Mozilla Firefox Blocks Add-Ons to Circumvent Russia Censorship
At Russia’s request, Firefox web browser maker Mozilla blocked add-ons that are designed to circumvent internet censorship.
It's either get the addons removed, or get the whole addon store itself blocked. You can just install the extension from an xpi file.
Mozilla really isn't in a position to fight the Russian government over this and win.
Yes they kind of are. I'm not sure how many Firefox users there are in Russia but some how I think there enough that it would be yet another bad look for the authoritarian government.
If Mozilla gets blocked, people would just install some other browser (probably, something from Russia). I do not see how this helps anyone but the government itself. And departure of hundreds (if not thousands) of western companies did nothing to the Russian government, some problems with a browser with almost non-existent userbase would have the same effect. It should be quite clear by now that such tactic simply does not work.
“Following recent regulatory changes in Russia, we received persistent requests from Roskomnadzor demanding that five add-ons be removed from the Mozilla add-on store,” a Mozilla spokesperson told The Intercept in response to a request for comment. “After careful consideration, we’ve temporarily restricted their availability within Russia."
It sucks, but it's a battle they weren't ever going to win. The dictator gets to have final say in how things go in their country.
Not that this isn't interesting, but how is it linux related?
I mean, FF is the default browser and this also might rub some people the wrong way - having the developer of the only relevant free and open, non-google browser bow to a dictatorship
Firefox is a Linux browser in the since that pretty much all of Linux comes with it of you have a desktop.
Ok it's getting properly sus now. Mozilla goes into politics way too much
It is a hard issue to solve. However, I think Mozilla should ignore Russia.
laughs in Canadian
What is so funny?
It's not the first time. Mozilla was helping to fascism in Russia for years by using Yandex as a default search engine in Russia. Because Yandex was paying them. It's all for money, obviously. And now they don't want to lose the market. But the fans of FF will explain how this is "ethical" and helps to save the web.
It's not ethical.
Chrome, and Google, however, are worse. Firefox derived browsers are the lesser of two evils, at least they prevent Google having a total monopoly.
Chrome is a commercial product and don't pretend to be something more, while Firefox gets free marketing from the whole GNU/Linux community, exploiting people's sense of morals.