Disabling Firefox telemetry breaks ChatGPT UI functionality

[ab_ab]

I would like to report a reproducible issue related to Firefox telemetry settings.

When the setting “Send technical and interaction data to Mozilla” is disabled, ChatGPT becomes partially non-functional, even though the page itself loads correctly.

Observed behavior:
The ChatGPT page loads normally.
Text can be typed into the input field.
Pressing Enter only inserts a newline and does not send the message.
Clicking the send button does nothing.
The sidebar cannot be opened or interacted with.
The UI appears rendered, but user interaction does not work.

Expected behavior:
Disabling Firefox telemetry should not affect the functionality of websites or web applications.
Chat input submission and sidebar interaction should work regardless of telemetry settings.

Steps to reproduce:
Open Firefox.
Go to Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Firefox Data Collection and Use.
Disable “Send technical and interaction data to Mozilla”.
Restart Firefox.
Open https://chat.openai.com.
Try to send a message or open the sidebar.

Result:
ChatGPT becomes non-interactive as described above.

Additional notes:
Re-enabling the telemetry option immediately restores normal ChatGPT functionality.
Firefox Refresh does not resolve the issue.
This appears to be related to event handling or asynchronous behavior when telemetry is fully disabled.
This does not seem to be a ChatGPT configuration issue, but rather a Firefox-side issue affecting complex single-page applications.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best regards,

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

Take a look at
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/717521#post-89944

About Studies
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOgkFtUFMPY

[ab_ab]

Hello,

Thank you for the provided links and the explanation about Studies and Shield. I understand how Firefox Studies work and how Shield is used to deploy experiments.

My report is not about the purpose of Studies or telemetry.

The issue I am reporting is that disabling the Firefox setting Send technical and interaction data to Mozilla causes a functional regression in Firefox. When this setting is disabled, ChatGPT loads visually but user interaction no longer works correctly.

In this state, text can be typed into the input field but pressing the Enter key does not submit the message. Mouse clicks do not trigger expected actions and the sidebar cannot be opened. The interface appears rendered but interaction events do not fire.

When the telemetry setting is enabled again, the problem disappears immediately without restarting Firefox or changing any other settings.

A browser configuration option should not affect basic web compatibility or core event handling in modern web applications. If disabling telemetry is expected to have such side effects, this behavior should be documented. Otherwise, this looks like an unintended dependency or a bug.

Could you please confirm whether this behavior is expected or whether it should be investigated as a Firefox issue.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best regards,

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

About the subject, Manage technical and interaction data collection settings in Firefox
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/technical-and-interaction-data
How to turn off technical and interaction data collection

Uncheck the box next to Send technical and interaction data to Mozilla.
Next, type about:studies into your address bar to see a list of your studies.
Check the box next to Send technical and interaction data to Mozilla.
Next, type about:studies into your address bar to see a list of your studies.

[Agentvirtuel]

Can you test

1 - Go to configuration editor https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-config-editor-firefox
2 - Enter a search term network.http.dictionaries.enable
You can double-click on the preference to set the value to true

Test Chatgpt

1 - Go to configuration editor
2 - Enter a search term network.http.dictionaries.enable
You can double-click on the preference to set the value to false

Test Chatgpt

[freddyb]

The issue should be solved since we published 147.0.1 last Friday.

Background: We had detected the issue with ChatGPT ourselves and made a hotfix through our "Studies" mechanism. This helped unblock ChatGPT without requiring us to make a fully new version of Firefox.

The resulting behavior is that ChatGPT only works when Studies (a subcategory of Telemetry) is enabled. While this fixed the issue for the majority of our users, we know this wasn't enough. But making a new release is more time consuming, so we could only publish 147.0.1 after a few more days.

[ab_ab]

Hello,

Thank you for the update.

I can confirm that after updating to Firefox 147.0.1, the issue is resolved in my environment. ChatGPT now works correctly even with technical and interaction data collection disabled and with no active Studies.

I also saw the 147.0.1 release notes mentioning the fix for compatibility issues with websites using the new Compression Dictionaries technology, including ChatGPT. This matches the behavior I observed.

Thank you for the clarification and for addressing this issue.

Best regards,