Gregory's ServerAt the request of Russia’s federal censor, the Mozilla Foundation, the entity behind Firefox, is blocking censorship circumvention add-ons for its browser, including ones developed specifically to help those in Russia bypass state censorship. https://theintercept.com/2024/06/12/mozilla-firefox-russia-censorship-blocked/
 48 comments
 @johnglass @kevinrothrock I won't use chrome. Google wants ALL the data. Thank you for sharing. @drdpov @noondlyt @johnglass @kevinrothrock No, it really isn't. Brave is pure hot steaming shite.  @drdpov @noondlyt @johnglass @kevinrothrock if you love cryptocurrency and can turn a blind eye to Brendan Eich, which is a lot to ask, then you still can't pretend Brave isn't reliant on Chrome's source code, and as such largely at the whims of whichever way Google wants to steer the Chromium project. It's like Chromium for people who don't know that browser extensions could've done that all too (or for people who think crypto isn't a scam and/or a little bit of queerphobia is OK as a treat).  @TheCoolest @drdpov @noondlyt @johnglass @kevinrothrock Thanks for clarifying 👍 (rather than just saying something is crap but not saying why).  @grb090423 @TheCoolest @drdpov @noondlyt @johnglass @kevinrothrock Let's see how Google can resist, maybe even longer. I mean they likely have received the same letters? @grb090423 @TheCoolest @drdpov @noondlyt @johnglass @kevinrothrock BTW Mozilla has restored the extensions! https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/mozilla_firefox_russia/ @rugk @grb090423 @TheCoolest @noondlyt @johnglass @kevinrothrock the point is that those original requests from authorities did not refer to any low. It's forbidden to promote vpn like services, but hosting or installing them is still permitted. If you want an example of what happens to services which are not complying with laws un russia - they are just getting blocked - like LinledIn, twitter, instagram etc @rugk @grb090423 @TheCoolest @drdpov @noondlyt @johnglass @kevinrothrock I hear this argument quite often, but unlike Google or Microsoft, does Mozilla have or has it ever had any offices or employees in Russia? https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contact/spaces/ shows only 4 locations. Also, much bigger companies have left Russia after it started the war. Should have been a no-brainer for Mozilla. @johnglass @noondlyt @kevinrothrock Yeah, Mozilla's new CEO is a real piece of work... comes from AirBnb, PayPal and eBay. @kevinrothrock summary above incomplete. Russians were blocking Mozilla add-on store. These add-ons are blocked only inside Russia by Mozilla, presumably to avoid having their whole site blocked. Still not good, but not as bad as the summary makes it sound. @mike805 “we’ve temporarily restricted their availability within Russia” is pretty cut and dry @kevinrothrock Sure but if the KGB was saying "either you remove these tools or we ban your entire site" they chose to remove the tools for Russian IP addresses. People with VPNs can still get them. The summary sounded like Mozilla was collaborating with the Russians or something. @kevinrothrock @mike805 ok thanks @mike805 for the precision. Indeed it changes what the title suggested. This being said, it's still a cooperation with Russia. I guess there was other alternatives: accepting to loose the market, providing a way to run alternative stores, recommend alternatives when ppl run Firefox in Russia etc...  @emergence_trailblazer @kevinrothrock @mike805 Well, it's not like, with the direction Firefox was taking this last decade, they would care to make extension repositories a thing that browser natively supports. At least, we can distribute extensions through other sites... @emergence_trailblazer @kevinrothrock @mike805 We'll see what happens, https://www.osnews.com/story/139928/under-pressure-from-russian-censors-mozilla-removes-anti-censorship-extensions/ also implies they likely have to face fines or arrests of Mozilla employees otherwise, so let's see. But it also seems to imply this is not a final decicion… (maybe they get their employees out of there 😉) @rugk @emergence_trailblazer @kevinrothrock Well yeah if they have employees inside Russia who are Russian citizens, then they have to do what the orcs say, at least publicly. The right thing to do in that case is malicious compliance, i.e. you officially do as you're told, and have some people outside of Russia who are not publicly affiliated make it easy to work around the ban. People inside Russia should not be involved in that. @mike805 @emergence_trailblazer @kevinrothrock and how would you make it "easy to work around" the ban? @rugk @emergence_trailblazer @kevinrothrock Add a Tor hidden service for downloading Mozilla software and plug-ins, for starters. And there would be a stand-alone installer for the relevant plug-ins, so if I used a Tails live environment or similar, I could download that, copy it out, and load it into my main working environment. Tails provides very good anonymity, but does not naturally mesh with the rest of your online life. And the Tor exit nodes often get blocked or captcha'd.  @kevinrothrock Time to fork, and maybe I should have been using Iceweasel all these years after all. (Note that the plugin downloads are geoblocked only for Russian IP addresses, and it will be interesting to see whether the firefox based #TorBrowser could be used to get a goodnexit node.) Meanwhile, join the intercept mailing list to read the article? fuckallthewayoff@hell.no  '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.”' Then why restrict Firefox add-ons for displaying alt text? That change affects disabled and poor demographics for no apparent reason. Its pledge is junk. @kevinrothrock interesting to see mozilla conspire with criminal enterprise against users. wonder how long that's been going on. @kevinrothrock this makes me incredibly sad. Was *just* setting up my new laptop and as always, FF was already set as the default browser. Goddamnit, @mozilla! What happened to "we work to ensure the internet remains a public resource that is open and accessible to all"? Are you changing that mission statement? @ianto_jones @kevinrothrock @mozilla You likely will say different if you have to face arrests of employees, if you don't comply. But we'll see… https://www.osnews.com/story/139928/under-pressure-from-russian-censors-mozilla-removes-anti-censorship-extensions/  @kevinrothrock it's nice to know Mozilla would rather obey a fascist country and take their money rather than doing the ethical thing we'd all expect them to be doing. @kevinrothrock God damn it. Are there *any* good guys left on the internet, or do I need to get my ham radio license? @kevinrothrock an option could have been. “Bye bye Russia”. See you after the war. Get the hell out of @kimhoar @kevinrothrock Actually, I liked they kinda did that in a small technical detail: "When I try to download them via a direct link, the Mozilla directory displays an HTTP error 451 (“unavailable for legal reasons”)" @kimhoar @kevinrothrock BTW Mozilla has restored the extensions! https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/mozilla_firefox_russia/  @kevinrothrock asked couple questions in their today's Reddit AMA, but it ends in 20 minutes, and there is still no response at all https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1de7bu1/comment/l8gc7h0/ |
@kevinrothrock RIP, Mozilla. I hate this so much.