Censorship where you least expect it: the Mozilla Firefox web browser

I have long wanted to devote an extended and summary article to the different ways in which censorship on RT.com (and RT-French, RT-German, RT-Arabic, RT-Spanish…) can be circumvented. But if you further differentiate all these languages ​​between “reading”, “watching”, “satellite reception”, “iPhone app”, “Android app”… then this project begins to reach the proportions of Take a Book, and it actually goes beyond my head.

That’s why I’ll limit myself here and now to one specific part of this whole story: the rollback of censorship of plug-ins in and with the Mozilla Firefox Internet browser. Later, I might assign another piece to another niche: “application“From RT.

Mozilla’s Firefox is marketed as a browser that cares about your privacy and mine. It’s no secret to Google (Chrome browser) and Microsoft (Edge browser) that you are the product that needs to be marketed and that browser manufacturers do everything they can to record and track as much of your personal data and browsing behavior as possible. Firefox is more cautious in this regard and positions itself as a privacy-oriented third party in the browser market. However, Firefox’s share of the total browser market is marginal. At my workplace, this has the advantage that the company’s IT department spends a lot of time simplifying Edge and Chrome, making all kinds of interventions and restrictions on them, but ignores Firefox because “Nobody does that [onding] userIn other words, the foam is not worth the effort. The result is freedom and happiness for the rare Firefox master.

Last year, at the beginning of the war between NATO and Russia, some Firefox users came to the conclusion that parent company Mozilla, no matter how small its market share, is as active a part of the US military technology complex as anyone else. and other major technology companies.

It is narrated like this: [GECENSUREErt].com, the well-known flagship of the private media empire of the world’s biggest criminal Vladimir Putin, had two simple, but very useful, plugins (in French and English) for Firefox with an RSS feed of the latest news. Here is a screenshot of both:

(image: own screenshots)

At the beginning of the war, these plug-ins suddenly stopped working and disappeared without a trace from the Firefox plug-in display. Here is a screenshot of today’s search for “rt”:

(own screenshot)

plugin at the top of the list”Latest RT Videos“” is an empty box, no longer working and was developed by a company that has published hundreds of similar plugins: “Latest CNN videos“,”Latest BBC videosetc. This company and its plugins have no connection to the Russian rt.com site. Although it says in bold “206 results…”, nothing else from the RT.com site can be found in Firefox Plugins store.

Fortunately, the plugins involved are in another place Still available for download. I’ve also made it available here on DWM (zip file, 173 KB; ie: “small file”).

You can easily install Firefox plug-ins by dragging the relevant .xpi file into Firefox, clicking the Firefox window (i.e. activating the window), and then clicking OK to install. Unfortunately, for RT plugins, the matter is more complicated: Mozilla has deliberately blacklisted them since March last year as “dangerous software” (sic) (“Security risk! This add-on cannot be installed!“). In other words, RT plug-ins are actively blocked from being installed! If you already have these plug-ins on your computer and aren’t lucky enough to have Firefox update itself after February 24, 2022 (Firefox auto-updates almost monthly), These plugins have been disabled and subsequently blocked since that upgrade. Pure censorship, where you wouldn’t expect it at all.

The good news is: if you can disable this oversight (see below) and install these plugins, they will still work. The unelected Ice Queen Ursula von der Lugen, her court jester Josep Borrell and their Flemish servant, Minister of Media Censorship Benjamin Daly, never thought of draining the source of these RSS feeds. Understandable: none of these Big Three have ever looked at RT or read a letter from RT, and therefore have no idea that in addition to the website, RT also has RSS feeds (its servers are not necessarily located in Russia).

Below is a guide on how to disable plug-in blocking in Firefox. Here is mine source.

How to Remove Nazi from Firefox

(Since Mozilla intentionally blocks plugins of Russian origin, but not Ukrainian, the choice of term “seems to be”denazify“It is not unfair to me.”

– In the address bar (or “URL bar”), type “About: configuration“. This will open the Firefox Configuration Editor. You will receive a warning immediately.”Here is the dragon…” etc. Click away from the warning to continue.

– In the search bar of the configuration editor, type “com. xpinstallYou will then be shown configuration options that contain the term “xpinstall”. Double-click on the two options below to remove them from “.TRUE“to switch to”bloomer“:
xpinstall. signs. required -> false
xpinstall. whitelist -> false

For the less experienced user: Note that keys you manually adjust will appear in bold. On the far right you have another button for each key with a ‘back’ arrow to reset the key to its initial value. So you can’t do much wrong. Undoing changes is a piece of cake.

– Type (or copy/paste) into the search bar “Extensions. Abuse reportAnd set the following keys:
Extensions.abuseReport.amWebAPI.enabled -> change to “false”
Extensions. abuseReport. enabled -> change to “false”
The extensions .abuseReport.amoDetailsURL -> Delete this Internet address, and write anything in its place, such as “.” or “-“
Extensions.abuseReport.url -> Delete this Internet address, and write anything in its place, such as “.” or “-“

Type in the search bar “Extensions. blocklistAnd set the following keys:
The extensions.blocklist.enabled -> false
The extensions.blocklist.level -> set the value to “0” (zero)
extensions.blocklist.itemURL -> Delete this URL, and write anything in its place, like “.” or “-“
Extensions.blocklist.addonItemURL -> Delete this Internet address, and write anything in its place, such as “.” or “-“
extensions.blocklist.detailsURL -> Delete this URL, and write anything in its place, like “.” or “-“

– Type in the search bar “Extensions.Experiments” and set the following key:
extensions.experiments.enabled -> Correct

– Type in the search bar “browser.contentblocking.report.proxy(copy/paste can speed things up considerably) and set the following switch:
browser.contentblocking.report.proxy_extension.url -> Delete this URL, and write anything in its place, like “.” or “-“

Finished!

You can now drag the blocked .xpi files to Firefox to install them. Firefox should no longer object.

In the first article Indicates As a source, the author warns that if you update Firefox, you may have to make these modifications again. I can’t confirm this because I systematically block all automatic software updates specifically to avoid these kinds of unpleasant surprises. I can confirm that since mid 2022, RTNews files Working again without any problems in Firefox version 100.0b9, see above screenshots as evidence.

addition:
It took me years to find an effective way to block automatic updates for Firefox (I hate automatic updates for Firefox and many other programs) for all users of a given computer. I finally found the following: Updates can be blocked for all users using a Windows policy (source). For those interested: Here’s a Windows .reg file with the policy setting below that blocks Firefox updates.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Mozilla\Firefox]
"DisableAppUpdate"=dword:00000001

Finally:
rt.com website And français.rt.com Censored by order of the European Commission (unelected ice queen Ursula von der Lugen, court jester Josep Borrell and Le Roy Soleil Macron). Also read this article on DWM regarding past and unconstitutional censorship of the press. It is also easy to circumvent this censorship.

If that doesn’t work, search the Internet for “Censorship-free DNS servers“And how you can change the DNS settings of your computer (network).” To adjust.

A program that can be useful for this, for example, ‘Jumper DNS‘. There are undoubtedly dozens of similar programs out there.

Read also our previous contribution on DWM: “How nice it is to be a citizen of a country with censorship of the press and the Internet.”