Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.

@tasket if you want a serious discussion about the role translations should or shouldn’t have in a browser, let me refer you to steve: https://hci.social/@fasterandworse/115849566354469222

I don’t really feel anything about the translations feature other than disappointment, a bit of concern over how the data was sourced, and a strong feeling that it shouldn’t be a core browser feature

@davidgerard @mdavis@mastodon.social @firefoxwebdevs “but wait just let me explain the AI kill switch”, Mozilla continues to insist, as they slowly expand and transform into an SBF

@davidgerard @mdavis@mastodon.social @firefoxwebdevs “but wait just let me explain the AI kill switch”, Mozilla continues to insist, as they slowly expand and transform into an SBF

@zzt @davidgerard @firefoxwebdevs Mozilla spent 25 years being unable to get the "don't use tabs" preference to work and I'm supposed to believe their "turn off AI" preference will work?

@zzt @davidgerard @firefoxwebdevs What Mozilla needs now is an "AI kill switch" that can actually kill.

@jwz @zzt @davidgerard @firefoxwebdevs Isn't it Open Source?

@RAOF @gatesvp yeah, the whole thing is dissembling weasel speak. None of this discussion was proposed by Mozilla with sincerity.

@firefoxwebdevs What do you mean "open data"? https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/translations/resources/01_overview.html points to https://browser.mt/ points to https://paracrawl.eu/index.php which says "We do not own any of the text from which these data has been extracted."

Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.

They're not LLMs. They're trained on open data.

Should translation be disabled if the AI 'kill switch' is active?

@chillicampari @firefoxwebdevs @joepie91 ️ But that alone won’t be enough to rebuild trust; I’d like to suggest something that would help with that, but unfortunately that’s far outside my wheelhouse
️

@cassidy @firefoxwebdevs this is because it's an AI marketing lie. "ha, you say you hate slop, so does that mean you hate *xrays* now? Checkmate, AI hater!"

@firefoxwebdevs "Without the user's request" is quite ambiguous, though. I'm reminded here of Google, which put the AI tab before the Web/All tab, displacing it so that people would unintentionally hit the AI button and "request" it. It's a small and plausibly-deniable change that nevertheless violates the user's boundaries, and difficult to call out and stop even internally within a company or team. I've seen many companies and software do the same thing.

A genuine opt-in would, in my opinion, look something like a single "hey do you want such-and-such features? these are the implications" question, presented in a non-misleading way, and if that is not answered affirmatively then the various UI elements for "AI" features should not even appear in the UI unless the user goes and changes this setting. It's much harder for that to get modified in questionable ways down the line, and reduces the 'opportunities for misclick' to a single one instead of "every time someone wants to click a button". It also means users aren't constantly pestered with whatever that week's new "AI" thing is if they've shown no interest.

Such a dialog could still specify something like "if you choose Yes, Firefox will still only download models once you try to use a feature", to make it clear to users that it's not an all-or-nothing, and they can still pick-and-choose after selecting 'Yes'.

@jwz @zzt @firefoxwebdevs we added an extension to send 440 volts through the other guy's chair

1M+ installs first week, 0 users remaining second week

@joepie91 @firefoxwebdevs Mozilla's tortured definition of opt-in seems to predict that Mozilla will invent features to nag you into enabling AI, as they have already done with Link Previews: https://www.quippd.com/writing/2026/01/06/architecting-consent-for-ai-deceptive-patterns-in-firefox-link-previews.html

@tasket

"Meanwhile, Red Hat is quietly undermining any legal basis for copyleft and leaning into the idea that gratis products (Fedora) shouldn't have robust & transparent system update tools."

it's a bit off topic, but would you mind elaborating more about the system update tools? i'm out of the loop on that, and it sounds concerning

@firefoxwebdevs @zzt You ignored the firefox userbase's voice when it came to adding AI in the first place, don't pretend you're listening now when you're really just trying to get the users to come up with justifications for what you have already decided to do. Firefox users have repeatedly said we do not want AI features imstalled by default, you chose not to listen and now you're trying to find ways you can feel less bad about that by pretending you gave people options when it comes to AI usage, rather than taking one away.

If you cared about what 'the community' wants, you would have asked people when the AI notion was first pitched and taken no for an answer, but yet again, AI enthusiasts have acted without consent.

@memoria The quick version: Fedora doesn't sign their repository metadata while everyone else (incl. sister RHEL) does. There was an outcry, and their response was to invent a new scheme that requests hashes of the metadata from a special server (not local mirror) for each update session over https.

@xela @firefoxwebdevs For on-device, the power usage is on the end-user, and the text in the viewport range is translated. It's heavy CPU work that is quickly finished. So you get short bursts of heavy CPU usage while actively interacting with a translated page. All the page content is private and stays on your machine.

@tasket @memoria

What the heck are you talking about? That is not even close to true. Firstly, Red Hat Enterprise Linux doesn't have signed repository metadata. There, they have a special scheme involving pinned TLS certs generated by subscription-manager.

Fedora doesn't have signed repository metadata because the tooling doesn't support it. That's it. There have been requests to do it, but the signing infra is old and needs revamping (which is in progress for other reasons).

@tasket @memoria

What the heck are you talking about? That is not even close to true. Firstly, Red Hat Enterprise Linux doesn't have signed repository metadata. There, they have a special scheme involving pinned TLS certs generated by subscription-manager.

Fedora doesn't have signed repository metadata because the tooling doesn't support it. That's it. There have been requests to do it, but the signing infra is old and needs revamping (which is in progress for other reasons).