But still, the fact that the extension was not active unless you mess around in about:config is a crucial fact, which should not have been omitted in an highly critical article, specially if they use words like "Mozilla, you fucked up bad, and you still haven’t apologised. The study is still active and ongoing".
I feel misinformed by that article, to say the less.
If that is the case (I'm not saying it's not, just that I don't know)... why did the extension even need to exist? Presumably "certain sites" are partner sites participating in the promotion. If they are participating and (I assume) they control their own content, why didn't they just invert those words or whatever else they wanted to do with the content when they served it?
I'm very confused about why this needed to roll out as a browser extension at all.
So presumably it was implemented as a browser extension so game players would be able to find the browser extension, which would give them hints about what to do next.
"It involved sideloading a sketchy browser extension which will invert text that matches a list of Mr. Robot-related keywords like “fsociety”, “robot”, “undo”, and “fuck”, and does a number of other things like adding an HTTP header to certain sites you visit."
Only if HN is on the list of "certain sites". It's also irrelevant because the extension offers me no value so Mozilla was not acting in my best interest.