Could Mozilla’s blocking of add-ons result in Russian Firefox users facing the danger of torture and imprisonment? Or is this just an act of censorship on Mozilla’s part?
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It’s not illegal to circumvent censorship in Russia. However propaganda of ways of bypassing censorship is punished by law. Running a Tor node is also illegal. So, no, Mozilla’s blocking of add-ons doesn’t result in helping Russian users to avoid torture or imprisonment.
P.S. I believe you meant not “facing” but “avoiding” the danger.
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The use of tools to circumvent censorship is not prohibited in Russia. So it seems to have been Mozilla’s decision.
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I meant that Mozilla’s support of censorship and the prohibition of bypassing blocks will put users at risk of persecution.
- We are 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.
what a joke
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What a shame, Mozilla!
Will the official statement on this action be published?
Or will you continue to keep silent and pretend as if nothing had happened, as other corporations do, having lost all conscience?
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Dear Mozilla!
You were expected to fight censorship, not join it!
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It seems that Kommersant has received the reply from Mozilla, but not the extension developers.
“After recent regulatory changes in Russia, we began to receive persistent requests from Roskomnadzor demanding that we remove five extensions from the Mozilla extension store. After careful consideration, we have temporarily limited their availability in Russia. Realizing the consequences of these actions, we are carefully considering further steps, taking our local community into account,” Mozilla told Kommersant.
I’ve asked the reason in AMO Matrix chat room, no reply yet.
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USE of tools is not prohibited. Advertising and propaganda of such tools IS prohibited. RKN is specifically authorized to prevent such advertising and propaganda, they usually do it by asking resources to stop hosting this information and by them if they don’t comply.
Yes, it’s bad, and it IS de-facto censorship(which is forbidden in Russia). Question is - h ow to handle this by keeping extensions active and avoid blocking.
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Hello,
can i use Censor Tracker to circumvent censorship in Germany?
The government banned RT from here two years ago and only allows us to consume Ukrainian propaganda like Ghost of Kyiv stories.
I also would like to know how the Great Counteroffensive last year ended, any talk about this is under heavy censorship.
Thank You.
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I’ll ignore your ironic tone and answer you. Initially, it was developed for Russia (since we have a publicly available list of banned websites), but anyone can use it since we support custom proxying lists. So, the answer is yes, you can use it everywhere, including Germany.
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So i have to create custom lists in order to be able to consume media that my regime here censors, because my regime here doesn’t publish the list of banned websites, while Russia does?
Sounds useless, i will just keep using ordinary proxies. Thanks, though.
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Well, as I said Censor Tracker is initially developed by Russian developers for Russian users (although we also managed to add support for Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakshstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan). It is not surprising that censorhip in Germany is not our priority.
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Cool.
Well, if you would have advertised it in a general way, instead of specifically targeting a single country (as you wrote in OP), then this one country might have not been justified to ban it.
i.e. if i would make an Extension with the specific purpose to bypass the media bans in Germany, they would shut me down in Germany.
Already happened to others that did that.
Maybe just be smarter next time.
Think about censorship as a tool.
This tool may be used for good or for bad.
E.g., it may be used to hinder piracy, provide privacy, protect citizens from being fooled by some fake propaganda. However this tool may also be abused by bad actors, e.g., power usurpators like the Russian government to present the Kremlin in a good view and gain more supporters.
Some people think that the tool of censorship brings more evil than good and so it shouldn’t be used by any actor at all. In your case, both Russian and German state censorships shouldn’t exist and consumers of propaganda should use critical thinking, doubt the information they receive and so protect themselves on their own.
Should Mozilla ban Russian state censorship but allow German? Should they give this tool to good actors/states and deprive of it bad actors/states? It depends on what role the company wants to take, its principles and values, the balance between users freedoms and compliance to the laws of acknowledged and democratically (kind of) elected governments. I hope Mozilla will clarify their stance shortly.
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So you really think that closing off the ability to get information from alternative sources with an iron curtain is going to be the solution? Fascinating 
Two devs (@ilyaigpetrov and @zombbo) of major censorship bypass extensions are simply trying to get answers to their questions to understand the situation. None of them are blaming Mozilla for anything now.
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Hello @zombbo,
As noted in the article someone linked to in this thread previously, we temporarily restricted access following a request from Roskomnadzor. Notification to the developers of the impacted extensions was not completed in a timely manner and we are reviewing our processes to ensure this does not occur in the future.
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So Mozilla is now supporting censorship? That’s a shame. I’ve used Firefox from Netscape Navigator days and I always recommended FF to all people.
While Mozilla did many questionable things in the past years I stood for this browser, because well, no one is perfect and alternatives are much worse.
If they will not remove geoblocking quickly, then I’m leaving. Not because I personally need this addons, but because Mozilla doesn’t follow their own principles.
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Time to delete Firefox, huh?
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