- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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.”
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“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.”
People are getting upset about this, but it only applies within the country where Roskomnadzor has authority, and it’s temporary pending further review.
Slow down your condemnations. Mozilla, as a law-abiding organization, must at least acknowledge the requests of a regulatory agency within its own country. Whether you agree with their requests or not, Roskomnadzor has governmental authority in this context within Russia.
Stop jumping to conclusions, actually read the article, and put the fucking pitchforks away.
Remember when China told Google to censor web search results and Google said, “No. How about we show those search results with notes that they were censored and why since the sites will be blocked anyway?”, and China was like, “You can’t show them at all.”, and Google said, “Fuck you. We’d rather lose access to the Chinese market than violate our principles.”, and instantly shut down any service in China that would require censorship or disclosing private data and closed all Chinese offices working on any of those technologies?
What a time we’re living in.
It is a good stand from google but…
In the end it was all censored, since google wasn’t even there anymore, and China was left with a huge market opportunity for their own internal companies to serve their internal market instead of a foreign company. The Chinese people ended up worse off, Google ended up worse off, Chinese censorship won, Chinese tech companies won.
So still sucks either way. With firefox not being banned Russians can still load up the extensions, just have to get them from other sources.
Thanks for the reminder.
LOL. It’s quite easy to sideload Firefox add-ons and I’m pretty sure these add-ons are already available elsewhere, through IPFS, Tor, or even a Telegram bot.
That might not be so easy for random schlubs who don’t even know how folders work.
People are getting upset about this, but it only applies within the country where Roskomnadzor has authority, and it’s temporary pending further review.
Which means that now, for example, Republicans can file to have any extension that “provides or facilitates woke content”. To put forth one (1) such case.
Idiot laws are idiot and must be fought at every point, in particular if you have more power than one (1) mere citizen. What Mozilla is doing is just announcing to the world they’re open to spreading their legs before the MAGAs.
Mozilla, as a law-abiding organization, must at least acknowledge the requests of a regulatory agency within its own country.
Insert Nick Fury “I recognize the council has made an ass-stupid decision”.
Whether you agree with their requests or not, Roskomnadzor has governmental authority in this context within Russia.
Also the fact they didn’t tell anyone until people started asking questions… This isn’t a “good faith, temporary” action. It’s a “let’s hope no one notices us doing bad shit” action.
I think US First Amendment protections are much stronger than Russia’s equivalent.
True, but neither that nor anything else has stopped republicans and conservatives from pushing crap after crap until it slips in (or rather, is let slip in, given the Supreme Court the US has over there).
Pretty much same. Maybe even stronger on paper, since it’s second part of constitution(rights and freedoms), that can’t be changed like parts 3-8 as in 2018, not some amendment. Buuut constitution doesn’t work. As a lot of other laws.
Mozilla, as a law-abiding organization, must at least acknowledge the requests of a regulatory agency within its own country.
TIL that Mozilla is a Russian company.
But seriously why the hell would Mozilla be obliged to acknowledge this request? Do they have offices in Russia?
But seriously why the hell would Mozilla be obliged to acknowledge this request? Do they have offices in Russia?
Roskomnadzor has regulatory authority in Russia. Roskomnadzor has the legal authority to regulate communications technology within Russia. They are completely within their rights to enforce this within Russia, regardless of what people living in other countries think about it, and organizations operating within Russia are legally bound to abide by the Russian government’s regulations within Russia, just as they are in every other country.
Sure, and they can regulate it by blocking access to Mozilla. That’d be within their authority.
That doesn’t mean Mozilla has to answer to them. Mozilla would be within their rights to ignore Roskomnador.
Whether they should is another matter but they don’t have to respond.
If Russia blocks security updates, that’s worse for Russian users than having to go to GitHub to install a plugin.
They still have to go through court. Mozilla is proactive here.
Do they have offices in Russia?
Are you implying that if my office isn’t in a certain country, that means my software doesn’t have to obey that country’s regulatory agencies?
That’s kind of the Russian law, yes. Russians can even hack people and steal all their data and money as long as they’re not Russians or in Russia. It’s a legit business model over there.
I mean… yes? Generally laws only apply within the borders of their jurisdiction.
What, are the Russian police going to come to the US and arrest the CEO of Mozilla Corporation?
The laws of a country apply to the activity of a company that is operating within that country, regardless of what that company considers its home country.
operating within that country,
That’s kind of an important detail there… as far as I know Mozilla does not operate within Russia.
Do they distribute a Russian version of their software to Russian citizens?
Does it matter, unless there’s an agreement that says the US (or some other place where Mozilla actually operates) will enforce Russian law?
why the hell would Mozilla be obliged to acknowledge this request?
That’s what I’ve been scratching my head about too. What leverage does Russia have to force them to do this? What consequences could they impose for non-compliance?
Does Mozilla own property in Russia? Sell it or write it off, then ignore the censorship request.
Do they have employees who live or have family in Russia? Either fire them or help them move, then ignore the censorship request.
None of the above? Perhaps it is we who need to fire Mozilla then.
So they only block the addons where they are needed, oh and they also only block them temprary, while they are needed?
Yeah, great!
Wooo…
They don’t block them. They stopped distributing them in Russia.
They are not disabling installed addons and you can always install addons from a file in Firefox.
Yes it will be more difficult to install and more risky to get a tampered version of the extension but if they did not comply the same problems would exist and extend to the actual browser.
I supposed that as long as Mozilla just stopped distributing those add-ons rather than block them (i.e. they can still be side-loaded) it’s complying just about as much as they have to.
Even better if they keep the listings in the Mozilla add-on store but for Russian IPs do not allow downloads and instead have some text explaining why they were forced to not distribute those add-ons in Russia.
Depending on the legality of the whole situation they might have held of from doing anything until there was a proper Court Order from a Russian Court but that’s about it.
Ultimatelly Mozilla as a whole being blocked in Russia wouldn’t be any better than Mozila not distributing those add-ons themselves in Russia anymore, since the result when it comes to people being able to use those add-ons would be the same.
Given it’s size in the browser market I don’t think that Mozilla not being available in Russia anymore would trigger the kind of pushback against Roskomnadzor in Russia that we many seem to hope it would and absent that there were really no good options here.
There is difference between complying and rushing to comply before it’s officially banned by court.
Since russia is a terrorist state I dont really understand why even communicate with them in the first place
This is an unpleasant dilemma. What is the other option? Stick to their principles and let Russia ban Firefox? It’s not ideal but people in Russia can still install add-ons from file.
With the same logic, nothing is stopping people to download firefox from alternative sources 🤷♂️ There would be losses in market share (in Russia) had they refused to play along, but now Mozilla spread it’s buttcheeks for governments to impose themselves. Once again, it’s mostly about the money.
Once again, it’s mostly about the money
Do you have evidence or is this pure speculation?
How and why should Mozilla get money from Russia? Isn’t it more plausible if Russia were blackmailing Mozilla?
How and why should Mozilla get money from Russia?
I’m guessing via search engine defaults for that region
(I Don’t actually know if they have a monetary agreement with yandex)
I did not mean that they get paid by governments… loss of revenue comes with loss of market share. You’re not likely to pay for Mozilla VPN if Mozilla cannot offer their services in your country.
You’re forgetting about security updates, which would also be blocked. It’s definitely more of a problem if the whole of Mozilla gets blocked than some plugins that have workarounds and alternatives.
Agreed - rather give the people there the ability to install this themselves than have them try to block Firefox overall.
The problem is, Mozilla is not doing that. The ability install xpis is censored (oh the irony) in retail Firefox.
Is this all true for addons available from Mozilla’s add-on site?
PS: Mozilla had to limit installing addons because lots of companies installed malicious addons into browsers of their users, often without knowledge or informed consent of their users.
You keep posting that but it is wrong. Ignoring that disabling installation of unsigned extensions is not censoring, you can install signed extensions via file in every version of Firefox, not only the developer one.
Stupid artificial outrage
Never knew that; this is special of Mozilla.
It’s not that we want to communicate with the state of Russia, it is so citizens of Russia can see real and true information from the inside and out.
Doesn’t seem to help though
Couldn’t hurt. It’s about the principle of freedom.
History doesn’t really suggest that Russian people think much of that principle. They seem to enjoy living under strong men authoritarian rule.
History doesn’t really suggest that Russian people think much of that principle.
1917
It’s not about what they enjoy, it’s about what they deserve. People deserve the truth, whether they like it or not. That’s what I believe.
You would be right at home in Russia then
🤨 I think we’re not getting through to each other…
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).
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.
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
Even if we were to agree in all your points: This is about censorship.
My answer was about the word “terrorist”, which is used correctly, but I was very unsure of the author using it correctly in many other cases.
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.
100% honest answer, it seems like you’re maybe thinking something that doesn’t completely line up with what you wrote.
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.
I mean, I’m not ditching Firefox over this.
Well said and a good reminder to keep our loyalties / fanboyisms in check
Mozilla fanboy here, this feels like an absolute diversion from the mission. They should have at least notified the community and devs some how, delayed the best they could, and then ban them to prevent being censored too. They better fight it or at empower someone that can (both technical circumvention attempts and legal rectification).
It’s a handful of addons (open source, available to be added via files) rather than the whole browser that are now available in Russia. Seems better to cut loss there and remain available as long as a workaround exists I’d think?
I think this is the big takeaway for me as a Firefox user. I switched the over from chrome about a year ago and I’ve been enjoying/promoting Firefox since.
I’m not saying that I will stop doing that but we should definitely not be blind or unwilling to criticize Firefox just because we are big fans of the service.
We’ll keep using Firefox until they finally realize it’s a bad practice to trust a company.
What the actual fuck Mozilla
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.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
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.
Russia would just go ahead and ban Firefox while saying things like “Firefox is US spyware”.
FSTEK would not be amused.
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.
They could have waited untill court decides to block. They are being proactive here.
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.
That is really pathetic…
Why? Do they have employees that live there?
Probably, or employees’ families maybe?
“That’s a nice little nephew you got there, it would be a shame if something happened to him “.
Better than Firefox being blocked in Russia. Addons can be added from files anyway.
And they can be renamed, so the authorities will need to play whack-a-mole.
LOL
“switch to Firefox!” Yeah sure. What absolutely typical corporate cowards. Fuck Mozilla.
I’m not convinced this is “Fuck Mozilla” territory.
I’m genuinely curious why? I may have worded it strongly, but as a Russian, there are very few things as unethical to me as cooperation of any kind with the Russian government.
Would you be happier if they ignored the demands and possibly got Firefox banned in Russia? Because if so, it’s not that we disagree over our views of the Russian government. Probably neither do Mozilla.
We have different priorities. I want the average Russian to be easily able to use Firefox, even if it takes more work to load some extensions. From where I’m sitting, you seem to want to cut off your nose to spite your face.
I’m genuinely curious why.
Would you be happier if they ignored the demands and possibly got Firefox banned in Russia?
Yes, having a web browser banned is absurd and impossible to do in practice, it would be largely inconsequential overall, before you even consider the thousands of forks of Firefox.
Taking down extensions makes them much much harder to get because they are relatively obscure and are usually hosted in one place only - on the extension store, unless you’re lucky and they have a binary on a GitHub.
I want the average Russian to be easily able to use Firefox, even if it takes more work to load some extensions.
I want the average Russian to be easily able to bypass censorship that blocks out truth in favor of misinformation of their government that gets people onboard with a war that’s killed tens of thousands.
What browser they use to do that I care much less about, not that they’ll be able to block Firefox or it’s thousands of forks from every page that hosts builds, installers or even OS ISOs with package on disc, but whatever one they have the extensions need to be available on the store - otherwise they can be extremely hard to find.
I think we simply disagree about the effect of taking down an extension vs “blocking” a browser may be.
I stand corrected, I see your argument about the comparative difficulty and effect of banning a browser vs an extension. The discoverability of the extension alone is a big point.
Not sure I agree with how you seemingly downplay the damage banning the browser could cause and fail to consider consider other ways people could organize to distribute extensions (even as you mention various ways to get Firefox, I’m a bit confused on this one). Others have already talked about this in the thread, so I won’t repeat it here.
With all that said, it appears we were both fools. Mozilla has returned the extensions already. It was neither about protecting Firefox in Russia, nor a case of “Fuck Mozilla.”
Fair enough!
On the browser bit, my reasoning is very simple: idk about you, but I don’t have extensions downloaded anywhere. If ublock origin were to disappear, and I needed to install it on a new computer, I would be kinda screwed!
Unless the browser stores a copy somewhere that can be used for installing it again on another machine that I could send. I don’t actually know, but I would assume not, I would wager most people don’t know and would assume that it does not. (Actually I think Firefox might have used or still does just download .crt files and then install them? Chrome definitely does not work this way)
What I do have is an installer of Firefox on at least 3 different computers though, smack dab in the Downloads folder because I am lazy and do not clean my downloads folder and don’t really use it after initially setting up the OS, so if mozilla.org would be gone tomorrow, it would basically not affect me now or ever, there is no “organising” necessary.
Not to mention there are countless websites who will store binaries for something that’s as popular as Firefox also, and it’s very unlikely roscomnadzor would block all of them also, compared to some obscure only regionally relevant extension. And that’s before we even get to forks of Firefox on GitHub…
And then of course, there will always be a Linux compiled binary in the Debian installer also, and the package repo, so the entirety of Debian would have to be blocked too, along with basically every other Linux distro, and I doubt roscomnadzor knows what that is.
Blocking people from using a browser as such is utterly impossible. An extension can on the other hand become difficult enough to get that most people simply don’t bother.
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.
