I built a small extension for myself years ago – partly for customization, partly for "purity." There are plenty of similar add-ons in the store, but none did exactly what I needed, so I made one tailored for my own use. It's always been private, and I'm the only person who's ever used it.
But this week, Firefox automatically disabled it, citing "policy violations."
What policies am I supposed to follow when I'm only creating something for myself? Don't tell me I need to rewrite my code to meet rules that didn't even exist when I made it – I don't have the time for that. I deleted my developer account years ago anyway; I only used it back then to sign the extension into an installable XPI file. It was never published in the store.
Right now I can still re-enable the blocked add-on manually, but there's now a permanent warning. My concern is that if I lose this profile or set up a new computer, I might not be able to reinstall my extension at all, since it's officially blocked.
What bothers me even more is what this implies. If Firefox can silently block a private extension on my machine, that means you are collecting and pushing data back without my consent. I've opted out of all "Enhanced Tracking Protection" and "Firefox Data Collection and Use" settings, but clearly you can still interfere with private add-ons.
This is going too far. I switched to Firefox because of its flexibility and lack of forced restrictions. But now it feels like Firefox is turning into Chrome – making decisions for users, and offering little or no workaround. At the very least, there should be an about:config option that lets me bypass these blocklists if I know what I am doing.
At this point, I'm seriously considering switching back to ungoogled chromium.
