this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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To my knowledge Firefox / Mozilla does not have an office in Russia. And even if they had, the argument can be made that unlawful / authoritarian laws by any ethical perspective have to be fought against.
Sure, but you have to weigh the pros and cons. This request seems benign enough that Mozilla shouldn't be limited in delivering on its mission in Russia by following it, but they would certainly would be limited if they're completely blocked.
If Russia asks Mozilla to do something that compromises their core mission, that's the time to refuse.
That's how it starts. Mozilla itself is maybe not hindered on its mission, but the people who depend on them are: the extension was blocked, and there is no official way that I know of to add third-party extension repositories to Mozilla. And sure, the more important part of the problem is you cede just one bit, but the authoritarians won't stop. They know now Mozilla will spread their legs so they'll ask more and more, and Mozilla will for sure choose to bend over for them than to act for the people they were supposed to be fighting for.
You can sideload if you have the extension file.
The proper response, imo, is to implement third party add-on repos, so if Mozilla is forced to remove access to something, someone else can make a mirror or something. That way someone could create and host a repo that has blocked extensions and Mozilla doesn't get in trouble for it.
There should absolutely be a line drawn here. Mozilla shouldn't make any code changes to any of their services to appease censorship orgs (e.g. domain block lists). Blocking access to services that can be hosted/replaced by someone else shouldn't be an issue.