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The second paragraph of the article answers your question. Recommended extensions go through a stricter review and, if approved, are then "prominently recommended on AMO and other Mozilla channels". Mozilla has been doing this curation "for free" and at their own discretion; now they're adding a paid "shortcut" for anyone whose extensions are under their radar.

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I guess my point is that they've been looking at things pretty darn strictly already, poking through our source code and asking for all sorts of changes, even between submissions (that's right—we'd just be sitting there minding our own business, and we'd get an email saying we'd be pulled from the store if we didn't address issue). And to be clear, we have never collected any user-linked browsing data or even usage data, so it's not like we're a high-risk addon.

If what we've experienced isn't considered a strict review, I'd hate to see what the next level looks like.

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