Snowflake is a system that allows people from all over the world to access censored websites and applications. Similar to how VPNs assist users in getting around Internet censorship, Snowflake helps you avoid being noticed by Internet censors by making your Internet activity appear as though you're using the Internet for a regular video or voice call.
Much clearer explanation on the firefox addon page:
"Help people in censored countries bypass censorship by running the Snowflake extension
If you want to help people in censored countries access the Internet without restrictions, consider installing and running the Snowflake extension. Once you install it and enable it, there's nothing else you need to do. Once the snowflake icon turns green, this means a censored user is connecting through your extension to access the Internet!
The only prerequisite to install this extension is that the Internet in your country is not heavily censored already.
There is no need to worry about which websites people are accessing through your Snowflake extension. Their visible browsing IP address will match their Tor exit node, not yours (since you're an entrypoint)."
So you become a node without using Tor yourself?
Seems like that. Embarrassed I still can't understand it after a few re-reads with my long covid addled brain. Would be anxious what some of tor's clientele would be browsing and what would leak out.
So that's cool, def getting this. Always wanted to contribute to the onion network, but there was no practical way before since I almost exclusively use the clearnet.
Yeah pluggable transports are a cool adaption to tor censorship.
https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/wikis/doc/PluggableTransports