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You can disable this in about:config by modifying extensions.webextensions.restrictedDomains. It's probably there to help prevent malicious extensions from hijacking official browser support. I reckon many people here don't need it.

This sentence is eye-opening:

  > Smart Window infers information about you based on your interactions with the assistant and your Firefox browsing activity, including websites you have visited. This may include activity outside of Smart Window (such as in classic windows)...
Privacy-minded users who want to try this feature would need to create a totally separate browser profile to avoid data leaks.

You can control this in the settings:

    - Learn from chats in Smart Window
    - Learn from browsing in Classic and Smart Windows

The real question here is what is the default? Is it opt-in or opt-out?

This is complete bullshit. I am sick of fucking Mozilla doing this. I am writing this from Firefox and always test products to make sure they work, but fuck it is getting hard and harder to justify it.

To people who work at Mozilla and are pushing these. FUCK YOU.


Please don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

They have a reason: profit.

This is testable. The profits of car insurance companies should rise (let’s say substantially) in real dollars as accident payouts decrease as a result of the inevitable dominance of autonomous vehicles.

It reminds me of a Labubu doll designed by committe, (literally) removing the sharp edges

There has to be a much stronger correlation between good press for a software release and the subsequent downloads of it, even if a certain number of downloads were inevitable.

The troubling part in the post is that telemetry (about AI features) begins before the user can rush to disable either of them.

It's a response to the Mozilla CEO saying[0] "Trust is earned. Consent is asked. AI skipped both," which promised to ameliorate this issue, and apparently did not.

[0]: https://aed.me/articles/turn-it-off/


If the CEO of the company behind my browser of choice gave me an AI slopped response after criticism of integrating AI into the browser I'd never touch that product again unless he got fired.

before the user can rush to disable either of them

You download, disconnect from the network, and then edit the settings file before even starting the app for the first time.


That's not ever how it should be done, and the average person certainly won't work around that.

However, I'm fine with telling Mozilla once per install that I'm not interested in using the generative AI, or summaries, etc. On-device translation is quite useful.


I ended up on this comment after looking through the linked article and realizing the words "data center" never come up in it.


I think you can use it without enabling telemetry, due to a recent change:

> Previously, access to these changes required you to share technical and interraction data (telemetry) with Mozilla. However, as of Firefox version 148, you can opt into receiving remote improvements, even if you have opted out of sharing your telemetry or participating in our experimental studies.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/remote-improvements


> access to these changes required you to share technical and interraction data (telemetry) with Mozilla

How did that even happen? I sure hope that was a bug and not a product decision, because that sounds very backwards.


I think for their labs / beta features they just require it to get testing data


In February 2025 Mozilla granted themselves the right to sell your personal data for profit


> If they choose to support the PKK

Did they? There's a lot of implication with that "if", and I saw someone else point out (albeit rudely) that anything that may have supported them was taken down.


Even intelligent people have demonstrated they are not immune to the damaging effects of AI sycophancy. The most recent example that comes to mind is Hank Green.


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