this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 48 points 5 months ago (2 children)

WTF on the part of Mozilla

[–] [email protected] 54 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I suspect this was a "do it or we'll categorize Mozilla products as malicious software" situations. But some transparency from Mozilla would be nice.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They should tell Russia to eat a dick. Remember when Google did that to China? I thought it was very cool of them

[–] sukhmel 13 points 5 months ago

Unfortunately, the time when they seemed cool is long gone

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Let them. If everyone refuses to comply the authoritarian control of the Russian government over its people will crumble a little.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If everyone

I think, that's the problem...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well at the very least they could of just said no. I don't think they have a Russian office and if they did they probably should get out of Russia

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I would expect Russia to just ban downloads of Firefox, if they said no. Like, why would Russia not do that? Chrome, Edge, Safari etc. will presumably bend over backwards quite readily. As in, it would be a disservice to the Russian people to get Firefox banned over this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

The Russian government is a disservice to the Russian people. However, I do not think Mozilla should go along with the collapse of any form of democracy.

Russia is either exactly like China at this point or it will be like China soon. US companies shouldn't deal with authoritarian governments. I also dislike that Cisco is a big Chinese government contractor.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

because it's either do that or block all of firefox from existing in russia.

besides it's not really a big deal since firefox can install extensions outside of mozilla add-ons. the intercept is just sensational trash.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I disagree with that.

Surely there is someone, somewhere who is unable or deterred from using Instagram in Russia because of the ban.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

firefox can install extensions outside of mozilla add-ons

release builds cannot and all extensions not signed by Mozilla will refuse to install

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

The addons on the store are signed and you can install them from an xpi file in regular Firefox.

Try it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

On mobile that may be the case, but on desktop you can definitely install extensions not signed by Mozilla

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

only until restart.
to load unsigned extensions persistently, you must use nightly or developer edition and enable a hidden config flag.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Shadowsocks...

And guys! Please get your snowflake proxies running!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (4 children)

snowflake is actually blocked quite well

[–] randombullet 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm using Outline. Is that safe? I've never tested it against a hostile nation though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

it might work with obfuscation, in general my preferred solution is VPN+proxy, the proxy is used for bypassing the DPI and doesn't have to adhere to particularly high standards and can be easily swapped, and the VPN is used via the proxy for actually routing L3 traffic

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Already done, has been for several months 😆

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And US government just forbade any IT services to work with Russia

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

not "any", but some very specific ones

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

A quick web search for "page is not available in your region" indicates that it's not the first time they've done something like this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Any similar extensions to bypass EU censorship?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

That's what I have been using. More often than not I get exit nodes that allow the propaganda through.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

A proxy or VPN outside the EU?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (7 children)

Either Connect to VPN > Download the Add-on.

Or, on the GitHub or Gitlab page, provide a copy of extension and the instruction to install it locally.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

The problem with this is that Russia tries to block all popular VPNs as well.

I know, there are many VPNs and you can host your own VPNs, but most regular users won't bother.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

If only Firefox had publicly available source code that anyone could compile

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

What the frigging cow-dung is going on there, Mozilla?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (7 children)

Why is Mozilla even in Russia? They really should pull out completely and the certainly should not comply with this requests.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


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.

Developers of digital tools designed to get around censorship began noticing recently that their Firefox add-ons were no longer available in Russia.

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.

“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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