Firefox blocks mainland Chinese users from installing ad blocking plugins such as uBlock Origin

Recently, some users posted that "Chinese users cannot use ad-blocking plugins" - they found that "when using mainland China IPs to access ad-blocking plugin pages in the Firefox extension store (such as uBlock Origin, AdGuard AdBlocker, AdBlock For Firefox, and AdNauseam) A 'This page is not available in your region' message will appear".

As we all know, in this era of "explosion" of network information, ordinary people see thousands of advertisements every day on average, which is very annoying. Therefore, at this time, the "ad blocking" extension tool has become everyone's choice.

Generally speaking, ad blocking plugins are software used to block ads, and they work in two ways:

1) When an ad blocking plugin blocks the signal from the advertiser's server, the ad will never appear on your page.
2) Ad blocking plug-ins can block parts of the website that may be advertisements.

Whether these ads are video ads, web ads, pop-up ads, or third-party cookies, you can search for ad blocker add-ons available in your browser as long as you use an ad blocker.

So here, I have to mention the list of approved ad blocking plugins for Firefox, such as uBlock Origin, AdGuard AdBlocker, AdBlock For Firefox and AdNauseam.

As discovered by the user in the opening paragraph, after testing and verification, when visiting the 4 ad blocking add-on pages for Firefox, addons.mozilla.org does return a 451 (not available for legal reasons) error code page with the page body Statement "This page is not available in your region". Of course, in addition to the above four ad blocking plug-ins, other such ad blocking plug-ins such as Adblock Plus and Ghostery have not been affected for the time being and can be accessed, downloaded and installed normally.

Test sources and evidence for this "shielding" event:
[1] According to Blocky's test log, restricted access will initially begin no earlier than March 8, 2022, and no later than March 19, 2022. User report link: https://bgme.me/@bgme/107986773834355287
Test Results (blocky.greatfire.org)
Before: https://blocky.greatfire.org/api/url_test_result/18800410?format=ooni
After: https://blocky.greatfire.org/api/url_test_result/18861443?format=ooni
The same test results can be reproduced by testing the following URL from a mainland China IP address or blocky.
Affected add-ons:
[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/zh-CN/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/
[3] https://addons.mozilla.org/zh-CN/firefox/addon/adguard-adblocker/
[4] https://addons.mozilla.org/zh-CN/firefox/addon/adblock-for-firefox/
[5] https://addons.mozilla.org/zh-CN/firefox/addon/adnauseam/

Some foreign media reported that the "blocking" incident was carried out entirely by Firefox in China, because the "addons.mozilla.org" website is accessible in China (not blocked by the "Great Firewall").

According to reports, Firefox has a long history of "blocking websites at will" in China (even for non-legal reasons, etc.).

In fact, as early as 2017-2018, Chinese courts had sentenced several such cases (court cases concerning Firefox's misconduct in China):
(2017) Beijing 0101 Minchu No. 4609
(2018) Beijing 73 Minzhong No. 433
(2017) Beijing 0101 Minchu No. 4608
(2018) Beijing 73 Minzhong No. 397

At the time, Mozilla was repeatedly sued by several Chinese companies for ad blocking (the verdict took effect in 2019).

This time, Mozilla has not responded to the latest incident of "blocking ad blocking plugins" discovered by users. This site will continue to pay attention to the follow-up of the incident. If you have any opinions on the incident, please communicate and interact in the comment area!