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Mozilla's massive lapse in judgement causes clash with uBlock Origin developer

Software developers who publish their products on third-party stores face all kinds of problems sometimes. From rejected apps or extensions to removed products or unjustified claims about them.

Raymond "gorhill" Hill, maker of the world's most popular content blocker uBlock Origin received two emails from Mozilla recently about his Firefox add-on uBlock Origin Lite.

Good to know: uBlock Origin Lite is a Manifest V3-compatible version of the content blocker. It is less powerful, but since Google is disabling Manifest V2 support in Chrome, it is what will remain from uBlock Origin for Chromium-based browsers.

uBlock Origin Lite Firefox

Mozilla says that it has reviewed the extension and found violations. The following claims were made:

  • The extension is not asking for consent for data collecting.
  • The extension contains "minified, concatenated or otherwise machine-generated code".
  • There is no privacy policy.

As a consequence, Mozilla disabled the extension on the Firefox Add-ons Store.

Hill refuted all three claims that Mozilla made on the GitHub repository stating that the extension is not collecting any data, that there is no minified code in uBlock Origin Lite, and that there is a privacy policy.

He admitted further that he does not "have the time or motivation to spend time on this nonsense" and won't react to the allegations made or appeal the decision.

In a follow-up, Hill criticized the "nonsensical and hostile review process" that put added burden on developers. Mozilla disabled all versions of the extension except for the very first one. It still flagged the extension for the very same reasons, but nevertheless decided to keep the outdated version up.

Does it affect uBlock Origin? The core extension remains available for Firefox. Unlike Google Chrome, Firefox will continue to support Manifest V2 extensions. Mozilla has not flagged this extensions or disabled it.

Hill is now self-hosting the extension uBlock Origin Lite for Firefox on the GitHub repository. Interested users find it on the releases page as a direct download.

Mozilla realizes its blunder, but it seems too late

Mozilla contacted Hill a few days later, likely after the thing blew up everywhere, stating that the "previous decision was incorrect" and that the extension has been restored.

The organization issued an apology for the "mistake"  and recommended to Hill to reach out whenever he has questions or concerns about a review.

Hill decided to go ahead with the plan to self-host the extension. He removed the extension from Mozilla's Add-ons repository as a consequence.

When you search for uBlock Origin Lite, you won't get the extension returned anymore.

It remains to be seen if the two parties will come closer together again or if this breakup will be permanent.

Closing Words

Most mistakes in review processes are made by machines. Google, for example, uses automated reviews for the most part, but may also manually review extensions.

The process does not keep all malicious extensions out, of which plenty are regularly discovered,  but it may also block legitimate extensions or updates.

In the case of uBlock Origin Lite, it is unclear how the reviewer came to the conclusion that the extension was in violation of policies. Especially the claim that the extension had no privacy policy, when it clearly had one, sheds no good light on the reviewer and process.

Mozilla might want to look at the review process to find out what went wrong exactly to avoid another disaster like it in the future.

Did you experience issues with removed apps or extensions in the past due to reviews by the owners of the stores? What is your take on this one? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

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