That’s somewhat different from user-agents refusing to implement useful features because they might have privacy implications.

I’m not saying we should stop caring about online privacy, but the extent to which we fight fingerprinting while not actually solving the problem has made the web worse. It’s kinda like the argument for gun control: the unsavory folk will still fingerprint your browsing while the well-mannered sites suffer from lack of features due to aversion to any persistent handle on the users they might provide, like strong crypto because uh-oh a pub key would give your a “super-cookie” so we can’t have that.

Wouldn’t the addition of the debugger disprove this slant? Huge feature that has nothing to do with AI.

That’s not how it worked in the US. I also stipulated that I’m talking about contract plans not pay-as-you-go. From my time in Europe I recall pay as you go being much more of a prominent option.

No, like I don’t believe the math. It’s not about not wanting to believe the math. I don’t believe the mathematical conclusion is practically true even if there may be something theoretically interesting to talk about, like the monty hall problem.