Thoughts on the Future of Web Browsers

The post argues for a browser base kept separate from Mozilla, with Firefox forks working together to maintain it. It says AI integrations and other user-hostile features should be removed entirely, not just disabled, and that the current browser trend is moving toward a future built for third-party AI agents rather than people.

Reading notes

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• A thread on Mastodon called for Firefox forks to cooperate on a hardfork isolated from Mozilla.
• The base browser project grew out of that thread and later conversations.
• The author built a patch that removed all AI integration code from Firefox.
• The current base browser work uses patches on Firefox 153 ESR to strip user-hostile features from the code base.
• The author argues that deleting these features is better than soft-forking them out.
• They think the effort may be hard to sustain long term without pooled funding and developer work.
• They describe Mozilla and Firefox as moving toward a browser shaped for AI agents.
• Temporary ways to rely less on Firefox include offline browsing with OpenZIM, standalone applications, and feed readers.
• The author does not want to spend all their effort just resisting browser decline.
• They say web standards have become saturated by commercial interests over the last decade-plus.
• They recall early-2000s browser ideas about feeds, blogging, tagging, and open comments.
• They mention browsers such as Amaya and Flock as examples of a browser meant for creation as well as consumption.
• They have also experimented with small browsers that support Gemini, RSS, and other less polluted web technologies.
• The post ends by saying that maybe this could be one future, and that new noise is needed.