Well the issue I’ve always found is that privacy is a sliding scale. At the time especially, everyone was after “absolute” privacy - i.e. everything Tor offers. But people were coming in to use Waterfox with that expectation and it wasn’t meeting it - but communicating how “much” privacy you’re being offered is difficult. I did settle on the current terminology and when people ask in user forums I try and make it clear that it’s a balance of usability and privacy - as much as possible without breaking websites.

Not sure I agree with your understanding wrt Waterfox not being about user control? Always has been and the feature set matches that and that hasn’t changed.