Violation of Mozilla addon policies: Brave Browser ad

[Sommerwiesel]

This addon adds an "install brave browser" ad alongside the website warning. The ad cannot be disabled. This ad was not disclosed in the description, it violates the Mozilla TOU (https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/add-on-policies/) and consequently, I have reported this addon to Mozilla.

Please remove this ad and re-release the addon, I would really like to use it. Horrible idea to add this ad imo.

[anti-wokeness]

There is no "ad" that has been added alongside the addon. If the user navigates to a page where a warning should be displayed, and the user has not turned off the top-bar warning, then as part of the warning the addon will remind users to "use an ad-blocker extension or the Brave browser with has a built-in ad-blocker" to deprive the woke websites of their ad-revenue if you choose to visit.

I don't view this as an ad in the same way I would not have viewed it as an ad if I chose to name one or two of the many ad-blocker addons in existence. The project is receiving and has received a total of 0$ from Brave so far, so it is not sponsored but simply a personal recommendation to easily avoid ads if you don't want additional addons. And if the addon mentioning specific companies makes that mention into an ad then the list of non-woke companies can also be seen as ads for those companies since it's a limited/curated list of companies/brands.

The display of the top warning will possibly be reworked sometime in the future to make it less intrusive or at least give an option to make it smaller. I can consider at that time if I want to add code so users can choose to remove the ad-blocker warning or not, but this change is not slated to happen in the immediate future. If Mozilla agrees with you that the mention of Brave is an ad I will simply have to refrain from publishing the addon for Firefox until whenever the next update comes.

[Sommerwiesel]

Thanks for the answer and clarification.

The link that,

will remind users to "use an ad-blocker extension or the Brave browser with has a built-in ad-blocker" to deprive the woke websites of their ad-revenue if you choose to visit

is an additional unexpected ui change, that, according to Mozillas addon policies has to be clarified in the addons description. To quote Mozilla:

Users should be able to easily discern what the functionality of your add-on is and should not be presented with unexpected user experiences after installing it. The add-on should have an easy-to-read description about everything it does [..] “Unexpected” features are those that are unrelated to the add-on’s primary function, and are not intuitive from the add-on name or description. This includes features that impact user privacy or security, make unexpected changes to web content [..]

For me, the link to Brave was an unexpected and unwelcome addition to said banner.

Whether linking to brave is truly an ad is debatable, however, you should not just add links to external sites to an addon unless said practice is clearly specified in the addons description. What you did, will only get people to loose trust and turn away from your addon. Which honestly would be a real shame, because i think you've really created something valueable here.

On a more personal note: I think this is a great plugin. I would really love to see it on addons.mozilla.org. I will probably fork it later and remove the Brave part so that I can use it in my Firefox. What I really don't get is why you chose to create a plugin warning users about websites that push woke agendas and then yourself decide to add a link to push your own "agenda" of installing Brave. Especially if you take into consideration that Brave is under heavy criticism for the amount of telemetry it collects. The company behind it is, after all, an advertisement company who makes all their money from various advertisement networks. I would personally never trust Brave.

Just my two cents.