I’m not sure why this has become a thing - usually I either release Waterfox the week before ESR releases (the week the code freeze happens and new version gets tagged) or, if I’m actively working on features and they need to coincide with the next update I push, I will release on the same Tuesday the ESR releases.
You can check the GitHub tag history for Waterfox to see it’s been that way for a good while :)
Speaking only for myself, and regardless of whether this is actually true (see sibling comment): yes. Absolutely. A non-privacy focused browser like Firefox has vulnerabilities/data leaks by design that are worse than hypothetical ones that I probably will not be subject to browsing my usual benign set of websites.
(Posted from Waterfox)
There are other variations that are a little faster in issueing the updates, but they are maintained by small teams, so they have more change of being corrupted by bullshit, specially this day and age where people take politics too damn serious.
Too be honest, except for niche uses, I just abandoned firefox. Their engine is behind, lags in sites that use too much javascript is visible, when even opening 3 or 4 tabs makes they browser lag behind.
I just keep it in my system this days to access some sites in my work computer and test UI rendering in firefox. Other than that, I had to surrender to chrome and its variations.