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Reminder that Firefox has a pathway to specifying some settings, including ones not exposed to users any other way, with a config file stored on disk.
They call it enterprise policies but anyone can use it by just putting a file in the location indicated on that site.
You can disable entire features, opt out of Telemetry before your first launch of Firefox on a new install, declare you never want to be part of studies, turn off their ML integration and keep it off, force about:config preferences in a way that can't be "accidentally" reverted, etc.
@trysdyn, why would I want to disable telemetry or studies?
@andrew_shadura @trysdyn Because unless you're an expert you have no idea if they leak sensitive personal information. And participating normalizes them, makes opting out more conspicuously different for ppl who need to. They're also harmful to begin with because they're user surveys biased to only reflect the behaviors of non privacy conscious users, and create data that suggests privacy features are unused.
All telemetry is harmful in this way. Respectable projects don't use telemetry whatsoever.
@andrew_shadura @trysdyn Also (I wrote in depth on this a long time ago, should dig it up) the word "telemetry" here is very loaded and harmful.
"Telemetry" conventionally means remote sensing/measurement done on something the party gets the readings from owns and has deployed.
In the context of software, it implies the software running on your device really "belongs to" the party getting the telemetry, and is an agent acting remotely on their behalf.