Some specific examples I've noticed on the privacy side are pinging a Facebook server when a page uses Facebook Connect, and allowing the various web font services.
It's certainly possible to customise uBlock Origin to prevent these things. However, I couldn't immediately see any of the other suggested lists that would have blocked some of these potential privacy/tracking issues either, which suggests that not only do I need to manually block them if I want to stop the tracking, I also need to manually update those lists.
In contrast, with a couple of fire-and-forget plug-ins I've been installing as standard for years until recent FF updates broke them, I very rarely had to customise anything manually. They just worked as standard, and I trusted them to keep working and never noticed any significant problems, until now.
It's certainly possible to customise uBlock Origin to prevent these things. However, I couldn't immediately see any of the other suggested lists that would have blocked some of these potential privacy/tracking issues either, which suggests that not only do I need to manually block them if I want to stop the tracking, I also need to manually update those lists.
In contrast, with a couple of fire-and-forget plug-ins I've been installing as standard for years until recent FF updates broke them, I very rarely had to customise anything manually. They just worked as standard, and I trusted them to keep working and never noticed any significant problems, until now.