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Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 1:19 AM
RE: https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/116967027925557386
To follow up on this, I have pushed an initial, experimental, exploratory patch to https://codeberg.org/basebrowserproject/organization
This patch removes (not just disables) many AI features from desktop Firefox including: smart windows, model chat, link previews, smart tab groups, semantic search, on device model integration (translations) etc.
1605 files changed, 98 insertions, 852297 deletions
I've tested that Firefox builds, and runs, and overall doesn't complain, but it's far from complete, hic sunt dracones etc.
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Replies

Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 1:25 AM
I tried to be as surgical as I could with the removal, so there is likely still a fair amount of vestigial code that I didn't notice or overlooked.
I also didn't intentionally remove any of the AI-related code in the android source, in an attempt to minimize the scope.
If you are interested in this absurd project and are comfortable with building firefox from source, feel free to test it out and report any issues.
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Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 1:34 AM
For those wondering: I did this by fucking hand, it took me ~5 hours.
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Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 1:51 AM
Oh I forgot to mention, If you would like a number which I think epitomizes the scope and scale of these AI features e.g. if you are at all concerned with how complexity of software relates to maintainability or security...
The size of the *patch* that I produced (whose sole purpose to to remove AI related features) is 37 megabytes.
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Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 8:09 PM
Pushed a couple of updates to the patch including a rebase onto the latest firefox main (and documenting the hash so people can more easily test this out)
Fixed an issue that prevented browsing history from showing up when typing in the urlbar (I accidentally deleted functionality related to "SemanticHistory" when deleting functionality related to "AI Chat history", I reverted these changes)
I also fixed a couple of smaller bugs I came across while testing the rebase.
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yoasifyoasif@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 1:34 AM
@sarahjamielewis Ah, no binaries. I'll have to give this a shot later, but you will definitely get more testers if you can provide binaries.
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Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 2:16 AM
@yoasif if/when this develops further I will attempt to find the resources to provide binaries (it's not quite the intended end-goal for this project, but I agree it's likely a valuable thing)
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Dianealienghic@timeloop.cafe
Jul 28, 2026, 4:21 AM
@sarahjamielewis
I thought i'd try applying your patch to the debian firefox package and I found there's a much smaller proposed patch from librewolf
https://codeberg.org/librewolf/source/pulls/81
In case you didn't know about that try.
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ananasananas@scicomm.xyz
Jul 28, 2026, 5:09 AM
@sarahjamielewis 37 megabytes? O.O
That's... a lot.
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vvesen@chaos.social
Jul 28, 2026, 10:46 AM
@sarahjamielewis amazing! thanks for putting in the effort to see if this is viable 💞
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webbeefwebbeef@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 3:48 PM
@sarahjamielewis Why remove the translations support? As far as I can tell it's been built ethically by the Bergamot project (https://browser.mt/). This classic ML much more than genAI.
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Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 3:50 PM
@webbeef
Covered here: https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/116995519268090165
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Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 3:56 PM
@webbeef but also I don't quite buy the argument that those models are more ethical (to be clear: I agree that they are different than the genai cases, but I think the argument presented for why is pretty weak)
https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/115850244827555192
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webbeefwebbeef@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 4:33 PM
@sarahjamielewis fair enough! I didn't know well how the corpus (https://paracrawl.eu/index.php) was put together.
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99bdc99bdc@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 9:16 PM
@sarahjamielewis thanks for doing this!
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Karlkarl@infosec.exchange
Jul 28, 2026, 5:29 AM
@sarahjamielewis That is... very impressive for such a massive patch.
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Aaronsuddjian@social.coop
Jul 28, 2026, 5:47 AM
@sarahjamielewis insane
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Matthew Flintmatthew@mastodon.me.uk
Jul 28, 2026, 11:49 AM
@sarahjamielewis
Five hours is a great result! Mind blown.
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The Orange Themetheorangetheme@en.osm.town
Jul 28, 2026, 3:23 AM
@sarahjamielewis This is amazing (and terrifying!). My next few weeks are jam packed, but I'd love to pitch in once the summer winds down (in the northern hemisphere). I even just applied to join Codeberg as an active member! We're all going to need to build the commons we want, and a decent browser is one of the big ones.
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ananasananas@scicomm.xyz
Jul 28, 2026, 5:35 AM
@sarahjamielewis If I still remember in 1.5 weeks when I have a bit more time again, I'll give this a try.
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Bloo (they/she) 🍓 🏳️‍⚧️ 🍉QueerMatters@mstdn.social
Jul 28, 2026, 1:29 AM
@sarahjamielewis Fucking why.... Who asked for any of that crap?!? Im glad youre doing this, its really highlighting how absurd it all is.
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George Liquor, Americanliquor_american@universeodon.com
Jul 28, 2026, 2:28 AM
@QueerMatters @sarahjamielewis I can tell you who asked for it... out of touch, greedy executives who don't know shit about shit.
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🍐 Perivi Yohanesburgo 🍐 :fedora:fruitchypear@owo.cafe
Jul 28, 2026, 5:40 AM
@liquor_american
Translations are actually helpful: not everyone know every language. In fact, not everyone understand, let alone speak English.
Smart tab groups never worked for me, but the idea seemed good, especially for the people who tend to have multiple tabs opened at once.
Firefox should prioritize other aspects like security (Madaidan's post about it is still relevant today), but not every AI feature is bad.
@QueerMatters @sarahjamielewis
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George Liquor, Americanliquor_american@universeodon.com
Jul 28, 2026, 5:56 AM
@fruitchypear @QueerMatters @sarahjamielewis Thanks for the lesson. How did you know that this was my first time ever considering the pros and cons of a technology that has been turning everything it touches into utter shit for several years now? Guess I just give off that youthful vibe.
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Ray McCarthyraymaccarthy@mastodon.ie
Jul 28, 2026, 7:34 AM
@fruitchypear @liquor_american @QueerMatters @sarahjamielewis
Translation is better as user choice 3rd party website not part of the browser.
Also can be misleading.
PDF shouldn't be there either. Only rendering web pages.
I'd like a browser mode that treats the window like a printer and paginates.
I'd like the browser to go back to following the OS theme instead of stupid UI design you have to fight with to even have decent scroll bars.
Page & tab connected.
No AI good start!
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ƒ: 🪿️→ ℝemma@orbital.horse
Jul 28, 2026, 1:34 AM
@sarahjamielewis you're out here doing good. Thank you.
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Sashinsashin@veganism.social
Jul 28, 2026, 1:44 AM
@sarahjamielewis Would it make sense for Firefox forks to base on this if and when you complete it?
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Sam Stephenschopsstephens@mastodon.nzoss.nz
Jul 28, 2026, 1:49 AM
@sashin @sarahjamielewis I believe that's kind of Sarah's plan, she explains her motivations here https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/116959309031485270
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Sashinsashin@veganism.social
Jul 28, 2026, 1:52 AM
@chopsstephens @sarahjamielewis Woah, this is epic.
I really hope something comes of it.
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Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 2:21 AM
@sashin
I don't know if this will ever become anything. I do think it would be a good idea if many firefox forks came together and committed to co-maintaining a base that was outside of Mozilla direct/indirect authority.
Consider this project an exploration into the viability of that.
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Frequency Fault Officialfrequencyfault@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 3:24 AM
@sashin @sarahjamielewis LibreWolf sure as shit better scrub Mozilla's AI shit. I'm so tired of this. Private AI my ass. Anyone who talked to Claude (not me) has their chats indexed on Google now. When are people gonna learn if you want a friend, just go to a park, sit on a bench and say "hello" to someone.
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Owl Eyes Hood1@autistics.life
Jul 28, 2026, 2:17 AM
@sarahjamielewis your efforts are praiseworthy, however merging ongoing security updates will be another issue soon to follow...
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Sarah Jamie Lewissarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 2:19 AM
@d1
100% agreed this is an absurd project, but on the other hand...at some point I think there is an argument to be made that the risk reduction obtained from removing hundreds of thousands of lines of code from a code base outweighs the effort to track other fixes...
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Ziggy the Hamster ☎️ 4ZTHZiggyTheHamster@ruby.social
Jul 28, 2026, 2:55 AM
@sarahjamielewis @d1
Dumb question: could this be turned into a shitton of ifdef’s so it can be upstreamed?
It at least makes the patch smaller in size
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chocobo13ζchocobo13@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 3:12 AM
@ZiggyTheHamster
One of the issues is that the maintainers upstream, working for Mozilla, have been burning trust with the free software community for years, and it's been coming to a head for a lot of people lately.
@sarahjamielewis @d1
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󠀁󠁓󠁩󠁬󠁬󠁹󠀠󠁯󠁲󠁡󠁮󠁧󠁥󠀠󠁣󠁡󠁴󠁿aronowski@furry.engineer
Jul 28, 2026, 7:32 AM
@d1 @sarahjamielewis Perhaps a script that analyzes the upstream sources and modifies the code (or informs the operator what to do) would be a better long-term idea?
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Perrin42Perrin42@mastodon.social
Jul 28, 2026, 3:37 AM
@sarahjamielewis
Damn, that's awesome!
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Мя ��mo@mastodon.ml
Jul 28, 2026, 4:28 AM
@sarahjamielewis did some calculations, to see how it relates to overall code
shallow clone of Firefox source code weights around 5.8 *giga*bytes and contains 42 544 302 (yes, fourty two millions) lines of code, excluding blank lines and comments (and sixty two millions, including)
aaaand your patch removed around 1% by LoC. Still more than I expected, honestly :neocat_googly_shocked:
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OkunaOkuna@social.tchncs.de
Jul 28, 2026, 6:19 AM
@sarahjamielewis I wonder if people stop donating because they dont want to finance AI development in their browsers
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KerplunkKerplunk@mastodon.scot
Jul 28, 2026, 6:20 AM
@sarahjamielewis
To follow up on this, I have pushed an initial, experimental, exploratory patch to #https://codeberg.org/basebrowserproject/organization
Thank you for all the work and the info:
Hopefully the group behind LibreWolf or others will jump in and help to make this a really usable browser for the people
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Tim Chasegumnos@bsd.cafe
Jul 28, 2026, 6:16 PM
@sarahjamielewis
this is beautiful work, making the world (or at least browsers) a better place 🤩
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HugoPoihugopoi@mastodon.hugopoi.net
Jul 28, 2026, 7:30 PM
@sarahjamielewis how many lines #Firefox has in total ?
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yumanyuman@defcon.social
Jul 29, 2026, 12:44 PM
@sarahjamielewis very awesome, thank you! patch and build went without hitch on modest hardware (i7-870), some 30 minutes.
opensnitch lit up like fireworks, every telemetry endpoint got pinged
any chance the @librewolf folks mighta get involved?
edit: ignore the Qs, found the issues tab
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ㄒ丨乇爪卩ㄖ :anarchism: :heart_bi:Tiempo@todon.eu
Jul 30, 2026, 1:13 AM
@sarahjamielewis
I believe @zenbrowser would be interested in this
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Robert KingettWeirdWriter@caneandable.social
Jul 30, 2026, 6:22 AM
@sarahjamielewis What makes it different from Librewolf?
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