In a development that may concern Firefox users, the developer behind uBlock Origin Lite, Raymond Hill, has decided to withdraw the ad-blocking and privacy extension from the Firefox Add-ons Store. This decision follows a series of disagreements with Mozilla’s store review team, which Hill described as enforcing a “nonsensical and hostile” review process.
The conflict began earlier in September when Mozilla cited each version of uBlock Origin Lite for policy violations, such as data collection and incorporating hard-to-review code. The accusations, Hill argued, were baseless and easy to discredit by anyone with rudimentary JavaScript knowledge. Though Mozilla later acknowledged the oversight and apologized, Hill chose to transition uBlock Origin Lite to a self-hosted format, accessible via GitHub.
Hill’s move to self-hosting also allows the extension to auto-update, ensuring users can maintain the latest version without traditional store oversight. The transition does not affect the original uBlock Origin, which remains available and supported on Firefox. It is important to note that the lite version is crafted on the newer Manifest V3 framework, designed to be more resource-efficient, a timely shift given Chrome’s recent challenges with the extension under its older framework.
