The author notes that this sort of extension would be laughed out of the review queue....but there are plugin authors who get plenty of users by putting up a website and making the plugin available directly from their site.
For example, the author of FB Purity hasn't explained to anyone why his plugin is not available via Firefox's extension store, only via his page. Presumably, he didn't meet some requirements they had...but he won't say what they were...
And this is why I welcome “control over” what I can do with my device by my OS vendor. Even though it’s mostly trivial to bypass, it still serves as a good gut check in the rare case where I might skip over my own scruples. 99% of the time if I even get this far I back out because I’ve realized by that point I was being foolishly trusting.
Given all the extensions in the store that are at some point updated with a trojan to sell your internet connection to shady people, the "review queue" is some kind of mythical beast that doesn't in practice do or achieve anything.
It would be trivial for Google to find all the extensions using that kind of crap, but they don't care.
Don't all Firefox extensions have to be signed by Mozilla in order to be installable (in non-developer Firefox editions at least) these days? Even if they're publishing it on their own site, it should have gone through the review.
Yes. It's mostly automated review, usually taking a matter of minutes, though I guess Mozilla reserves the right to do manual checks if they find something suspicious.
Which is exactly why these permissions exists. If you don't take permissions that allows you to horrible things, you are rubber stamped and can go on your way. If you want to do more involved things, you're escalated.
For example, the author of FB Purity hasn't explained to anyone why his plugin is not available via Firefox's extension store, only via his page. Presumably, he didn't meet some requirements they had...but he won't say what they were...