Asides from the kinda-shady crypto stuff and the other things that’ve already been mentioned, just philosophically it should be kinda evident that over-concentration on one corporate controlled rendering engine isn’t a good thing. Google wants the internet to be a walled garden with themselves as the sole decision makers so they can stuff ads down your throat.
Gecko’s web compat is bad largely because of this over-concentration.
That is the default behaviour, but it’s pretty trivial to change. Also, I’d imagine the distro maintainer could choose to change the default settings as part of a post-install script, if they wanted to.
Edit: Not sure why you’re being downvoted, as I do think it’s a valid concern.
While FF’s evil quotient has been on the rise, Brave definitely isn’t a better option. If anything, librewolf is the way to go.
Considering Google’s track record on simplifying UIs by taking away features, I’ll take my chances, and only update for severe threats.
Sadly software updates have turned in to an enshitification vector.
Just as a mild counterexample, I’ve personally changed my views quite drastically over my time on reddit and now lemmy, and most of it was from individuals just sharing their own perspective.
I held some latent bigotry and misogyny, part of which I picked in my day to day life, and partly from 4ch. I won’t say I’ve eliminated it completely, but I think I’ve become a better person from my interactions online.
If we’re not out here trying to actively learn from and help other people, then what the heck are we doing?
That’s not the only point though. IIRC, they also remove telemetry, and pocket as well as some other things. I personally turn back on persistent sessions and history, but leave all the other privacy features there.