

Of course it does. This particular change may seem innocuous in itself, but the idea of compliance with ridiculous laws like this one, in one jurisdiction, being implemented in a project used globally will result in compromising everyone’s privacy/security, regardless of whether they are even subject to that law or not.
If anything, it’s more troubling for those outside the relevant jurisdiction, since we get 0 say on the laws, and have no actual reason to comply.

Umm, yes they do. Look at copilot (as one recent example). The full range of opinion I’ve ever encountered goes from apathy to hatred. (Never heard of anyone having anything positive to say about it, the ‘nicest’ thing being to the effect of ‘I just ignore it, so I don’t care’). And yet, Microsoft’s attitude is that ‘the user is wrong, deal with it’, and this has always been the case in both Windows and Mac OS, while the various OSS DEs attempt to fix real user frustrations.
Many of the points they make are true for GNOME specifically, but thankfully, there are plenty of other options, and Linux != GNOME.