Mozilla, the maker of the popular web browser Firefox, said it received government demands to block add-ons that circumvent censorship.
The Mozilla Foundation, the entity behind the web browser Firefox, is blocking various censorship circumvention add-ons for its browser, including ones specifically to help those in Russia bypass state censorship. The add-ons were blocked at the request of Russia’s federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor — the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media — according to a statement by Mozilla to The Intercept.
“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. Recognizing the implications of these actions, we are closely evaluating our next steps while keeping in mind our local community.”
“It’s a kind of unpleasant surprise because we thought the values of this corporation were very clear in terms of access to information.”
Stanislav Shakirov, the chief technical officer of Roskomsvoboda, a Russian open internet group, said he hoped it was a rash decision by Mozilla that will be more carefully examined.
“It’s a kind of unpleasant surprise because we thought the values of this corporation were very clear in terms of access to information, and its policy was somewhat different,” Shakirov said. “And due to these values, it should not be so simple to comply with state censors and fulfill the requirements of laws that have little to do with common sense.”
Developers of digital tools designed to get around censorship began noticing recently that their Firefox add-ons were no longer available in Russia.
On June 8, the developer of Censor Tracker, an add-on for bypassing internet censorship restrictions in Russia and other former Soviet countries, made a post on the Mozilla Foundation’s discussion forums saying that their extension was unavailable to users in Russia.
The developer of another add-on, Runet Censorship Bypass, which is specifically designed to bypass Roskomnadzor censorship, posted in the thread that their extension was also blocked. The developer said they did not receive any notification from Mozilla regarding the block.
Two VPN add-ons, Planet VPN and FastProxy — the latter explicitly designed for Russian users to bypass Russian censorship — are also blocked. VPNs, or virtual private networks, are designed to obscure internet users’ locations by routing users’ traffic through servers in other countries.
The Intercept verified that all four add-ons are blocked in Russia. If the webpage for the add-on is accessed from a Russian IP address, the Mozilla add-on page displays a message: “The page you tried to access is not available in your region.” If the add-on is accessed with an IP address outside of Russia, the add-on page loads successfully.
Supervision of Communications
Roskomnadzor is responsible for “control and supervision in telecommunications, information technology, and mass communications,” according to the Russia’s federal censorship agency’s English-language page.
In March, the New York Times reported that Roskomnadzor was increasing its operations to restrict access to censorship circumvention technologies such as VPNs. In 2018, there were multiple user reports that Roskomnadzor had blocked access to the entire Firefox Add-on Store.
According to Mozilla’s Pledge for a Healthy Internet, the Mozilla Foundation is “committed to an internet that includes all the peoples of the earth — where a person’s demographic characteristics do not determine their online access, opportunities, or quality of experience.” Mozilla’s second principle in their manifesto says, “The internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.”
The Mozilla Foundation, which in tandem with its for-profit arm Mozilla Corporation releases Firefox, also operates its own VPN service, Mozilla VPN. However, it is only available in 33 countries, a list that doesn’t include Russia.
The same four censorship circumvention add-ons also appear to be available for other web browsers without being blocked by the browsers’ web stores. Censor Tracker, for instance, remains available for the Google Chrome web browser, and the Chrome Web Store page for the add-on works from Russian IP addresses. The same holds for Runet Censorship Bypass, VPN Planet, and FastProxy.
“In general, it’s hard to recall anyone else who has done something similar lately,” said Shakirov, the Russian open internet advocate. “For the last few months, Roskomnadzor (after the adoption of the law in Russia that prohibits the promotion of tools for bypassing blockings) has been sending such complaints about content to everyone.”
What the actual fuck Mozilla
Their choice is to either block access to a set of add-ons from Russia or to get their whole infrastructure blocked by Roskomnadzor.
Every piece of software that’s available in Russia or China has to comply with their laws. Their laws are fucked up. This is also very easy to circumvent.
Hey they enshitified starting quite some time ago, and with only sub-3% market share lmao.
If you like GECKO based browsers like firefox then try out Waterfox or others.
I think it’s important to support the original Mozilla since they are the engine developers and need resources to make all other gecko-based browsers possible.
Currently though, it might make sense to make a switch, at least for now.
Disgusted (mostly at the Russian government), but not surprised. There was no good option for Mozilla to take with respect to this—it was either block these add-ons in Russia, or have the entire browser blocked in Russia, and I’m not sure which would do the most harm in the end.
They could have waited untill court decides to block. They are being proactive here.
I think k long game would have been to stick to their values and have it blocked in Russia. Would be good press for them and people in Russia frankly need to get more pissed off. Maybe this would help a little.
I hope their values are not “get some good press”.
Firefox being banned (or even chrome) won’t change the outlook of Russians more than… fighting a friggin war (and doing badly).
You can still get the plugins via other means (getting them from somebody who already had them, getting a non flagged vpn to access the store).
In this context it’s better for Firefox not to be the illegal unpatriotic software.
Russia would just go ahead and ban Firefox while saying things like “Firefox is US spyware”.
But enraged commenters without any idea how shit works don’t agree. So there! /s
Welcome to the lowest common denominator.
It’s an infuriating world.
It sure is. The less these fucks know, the more convinced they are that it’s cut and dried and that they know everything
welp time to browser hop soon
Unfortunately there are no other options. Literally everything else is Chromium based and ruined by Manifest v3.
Maybe if all tech companies told Russia and China to fuck off, they’d all get banned in those two countries, further isolating their citizenry, in hope that those citizens would eventually get fed up and say enough is enough, through whatever means necessary.
I’m sure plenty of Russians and Chinese put up with their governments, but are they willing to become North Koreas?
Not likely from what I’ve read the majority of russians don’t have flushing toilets. So the internet is probably a few notches down on the whole basic needs thing.
This comment section is a great example of the Dunning-Kruger effect playing out in real time
Mozilla is making a mistake in my opinion, should’ve never started obeying terrorist Russia. I have a feeling that’s going to hurt them more than just getting their browser blocked in Russia. They should’ve stood up for their values instead of caving…just sayin
This is not equating one to another, but the US invasion of Iraq is how much less terrorist? And how much less terrorist is what some US allies do, like Turkey and Israel? And how much less terrorist is surveillance in western countries?
(Please don’t comment with “whataboutism”, there’s a reason this word is used only in politics, cause everywhere else it’s assumed rules should apply equally.)
Also escaping Russian censorship is becoming less valuable the way the global Web has become, TBH. Why escape a propaganda and stupidity ridden space for a vaster propaganda and stupidity ridden space?
That said, it sucks, I’ve just gotten used to such addons as in the title a few months ago instead of having a separate profile with Tor.
Where the fuck Iraq came from?
Why escape a propaganda and stupidity ridden space for a vaster propaganda and stupidity ridden space?
Same thought Yandex progrrammers. Now Yandex is biggest source of propaganda on the Internet.
Where the fuck Iraq came from?
From unprovoked invasions.
Same thought Yandex progrrammers. Now Yandex is biggest source of propaganda on the Internet.
Yandex just aggregates Russian media, which obviously conform. I don’t know what this was about, though, it’s incomprehensible.
Yandex just aggregates Russian media
Google just aggregates American media. Do you see mistake here? Even when talking about only Yandex News, first they blocked “unwanted organizations” that did have media license(like Novaya Gazeta), then they increased weight of TASS, and it ended in entire news is “Putin caught pencil”.
And this ignores main Yandex’ product - Yandex(the search engine). It bans all pages that contain both Pu and words “краб”(crab), “пиздабол”(liar), “плешивий”(bald), “бункерный дед”(bunker old man), “главный вор”(head thief) and “хуйло”(huilo, I don’t need to explain, georgians and ukrainians can do it better than me).
Article(in Russian obv).
Here’s part of leaked rewrite file:
символ z * patch -luftwaffe -знак -люфтваффе -emblems -немецкий -german -президент -германский -славянский -army -рейх -вермахт -symboly -нацисты -германия -ss -hitler -nazi -сша -us -germany -сс -postimages -калмыкия -крест -членский -гитлерюгенд -message -ww2 -symbol -фон
Google just aggregates American media. Do you see mistake here?
There’s no mistake here, only by aggregating the conformant Russian media you’ll get the same results.
Also Yandex has been, one can say, captured by people different from those who created it in the first place and led it for many years.
And this ignores main Yandex’ product - Yandex(the search engine). It bans all pages that contain both Pu and words
Search engines do that. Search engines in countries with thermorectal (if you want cultural references about Russian politics) legislature do that even more specifically. Because you don’t do things that’ll get your business shut down and yourself put in jail. When normies get ordered by the state to do something, they usually comply.
Also obviously It’s a very weird PoV to consider yourself a better person than someone who has complied with such demands, when the same demands simply hadn’t been presented to you.
I happen to speak Russian, so you don’t need to translate these terms to me, LOL. Still they address just one man, it’s pretty clear that if he dies 15 minutes from now, no significant change will happen in Russian internal or external policies.
(if you want cultural references about Russian politics)
It is more reference to police violence, but ok.
When normies get ordered by the state to do something, they usually comply.
*unless it is creates hazard for compliant, because then normies are so noncompliant, that goverment creates law that punishes not helping goverment to enforce it.
no significant change will happen in Russian internal or external policies.
External will change. There is only one person that started war, that benefits from war the most and keeps it going. “Achieves internal goals through means of external policies”.
There is only one person that started war
It doesn’t work like that.
Actually asking, how has Firefox complied with American censorship?
Seems unconnected to my comment.
You’re calling this Russian censorship, and saying the rule should be applied equally.
That was about whataboutism and I was talking about calling Russia terrorist.
Did you really not understand that or you think it’s somehow smart to pretend? Just asking.
Better than Firefox being blocked in Russia. Addons can be added from files anyway.
im not TOO surprised.
they’re a non-profit company after all. they’re not political activists etc.
that said, it hardly matters, because its open source.
That is really pathetic…
Dammit, Firefox! You was the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the anti-privacy, not join them! You were to bring security to the internet, not leave it in neo-naZi’s propaganda.
They were never really the chosen ones, just the most well known GECKO browser.
It was clear what has happened since XULRunner and alternative Gecko browsers became unwanted.
Like now WebKit is sometimes the basis for alternative browsers for people who need something patient and usable. Or QtWebEngine, but that’s Chromium.
Before they did this, Gecko was the one to be picked the most for such usage.
Wait, they complied to Roscomnadzor? This is so stupid. It’s literal Big Brother.
Долбоёбы.
“In general, it’s hard to recall anyone else who has done something similar lately,” said Shakirov, the Russian open internet advocate. “For the last few months, Roskomnadzor (after the adoption of the law in Russia that prohibits the promotion of tools for bypassing blockings) has been sending such complaints about content to everyone.”
Wait. Are they first to comply?
They can either lose the Russian market entirely or capitulate to this demand, I think it’s pretty obvious what they’re going to choose. Mozilla may be an NPO but it still needs revenue to survive.
Besides, it’s open source. Anyone can pull it down and compile it without the fuckery, or download a binary from another source, or use a package manager that presumably would have a normal version for that distro.
Yeah, and you can install extensions even if they’re not on Mozilla’s addon store.
So what they’re essentially said is that they’re gonna follow the rules for now to not be insta-banned, but will consider how to act next given the time they have received.
Which is why it’s important to tell Mozilla it really is a bad choice to follow Russian censors.
I see a lot of gentle replies. I wonder if they would have looked the same if the browser in question was Google Chrome. The issue is that you can’t win this game. They ask you one thing, then another, then another, until you either fully comply or stop cooperating, and they block you anyway. That’s a reputational hit for the company and its product, whose only competitive advantage was its reputation.
