Firefox banned Dissenter[1], a plug-in that did nothing nefarious - only enables browser users of the plug-in to chat / comment with each other about webpages.
They did this for political reasons. Regardless of what kind of trash talk takes place on Dissenter, the point is that nobody is forced to use it.
My point: neither Google nor Mozilla should be trusted and both seek to be your totalitarian Internet overlord.
But it looks like they didn't "ban" it, they just don't want to host it
on their store [1]. As long as they don't refuse to sign these
"problematic" add-ons, this is fine (although it's worrying that they
are able to do so because of this signing-required-crap).
At least one extension maintainer (yappy, a pushbullet alternative) says that they are unable to sign their extension because of the 3rd party library they use, so while they have both firefox and chrome extensions, only the chrome one works.
That would be very disappointing from mozilla! I only found a
support-thread from yappy in 2016 but if this is still up-to-date there
should be an outrage on HN's frontpage.
I also made a simple, private(!) extension before I learned about the
signing-requirement and that it won't work without uploading it. So I
canceled my career as an extension-writer and just went to bed angry.
They really fucked this up (without even mentioning the "armag-addon").
Use WaterFox or Pale Moon. XULExtensions are fantastic.
I have darkmode on, on the entire internet. Had it for eternities before ff, thanks to an extension. Great reader extension. Even ported (to webextensions) extensions still have great versions for xul.
You can't have both the ability to install unsigned addons and one-click addons in a software designed for average Joe, and not end up with massive malware problems.
They did this for political reasons. Regardless of what kind of trash talk takes place on Dissenter, the point is that nobody is forced to use it.
My point: neither Google nor Mozilla should be trusted and both seek to be your totalitarian Internet overlord.
1. https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/36490/firefox-and-chrome-ban...