Firefox Community Forum

More of a suggestion than a question - I've been using Firefox for 20 years because of it's focus on privacy and it's lack of pushing trendy slop options (Sloptions?). Almost everyone who uses Firefox is going to be doing so because of this - It's what it's known for and is what makes it unique compared to other search engines. What is going on with the pushing of AI? At they very least make it easy to disable it, that's the bare minimum. This is such a weird shift for the company after years of differentiating itself and with a loyal user base who are using Firefox to avoid this. Why would we be here if not because Firefox is different? Please stop pushing this kind of crap!

On my pc, Mozilla Firefox continuously loops the error message, “Firefox is already running, but is not responding. The old Firefox process must be closed to open a new window.” It then proceeds to close and loop this error. I have uninstalled and reinstalled multiple times, as well as did a “refresh” in deleting all my extensions and addons upon the new installation. Please advise. Thank you.

Saw a bunch of news articles that said Mozilla has a new CEO who wants to make Firefox a modern AI browser. Fuck that. If I have to spend more than 30 seconds gouging AI bullshit out of the heart of your product, I will stop using it immediately and resort to open source alternatives. Not a question, just a warning. I don't use social media so send this to your PR department or whatever.

To the Firefox development community:

I started using Firefox... well, before it was Firefox. In the early browser wars, I was a devotee of Netscape. After high school, Firefox became a thing, and I was an early adopter. For years I eagerly spoke of the glories of the open source browser, and even when Chrome came around with its "new hotness", I stuck with Firefox. It was, I reckoned, just better.

However, something has happened which has shaken my faith in the browser - and in the Mozilla foundation entirely. As the whole internet screams "WE DO NOT WANT AI", as Valve gets endless kudos from its userbase and a reputation as "the only good monopoly" because it forces its game listings to have disclaimers if AI touches games in any way, and as it becomes known that ChatGPT is pushing teens to suicide...

Mozilla has decided "hey we want that in our browser!"

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

This is the greatest betrayal of a userbase I can imagine. LLMs are the antithesis to the open-source, "you can see what goes into it" mindset that Firefox has had for over 20 years. It is bloat. It is built on plagiarism - by default, all LLMs are built by scraping huge amounts of data that their designers do not own.

Thankfully, there IS a branch of Firefox that does not use AI - the Waterfox project - and I will be turning my attention there. But mark my words - by deciding that the last holdout against putting AI in everything SHOULD put AI in it, you have soured an incredible amount of the goodwill that you have built up.

My personal recommendation: Fire the idiot who made this decision and replace him with ANYONE who has a modicum of sense in the Foundation.

As a last comment, I will say that I am ending it here because I believe this says enough of what I am thinking and feeling at the moment; if I was to say everything it would be approximately 90 pages long and be 35% obscenity by volume, and I don't think the forum rules allow that. Good evening, and may Mark Surman stub his toe every 129 seconds for the rest of his life.

AI is using my data and serving up slop from what it gathers. I'd like to keep as much AI slop out of my Firefox web browser as possible, is there information available on how to block AI features and results from my Firefox?

Hey I specifically switched to Firefox for its wonderful open sourcing, its private features, ai blockers, and accessibility and i am sorely disappointed to hear that the new CEO desires to pump this browser with AI. I did not get this browser for its AI features to be, but because it had NO AI. None. I really don't want to search for some other brower. I really love this browser since its away from Chromium, because its unique and its own thing. Please don't do this to your users, you have the base you want thats dedicated and loyal. It would be such an unsmart move to go towards AI, you will lose many many users.

Thank you for hearing out my complaint. Dont change anything and we will all be happy.

Is it true that the CEO is planning to put AI into the browser? If so, I would have to switch to something else because that would be a massive privacy and security violation. I am incredibly disappointed that this is something Ive heard about when Mozilla Firefox has been one of the best browsers Ive ever used. Putting AI into everything is a waste of everyones time and resources.

Whenever I type in "photo", Firefox has always autocompleted to photos.google.com. Today it's started autocompleting to photoquotes.com instead; a site I never use, and I don't know why Firefox is suggesting it.

I have followed SEVERAL guides for how to remove sites from autocomplete suggestions, and all of them give wrong advice.

I have gone to History/Manage History and 'Forget about this site'. That does not remove the site from autocomplete.

I have tried 'Hover over the entry to select it, then click delete'. This does not work. It only deletes the last character entered in the address bar.

I have tried 'Select the three-dot menu beside the suggestion and select Remove from history'. That is Not Possible with the top result in autocomplete, which appears above Firefox suggestions.

Could someone please tell me the CORRECT answer on how to remove specific websites from being suggested in autocomplete!?

I've donated to mozilla in the past because I really love this browser but I hear your new CEO is doubling down on using more AI slop. Please don't. I'm old and tired and don't want to find a new browser but I will.

The biggest reason I use Firefox is because of the lack of Generative AI "features" that both make browsing worse and destroy the environment through the ridiculous amount of resources they take to spit out worse results. Stop sneaking them in, or I - and many others - will take our business elsewhere.

First, is there a list of commandline options?

Second, I would like to be able to start Firefox with a specified URL from a batch file -or- a .net program. Then, either close FF -or- switch to a different URL. is this possible?

Is there a way to turn off the “shake for AI summary” function on IOS? It doesn’t add anything to my experience, and more often than not, I end up accidentally shaking my phone and getting a summary I didn’t ask for.

If there’s a way to completely turn off the AI features, i’d like that too I’d prefer if my browser didn’t summarize the websites I visit in a way that can be inaccurate or lie to me.

Mozilla, please just remove these features entirely. If we want AI, we can go to ChatGPT or another website, I just don’t want it added into everything I use all of a sudden.

Thanks in advance for any help. :)

The only reason Firefox has remained relevant in any way—the reason myself & everyone I know switched from Chrome in the first place—is because of the fact that privacy is respected and there aren't superfluous features bloating the browser. Nobody wants more AI integration, least of all the people using THIS browser!

If these changes don't stop, sooner than later myself (& many others, as is evident by the overwhelming response) will be migrating to a new browser. This is not what we came here for! Don't fix what isn't broken, and listen to your users!

I abhor the use of AI in the one browser I use because I thought it was far safer than any other browser. I have switched to Firefox because I knew it hadn't tracked my data, nor did it shove useless and unwanted features onto me without the ability to tell it no. But apparently, that has changed.

The blatant disregard for any opinion other than the CEO's in terms of including the implementation of AI tells me that Mozilla has little care for what their users want. Many people are speaking out against AI, many people here on these forums especially, and I am adding my own voice to the choir.

If the use of AI features continue to be added, I will consider simply switching browsers to one where I can at the very least patch out the AI entirely. I will be taking me, and my funding, with me, and I will not be looking back. I would hope these rising voices will be heard, and taken into consideration, before Firefox all but goes up in blazes and never reignites again.

I use Firefox every day and have since the browser's very early days. I have a Firefox account, and am logged in when using it.

Typically, I have some pinned tabs (calendar, for instance) and also some tab groups (Container Tabs). There are usually a small number of open tabs. For example, this week, I have been googling spreadsheet formulas for a Google Sheet I am working on.

Occasionally, perhaps once every couple of months. when I open the browser, everything is gone. All the pinned tabs, tab groups, and the tabs I'd left open deliberately are not there. Just one tab (Google), is open.

I can re-open the container tabs and add them to the tab bar again, try and remember which tabs were pinned and redo those, but having to trawl through history to find the very detailed searches for spreadsheet formulas and work-rounds - is all very tedious and shouldn't be happening!

It has only been happening for at most a year, maybe seven or eight times in total, but those seven or eight times shouldn't happen.

I have searched for a way to restore it to how it was the last time I closed it, but cannot find any way to restore Firefox to how it had been.

I am using an a fairly new ASUS laptop (but it happened on my previous PC too), with Windows 11 installed and up-to-date. Firefox is always kept up-to-date too.

Any suggestions would be very welcome.