Are you tired of web browsers tracking your every move and forcing you to use intrusive and unnecessary AI features? Apparently, you are not alone. Some of your favorite internet personalities (and real-life memes from the late 2000s and early 2010s) are joining forces to promote Firefox, a browser that’s fighting online tracking and unwanted AI features. Mozilla, the nonprofit behind the Firefox web browser, just launched a new advertising campaign to lure Internet users away from AI-packed Google Chrome and back to Firefox’s heyday in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when Firefox controlled up to 32 percent of the global browser market share. To do this, Mozilla has brought together some of the most important Internet personalities of that time for a new advertising campaign called “Come Back to Firefox.” “What happened to the Internet?” asks Numa Numa Guy in the opening of the new campaign video. “It used to be fun.” Mashable Light Speed Overly Attached Girlfriend, Annoying Orange, Tay Zondaday of “Chocolate Rain” fame, and a host of other internet memes appear in the ad that nostalgic for the internet times of yesteryear, before modern web browsers tracked your every move, sold user data for advertising purposes, and implemented artificial intelligence features for their users. Firefox offers an alternative to many other browsers that seem to be obsessed with artificial intelligence and monitoring users’ online habits. Firefox includes a free built-in VPN to help keep users’ browsing activity private, AI controls so users can decide how many AI-related features they want to be accessible in their browser, and an ad blocker in the mobile version of the browser. The full list of cameos from internet personalities includes: The video is not AI-generated. It actually presents real-life online personalities as they are today. For example, if you’ve been wondering what Success Kid looks like as an adult, you’ll find out here. “I kept going back to the heyday of Firefox, when the Internet was really fun, strange, and interesting… That’s the feeling we wanted to bring back with this campaign,” Mozilla chief marketing officer John Solomon said in a statement provided to Mashable. “We wanted to remind people what makes the Internet so wonderful,” Solomon explained. “These are people who helped make it weird, creative, surprising and fun. None of them were trying to go viral. They were normal, everyday people using the Internet. This is how the Internet should be and that’s why we feel it’s a great moment for Firefox. Always independent and unlike big tech, without trying to extract more from ordinary people.” Firefox currently has an estimated 2.8 percent share of the global web browser market.
