The poll is over, and the result is clear:
#FireFox users have very little interest for Chatbot integration into their browser.
I am very much aware that the people, who voted in this poll are hardly a representative sample, but more than 2.4K people is a better size than many “professional” opinion polls.
@mozilla & @firefox should take people, who actually care about their #browser choice, seriously.
I still seriously believe that #Mozilla’s fate matters,
https://berlin.social/@mina/113102817500429735
1/3
Eventhough I am not pro chatbot, such a poll is unfortunately completely worthless. Only random samples (or at least representative ones) allow to say something about a group.
If we go into an AI fanboy forum and ask the same question, we may find 3000 people saying the exact opposite. It just means nothing whatsoever.
There’s also the fact that it’s a false dichotomy.
Yes and no.
Obviously, the people questioned here, are not representative for the entire FF user community.
However: The Fediverse at large is a community of mostly tech-savvy people, who do care about independence from major corporations.
These are, in fact, also the people who are the core users and developers of FOSS software.
Whilst the exact percentage means nothing, the tendency is so clear that it should, at least, be taken into consideration.
Did you read part 2 & 3?
as being a prominent and established way of accessing the internet without using a product owned by one of three three tech giants.
No niche browser can play the same role.
To me, hopping onto a running train doesn’t seem to be the way to go when it comes to creating and keeping trust:
People, who think that cars are a terrible way of getting people around in cities, don’t want “another Tesla”, they want a good bicycle.
Here we have a problem, common to many non-profits:
Fake Professionalism!
I don’t believe that CEOs, who demand a 7 digit salary, have the ability to understand the soul and heart of a collective of people (in the case of many #FOSS projects: some of the world’s most skilled and talented programmers), who donate lots of their time and energy for a project they believe in, and hence lack the credibility and skills necessary for making them thrive in the long term.
Firefox’s ever falling market share proves that.
3/3
computer scientists: we have invented a virtual dumbass who is constantly wrong
tech CEOs: let’s add it to every product
Borrowed from here
We want lighter and faster browsers that load up less features, block all unnecessary data collection and spying and java scripts, consume less hardware resources, and don’t choke and heat up 8-gb ram laptops just because I openned 1 tab.
I don’t want Siri in my internet. I don’t even like it when it automatically searches and returns suggetions for mere typing anything in address bar. If I wanted a chatbot, I know how to visit chatgpt or any site myself.
It’s just an integration with LLM services and not AI baked-in the browser code. You can even self-host any such service (Ollama) and integrate Firefox with it. That will make sure your query is not leaving your network.
aw man i missed the poll i would have voted “fuck no” to chatbot integration
why can’t we just have a fast, reliable browser with a clean UI that is fairly customizable with really solid extension support?
Extensions/plugins were supposed to provide the framework if users wanted a bunch of bells and whistles.
and I refuse to believe that a company with the resources of Mozilla cannot do that.
Minecraft is basically that in game form. A powerful voxel engine that has a massive amount of support for mods and plugins.
I guess, that is what most people want.
I don’t want an AI chatbot in the sidebar, but if it gives Mozilla a new, substantial source of revenue outside the Google search deal–and I can disable it–then I’m all for it.
Good point.
However: Revenue is a good thing. Being trusted by the community is infinitely more valuable.
I used to always have a ChatGPT tab pinned, so I wouldn’t mind. That said, the integration is just plain terrible. To be more precise, the whole experience with the sidebar is terrible. Why can I only have one and not even choose the default one? I need two clicks to get to the assistant, which is one more than just pinning a tab…
In Brave, the integration is so much better. They have a dedicated button (that you can also disable iirc), that opens a sidebar with only the chatbot. Moreover, you can choose from a bunch of models or link your own. You are not constantly at risk of accidentally sending something to it when selecting text, because neither is “AI” the top option in context menus, nor is one opening automatically. AI doesn’t appear in search. And it can even do more (e.g. “summarize this entire page”), while there is also no need to log in.
In short: This seems not thought through at all. And if it was, maybe the reactions would be less negative.
I mean, I don’t have anything against the chatbot feature, but this is coming before the tab group functionality…
Presumably this one’s less work, so even with them being worked on at the same time, no real reason to hold back the one that’s done sooner. But apparently you can try out tab groups already: https://lemmy.ml/post/20000489
please for the love of god almighty dont ad a chatbot or any other kind of gipity! even if one disregards all the concerns about privacy, software bloat and energy usage (climate change), one has to remember the purpose of firefox, or any other browser for that matter: loading websites. nothing more nothing less.
Can this poll be considered official ? I clicked the link and it looks like a Twitter poll or something.
Of course, it’s not official.
I made this poll, as just a normal Fedi user.
It got more attention than I had anticipated, though.
This post is confusing because I recently did take an official Firefox poll involving AI features (and others).
I’m sorry.
It was certainly never my intention to impose myself like an official channel or something like that.
I still welcome a debate here.
Asking mastodon users whether they’d choose AI over Privacy is like asking Elon Musk if he’d rather end poverty or buy another mega yacht.
As the “tech guy” who my family turns to for advice, I do not have a single family member other than my younger brother who has any interest in AI-assistance. My brother wants it to cheat in school.
I don’t think you thought this one through!
To be the guy known for ending poverty for all time, having statues in every park on the planet? Or just another boat to park in your mega-garage of boats?
Easy choice.
Yeah, I dunno about that considering he promised to end world hunger if the UN could show him how the money was used. They did and he essentially told them to fuck off and donated it to himself instead: https://truthout.org/articles/musk-pledged-6b-to-solve-world-hunger-but-gave-it-to-his-own-foundation-instead/
We’re talking about two different things here.
Actually trying to end world hunger vs pushing a button and having it happen. The former is really hard and probably way beyond the means of any individual, no matter how wealthy. The fact that Elon promised to do it is only evidence of his extreme ego, not his ability nor his ethics (which his donation to himself calls into question).
If he could push a button and end world poverty at a nominal cost of $xxx billion, I think he would do it. But to actually put in the work over a lifelong project which has a high potential to fail? I don’t for a second believe he’s capable of that. But who is?
He did not have to provide lifelong project and work on it. He just needed to donate his money and people in UN would have worked with that money. Even if it didn’t work, he’d still have done a real great job by donating that much. And maybe we could have learn money is not the solution and we need to change approach.
A representative 300 sample would give a more accurate result than a biased 2.4k sample. Bigger number doesn’t mean better results.
That said, I’m not sure how to get representation from certain subgroups of the population, like the “never engages with polls” or “lies specifically to fuck with your data” subgroups.
Yes, It was easier to do truly representative polls, when people loved answering questions and everybody had a landline.
I remember a time when the phone or doorbell would ring and I would get excited to know who it was.
Now I seriously consider setting up a series of mirrors so that I can see who is at the door without giving up my ability to pretend like no one is home and my phone ringing causes an emotion somewhere between worry and rage.
Same!
But isn’t it a bit sad, we’ve all become so paranoic whilst at the same time being total oblivious to sharing lots of data, just because we want to know what the kitten did to the alligator?
I’m just tired of people trying to sell me shit. Or beg. Like I know I’m not interested 3 words in to the spiel but still feel like an asshole if I just say no and close the door or hang up the phone.
Though I did eventually tell my phone provider to put me on their no call list for their internet marketing because I got tired of them trying to get me to switch to their less good internet package.
Hoping (but not holding my breath) that we, as a society, squash the whole data broker thing sometime relatively soon, though.
