According to Neowin, the popular ad-blocking extension uBlock Origin Lite has been removed from the Firefox add-on marketplace amid an escalating conflict between its developer, Raymond Hill, and Mozilla. The trouble began in early September when Mozilla flagged all versions of uBlock Origin Lite for alleged violations of Firefox policies. The accusations included claims of user data collection and privacy violations—issues that contradict the core values that attract users to Firefox in the first place.
In defense of his add-on, Hill remarked that the concerns raised by Mozilla were unfounded and could be easily disproven by anyone with a basic understanding of JavaScript. Despite Mozilla later acknowledging that it had made a mistake in its assessment of the extension, Hill decided to cease development of uBlock Origin Lite for Firefox entirely.
He cited the “hostile” and “nonsensical” nature of Mozilla’s add-on approval process as the key factor in his decision, stating, “I am dropping support because of the added burden of dealing with AMO’s nonsensical and hostile review process.” As a result of these developments, uBlock Origin Lite has been permanently removed from the Firefox Marketplace. The last approved version, uBOLite_2024.9.22.986, will remain available as a release package on GitHub, but no further versions will be produced.