I doubt it is just that - the sending of such info is enabled by default for one, and even after disabling it, for several years now Firefox has continued to connect to the server regardless. I have not personally delved into the source code to verify just how "friendly" such a check is, which has already been asked to be halted, but ad blocking software such as Blockada (Android) has decided to mark it as "bad".
If this feature was opt-in only, and functioned respectfully, it would be an entirely different matter, but as it is, user consent seems to be at least partly ignored. I am sure that those stats are useful to the developers... but that is not and will never be the point, for many people.