Raymond Hill, author of uBlock Origin and uMatrix unwanted content blocking systems, with the inability to publish the next test release (1.22.5rc1) of the uBlock Origin ad blocker in the Chrome Web Store directory. The publication was rejected, citing "multi-purpose add-ons" that include features unrelated to the main stated purpose as the reason for not being able to list in the catalog. In accordance with back in 2013 with changes Chrome Web Store, multi-purpose add-ons are not allowed and are subject to separation into several simple ones.
Since uBlock Origin only implements one specific functionality (blocking ads), Raymond thought it was a false positive and tried to publish the update again, changing the version number (1.22.5rc2), but it was unsuccessful. It was also not possible to get an answer from the support service to the question of what kind of additional functionality is present in uBlock Origin. A request to clarify the reason and an attempt to convince the support service that there is no violation comes only with references to the general points of the rules, without detailing what exactly the violation is.
As a result, Raymond that it is useless to try to prove the erroneous nature of the rejection of the new version by e-mail, since only repeated typical general unsubscribes come in response and no one tries to get to the bottom of the problem. Raymond also created an issue report, marking it as unresolved and advised users to find a different browser if they wanted to use uBlock Origin.
Addendum 1: A few minutes ago in the Chrome Web Store catalog new test release 1.22.5.102 (rc2), but there is no confirmation of the resolution of the problem yet and it is not clear if there will be problems when trying to update , the future release (1.22.5) of which is identical to the latest test updates, the attempt to publish which led to problems.
Add-on 2: Simeon Vincent, Chrome Team Responsible for Add-on Developer Relations (Extensions Developer Advocate) that the review team has already reviewed the solution and the build to the directory. The publication rejection was recognized as an error of the automated review system. It is also claimed that the support responses were generated automatically and at that time there were no people to assess the situation (the block was completed 6 days ago).
The comments raised an important issue for the Chrome Web Store catalog - uBlock Origin is a popular add-on with over 10 million installs, but even it took several days and public attention to get at least some reaction from Google. For less popular add-ons, errors in the review system can be doomed, and there is no guarantee that such blocking will not happen again for uBlock Origin. At the same time, everything is completely confusing that the blocking messages do not contain specific information about the reason, but only a general mention of a violation of the rules of the directory. All attempts to prove the failure of the blocking lead only to fruitless correspondence with the bot.
Simeon Vincent agreed that the organization of interaction with developers leaves much to be desired and automated systems are not without false positives. Regarding the blocking of uBlock Origin, he promised to provide a detailed report next week on which code caused the false positive. In case of problems, he recommended contacting him personally via Twitter. In the long term, he promised to work on improving interaction with add-on developers, providing the opportunity to obtain more detailed information about the reasons for blocking and simplifying the process of appealing blocks.
Source: opennet.ru
