Your post is really straining.
You don't get several points regarding monitoring. An evolving browser hast to be monitored for these anti features because new ones could be added at any time and thus has to be disabled immediately.

'Claim' to help is correct. While AI can have benefits, is is advertised as always helpful and has to be integrated into a browser. And that's two different points with the latter one being wrong. The opposite will be the case. People will lose their ability to think, analyze and decide by themselfes.

they’re building AI so deeply into Firefox that an opt-out mechanism becomes necessary in the first place

That’s such terrible logic. If something has an opt-out, it has to be “so deeply” built into it?

If you don't get it, I can't help you.
Article says: A causes B.
You argue: B causes A?
Your following examples are pointless unfitting as well.

Maybe you should take a deep breath and consider a factual view instead of pseudo arguments.

Some people obviously do not know what they are talking about. Telegram stores clear text chat messages on their servers. That's not even near privacy

Availability: Direct download via Repo or developer web page is missing. Google shouldn't be a plus. The provided explanation in the last thread was invalid

Yes, they do.
'But it's end to end encrypred' 🙄

Quite easy. Simply remove it. It is not deeply integrated as you say. The Problem is using other apps that depends on Google thus sending data to Google. Is that the case: reconsider your app usage

First of all, Signals code is open. Many people arround the world can check (and they already did) if the messenger lives up to its promises, is secure, private and so on. The others are not. Whatever you think they do, you have to trust a company like Meta. You wanna be that naive?

All those apps collect data: when you are online, where you are online, who is talking to who. Maybe also what you are talking about... we can't know. For example: Some psychatrists do not use WhatsApp because using such an app in the waiting room would provide Meta with information like 'you have mental health issues'. Signal on the other hand does verifiable not collect such data.

We also can see bahaviours coming from big companies to direct societies into a direction of their favor. They act like this, because maximum profit and power is what they are working for - they are simply companies. Signal on the other hand is a foundation which aims to provide security, encryption, privacy and fight against censorship (not in terms of content but in terms of countries blocking messenger services). What could be the more trustworthy base?

Btw Signal uses donations to pay their development and Servers so you can use the app for free. What does Meta use to handle costs for WhatsApp, Facebook and so on... Maybe they are charitable 🤞

To name differences:

• No adds
• No tracking
• Local backup (not on Google services or something like that)
• No exchange of personal data like phone number (they use a hash instead)
• You can use a pseudonym in form of a user name to get in contact with others (without telling them your phone number) and you can easily delete it and use a new one
• Signal created the Signal protocol which is called the gold standard, as it is the most secure and to encryption mechanism. They were the first so add resistance against quantum computers

And finally the better question is:
Why should the world use WhatsApp and co and not Signal? They do not have one advantage. If the whole world would use Signal, Threema or similar apps, it wouldn't lose anything but would win so much. Think about that

Them using Discord for cooperation and organization is a bad start. I'm not convinced

Messages are not end to end encrypted and can thus be read from service provider.

Additionally Google is integrated into website.

To clarify: eMail, web chats, gaming chats, Signal, Threema and so on are affected as well

VPN is both, an interface on your device and a network connection (to a provider). Netguard only uses the first. So every request is going through Netguard but is not sent to a VPN provider, it leaves your device like it would if Netguard wasn't active.

So no VPN provider can see your traffic.

While being sent through your local Netguard, the request is checked whether it should be blocked or not. This is done by its name. If the name is on a block list (real list or manually blocked) Netguard ensures that the request will end in nowhere otherwise it will go through.

Not activated by default. First strike. Cannot be activated in group chats. Second strike.

There are only a few to consider. /e/os if you want it easy or DivestOS if you want it most secure and private. All the other possibilities have disadvantages compared to these.

Please be aware that you should buy FP5 as FP4 has huge hardware issues and the support is a dissapointment. And yes, /e/ is available for FP5 (but not via easy installer, but it's not hard to flash it yourself)

/e/ is announced as 'degoogled' but that's not 100 % true (and not nearly as well). For example MicroG connects to Google as well as connectivity backup check. Patch level is far behind AOSP. The App Lounge uses clean APK for some apps which is very risky. Communication is a problem and they do not react like they should for example when Mike Kuketz analysed /e/ and found several problems.

The community is huge and they support many devices.

DivestOS is better in most points but is managed by one person alone. MicroG is not included by default (if you need it) and multi sim support is a problem.