uBlock Origin Lite ad blocker has been removed from the Firefox store — now the extension is only available on GitHub

The uBlock Origin Lite extension, which allows you to block unwanted content on web pages, is no longer available in the Firefox Utility Store.

Raymond Gill, the developer of uBlock Origin Lite, says that the changes were made due to a «ridiculous and hostile verification process» from the Mozilla extension store team.

Back in September, Mozilla’s store flagged all versions of uBlock Origin Lite as violating its policy. The reviews claimed that the extensions collect user data and contain «machine-generated» code. Gill seemed to debunk these accusations at the time, stating that «anyone with at least a basic understanding of JavaScript would only need a few seconds to see that the said violations made no sense».

For now, Firefox users who still plan to use uBlock Origin Lite in their browser are encouraged to download it the latest version from GitHub (it can be automatically updated). Interestingly, Mozilla has since admitted its mistake and apologized, but the developer has not changed its decision.

At the same time, the original uBlock Origin for Firefox is still available. The Lite version is an extension based on Manifest V3 that offers less load on resources such as CPU and memory.

Gill also previously recommended that Chrome users switch to uBlockOrigin Lite after the original version was deprecated there mark as unsupported with the transition to MV3 (however, there are ways to work around this limitation).

Source: Neowin