Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who's fault is that, at the end of the day? Mozilla didn't have to structure their addon system in such a way that their (in)actions could disable the addons of every Firefox user on the planet . Mozilla did not have to abuse the studies mechanism (also on by default) to ship a workaround. Mozilla did not have to disable the option that would let me work around this problem by myself (which is going to cause me no en…
"Opt-out telemetry" creates precisely the scenario I describe, where the users who care most are least visible to Mozilla, at which point their needs would go unconsidered; no one knows they exist, how many of them there are, or why they're opting out. This remains true regardless of why , which negates your entire list of issues, replacing them with a simple question that is very difficult to answer: How could Mozil…
I'd ask for feedback, and when that feedback is given freely, even when unsolicited, I'd take it on board and act accordingly. I would ask if people want to participate in "telemetry" and "studies", not assume they do without affirmative prior consent.
Mozilla is breathtakingly bad at this. They're about as responsive to feedback as GNOME/Freedesktop.
I most certainly would not put spyware in the product and turn it on without asking first. I'd most certainly never get myself into a situation where an oversight can simultaneously break every copy of my software ever deployed.
This idea that you require all copies of your software to phone home to make effective development decisions is bunk. We got along just fine without that garbage for decades.