Mozilla Staff Accidentally Blocked uBlock Origin Lite Extension

Administrators of the Firefox add-ons catalog (addons.mozilla.org) mistakenly removed all recent versions of the uBlock Origin Lite (uBOL) extension, citing alleged violations discovered during a manual review. The extension was accused of collecting and sending user data without warning, as well as containing minified or automatically generated code without providing source files.

uBlock Origin Lite is developed by the creator of uBlock Origin and is a version adapted to use the declarative API (declarativeNetRequest) introduced in Chrome Manifest V3.

Raymond Hill, the author of uBlock Origin, stated that he did not have time to refute Mozilla’s baseless accusations—uBOL does not collect any data and does not contain minified code. All files mentioned in the report (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) have not been changed for over a year and are identical to those long used in the main version of uBlock Origin. For example, the file in which Mozilla’s manual review claimed to find data collection or transmission contains only 50 lines of code and can easily be checked by anyone.

Later, Raymond announced he would stop supporting the uBOL extension for Firefox and no longer include the Firefox version archive in releases. He explained that, on principle, he would no longer participate in the absurd and hostile review process at addons.mozilla.org, which takes up too much time.

Afterward, Mozilla representatives apologized for the mistake and stated that a repeat review found no issues—the initial decision to remove the extension was incorrect, and the extension was restored to the catalog. In response, Raymond said he would not change his decision and deleted the uBOL page from addons.mozilla.org.