pretty sure those options went off because enough people decided that the preferences/option panel was too complicated and these were the ones that telemetry indicated were the least used.
This is not a conspiracy, just making browser hard to break for people who check boxes and forget about these. For those, browser is broken!
Those who know what disabling JavaScript actually does still have a way to disable! Where does all the privacy talk come in between?
When I got my last company laptop without all these things set, I was surprised how painful it was to try and download anything without a proper adblocker and noscript. I don't know how people do it.
https://socialcam.com/v/39HPvZde
Protesters can be heard chanting:
"WHAT DO WE WANT?"
"The ability to disable tabbed browsing"
"WHEN DO WE WANT IT"
"Possibly in the next point release, but the next major is cool too"