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Firefox 148 introduces the promised AI kill switch for people who aren't into LLMs
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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sadly I’ll likely support them through any shitty decisions they make as they are the only viable non-chromium alternative these days.
I get they’re chasing the buck and trying to stay relevant, but uhhhh… if they could be less Steve Buscemi-teen about it, that’d be great.
I strongly believe that the EU should fund Mozilla, or a fork of Firefox.
Gecko is the only viable competitor to Blink/WebKit, and it is needed
Maybe funding components would be better than funding mozilla. Eg: 2 engineers for Gecko
Govts around the world should be funding all sorts of FOSS projects. I know they do to some degree but not much. It benefits the whole world and only hurts big tech.
That prospect becomes less and less likely the more government is bought and paid for by Big Tech.
This is what people don't understand. Those in power, whether they're part of the government, a wealthy CEO, or a religious leader, will do what benefits themselves if they think they can get away with it. We keep talking about powerful organizations and what they could do to benefit everyone, but fail to realize that powerful people don't want to benefit everyone.
They only do what benefits everyone if they feel like they can't get away with just doing what benefits themselves. It's our responsibility to make sure they don't think they can get away with it, and clearly strongly-worded letters and quippy signs held outside their offices for an afternoon or two isn't enough to do that.
Funding FF? Maybe. Funding Mozilla? No way, not with my money.
Why?
Firefox is just the browser, Mozilla is the organization constantly wasting money on features Firefox's users are actively hostile to in a bid to tempt away people already using Chrome. Not the OP, but I'd be down to donate to Firefox's development directly, but I wouldn't want to make a donation to Mozilla hoping it would go toward Firefox, only to find out they took my money to build some new LLM integration that nobody asked for, only to sit unused for years before being quietly shuttered in favor of the new tech buzzword of the day.
Yeah I really hope there will be some way to tie donations directly to FF development.
This is probably common knowledge to you and many others, but it bears repeating: You cannot donate to fund the development of Mozilla Firefox.
Google can, unfortunately.
I recommend Waterfox
They have pledged to not fill their browser with AI slop features.
Last time I tried Waterfox some sites like Twitch that actively block usage on old browsers, refused to work because the latest Waterfox release was based on a Firefox like 20+ builds behind.
Firefox was on like version 142 and the latest Waterfox download was based on build 128.
Waterfox right now is built on ESR 148, which is on par with the latest Firefox release! ESR releases will lag several versions behind, but that's normal (even on Mozilla's side), and I'd be kind of shocked if it was such a big gap
Edit: there was a big gap. 128 to 140 was the right jump, but Waterfox non-betas took a little less than two months to implement the change after Mozilla released it.
I have used it for twitch for years without issue. I also have ublock origin with twitch adblock.
Well you clearly haven't used the standard available download (non-beta/nightly release) consistently through last year. Waterfox was using ESR 128 since October 2024, kept that base until finally upgrading to ESR 140 last August. So that's nearly a year of its base being out of date. So the user agent reported that number... sites really don't like that since they're looking at that for support.
https://www.waterfox.com/releases/6.5.0/ https://www.waterfox.com/releases/6.6.0/
Twitch only supports the last TWO versions of Firefox officially and will actively block logging in from older versions. So while you might be able to watch Twitch, if you aren't already logged in, you won't be able to login.
https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/supported-browsers?language=en_US
There are thousands of posts about it online for Waterfox other forks.
It was outdated, but only for a couple months. Firefox ESR is built to last about a year, and it was maintained with security patches up-to-date alongside Firefox Production versions 129, 130, 131, 132... all the way to 139. Only then did ESR 140 come out.
But if Twitch only supports the two most recent Firefox production versions, I guess ESR wouldn't cut it after FF 131 came out.
I have used the standard available download on multiple operating systems for years without issues with twitch.
Quintessential "works for me" response. Must be a software developer.
If everyone switched from firefox to waterfox, Mozilla would kill firefox which would in turn will waterfox
Yeah ofc they are chasing the buck.
It's either they find alternatives revenue streams or we no longer have Firefox as a viable alternative anymore.
Browsers development is crazy engineering heavy, and thus, expensive.
It's a shitty situation all around.
Ladybird browser looks promising!
The ladybird devs are currently in the process of switching language again from Swift to Rust, using LLMs.
Yup. Don’t use or support Ladybird, especially since it’s made by anti-inclusivity “keep your ‘political’ gender-neutral pronouns out of our READMEs” nerdbros.
On the other hand, Servo is coming along nicely.
https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
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