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Firefox's AI Switch Is Off. Telemetry Isn't

https://marius.blog/firefox-155-ai-kill-switch-retest/
26•speckx•1h ago

Comments

jasonvorhe•54m ago
> To be clear, I know that the AI kill switch does not claim to disable telemetry or advertising.

Well, at least it's not the closing sentence.

Farmadupe•31m ago
Thankyou! that title was painful, I spent 20 seconds term rewriting it in my head..

* Firefox's AI Switch Is Off. Telemetry Isn't

* Firefox's AI Switch Is Off. Telemetry Isn't off [complete second clause]

* Firefox's Telemetry Isn't Off [remove negative clause]

* Firefox's Telemetry Is On [remove double negative]

----

Admittedly I didn't read past the first two paragraphs, but I assume it is a several hundred word repetition of its tautologous title.

jqpabc123•53m ago
Just follow the money.
drnick1•52m ago
There shouldn't be any telemetry in free software, end of. There are other ways to estimate the number of active users, e.g. through downloads and browser fingerprints.

Mozilla does not need more money than it already has. Ladybird has shown that you don't need a huge team to build a browser from scratch, so clearly Mozilla isn't spending all the money it gets from Google for development.

sourthyme•46m ago
Does Firefox sell this data? That would be bad and should be able to turn off. But there's other uses for telemetry that can help free software.
JohnFen•14m ago
Like with any software, you can't ever really be sure if they share this data with other entities. That's part of why I don't let software phone home, FOSS or not.
kibwen•43m ago
> There are other ways to estimate the number of active users

The point of telemetry is not to estimate the number of active users, and focusing on "telemetry" is the wrong bogeyman. Things like crash reports are telemetry, and are perfectly acceptable as long as the user remains in control over whether or not to send them. Software should respect user privacy and user control.

demibabs•42m ago
I don’t get this take. There’s good reasons to have telemetry in any software. Doesn’t really have to do with whether it’s free or not.

Of course, it’s also good to have the option to disable it.

ginko•40m ago
Telemetry should be opt-in.
nickthegreek•3m ago
> There shouldn't be any telemetry in free software, end of.

Don't install it if you dont want it, that is where you choice lies. Telemetry inclusion is up to the author. Good ones will make it opt-in if it is truly necessary to include.

> Ladybird has shown that you don't need a huge team to build a browser from scratch

Ladybird has done no such thing.

userbinator•39m ago
It's somewhat cathartic to go through the settings and JS parts, using the source as a guide, and rip out/disable all the spyware, which you can do even without having to build the whole thing from source.

Since I do my content filtering at the proxy level, all I want is just a browser .

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