Just the Browser - Just the Browser
justthebrowser.com
Remove AI features, telemetry data reporting, sponsored content, product integrations, and other annoyances from web browsers.
  • guywithoutaname@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    2 months ago

    FYI if you want to edit the Firefox policies directly and save it in /etc/firefox/policies/policies.json, this is the file they are using

      "policies": {
    "DisableFirefoxStudies": true,
    "DisableTelemetry": true,
    "DontCheckDefaultBrowser": true,
    "FirefoxHome": {
      "SponsoredStories": false,
      "SponsoredTopSites": false,
      "Stories": false
    },
    "GenerativeAI": {
      "Enabled": false
    },
    "SearchEngines": {
      "Remove": [
        "Perplexity"
      ]
    }
  }
}`
    • flying_sheep@lemmy.mlEnglish
      12·
      2 months ago

      This shows how unhinged the whole recent hate on Firefox is. Turning off GenAI is literally one single setting AND Mozilla is doing things infinitely better than others (e.g. the translation feature is completely local, and having a chatbot in the sidebar is opt-in)

      • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        This shows how unhinged the whole recent hate on Firefox is. Turning off GenAI is literally one single setting

        We heard of that “kill switch” way, way after the general outrage. Also, other software and services have an “AI killswitch” that conveniently fails to work from time to time, and is fixed only when people notice it.

        It’s not unhinged to point finger at someone doing something that, from experience, as always turned bad. Also, if you think the hate (I use your word, I’d say distrust) for Firefox is only related to the recent “AI” push, you’re severely misinformed.

        • flying_sheep@lemmy.mlEnglish
          12·
          2 months ago

          I literally got banned from the “awfulsystems” Lemmy instance for suggesting that Firefox isn’t horrible. No exaggeration, there was nothing else to my comment than a polite suggestion that Firefox is pretty good actually.

          If that ban isn’t driven by hate, I don’t want to see how real hate looks like.

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        2 months ago

        I get a lot of hate for it but some AI inclusions are genuinely good.

        Firefox’s (local, FOSS) AI translation is infinitely better than scraping all the info and sending it to Google Translate servers, and nobody will convince me otherwise.

        The screen reader improvements that use AI are good as well. Has anybody here used screen readers for web pages? They are awful. It’s good that someone is willing to improve them. My sister is blind so this matters a lot to me.

        The (locally generated) AI assisted link previews aren’t for me as I imagine they’re unnecessarily taxing on older PCs, but they’re not exactly an evil inclusion. I can see it being a useful feature.

        I’m not a fan of the LLM sidebar, but it’s opt-in and you can at least choose open models or even host your own. Plus there’s the unfortunate truth that many people that Firefox is trying to win over (“normies”) now expect features like that.

        The hate is so overblown. Everyone is so negative and absolutist about everything all of the time. It’s exhausting.

      • Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        01·
        2 months ago

        That’s because the people who are fine or happy with firefox aren’t the type of people to talk about it, the vocal ones are the people that have complaints

    • in_my_honest_opinion@piefed.socialEnglish
      4·
      2 months ago

      For those interested

      https://librewolf.net/installation/

      https://codeberg.org/librewolf/issues/issues/1919

      Thanks to @acockworkorange@mander.xyz for the context below.

      The settings that Mozilla packaged in were the main big ones, Claude, ChatGPT etc, it didn’t look like any of them were locally hosted or even if a locally hosted model could be chose. Local AI… where the model itself and all the token are processed on either your own machine or another machine controlled by you certainly isn’t violating privacy, but as I said the choices on offer were none of these.

      LibreWolf by default gets rid of anything that seeks to abuse your right to privacy, you won’t even find Google or Bing in your search engine. Naturally this will also apply to AI providers. Unfortunately, at the moment, we can’t trust Mozilla and by extension with AI items so these things were removed. That doesn’t mean you can’t install third party AI extensions.

      Also you can host your own search engine for even more privacy.

      https://docs.searxng.org/index.html

      • Albbi@piefed.caEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        You can switch to WaterFox and it seamlessly uses the FireFox sync to use all your passwords. Very easy drop in replacement.

    • NotSteve_@piefed.caEnglish
      41·
      2 months ago

      I really like the Zen browser. It’s Firefox-based, open source and privacy focused with AI removed but it’s also really pretty and is built around vertical tabs

    • CheerfulPassionFruit@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      2 months ago

      As a libreworlf user, I’d have to advise some caution to regular users. A lot of sites are broken as images won’t load and “fancier” web apps don’t work super well either. Yes it’s an easy fix, but expecting someone to go look in the config files to get an image to load is too much for a lot of people

        • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          Open netflix. Even with a lot of features turned off and DRM enabled, it will regularly fail to load any content.

          And, yes, the general user will want sites like netflix to work.

            • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
              11·
              2 months ago

              No need. It seem it got fixed along the way. But that’s the point; I tried this a year ago, and it would not work, either under the default configuration with DRM enabled, or after disabling most of the privacy features, so I just gave up on it.

              Firefox, for all the flaws regarding the direction Mozilla is taking, just worked out of the box. And for adoption, working out of the box immediately is kind of a requirement.

              • in_my_honest_opinion@piefed.socialEnglish
                11·
                2 months ago

                It would be helpful that when you report something is working or not, that you test a modern version, or you state when you last had the failure. Misinformation is not something we should be spreading. It can do far more harm than good.

                Also hopefully the top comments config script works for you or you’ve found an alternative browser like WaterFox or others.

    • ken@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      Grumpy ken thinks “Just use Foo” meming is promoting mindless use and I think should therefore be discouraged. Even in jest I think this affects us subconsciously to feel more comfortable with not thinking deeper for ourselves. Even if X is the right one. “Use Foo already!” is nicer~!

      If I may illustrate:

      Use Konform Browser1 already!

      1: Disclosures: Am dev; is LibreWolf fork

  • kali_fornication@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 months ago

    given what “edge” means among the teens these days, microsoft really should go back to the old browser name…microsoft goon

  • AlexLost@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    I learned how to turn off the AI search mode and chrome immediately logged me out and pretended not to know my device. C’mon bro, just give it up already, we do t want your shitty product shoved down our throats. Waterfox it is, and they easily let me transfer all my bookmarks and passwords.

    • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.socialEnglish
      4·
      2 months ago

      It kind of is. For example, Edge will automatically pop up in the corner at checkout and offer coupon codes, most of them will never work, then they’ll steal the affiliate revenue from whoever actually sent you to the site in the first place, or add an affiliate link where it didn’t previously exist, so that the site now has more expenses that are just… paying Microsoft for no reason, making everything you buy more expensive in the long run.

      It pops up whether you want it or not, it’s convoluted to disable, it slows down your browser when it’s running, it financially harms the shops you buy from, and it often just lies about having coupons to waste your time while pretending it’s helping you.

    • dantheclamman@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      If you’re familiar with the controversy around the Honey coupon addon, there are a lot of parallels in terms of privacy, ethics etc.

  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Great move for those that don’t want to migrate, but I’d recommend just switching to Vivaldi if you like chromium browsers, librewolf if you are used to Firefox, and if you use edge you aren’t even reading this so whatever.

    Edit: I guess if you can get this to work on a work computer where edge is your only browser option perhaps, that would be nice.

      • 123@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        You didn’t sneak anything in, they just don’t care enough. Even the most useless IT admin has a GUI to see any and all executables that any user runs. They even know if you use bat or sh scripts that you add an argument with a plain text password (which is considered amateurish since it leaves the credentials directly on the history).

        Also fair warning, most endpoint security software that companies are forced to use nowadays (if they want consideration to work with certain clients like state and federal) do SSL man in the middle with certificates they push to their hardware. Accessing personal data and websites using company resources is like handing out your password to them, and at least in the US, could open you up for litigation of you get on their bad side for how you use company resources.

        Above might not apply to startups, but as mentioned, if they want to work with certain clients, they have to run that kind of software to be considered for contracts. This means actions could have delayed consequences if a client has some audit request for any reason.

  • Electricd@lemmybefree.netEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Don’t mind about the AI addition. The worse thing for me is that it doesn’t seem to support custom OpenAI compatible endpoints nor Ollama. Wtf?! This should be the norm for the more privacy conscious community

  • rando@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Would anyone know if this would work for all Firefox derivatives as well? Zen browser in my case. Also would it work for flatpak installations as well?

      • rando@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        I see, at least initial read/reviews seem to mention Zen removes Firefox telemetry and AI so that’s good. (I also have waterfox installed but didn’t really use it as main browser)

        Now need to see if flatpak Firefox is supported by this script.

  • Dreamertech@linux-nerds.org
    110·
    2 months ago

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