These settings are utter bullshit and a major dark pattern

[campuscodi@mastodon.social]

RE: https://mastodon.social/@campuscodi/116126560151585483

These settings are utter bullshit and a major dark pattern

Basically, if you don't agree to have AI present and watching over you, Firefox disables all these features... including the ability to translate pages....

Nice going, you Mozilla idiots!

[jacobresneck@journa.host]

@campuscodi - does #LibreFox have this issue?

[lauseta@poliverso.org]

@campuscodi LibreWolf is waiting for you on the bright side!

[cdn@mastodon.uno]

@campuscodi I wonder why the last 20 years or so translation required only a dictionary installed, but now it needs ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

[mausmalone@mastodon.social]

@campuscodi That's because the page translation is done through a ML/LLM model.

Like, I'm sorry you didn't know that was AI but it's AI.

[devnull@mamot.fr]

@cdn So we can shitty full-auto translation loaded with stupid mistakes, sentences that make no sense and even invented words to translate names/technical terms, shoved in users throat by alphabet and reddit… for both audio and written text

It's used it on video dubbing¹ with an annoying voice spitting out BS and invented words as well wrong subtitles…

Even titles are translated to different langages than the content, to match search…

1. Whether it can disabled… depends on videos

@campuscodi

[float13@masto.hackers.town]

@cdn @campuscodi

More like "artificial intelligence" needs translation... Or some other excuse to exist...

[aburka@hachyderm.io]

@campuscodi that's what I thought at first but it lets you granularly turn things back on

[shadowwwind@fosstodon.org]

@campuscodi the nightly account did a poll here and I believe most said it should BR disabled with it

[diogoconstantino@masto.pt]

@campuscodi translations has nothing to do with having AI surveillance, this features works with small model that is shipped with the browser, nothing ever leaves your browser, also enabling translations don't require to enable anything else, and unless you configure a chat bot service nothing else leaves your browser.

[diogoconstantino@masto.pt]

@campuscodi all of these features are not enabled by default, and require you to configure for them to work, so if you don't want them don't configure them to work.

[chris@mastodon.chrispelli.fun]

@campuscodi But you can just turn on and off what you want. You can either use the big blue switch or switch on or off what you want. Where is the problem. They gave you a choice. What more do you want?

[konform@techhub.social]

@campuscodi @briankrebs Browser makes all of this disabled by default but makes it easier to selectively enable the features you want - and have them keep working offline.

So you can have your local full-page translations without any telemetry or "AI chatbots" in your face.

I think this makes about:translations useful.

[gersande@the.bisexuals.town]

@campuscodi The automatic translation is "AI" though. So that seems logical that disabling it would disable the machine translator.

[gordonmessmer@fosstodon.org]

@campuscodi I can't find it at the moment, but I'm mostly sure that Mozilla asked their community whether the AI controls should disable ML features like translation, and this is what the user community asked for.

[kevingranade@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@gordonmessmer @campuscodi what the user community asked for was off by default with granular enablement of features, ideally by moving them to installable extensions.

[benjamineskola@hachyderm.io]

@campuscodi This feels like an unfair criticism. If you ask it to turn off all AI, it turns off all AI, including translations. That’s not a dark pattern. And, you can then turn translations back on individually without it turning the rest on. What’s the issue?

There are criticisms that can be made (like that it should be opt-in, not opt-out), but that’s separate.

[livinthelookingglass@transfem.social]

@campuscodi@mastodon.social @cdn@mastodon.uno Because that's not true. There have been ML translators for well over a decade. Google Translate, for example, has worked that way for as far back as I care to remember.

[jwupf@hachyderm.io]

Can you read or are you the idiot in this scenario?

[dusoft@fosstodon.org]

@campuscodi They said they wanted an AI kill switch.
They got a kill switch.
Now they complain about the kill switch.
Go figure.
(also very professional to call free browser creators "idiots". #not)