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Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

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Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#361

Post by bravetraveler »

Jalad wrote: post #258
xnx wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is a thick wrapper around the core functionality of uBlock on Android. Without uBlock, the case for using Firefox is very weak.

uBlock on Firefox pretty much is the only reason I haven't ditched Android yet

I'd go as far as to say it's my lifeline for a smartphone. Outside of sleep-or-shitposting like this, I don't use the thing.

I live as if it were a couple decades ago, working on a desktop computer. I've bought several laptops and failed to modernize. My entire life depends on the Internet and all of that, I'd prefer more distance to be honest.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#362

Post by amiga386 »

latexr wrote: post #295
amiga386 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Our review processes are not fit for purpose. We commit to replacing them with ones which acknowledge our entire ecosystem is built on the goodwill of unpaid volunteers, and we must not squander their time or resources. People like you are our lifeblood and we must not lose your trust." "We admit we used automated scanning here and tried to pass it off as human review. We got caught. Badly. All our future scans will…

Come on, be realistic. They’re not going to grovel and humiliate themselves over it, especially on a first apology contact. Expecting that kind of response would be ridiculous. The other comment was much more plausible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711187 I’m interested in what the original commenter thought, though.

The anodyne ass-covering apology they did send out, is massively more humiliating for Mozilla than a sincere mea-culpa would have been.

Hill made their initial emails public and the discussion of AMO's incompetence had already happened. Mozilla have been able to see this and formulate a response. Their response was not a full PR face-saving, it was a single further email from the AMO review system. That speaks volumes.

Dear Mr Hill

sorry we are such idiots. Now please reply to us so you comply with the mandatory review process governed by idiots. Our policies require that we do not unilaterally fix any mistakes we unilaterally made. We must first waste more of your time to acertain that you agree our direction is the right one.

Yours Sincerely

The Idiots

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197#issueco...

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#363

Post by chii »

EasyMark wrote: post #195
trustno2 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

manifest v3 is actually not a bad idea at all. it's more efficient, more private.

It’s bad though in that it reduces your power over your browsing experience. We should get a choice on that. uBO is a good actor and I trust them. Also good crippled storage for lists in v3 while Firefox did not. Clearly it’s to limit size of Adblock lists on google’s part to make the adblockers more irrelevant and in their interest to put as many ads in your face as possible.

> We should get a choice on that.

this is it exactly. They should not remove manifest v2, they should make it more explicit that an addon is v2 or v3, and let the end user choose (with the default being v3, and deny v2 addons).

When an untrustworthy addon asks to be a v2 addon, the user can be made more suspicious, but allow addons like ublock to remain working at full power.

Of course, the whole reason google did it is to remove effective adblocking.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#364

Post by Yeul »

ranger_danger wrote: post #293
horsawlarway wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar boat. I release an extension with about 1 million installs across Chrome/Firefox/Edge for work. Firefox (despite being the smallest usage) is utterly insane with regards to process. They demand a reproducible build, but then can't do things like install the right version of yarn (no - npm install -g yarn is not correct, our readme says it in bold like 5 times and provides the exact correct command to install…

This is exactly what the review process for the Play Store is like, even worse for Google TV apps. Often times just re-submitting multiple times without changing anything at all will get it pushed through.

Yeah but despite how much HN hates Google everyone here will do whatever it takes to get on their app store. Google has the power to make the entire industry their bitch.

Mozilla not so much.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#365

Post by adam-p »

If you want another example of difficulty with the AMO review process: https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/issues/21

And that's just one of the examples; another resulted in me having to add a preprocessor that removes code at build-time, which was annoying. I like Firefox, but it wasn't always easy to justify the effort.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#366

Post by AndrewKemendo »

sfink wrote: post #333
omoikane wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a proposal to make the review process giving more weight to reputation, unlike the current process which is supposed to be entirely technical[1]. This might be a good idea, but I can see how Mozilla would get a different set of complaints about reputation not being consistently evaluated. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Reviewers/Guide/Reviewing

That's a fair complaint, and I definitely agree that using reputation as a factor in the decision for an individual addon is a very bad idea. But why is that? (1) Because reputation does not imply trustworthiness. Someone could build up a reputation with a set of very proper addons, and then use that reputation to sneak in problematic ones. (2) Because it's unfair special treatment. The chosen person's addons would b…

People should read this when they think about AI “Alignment”

Can’t even have a singular aligned person with full confidence

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#367

Post by grahamj »

silverliver wrote: post #339
grahamj wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Fuck Google, I won’t use a desktop browser without it.

I wouldn't use a mobile browser without it either.

Wish I could say the same but that would require using an OS by Google... we can't win :P

Luckily there are other good options on the iOS front but I wish uBO was one of them.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#368

Post by fph »

sfink wrote: post #310

That sucks. I work for Mozilla, but nowhere near Addons so I don't know what pressures they're under or whatever. But if I ran the zoo... this is gorhill we're talking about. We ought to just make him an add-on reviewer with full rights, and tell him it's ok if the only add-ons he reviews are his own. We do not need to vet either his competence or trustworthiness; we have vastly more historical data backing him up th…

I disagree here. You don't want to allow people to review their own code. That defeats the purpose of a review. No matter if he's a superstar, have someone else look at his code so that he doesn't get sloppy with security practices.

And if you allowed this, then more borderline superstars would want the same privilege.

In scientific publishing, even if you're the editor in chief, your paper gets reviewed by someone else and the whole decision process happens away from your eyes; this is good for science.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#369

Post by thoroughburro »

EasyMark wrote: post #323
sfink wrote: post #310

That sucks. I work for Mozilla, but nowhere near Addons so I don't know what pressures they're under or whatever. But if I ran the zoo... this is gorhill we're talking about. We ought to just make him an add-on reviewer with full rights, and tell him it's ok if the only add-ons he reviews are his own. We do not need to vet either his competence or trustworthiness; we have vastly more historical data backing him up th…

I suspect he will simmer down a bit (I do not at all blame him for what he did, it has to be frustrating to dedicate thousands of hours into something just to have some clueless person pull it). I think it will be back inside of a week, it’s important and can save battery over regular ublock origin on Firefox.

> it’s important and can save battery over regular ublock origin on Firefox

That sounds like a reason for Mozilla to simmer down and compromise, not gorhill.

Re: Gorhill pulls uBlock Origin Lite from Firefox store

#370

Post by thoroughburro »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #320
move-on-by wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are too busy working for the advertising companies Mr. Gorhill is blocking. Most recently adding ‘privacy preserving attribution’ - a feature that no user has asked for.

People don't want 3P cookies tracking them around the web. They also don't want to pay to visit sites. Mozilla is trying to provide a middle path, I salute the effort.

Is everyone who claims the Internet cannot work without advertising only 20 years old? Why try to gaslight so many people who remember the Internet without advertising just fine. It was just a few decades ago!
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