- Mozilla has reinstated previously banned Firefox add-ons in Russia that were designed to circumvent state censorship, such as a VPN and a tool to access Tor websites.
- The ban was initially imposed at the request of Russia’s internet censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, but Mozilla lifted it to support an open and accessible internet.
- Mozilla’s decision reflects its commitment to users in Russia and globally, despite the potential risks associated with the regulatory environment in Russia.
Some Mozilla execs are going to get tossed out of windows.
Can we know the name of this mysterious addon by now? Are the authors of these reports afraid to be poisoned by putin if they say it?
They’re threatened by Russia.
I hate to say it, but I’m inclined to think that the Russian government may simply block access to Firefox (and the Firefox addons site).
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
Firefox has 2.82% marketshare as of May 2024. It’d create disruption to block it, but I’d expect that that’s probably low enough that it’s not in the “too big to kill” category.
If it were 2010, then yeah, I’d say that the price to pay for blocking Firefox is maybe one that’s too high for the Kremlin to be willing to pay.
What’s really clobbered Firefox has been the rise of smartphones, where Firefox has very limited uptake.
I use Firefox on both my phone and desktop, so I can say that it’s definitely usable…but it’s not the default. Google owns Android and uses their browser as the default, and Apple owns iOS and uses their browser as the default. I would bet that a very low proportion of smartphone users are ever going to seek out and install a different browser, and Firefox can only really compete for the users who are willing to do that.
I hate to say it, but I’m inclined to think that the Russian government may simply block access to Firefox (and the Firefox addons site).
Probably true, but that’s not justification for Mozilla to save them the trouble by doing it for them.
They did that a few times before without any warning, which is why I’m inclined to think it’s Mozilla using the situation for PR. I mean, why not, if the Russian government presents them with an opportunity.
In that case why block the add-ons in the first place? There is a risk that the “Mozilla is blocking privacy friendly add-ons on the behest of an authoritarian regime!” news will become more widely known than any correction. If it had been a planned PR move then any person involved in it should never work in marketing again.
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Aside from blocking the add-ons site, they might block the update servers. Linux wouldn’t be affected I think (unless they block rpm, apt… As a whole), but on windows I think it updates from Firefox servers directly.
There are probably ways around it, but it’s a burden for the windows users.
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They can kill access to the Firefox website and prevent people from getting access to the addon (well, okay, if you can manually find an .xpi, you can download it elsewhere and install it locally).
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Seems like some third-party hosting is in order to support any Rebellion Russians.
They will force local ISPs and Russian VPN companies to block access to Mozilla’s domains. Same thing China has been doing with the Great Firewall for years.
Just to be clear, mozilla.org is not blocked in China
Wow. That was a lot more temporary than I anticipated.
I think it was an intentional PR action.
Since they can’t be afraid of their services getting blocked in Russia, they’ve been a few periods already without any warning.
I’m glad to hear that!
Russia is 100% going to force local ISPs and local VPN developers to block Mozilla domains.
That said, good for Mozilla for doing what’s right, even if it means their installed base will get decimated in Russia.
I guess it’s worth it when the other option is to basically become a state controlled tool that doesn’t offer any good for the Russian people.
I’m more worried that this will give malicious non-state actors and, worse still, the Russian government easier access to Russian citizens seeking the ability to look behind the veil. The result of this repression will be inexperienced folks downloading an exe and quietly being logged as a dissident or innocent people finding their information compromised or hardware hijacked. Sourcing clean, difficult to track downloads of these addons and Firefox will become important in the near future.
They don’t even need to force it. Every ISP in Russia has government-managed DPI hardware that filters all use traffic performs such blocking. No cooperation from ISPs is necessary.
how fkd up is the sh1t really out there? This is unheard of.
It’s not Chinese GFW level fkdup.
Also legally the initial versions of this thing are from 2005, I think? Rather old. Just nobody cared.
They absolutely can implement China-level censorship right now, they have technical capabilities. In fact there have already been tests of complete isolation from foreign internet in remote regions of Russia.
They just don’t use it much, yet. I guess they are afraid of consequences and prefer to let people live pretending that nothing has changed. He will go slow with it. Russia is still tightly integrated with western culture and economy (e.g. they have a strong IT industry and internet isolation will kill it for good). Russian culture has been aligning itself with European culture for centuries. They watch western movies and tv shows, read western books, half of the memes they use are from anglophone internet, etc. They are much closer culturally to Europe than to China, even despite all the politics.
Also legally the initial versions of this thing are from 2005, I think? Rather old. Just nobody cared.
2014 is when it started for real. At first the laws were rather innocuous (protect the children and stuff). But with each year they were “improved” to become more and more oppressive. Putin is smart enough to realize that if you do it incrementally then there will be less protests and he will appear as a good guy, “protecting the people”. It was the same with “foreign agent” laws.
They don’t have the processing power (I think) and the competencies are below those of Chinese censors.
Russian culture has been aligning itself with European culture for centuries.
“Aligning”? I mean, most of the EU is not northwestern Europe either.
They watch western movies and tv shows, read western books, half of the memes they use are from anglophone internet, etc.
Yes and no, in general Russians don’t know\use English too well, it’s not like the Scandinavian countries, Russian-speaking space is big enough to be mostly using Russian.
They are much closer culturally to Europe than to China, even despite all the politics.
Politics are more about claiming to be some “non-degenerate” part of Europe or orthogonal to culture.
That aside, before the Mongols (the original central) Russia was just a weird backwater of Europe (with some dynastic marriages between pre-Norman English royalty and Russian princes, for example).
After the Mongols it was maybe too strange for western Europeans, but not for the east.
Since Peter it was LARP’ing as normal European monarchy, during Catherine’s reign it kinda was one (not weirder or more despotic than Austria), after that it was just too agrarian and underdeveloped, but not particularly weird still.
The White movement was pretty proto-fascist, and their winning adversaries were LARP’ing after one bearded graphomaniac who called his ideas “German ideology”. That particular period ended in the 80s and 90s with attempts to LARP after the USA.
EDIT: Forgot about the actual point of your comment:
2014 is when it started for real.
Nah, SORM with all the same arguments was legislated and, well, deployed much earlier, somewhere in the early 00s and I’m not even sure it started then. It was the cleartext web, if you remember, with unencrypted ICQ, unencrypted HTTP, unencrypted FTP and such things. Much easier to work in such an environment.
At first the laws were rather innocuous (protect the children and stuff). But with each year they were “improved” to become more and more oppressive. Putin is smart enough to realize that if you do it incrementally then there will be less protests and he will appear as a good guy, “protecting the people”. It was the same with “foreign agent” laws.
They weren’t. Russian laws were quite surveillance-friendly to begin with in 1999, just in the 00s economy was on the rise and the state appeared benevolent, so everybody learned to ignore this.
And no, it’s not about appearing a good guy. It’s about making people protest as much and as earlier as possible to morally exhaust them.
Correct. The cooperation has already happened.
