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EU browser choice rules send millions more users Firefox's way
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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There is something humorous to the fact that these users have waited until Firefox has begun the AI enshitification process before switching to it. It's like they just had to wait until it was no longer the clear. Good choice before they made the switch.
Dude, it's like five things – one of which is just translations that can be performed locally, and another of which is an alt text accessibility option – with an obvious universal kill switch (and of course individualized ones). Calm your tits. Chill your balls. I don't use LLMs at all except for translations, and I still think the whinging over this is completely overblown.
"Begun" implies a slippery slope of much more, and that just doesn't seem to be the case.
Lol, ok chief.
Firefox lets you implicitly disable or remove them, slop browsers do not.
I don't like AI either but lets not pretend there's an equivalency between these browsers.
But this is talking about users who switched to Firefox only AFTER being presented with a choice directly in their face. The Firefox AI options are turned on by default, and I can't remember if it was easily guided to turn them off. So this group may not find that an easy solution, or find it at all.
The difference is that there is a switch. Chrome does not. Not to mention, Firefox has optional AI features, which is different from a local AI model automatically installed. Mozilla/Mozilla staff has been vocal about how bad of an idea it is to make local AI a web standard reference
The AI stuff is behind a switch I have not seen a single AI feature while using Firefix nor do I see any ads
FireFox was enhittified even before the AI bits: it fucking spies on you
That's why I use LibreWolf , which is literally just the latest-stable FF build, but with all the AI and telemetry ripped out, uBlock Origin and anti-fingerprinting enabled by default.
It's literally what FireFox was supposed to be. And they don't even accept money . God level.
But there is no mobile version, and their FAQ says it's unlikely to happen. Instead they point to IronFox, which I presume is nowhere close to feature equivalent to Firefox.
why do you presume that?
Because more people would be promoting it if that were the case? It is what it is, I'm not meaning to knock it, just wanting to seek clarity in its promotion. There are always going to be trade-offs, and it is up to each end-user to decide whether they can live with them.
ironfox is not a brand new browser, but a soft fork like librewolf, always kept up to date. what it removes is the garbage google components, nothing useful is removed as I know. it even has a couple additional settings related to privacy, and Unified Push support for some reason I could not yet figure out
I'm personally quite partial to Fennec.
I've been using Fennec for a while and it's been a great experience. Much good. Do recommend.
IronFox, Fennec and Privacy Browser are all decent as far as mobile Firefox, on GrapheneOS I like to use mostly Vanadium and Privacy Browser
Same here. Only thing I am missing from brave is PWA support.
Its feature equivalent but it is so slow compared to Firefox fennec or waterfox.
Ironfox is literally a fork of Firefox Android with additional privacy settings. Why wouldn't 8 have equivalent features?
https://codeberg.org/ironfox-oss/IronFox
Not denying, but how has it been spying? you mean telemetry?
Yes. "Telemetry" is a nice word for "spying on you"
Yeah ig it is