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Architecting Consent for AI: Deceptive Patterns in Firefox Link Previews (www.quippd.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by yoasif@fedia.io to c/foss@beehaw.org

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TL;DR: Mozilla has a new CEO and a new mission: transform Firefox into an AI browser. That has run into some snags, as Firefox users don’t seem that interested in AI. Mozilla is forging ahead, utilizing deceptive patterns (previously known as dark patterns) to nag and annoy people into enabling AI features. You can see this in the introduction of Link Previews, an extremely invasive anti-feature that exists solely to push AI into your experience.

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[–] skarn@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Why was the feature added if my browser is going to browse to the page anyway? [...] it could be a privacy preserving feature.

It's just supposed to save you time and effort.

If anyone has real concerns about having their IP leaked they should be using a VPN (I think Proton has a fairly generous free tier) or TOR. Relying on a link preview feature like that would be like wearing a condom against the rain. It will technically increase your protection, but you will still be really quite exposed.

Love that you ignore all of the people who are currently seeing the popups and not understanding why.

No, I just took his objection at face value.

[–] yoasif@fedia.io 1 points 3 weeks ago

I added a section to my post with some additional comment.

I began thinking of privacy because Mozilla was clearly thinking of it when designing this feature, but I don't think they really thought it through.

People's browsers are visiting pages that they never intended to. If a random extension did that, you would say that it was violating your privacy. The browser does it, and you get people defending it as "optional". Yes, but the user never installed the malware extension that is leaking your privacy. It is your browser doing it in an automated update.

If you don't think this is a privacy issue, why doesn't the next version of Firefox just visit every page on every page that I visit, so that when I hover over a link, I can get a link preview immediately, without needing to wait. That would save me some real time and effort!