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.
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.
There are actually two very specific events that occurred after 2022 which are crucial to note.
The fact that Mozilla hasn’t talked much about ad blockers since then is, I think, significant.
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:
Phew. So now you’re talking about timing.
And just to explain why this is so chaotic: (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.
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!
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.
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?
I would emphatically reject that any progress is being made. I’ll be moving on to other conversations.
So you wish to change in order to avoid admitting things change?
I’m sorry if you got confused, but to simplify matters for you: I find it interesting that Mozilla hasn’t had much to say about ad blockers either this year, or last year. Things have changed considerably at Mozilla over the last couple of years. General consensus appears to be that those things are worse.
I never said Mozilla’s silence was proof of anything, I just find it curious when you add it to everything else Mozilla has become. Because they are now an ad company, we must place extra scrutiny on how they discuss advertisements.
Oh, you’re one of those people who can’t accept responsibility for anything. Got it.
“Oh, I’m sorry that YOU had a problem, but…”
It’s fair to say that if you can’t read past the first doesn’t words and respond to them, you do have a problem.
Uh huh.
Give the comment a couple minutes to reply, otherwise you might look even less normal
Dude, give it up. No one cares about the stupid insults you feel like you have to throw out to protect your ego.
If you’re not responding in bad faith and genuinely couldn’t follow, I’ll simplify matters:
I found it interesting that Mozilla hasn’t had much to say about ad blockers either this year, or last year. Things have changed considerably at Mozilla over the last couple of years. General consensus appears to be that those things are worse.
I never said Mozilla’s silence was proof of anything, I just find it curious when you add it to everything else Mozilla has become. Because they are now an ad company, we must place extra scrutiny on how they discuss advertisements.
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.
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?
Mozilla says FakeSpot sells private data to advertisers in their own privacy policy. In case you were genuinely unaware:
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.
You don’t understand it? It’s pretty clear that in California, they can’t get away with claiming they don’t sell your data, but in Nevada they can. They also clearly seem upset that they must declare that they sell your data, putting “sale” in scare quotes quite often.
Pretending Mozilla FakeSpot and Mozilla Firefox have no common denominator is wrong. They are both operated by Mozilla, and they both allegedly conform to Mozilla’s ethical principles. And if FakeSpot can clearly sell data, then that’s evidence that there is root at the rot of the corporation.
Surely you know better than to take the most charitable interpretation of carefully constructed legal speak.
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.
Mozilla Corp purchased FakeSpot over a year ago. FakeSpot changed the privacy policy right before the buyout, in order to explicitly give Mozilla the rights to the private data they had acquired over the years.
By buying FakeSpot, they objectively bought “data about you” for any “you” who was using FakeSpot. So we know it’s untrue when they say they don’t buy data. And if that part isn’t true, I’m not sure why you would take stock in the part right next to it.
And if it turns out Mozilla is making an “oopsie” on this privacy policy, (and in the a FakeSpot one that goes to great lengths to describe the data Mozilla purchased), it loops back pretty significantly to the “oopsie” they made with uBlock Origin Lite.