Mozilla defies Kremlin, restores banned Firefox add-ons in Russia

Mozilla has reinstated certain add-ons for Firefox that earlier this week had been banned in Russia by the Kremlin. The browser extensions, which are hosted on the Mozilla store, were made unavailable in the Land of Putin on or around June 8 after a request by the Russian government and its internet censorship agency, …

[Catkin]

Considering considerations

It's interesting that Mozilla would only start 'considering' the impact of the ban when it came into force and not beforehand. Especially given that they only reversed course after their 'considerations' occurred in conjunction with being publicly shamed. What a coincidence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Considering considerations

I would think that the demand to ban the add-ons didn't come with much notice and international law is tricky.

Especially when you're dealing a regime which can't manufacture reliable window locks and are notoriously lax when it comes to carefully disposing of nerve agents and radioactive materials so I'm not convinced Mozilla are the bad guys you're trying to paint them as.

[Catkin]

Re: Considering considerations

I don't think they're necessarily the 'bad guys' I think that the risk of public embarrassment played more of a role than they'd like to admit.

[Grogan]

Re: Considering considerations

Probably knee-jerk reaction on someone's part. Agree for now, consult later.

[xanadu42]

David vs Goliath?

So Logic Wins over the "Might is Right" philosophy...

[Catkin]

Re: David vs Goliath?

There's different kinds of 'might', one is the threat from a despotic state, there's also the impact from the wider, freer world for playing nice with said despotic state.

[I like fruits]

Re: David vs Goliath?

Right. This is why they can't have our nice things. Any gift we give them they try using against us. Examples: Internet, freedom of speech, social networks.

[FIA]

Re: David vs Goliath?

Gifts?? Because the benevolent US is just throwing stuff away for free. No other nation in the world has ever contributed anything to the sum total of human evolution.

FFS, we're all human, we should all share our nice things.

Also... when you say 'our'.... were you personally involved? ;)

[I like fruits]

Glad to be a Firefox user!

Good for Mozilla! Now if more people used Firefox rather than the products of certain Mountain View and Redmond companies, we'd have more freedom and privacy on Internet.

[FeepingCreature]

Re: Glad to be a Firefox user!

Now if Firefox stopped making the browser worse and breaking technology that people relied upon, and held up their promises regarding the XUL transition (what was that about adding APIs to support the XUL usecases), maybe I'd recommend them again.

The hoops I have to jump through to get something as simple as multi-row tabs are ludicrous.

Firefox decided, many years ago, to focus on their regular users over techies - ignoring, to their peril, that recommendations by techies had been the only reason that regular users had ever used Firefox to begin with. Their fall in mindshare is entirely deserved.

And let's not even get into the butchery they made of the Android version...

[Tron]

This is Russia.

So they may have needed time to get all their staff out first. You can only offend the local dictator if you are no longer on his turf. And have good personal security.

I wonder how long it will be before Western governments crack down on VPNs. They will have no choice but to remove them then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is Russia.

At least one Western government requires the use of VPN by businesses to ensure they meet minimum standards such as CE and CE+.

There is only so much that you can do via a web browser and sometimes you need a walled garden within which to use your web browser and applications....

[sten2012]

Re: This is Russia.

That VPN isn't a browser plugin though..

[DS999]

This is a tough call

On the one hand you want to be supporting freedom, so blocking downloads of extensions that help Russians find out real facts rather than the Kremlin propaganda they're getting from Russian sources is a good thing. On the other hand, Russia could respond by banning Firefox and blocking downloads of it. Even with the downloads blocked, it would still be possible to access those extensions from other sources (like github or whatever) and install them manually.

[martinusher]

Re: This is a tough call

>help Russians find out real facts rather than the Kremlin propaganda .....

Experience shows us that most people just swallow what they're told. For example, it might not seem the case for people living in the UK but your news is heavily curated, its almost at 1984 levels, but most people don't notice it because its the environment you live in. (I notice it because I live not in Mother Russia but in the Good Old USofA where news and the like might also be curated but it can't be censored like yours seems to be.)

I don't know if the UK is quite as bad as Europe, it does seem to be a bit of a toss up, but the mere fact that everyone repeats the same stock phrases about 'Putin' and 'freedom' suggests something's amiss.

Incidentally, there's another bit of the world out there that's distinct from Europe and the US. It does you a bit of good to get outside our Western bubble once in a while to see how this 'rest of the world' views things.

[nobody who matters]

Re: This is a tough call

So you think that news media in the USA is more open and reliable and that British and European news is actively censored??

May I interest you in buying a bridge?

[Lars]

Re: This is a tough call

He is talking about conspiracy theories and alternative facts and we have indeed a bit less of that in Europe.

[CRConrad]

Mozilla is American

As Winston Churchill said, Americans can be trusted to always do the right thing... After exhausting all other options.

[CowHorseFrog]

Just like a good american, always being a hero at the end, just like ww1 ww2 and ukraine war.

[Grunchy]

VPN, censor tracker, and tor browser

I don’t use any of these extensions. I got the one that injects dark background CSS so I could play NY Times sudoku without having to discern faint grey numbers against “glare white” (official CSS color name).

(I don’t think the privacy extensions are of much use anyway, presumably the FSB can access the same resources & easily infiltrate the group, identify all the participants, and move them all to Siberia for Xmas!)

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: VPN, censor tracker, and tor browser

Well, thanks for that deep and meaningful contribution. You don't use them, so... what...? They are pointless? Russia was right to ban them? Mozilla was right to capitulate at first? Something else?

[Nematode]

Wait for Putin's revenge mob to take Mozilla resources down, in any way they can.

[Anonymous Coward]

Keeping lines of communication open was critical to the downfall of the Soviet Union and so it shall be with Putin too.

Here's a cold one for the good staff at Mozilla keeping those lines around.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay! Downvote by one of our resident apologists no doubt.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...

He's downvoted your response as well. At least he's consistent...

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Well...

The FSB / GRB / Kremlin-funded TLA of choice pay him per click.

[Michael Wojcik]

Honestly at this point I think the downfall of Putin will be natural causes. There's clearly significant discontent with him in Russia, but not the sort of overwhelming resistance that might end a regime. At least if the reports I've seen are at all accurate.

Of course I support these sorts of browser extensions — I just don't have much hope of Putin being ejected from power.

[Anonymous Coward]

completely necessary vs practically necessary

Lifting the ban wasn't completely necessary for users to regain access to the add-ons – two of them were completely open source, and one of the VPN extensions could be downloaded from the developer's website.

A couple of years ago when I was developing a Firefox extension, it was not possible to load a non-(or-not-yet)-official-Firefox extension via an Icon - it required opening a settings page and loading the source from file for each invocation - extremely troublesome and time consuming. I doubt that has changed as the trend has been towards less functionality in extensions and more inconvenience for extension writers. (And yes I understand that some of that inconvenience may arguably help security).

So while it wasn't completely necessary, it does make a big difference in practice.

[Wtcher]

Re: completely necessary vs practically necessary

Absolutely. Every additional barrier you throw ahead of someone reduces adoption. Even if it's by a small number, that's the opposite of what we want here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now do China