uBlock Origin Lite Maker Ends Firefox Store Support, Slams Mozilla For Hostile Reviews (neowin.net) 25
The Firefox extension for the uBlock Origin Lite content blocker is no longer available. According to Neowin, "Raymond Hill, the maker of the extension, pulled support and moved uBlock Origin Lite to self-hosting after multiple encounters with a 'nonsensical and hostile' review process from the store review team." From the report: It all started in early September when Mozilla flagged every version of the uBlock Origin Lite extension as violating its policies. Reviewers then claimed the extension apparently collected user data and contained "minified, concatenated or otherwise machine-generated code." The developer seemingly debunked those allegations, saying that "it takes only a few seconds for anyone who has even basic understanding of JavaScript to see the raised issues make no sense." Raymond Hill decided to drop the extension from the store and move it to a self-hosted version. This means that those who want to continue using uBlock Origin Lite on Firefox should download the latest version from GitHub (it can auto-update itself).
The last message from the developer in a now-closed GitHub issue shows an email from Mozilla admitting its fault and apologizing for the mistake. However, Raymond still pulled the extension from the Mozilla Add-ons Store, which means you can no longer find it on addons.mozilla.org. It is worth noting that the original uBlock Origin for Firefox is still available and supported.
The last message from the developer in a now-closed GitHub issue shows an email from Mozilla admitting its fault and apologizing for the mistake. However, Raymond still pulled the extension from the Mozilla Add-ons Store, which means you can no longer find it on addons.mozilla.org. It is worth noting that the original uBlock Origin for Firefox is still available and supported.
A New Pro-Strat? (Score:2)
The last message from the developer in a now-closed GitHub issue shows an email from Mozilla admitting its fault and apologizing for the mistake. However, Raymond still pulled the extension from the Mozilla Add-ons Store, which means you can no longer find it on addons.mozilla.org.
Eat paste, Evacuate into pants, Extinguish.
He's self-hosting, but far fewer will install or even see this adblocker in the future.
Re:A New Pro-Strat? (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly I don't even understand why it was available, because the only real use case for UBO Lite is on Chromium based browsers, as UBO lite is the nerfed Manifest V3 version. If you're running Firefox, use the original, unnerfed version which IS still available in the store.
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It uses less resources, and might be suitable for potato-level PCs or phones.
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Do extensions, the same extensions, run on Android and Windows versions now? I don't think that was the case last I checked (around 6 years ago).
Re: A New Pro-Strat? (Score:1)
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Normal UBlock Origin is available and works fine on Firefox on Android.
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Yes, for Firefox, and it's the same code (nobody is re-writing the extensions). The catch is that you have access to a limited (but kind of increasing over the years) small subset of the extensions from the store; ublock was there since there were like 5 of them approved, and probably ublock light was there too nowadays as there are many more. Now if you want more extensions you can follow what I called an outrageous process (for some reason the post is moderated Flamebait although I'd say I'm not exaggerat
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That's not the case anymore: open the extensions manager, scroll to the bottom and tap "Find more extensions", then tap "See more trending extensions" and you'll find 1593 extensions as of right now.
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This is PRECISELY what I'm saying, there's a selection that's been somehow increasing over the years but it's still a limited (and not that big) part of the total (there are like, tens of thousands of them in the store)?
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uBO on mobile devices kills your battery. In my tests, uBO Lite barely affects battery life on Android, if at all, but the full-fat version causes Firefox to consume power quite rapidly. It's actually noticeably slower too, with scrolling being less smooth as the DOM updates and uBO filters it.
With Lite you get about 80% of the filtering, so I use that and a separate CSS modifying add-on just to fix Slashdot.
Re: A New Pro-Strat? (Score:5, Informative)
His main addon is still there.
The "lite" version was created to work with Chrome, and ported to Firefox.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]
Ublock Origin (the best adblock) is still right there.
Note that the bogus crap about the Lite version could just as easily apply to the full version, because many of the files that Firefox made false claims about are in both versions.
Follow the money (Score:2)
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Isn't Google still the biggest funder of Firefox? I heard that was going away, but maybe the threat of them going away is what gives them more leverage now. "Do this and we'll continue providing some funds, even when the courts cancel our search deal."
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Those "reviewers" are actually a stupid bot. It happened to me too -- my addon was blocked just because of a "trigger word" inside a comment. When I removed the problematic word, it was accepted, without any functional change. (No, it was not a racist slur or anything similar ;-)).
Of course, real malware writers know how to play it and fly under the radar.
Uhm... (Score:3, Insightful)
2) All the requirements that he's saying is nonsensical and absurd were put into place after several add-ons were found to use minified/compiled code to do malicious things.
3) The plugin's privacy statement says: "Doesn't embed any analytics or telemetry hooks in its code", but, in that very issue, one of the files is named
4) None of these files are commented or documented.
5) The mozilla add-ons team usually requires explanation for justification not just "where it is".
6) He complains "where is the minification of these codes"? When the statement from mozilla was "Your add-on contains minified, concatenated or otherwise machine-generated code" It's not specifically minification.
Something's not meshing with the author's story. I'm not saying the mozilla team is faultless, they do get stuff wrong sometimes, but all these reasons from Mozilla were justified.
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Here is the apology email [github.com]
Re:Uhm... (Score:5, Informative)
1) I don't see an apology email from Mozilla, as the story claims, in the github issue
you have to click to expand the quote on github but it says that it is from Sept 27th with the meat of it:
After re-reviewing your extension, we have determined that the previous decision was incorrect and based on that determination, we have restored your add-on.
We apologize for the mistake and encourage you to reach out to us in the future whenever you have questions or concerns about a review so that we can correct mistakes and resolve any issues quickly. ...
(see: https://github.com/uBlockOrigi... [github.com] )
Re: Uhm... (Score:3)
1) already debunked
2) He said the review process is nonsensical and hostile. Not that the requirements are nonsensical and absurd.
3) already debunked
4) "None of these files are commented or documented." Well true, and while that could have lead the review to the right conclusion, there is no requirement on commenting or documenting the code, so the point is irrelevant.
5) Well if there is a photo of a beach and they say "this picture contains violence", how do you say where specifically they are wrong if the
Re: Uhm... (Score:1)
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There is machine generated code in uBOL.
Manifest V3 prevents extensions from reading in external data, because it's a security issue. They could pull in anything, including executable code that was not subject to review. As such, uBOL has to embed the blocklists in its code, and those lists are machine generated based on statistical analysis of the most effective ones.
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3: Those are a dummy replacements for the actual tracker scripts, so that the web page scripts still have the functions to call and don't throw errors, but the dummy functions don't do anything.
7: While seemingly everyone else, including Mozilla, is tracking for the ad industry, we're talking about Raymond Hill, who has been giving the world a usable web experience by disabling tracking and removing ads, fucktons of it, for free, without any tracking or ads of his own. If you look at his work and think, oh
Assuming he's correct on everything (Score:2)
So let's assume that every accusation laid at mozilla's feet is accurate.
What it the purpose of porting a crippled extension that is specifically crippled to somehow adapt to changes that prevent the full extension from working correctly on one browser engine... to a completely different engine?