I mean, ChatGPT broke the top 5 most visited sites earlier this year.

People do use chatbots, but there is a biiiig gap between popping in to a chatbot to… I don’t know, help you remember the name of a movie, or sub in for Google Translate or check your spelling or whatever people are doing in there, and a very different one to push it as an agentic always-there ur-feature.

Chatbots are alright at chatbotting, but most of these other applications are way out of spec and just don’t work or fit the user experience of the software they’re being bolted on to.

I sometimes think the overzealous, always-online blanket rejection of GenAI stuff is doing a disservice by obscuring the things that have an use from all this forced garbage designed to tick a checkbox.

FWIW, I’ll happily keep ignoring these features as long as I’m able to actually ignore them. It’s a bit of a waste, but not a dealbreaker. The whole conversation, the irrational stances, the insane, transparent false hype and the quivering economy-ending bubble are all exhausting and incredibly depressing.

Exactly this.

If these “features” had any value then it wouldn’t be necessary to force it on end users.

Hehe, but only the Firefox frame, whereas the LibreWolf was made from a known meme that predates such slop:-)

The reasons don’t really have to do with privacy, but rather economics.

The core issue is that most people ignore new features if they are opt-in rather than opt-out. And that presents a problem for investors who want to see people using the new features.

The fact that this is also a privacy nightmare is irrelevant to the money. That part is just a symptom.

As with most things capitalism, the only thing that moves the needle is money. If firefox sees a sharp and sustained loss of the user share, they’ll reverse course.