Mozilla removes uBlock Origin Lite from Addon store. Developer stops developing Lite for Firefox; "it's worrisome what could happen to uBO in the future." - eviltoast

Mozilla recently removed every version of uBlock Origin Lite from their add-on store except for the oldest version.

Mozilla says a manual review flagged these issues:

Consent, specifically Nonexistent: For add-ons that collect or transmit user data, the user must be informed…

Your add-on contains minified, concatenated or otherwise machine-generated code. You need to provide the original sources…

uBlock Origin’s developer gorhill refutes this with linked evidence.

Contrary to what these emails suggest, the source code files highlighted in the email:

  • Have nothing to do with data collection, there is no such thing anywhere in uBOL
  • There is no minified code in uBOL, and certainly none in the supposed faulty files

Even for people who did not prefer this add-on, the removal could have a chilling effect on uBlock Origin itself.

Incidentally, all the files reported as having issues are exactly the same files being used in uBO for years, and have been used in uBOL as well for over a year with no modification. Given this, it’s worrisome what could happen to uBO in the future.

And gorhill notes uBO Lite had a purpose on Firefox, especially on mobile devices:

[T]here were people who preferred the Lite approach of uBOL, which was designed from the ground up to be an efficient suspendable extension, thus a good match for Firefox for Android.

New releases of uBO Lite do not have a Firefox extension; the last version of this coincides with gorhill’s message. The Firefox addon page for uBO Lite is also gone.

  • DarkGamer@fedia.io
    515·
    3 months ago

    So much for capitalizing on Chrome’s missteps when it comes to ad blocking I guess

      • leopold@lemmy.kde.social
        453·
        3 months ago

        The article you linked makes a big deal about literally nothing. We’ve known Chrome was going to drop MV2 for years. We also know Firefox won’t. There is nothing more they have to do or say about this situation. It doesn’t affect Firefox whatsoever.

        “Suspiciously silent” is such a bullshit nothing accusation to make. It is so obviously trying to capitalize on how many users have been (justifiably) turning on Mozilla as of late.

          • kbal@fedia.io
            143·
            3 months ago

            It’s not “handy.” It’s badly-written arrant clickbaity tendentious anti-Firefox garbage. Mozilla does plenty of stupid things. I do not understand this desire some people have to invent more. It appears that many of them have simply decided based on Mozilla’s now-discontinued efforts to improve social media that Mozilla is too “woke” and therefore the enemy, or something like that.

            • LWD@lemm.eeOP
              64·
              3 months ago

              It’s a bit ironic because Steve Teixeira, who sprearheaded Mozilla Social, got fired after bringing to light the fact that Mozilla wasn’t an inclusive company. I’m a fan of inclusivity, and I agree that accusations of “woke” are meaningless, but I didn’t spot any in that article.

      • abbenm@lemmy.ml
        201·
        3 months ago

        As the other commenter noted, this is kind of a nonsensical article. I am not by any means a fan of Mozilla’s decision on Ublock, it seems egregious and indefensible. But the convoluted logic of making Manifest V3 about Mozilla is completely emptyhanded, and there’s no rhyme, reason, logic, or precedent suggesting we should make anything of their absence of a statement.

        Also, this is especially nuts because Mozilla HAS in fact criticized Manifest V3! They just happened not to have done so within a particular randomly selected window of time.

          • zkfcfbzr@lemmy.worldEnglish
            154·
            3 months ago

            Your own 2023 article doesn’t say anything about policies allowing Mozilla to sell private data, and Mozilla’s own website openly and proudly claims they neither buy nor sell their users’ data.

            And Anonym is a company purpose-created to try to transform the advertising industry into a more privacy-respecting industry. Its mission could not align more with Mozilla’s. They in particular developed PPA, the feature Firefox was getting so much bad press about last week - and which ended up being none of the things the dozens of articles posted about it claimed. It is, in fact, a complete non-factor when it comes to privacy risks, and its explicit purpose is to pivot the internet toward a significantly more private ecosystem.

            There are lots of people claiming Mozilla is becoming an advertising company and is selling their users out. There’s some misleading evidence that even makes that superficially appear true. But it’s false.

            The fact that Mozilla hasn’t talked much about ad blockers since then is, I think, significant.

            When have they talked about ad blockers in the past, period? This is just a meaningless scare tactic. I don’t see them talking about arctic drilling either - should I be concerned?

            From the same page you got your image from:

              • zkfcfbzr@lemmy.worldEnglish
                102·
                2 months ago

                From the same privacy policy you linked:

                I don’t personally understand the disconnect between the parts we each posted, but there is a clear disconnect regardless.

                And, regardless, this applies to fakespot.com. Not Firefox. Not even slightly Firefox. Firefox unambiguously has nothing to do with selling user data.

                Edit: I’ve also gone ahead and sent an email to the address at the bottom of the policy asking for clarification on the issue.

                Four weeks later edit: They replied to my email. Here is their response:

                Hello,

Thank you for contacting Mozilla and for your question. At this time, Fakespot does not sell or share any user data pursuant to any applicable privacy laws. The only data we share outside of Mozilla are generalized aggregated metrics with service providers who make Faksepot run to help us with logging and debugging issues to provide an uninterrupted experience for our customers, and we do not share this data for monetary gain. We are in the process of updating our privacy policy for additional clarity on all the points referenced in your email.

We trust this answers your questions and thank you again for reaching out.

Kind regards,
Mozilla
                  • zkfcfbzr@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    6·
                    3 months ago

                    And surely you know better than to assume Firefox’s own privacy policy is null and void because the privacy policy for a different, distinct product offered by the same company has some different terms in it? Regardless of what FakeSpot’s actual policy ends up being (I’m withholding judgement until they reply to my email), I can’t see it as anything other than disingenuous to imply that their policy in some way affects Firefox’s policy. Firefox does not sell user data, period.

                    I’m going with Mozilla on this one.

          • abbenm@lemmy.ml
            8·
            3 months ago

            I just have to stop and note something here. This is an incredibly disorganized way to carry on a conversation. I feel like you didn’t pick up most of what I put down, and instead, you’ve opened two new pandoras boxes, stacking a mess on top of another mess.

            So just to recap:

            • You posted an opinion article criticizing Mozilla from a place called FOSSpost
            • I noted that it was a bizarre article because it was about something not directly tied to Mozilla, and the logic trying to tie Mozilla to it was questionable
            • I noted even if you entertain this bizarre logic (which you shouldn’t!) Mozilla has criticized V3 in the past
            • I noted that given that they have criticized it in the past, the only way this already bizarre logic would make sense was if remaining issue is the timing, but even so that’s entertaining the bizarre assumptions of the article

            Phew. So now you’re talking about timing.

            I wanted to do my best to take the feeling of disorientation at the strangeness of your comment and turn it into words, so here goes: (1) I feel like the essence of the point isn’t about the timeline of Mozilla acquisitons (not mentioned by your first article) but about the article’s questionable logic of interpreting silences to mean something, which hinges on all kinds of subjective choices about how you interpret context (2) the point you seem to be making now, is about a shift in Mozilla’s motivations and identity, which is a very nebulous and subjective thing, and hardly even the kind of thing you can establish with an article or two (3) you don’t seem to be up to the task of attempting a nuanced reconciliation between the table you posted and the other privacy policy info on the same page that the other user brought up (4) the article you posted together with the table doesn’t contain the table or anything affirming your description (I found the table via google but it’s a disorienting way to organize the information) (5) even if your interpretation was reliable it wouldn’t mean silence during a particular news cycle was proof of anything (6) none of these things establish a motivation for sympathetic behaviors toward Google (in fact it would seem to be the opposite) (7) there’s not any reason to think these are the best pieces of context to be brought to bear on this question, (what about, for instance, the fact that Mozilla has their own modded version of V3 that restores add blocking? That seems at least as relevant to gauging their true intentions as anything you have posted, given that the first article was about V3).

            Even if you were 100% right, there has to be a way to make this argument that doesn’t require everyone reading it to reach for the dramamine. It’s a disorganized mess.

            • LWD@lemm.eeOP
              13·
              3 months ago

              I’m sorry you don’t follow the logic, but to simplify it for you, I’ll break it down: ever since Mozilla picked up an ad subsidiary, they became an ad company. Kind of like how Google is an ad company even though they only have an ad subsidiary too.

              And because Mozilla is an ad company, we need to watch how they describe advertisements to us, because they have a huge conflict of interest. It would be bizarre, as you say, to act otherwise.

              Do you still follow, or would it be more helpful if I made a post about it on this community to remind people how Mozilla has become an ad company over the past year?

              Regardless, that is all I was trying to do: to get people to think a little bit. Stay curious!

              • abbenm@lemmy.ml
                2·
                3 months ago

                I’m sorry, but you’re not at all taking responsibility for your mess, and trying to re-frame this as you being simply too smart for this world is kind of a deadbeat move.

                If you think nobody else knew that Mozilla and Google get revenue from ads, like it’s something you need to “help” everyone understand, you’re underestimating the knowledge of people you are communicating with and overestimating yours.

                How does any of this connect to the FOSSpost article you shared from like 2 comments ago? The argument from FOSSpost was originally “Mozilla has been silent”, but then it changed to “Oh, well actually Mozilla did criticize it, but since then they’ve changed, so they need to criticize them again”.

                Speculating on the meaning of a “silence” and treating it like proof of something is already a terrible way to reason for reasons that seem so obvious to me I would never expect to have to explain it in a serious conversation. There are better ways to gauge their commitments than that, there are better pieces of evidence to set the context, the evidence you are putting forward is mixed rather than decisive… and these are all the things I already said the last time around.

                Yet here you are, offering to “help” me follow as if this lowly train wreck was a brilliant point that’s being misunderstood out of a deficit of curiosity.

                • LWD@lemm.eeOP
                  11·
                  3 months ago

                  Okay, we are making some progress. You and I both agree that Mozilla has changed into an advertisement company. Can we both also agree that this means they have a conflict of interest with advertisements now?

                  Do you also understand that it’s important to reassess someone’s opinion on something after the conflict of interest arises? For example, if a politician got a huge cash donation from a lobbying interest, would you actually be saying “well, the politician criticized the lobby once” and absolutely freak out if anybody said things needed to be reevaluated?

                  • abbenm@lemmy.ml
                    1·
                    3 months ago

                    I would emphatically reject that any progress is being made. I’ll be moving on to other conversations.