The main question is what behavior is being introduced. I haven't researched deeply, but apparently the add-on does nothing until the user opts-in on studies.
Some of the comments are mentioning IT managers banning firefox, those will be the same IT managers doing all the other pennywise/pound foolish things that make you try not to work on their team in the first place.
Maybe it’s actually good to put something scary sounding in there to raise awareness. It could help people understand that scary phrases are not the most common sign of foul play. When the real hackers come for you, they usually dont look scary at all.
who knows, you may totally change my mind, but as it stands it makes it difficult to disagree or agree with you.
I opted into FF telemetry and "studies" with the understanding that some extra data would be collected and experimental features or specialized debugging tools might get pushed to my browser (like the last "study" I saw for collecting JS errors).
This addon is none of those things. It is an advertisement. Call it an "alternate reality game" if you like, but it's an advertisement for a television show. It has nothing to do with making FireFox a better browser.
Using the Shield Studies program to deploy extensions and advertisements that have nothing to do with the original stated purpose is an abuse of the tool and a breach of trust.
That's all aside from the fact that there's been numerous reports of people receiving the addon who never opted in to Shield Studies in the first place.
Even if it's ostensibly about ideals I might agree with, this was a very poor decision and a breach of trust.