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Mozilla is in a tricky position. It contains both a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the internet a better place for everyone, and a for-profit arm dedicated to, you know, making money. In the best of times, these things feed each other: The company makes great products that advance its goals for the web, and the nonprofit gets to both advocate for a better web and show people what it looks like. But these are not the best of times. Mozilla has spent the last couple of years implementing layoffs and restructuring, attempting to explain how it can fight for privacy and openness when Google pays most of its bills, while trying to find its place in an increasingly frothy AI landscape.

Fun times to be the new Mozilla CEO, right? But when I put all that to Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, the company’s just-announced chief executive, he swears he sees opportunity in all the upheaval. “I think what’s actually needed now is a technology company that people can trust,” Enzor-DeMeo says. “What I’ve seen with AI is an erosion of trust.”

Mozilla is not going to train its own giant LLM anytime soon. But there’s still an AI Mode coming to Firefox next year, which Enzor-DeMeo says will offer users their choice of model and product, all in a browser they can understand and from a company they can trust. “We’re not incentivized to push one model or the other,” he says. “So we’re going to try to go to market with multiple models.”

-_-

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[-] Deestan@lemmy.world 546 points 3 months ago
[-] dimjim@sh.itjust.works 123 points 2 months ago

This is such a fantastic way to put it. I fuckin love the internet, people have amazing ways to say things lol

[-] turbowafflz@lemmy.world 215 points 3 months ago

I feel like mozilla could switch to making all their decisions by flipping a coin and do better than they're doing in recent years

[-] Deceptichum@quokk.au 50 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

But how else would the CEO justify her $7 million dollar salary (in ‘22) that’s going up by a million or two every year since she returned, starting at $3 million in 2020.

[-] mjr@infosec.pub 20 points 2 months ago
[-] Deceptichum@quokk.au 61 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Oh shit they literally changed CEO a few hours ago. My bad.

Doubt the wage issue will change though.

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[-] Gonzako@lemmy.world 113 points 2 months ago

Man, I so wish mozilla was a worker owned cooperative. These string of useless CEOs would have already been shown the door

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[-] DigDoug@lemmy.world 101 points 2 months ago

Is "must make the dumbest fucking decision possible at all times" in the Mozilla CEO job description or something?

I have no CEO experience, but I'll make stupid fucking decisions for a fifth of the salary you're paying the current guy.

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[-] tynansdtm@lemmy.ml 95 points 3 months ago

"AI is untrustworthy, therefore you can use multiple AI services in our product."

[-] criss_cross@lemmy.world 81 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

“What I’ve seen with AI is an erosion of trust.”

Mozilla is not going to train its own giant LLM anytime soon. But there’s still an AI Mode coming to Firefox next year, which Enzor-DeMeo says will offer users their choice of model and product, all in a browser they can understand and from a company they can trust. “We’re not incentivized to push one model or the other,” he says. “So we’re going to try to go to market with multiple models.” Some will be open-source models available to anyone.

This is such an out of touch non-answer here.

People don’t oppose ai changes because they’re locked into a model. In fact most AI products I use for my job let you choose a fucking model.

People hate them because

A) 90% of the time they’re useless and the remaining 10 are detrimental to the product experience

B) Ethical concerns about training off of artists and authors as well as environmental impact. EDIT: or also the general trend of trying to replace humans with AI.

C) Not wanting to play into the fucking arms race the billionaire class are manufacturing

D) The time they could be useful they have a risk of being either hilariously wrong or dangerously wrong. And there’s no amount of training and GPU manufacturing that’s gonna fix that.

Absolutely none of this is addressed by the CEO. I’m sure he has to say this because of the fucking tulip crazy money is in around this but it doesn’t make it any less tone deaf or futile.

[-] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 76 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Their user base is almost exclusively tech savvy people, the same people who are most opposed to AI.

I think this move signals that they believe we have nowhere else to go, and they're daring us to go fuck ourselves, because fuck you, what are you going to do, use Chrome?

Yes, yes I will, well Chromium forks.

In general, I prefer the look and feel of chromium-based browsers, but I use Firefox and Firefox forks for the reasons that I'm sure everyone here is aware of.

If those reasons go away, I'll just switch to Vivaldi as my primary browser. I won't be happy about it, but if Firefox becomes another AI slop project. I might as well go with the browser whose UX I prefer.

[-] Supervisor194@lemmy.world 50 points 2 months ago

Yes, yes I will, well Chromium forks.

Yeah, I'm not going to switch to a Manifest V3 browser because Firefox puts in access to an optional AI agent. If Firefox makes it so you can't turn it off, which I wouldn't think is likely, I might switch to something like Librewolf, but Chromium? No.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 29 points 2 months ago

Why do you say that tech savvy people are "most opposed to AI?" Don't conflate "the membership of this small social media bubble called 'technology'" with tech-savvy people in general. Lots of tech savvy people are developing and using AI, where else do you think it's coming from?

The problem here is that we've got a small crowd with a strong opinion, constantly shouting their opinion to each other and making an unfriendly environment to anyone who doesn't share that opinion. So of course it seems like "everyone" shares that opinion, you never see otherwise.

[-] FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 47 points 2 months ago

Most people in tech that I know hate AI, including devs. I know one manager who is gung ho for it but everyone is annoyed by him and he was already well known for going apeshit over whatever the latest tech buzzword is before the whole AI craze kicked off.

Anecdotal I suppose, but IMO, most people who are actually technical seem to treat AI with a good degree of skepticism if not outright disdain.

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[-] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 2 months ago

I would use a Firefox fork over Vivaldi simfly because of extensions (including uBO)

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[-] billwashere@lemmy.world 65 points 2 months ago

Mozilla’s new CEO is a dumbass.

[-] namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev 19 points 2 months ago

It's hard to beat the last one, but he somehow managed to pull it off.

Then again, Mitchell Baker is still on the board of directors if I'm not mistaken, so it sounds like the rot is too pervasive for just one CEO to change.

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[-] trk@aussie.zone 61 points 2 months ago

I've cancelled my monthly donation to Mozilla. What's the point. Every bit of feedback I've provided is to the tune of no goddamn AI, spend my money towards keeping up with the alternatives to make sure there's always an extra player in the field. Instead it's going to some overpaid dickhead who's going to introduce AI.

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[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 59 points 2 months ago

This is every Mozilla CEO in the last decade:

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[-] 58008@lemmy.world 54 points 2 months ago

Is there like a petition or something we can all sign to show that literally no cunt wants this?

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[-] witty_username@feddit.nl 49 points 2 months ago

EU here is your chance! Fully fund Mozilla on the condition that they move to an EU country

[-] yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 2 months ago

And fire the CEO :)

[-] Brum@lemmy.world 18 points 2 months ago

This. There is so much Mozilla and EU can offer each other.

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Any valid alternative for android phones to firefox with same add-on support? These idiots look like they are speedrunning it to become a shitty company.

[-] vikingtons@lemmy.world 23 points 2 months ago

Fennec on fdroid perhaps?

[-] quaff@lemmy.ca 22 points 2 months ago
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[-] tired_n_bored@lemmy.world 38 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Mozilla is completely detached from its user base. They think their average user is a Microsoft enthusiast when in reality it's a Debian enjoyer.

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[-] DFX4509B@lemmy.wtf 37 points 2 months ago

Just like I said in another post related to this, I hope this doesn't kill LibreWolf, IceCat, and Waterfox.

[-] ChromaticMan@lemmy.world 49 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Librewolf have put a post out a few days ago that they won’t add any AI stuff.

https://chaos.social/@librewolf/115716906957137196

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[-] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 31 points 2 months ago

So many people mentioning (inferior, in my opinion) Firefox alternatives in the comments and nobody's mentioned Librewolf? Really? Maybe Librewolf will have to become a hard fork someday if this continues, but for now, it's just Firefox for people who care about their data. Aside from a few justifiably aggressive default settings, I've never had even a hint of an issue with it.

[-] Truscape 20 points 2 months ago

Librewolf's automatic cap at 60hz (anti-fingerprinting measure, I know, but annoying AF), and elements that break websites usually are the parts that turn people away. I'd rather use something like IronFox or Waterfox instead and just customize them.

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[-] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 27 points 2 months ago

That's what all CEOs do. Double down on AI.

[-] MyPornViewingAccount@lemmy.world 23 points 3 months ago
[-] namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev 22 points 2 months ago

I was having issues with Librewolf on a work computer a few weeks ago, so I decided to try Firefox to see if it was LW's security settings.

Holy shit, what a fucking trainwreck Firefox has become! It's so bad that I can't honestly recommend anyone use it anymore. The first time I started it, I saw all kinds of ads and trashy "news" articles that had no relevance to me whatsoever. Plus I had to reinstall all my extensions because they weren't signed and there's no way to disable that requirement. I was so horrified and offended, I just dumped it immediately and tried Chrome instead. What difference is there at this point?

It's just insulting at this point. I understand that they trying to find new revenue sources, and things are still better today than they were with Mitchell Baker as CEO, but it's still horrific how poorly Mozilla is being run. I'm so grateful we still have usable forks from the amazing people running projects like Librewolf. Without them, the web would just be flat out unusable.

[-] super_user_do@feddit.it 22 points 2 months ago

Once I saw AI being integrated into Firefox, my trust towards the Mozilla Foundation dropped permanently. I have now switched over to Vivaldi which is an amazing European browser that kinda mimics Opera in many ways (but without the spyware ofc)

[-] TedZanzibar@feddit.uk 36 points 2 months ago

Vivaldi is Chromium based, that's like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

There are plenty of Firefox forks that will be actively removing the AI crap. Waterfox, Pale Moon, Librewolf, Zen, Floorp to name a few. And these will all continue to support Manifest v2 and therefore adblockers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Web_browsers_based_on_Firefox

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[-] sockenklaus@sh.itjust.works 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Do you trust Vivaldi despite it beeing closed source? I get that you mistrust Mozilla since they integrated AI but there are plenty of forks that cut the AI part and even are explicitly privacy focused.

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[-] letsgo2themall@lemmy.world 21 points 3 months ago

waterfox, pale moon, ironfox. there's your multiple models.

[-] Professorozone@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago

It's almost as if they are out of touch with their users. I don't get it. CEOs are just normal people like us.

/s

[-] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 19 points 2 months ago

Of course, this is just what Firefox needs ~~fixing long standing issues, catching up to web standards, process isolation on mobile~~ AI!

[-] rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago

You either die Old Mozilla or you live to see yourself become Current Mozilla.

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[-] PrimeMinisterKeyes@leminal.space 18 points 2 months ago
[-] skip0110@lemmy.zip 18 points 3 months ago

🤷‍♂️ ironfox exists

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[-] QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 18 points 2 months ago

Why do they keep going all in on AI when no one wants it?

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this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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