Could Firefox Be the Browser That Protects the Privacy of AI Users? (anildash.com)
- Reference: 0180089789
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/11/15/2242238/could-firefox-be-the-browser-that-protects-the-privacy-of-ai-users
- Source link: https://www.anildash.com//2025/11/14/wanting-not-to-want-ai/
And at the Mozilla Festival in Spain, "Virtually everyone shared some version of what I'd articulated as [2]the majority view on AI, which is approximately that LLMs can be interesting as a technology, but that Big Tech, and especially Big AI, are decidedly awful and people are very motivated to stop them from committing their worst harms upon the vulnerable."
But...
> Another reality that people were a little more quiet in acknowledging, and sometimes reluctant to engage with out loud, is the reality that hundreds of millions of people are using the major AI tools every day ... I don't know why today's Firefox users, even if they're the most rabid anti-AI zealots in the world, don't say, "well, even if I hate AI, I want to make sure Firefox is good at protecting the privacy of AI users so I can recommend it to my friends and family who use AI"...
>
> My personal wishlist would be pretty simple:
>
> * Just give people the "shut off all AI features" button. It's a tiny percentage of people who want it, but they're never going to shut up about it, and they're convinced they're the whole world and they can't distinguish between being mad at big companies and being mad at a technology so give them a toggle switch and write up a blog post explaining how extraordinarily expensive it is to maintain a configuration option over the lifespan of a global product.
>
> * Market Firefox as "The best AI browser for people who hate Big AI". Regular users have no idea how creepy the Big AI companies are — they've just heard their local news talk about how AI is the inevitable future. If Mozilla can warn me [3]how to protect my privacy from ChatGPT , then it can also mention that ChatGPT tells children how to self-harm, and should be aggressive in engaging with the community on how to build tools that help mitigate those kinds of harms — how do we catalyze that innovation?
>
> * Remind people that there isn't "a Firefox" — everyone is Firefox. Whether it's Zen, or your custom build of Firefox with your favorite extensions and skins, it's all part of the same story. Got a local LLM that runs entirely as a Firefox extension? Great! That should be one of the many Firefoxes, too. Right now, so much of the drama and heightened emotions and tension are coming from people's (well... dudes') egos about there being One True Firefox, and wanting to be the one who controls what's in that version, as an expression of one set of values. This isn't some blood-feud fork, there can just be a lot of different choices for different situations. Make it all work.
[1] https://www.anildash.com//2025/10/22/atlas-anti-web-browser/
[2] https://www.anildash.com/2025/10/17/the-majority-ai-view
[3] https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/how-to-protect-your-privacy-from-chatgpt-and-other-ai-chatbots
I see one problem (Score:4, Insightful)
So you disable all the tracking and that's cool and all but a lot of businesses use that tracking to decide whether or not you're committing fraud or not.
So you use Firefox and they can't track you but then they won't let you make purchases on their website...
As a regular user then you go to Chrome because you find it if you use Firefox you can't buy stuff but if you use Chrome you can.
It's a problem that Firefox is seemingly unaware of and probably needs to find a solution for. Basically we need to find a middle ground of some kind.
I guess you could say the companies shouldn't do that because they shouldn't be tracking users but it's often the only effective way to catch fraud.
Re: (Score:2)
I've never seen this, at all. Maybe your filters are too aggressive?
Re: (Score:2)
I have run into sites that won't work in Firefox, but I am pretty sure that it is due to extremely poor coding by the website, rather than fraud prevention.
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This doesn't break the website it prevents you from completing a purchase. Generally speaking if you get flagged for fraud you won't be told. It just shows up as a decline. I had it happen to me trying to buy games for my PS3 from Sony back in the day. I would have to go to Amazon and buy a gift card and then load it because Sony had decided I was an evil Mastermind or something and they would not approve me for purchases no matter what. The card had a zero balance and I have an 800-point credit score.
Re: (Score:2)
> This doesn't break the website it prevents you from completing a purchase.
What purchase? In a few cases, I can't even view informational web sites; being presented with the "Looks like you are using an ad blocker". From some outfit with the URL freestar.com. Including a link with instructions on how to disable it.
But I'm not actually blocking ads. I just have Enhanced Tracking Protection set to "Strict". I'll actually put up with your stupid ad banners and video clips*. I don't care. Because I don't buy stuff from people who repeatedly annoy me.
*Except where I get a popup telli
Re: (Score:2)
You haven't seen it because Firefox isn't really doing all that much to prevent fingerprinting yet. They have a bunch of stuff in the nightly builds that will be in production build soon and it's going to be a problem.
How much of a problem will probably vary. Us old farts are probably in a database somewhere already that will allow us to get through. But if you're in your twenties and just starting out then when you go to make purchases it's going to be an issue.
Most consumers won't know what the he
Re: (Score:2)
Strict tracking prevention has been in the main builds for at least a year or 2 now. It is an option under privacy settings that warns it might break things. So I don't think it is going to be the default any time soon. I use the default standard protection, plus uBlock and Privacy Badger. Everything works, including YouTube with no ads.
Re: (Score:2)
> So you disable all the tracking and that's cool and all but a lot of businesses use that tracking to decide whether or not you're committing fraud or not. So you use Firefox and they can't track you but then they won't let you make purchases on their website...
I use Firefox daily and have for several years now and I have never, once, run into this issue.
Re: (Score:2)
That's because the advanced privacy features aren't in the current builds yet. It's very new stuff that they were using to prevent the kind of fingerprinting that is used to track people.
And it probably will not affect you because even after they roll out the new privacy features you are probably in a database somewhere of existing customers or something like that. The problem is going to be brand new customers getting flagged by mistake.
So the old farts floating around here are probably never going
Re: (Score:1)
Why don't you actually name the site(s) that are causing this supposed Firefox incompatibility?
Re:I see one problem (Score:5, Insightful)
> "So you disable all the tracking and that's cool and all but a lot of businesses use that tracking to decide whether or not you're committing fraud or not. So you use Firefox and they can't track you but then they won't let you make purchases on their website..."
This is actually insightful. I have noticed that with UBO and lots of tracking disabled (thank you Firefox), many sites, INCLUDING SLASHDOT, are now constantly challenging me to prove I am not a "bot" through their use of Cloudflare. So far it is just annoying. But that could evolve pretty quickly into downright disaster. And the more we outsource control of our sites to Cloudflare, the more dangerous it becomes. Soon, Google will be able to define the web in whatever freaking way they want, ways that will certainly not benefit user privacy or freedom. And Cloudflare will be able to completely control who is allowed to even browse the web, and how, and using which tools, and from where. Throw in AI nonsense to remove users from all direct sources of information, power more bots, and confuse everything with fake crap, and the outlook for "the web" is looking more dreary every year.
Re: I see one problem (Score:2)
If I get the cloudflare, show me the traffic light, challenges more than once I just stop trying. Once they notice the drop in genuine traffic they might reconsider. If not, well there other places to go to.
Re: (Score:2)
Right now, it is a stupid check box I have to keep clicking. Just started maybe a week ago. And it is nearly every time I click on anything Slashdot, if I have a gap of time inbetween. Sometimes even a few minutes. It is very annoying.
Re: I see one problem (Score:2)
Ironically I just got the cloudflare checkbox clicking on your reply. A first for me on slashdot, but I'm on my phone this morning which might be GNATed (shared IPv4), making it suspicious. I'm logged in though, and with a fairly old account, you would think that would bypass the need for a check.
AI bots are probably to blame for this trend.
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Very very few people are going to do that. They're going to try another browser and it's going to work just fine in that browser and then they're going to use that browser.
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Get ready to drink a verification can of Mountain Dew.
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Try deleting your profile, start from fresh, re-install your add-ons. I was getting a constant Captcha treatment on my corner of the web (not Cloudflare in my case, some European equivalent). I had privacy-protecting settings in about:config that I set years ago and forgot about, possibly something there triggers the bot suspicion. Restarting with a new profile solved it.
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You're not wrong, and I think the solution lies with the places where we are customers, not consumers. Let them know why you're not giving them your business. Money talks.
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I got an email asking for a review on a recent purchase. I spent 15 minutes writing the damn thing and their site decided I couldn't post it because I had an adblocker. I whitelisted them, even disabled it so I could post. None of it worked. I just emailed their "Contact US" and expressed how they wasted my time and wouldn't bother with a review. It helps them, not me. These folks need a better way to detect fraud.
Re: I see one problem (Score:3)
Been using Firefox since it was called Firebird. Never once encountered that problem. It's shocks me you found a business that doesn't want money.
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Newbie! I've been using it since it was called Phoenix!
Re: (Score:2)
> businesses use that tracking to decide whether or not you're committing fraud or not.
"Hey Mr Businessman! I just bought this brand new PC/Tablet/Cell phone and I'd like to buy that really expensive product I saw on your web site. Of course you can't track me. Because I only just turned on this brand new machine this morning."
Do you really think they'll turn you down? Once the credit card has been approved and the transaction completed, I'll just spin up a clean copy of the VM running my browser. And then next week: "Hey Mr Businessman! I just bought this brand new PC/Tablet/Cell phone ..."
It breaks sites (Score:3)
One of the problems I am running into nowadays is an increasing number of sites that intentional break when tracking is disabled. Some of them are being very aggressive with stopping reading of the site if ads have been removed but now the stronger settings in Firefox are starting to cause similar issues. The websites are fighting back against this privacy enhancing features.
Firefox is great but ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't like those emdash symbols in the article.
Why's everything got to be AI to get attention. Can't FF market itself as the non-AI browser? Use AI things in extensions perhaps?
If you have to ask that question (Score:3)
Then you rally don't know how the world works and what Firefox financial situation and ties are.
This is Why??? (Score:1)
I cannot log into my Home Depot account anymore, not even if I switch to Safari. I tried by turning off my privacy apps and still not able to sign in. Not gonna install Chrome, no way. Time to kill the HD credit card.
Firefox spies by default (Score:2)
Perhaps they should have a think about what they stand for.
Nobody cares... (Score:2)
> people are very motivated to stop them from committing their worst harms upon the vulnerable.
Seriously. Nobody cares as long as it doesn't affect them. If people cared then most scams would fail because the tools that scammers use would be shut down long ago.
Did you ever wonder why it's so easy to find your personal information and so hard to find the scammer. Because nobody cares about the vulnerable.
People are motivated to pass the problem off to others just like "think of the children" campaigns.
LibreWolf (Score:5, Interesting)
No. FF is hopelessly enshittified. The only way to fix it is to strip out all the telemetry/AI/adware and preinstall good adblock. The result is called [1]LibreWolf [librewolf.io] and is the browser you *thought* you were supposed to get with FF
[1] http://librewolf.io/
Re: LibreWolf (Score:2, Redundant)
Fml here is correct link [1]https://librewolf.net/ [librewolf.net]
[1] https://librewolf.net/
Re:LibreWolf (Score:4, Interesting)
> "No. FF is hopelessly enshittified."
Couldn't disagree with you more. If you want that type of browser, look no further than Edge/Chrome. Rigid config, lack of user control, often mysterious goings-on, etc. That is on top of Google trying to completely take over what is web standards, mostly in favor of their own products and services (and drag all the other browsers with it, since they are now all Chromium, except Firefox and those based on it).
> "The only way to fix it is to strip out all the telemetry/AI/adware"
What little telemetry/AI/adware, if you can call it that, is 100% under user control. Mozilla is completely open about what they do and where, and you can turn all of it off. Nothing is hidden. And it actually is off when you turn it off. And it stays off.
> "and preinstall good adblock."
Mozilla isn't going to put that directly into Firefox. It would be suicide. Yes, we all immediately install a VERY good adblock, which is UBO. And it is the real deal, unlike anything you can put in Chrome or Edge. But that is our doing it. If that were preinstalled, it would make Firefox an enemy of some very powerful corporations. Mozilla has enough issues without adding that.
Re: (Score:1)
example #45323 of why open source projects lose to big corporations. the only real viable alternative to literally google/microsoft and apple and what do we get? "actually perfect is the enemey of good"
and whats the alternative? a whole new browser as a real alternative? no a fucking fork of the very thing being criticized so it relies upon the financial success of the thing we are supposed to hate but will also fragment it
continued good work guys, year of the linux desktop anytime now
Re: (Score:2)
Since it is based on Firefox, if everyone leaves it for LibreWolf, who will maintain that? Firefox will fold, and so will LibreWolf. You need a sustainable business model.