Soooo, pretty similar to the manual steps that Mozilla are complaining about in the article, then?

I would say that disabling this is even less user friendly in Firefox. The about:config is cryptic and prompts the user whether "they know what they're doing", that will scare most away.

Yes, but we're talking about disabling a button instead of persistent tracking used for advertising purposes.

I can do that. But try explaining that to the average person the street and see how far they get before they give up.

The average person might like having Pocket already installed though.

If that person likes it they can go to AMO and install it like the extension that it's supposed to be. Instead of wasting space, time, and technical debt for all the users who don't want to use it.

How is this technical debt? It’s a plug-in. None of its code is in Firefox.

Serious question - would you object as much if it was called “Firefox save page”? Because I’ve never heard HN complain about Firefox sync, which has all your passwords, your history etc.

If you explicitly sign in to it.

Pocket explicitly requires a sign in with a separate Pocket account. What now?

Doesn't Pocket require a sign in too?

The average person sees the button in their browser and says "What the heck is Pocket?"

The average person's eyes would gloss over it - just like how you'd ignore features and tools you don't use or don't know how to use in photoshop or visual studio.