Defying “persistent requests” from Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor and Mozilla saying This week it will restore local access to five plugins to bypass censorship.
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Mozilla removed Firefox extensions, including Censorship tracker and Bypass Runet censorship — in Russia earlier this month without directly notifying its developers, register first reported.
Citing “recent regulatory changes in Russia,” Mozilla told a Russian news outlet Kommersant on June 6 that its decision to remove extensions from the list was temporary. At the time, the firm said it was “carefully considering next steps, taking into account our local community,” according to a machine translation of the story.
By “regulatory changes,” Mozilla seemed to refer The March 1 ban in Russia of websites and advertisements that offer information about virtual private networks or VPNs. The affected extensions offer access to websites blocked in Russia, including Tor sites and “libraries, encyclopedias, opposition political sites.” At least two of the extensions are open source and accessible simultaneously on the Microsoft property Github code repository.
Mozilla did not immediately respond to a request from Gizmodo for comment on its latest decision.
However, in a belated response to angry comments about your support forumwhere users questioned the internet openness commitmentdeveloper and community relations manager Edward Sullivan said Mozilla will restore access to the extensions.
“We remain committed to supporting our users in Russia and around the world and will continue to advocate for an open and accessible Internet for all.” reads a statement posted by Sullivan on Thursday: “Users should be free to personalize and enhance their online experience through plugins without undue restrictions,” he adds.
Along with Tor, Russia has censored access to a wide range of popular sites and services, including pornhub, Telegram, Shutterstock, certain facebook pagesand google news.
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