The issue seems a bit misrepresented by the dev.

I don’t believe I misrepresented it. Others (ex. Privacy Guides) also don’t recommend Qwant for similar reasons.

It doesn’t matter whether this type of data collection is only for logged in users/optional/etc. Selling data and profiling users in any way, shape, or form is unacceptable. We’re trying to reserve our default search engines for the best of the best, and it’s clear that Qwant doesn’t align with the values of the IronFox project by engaging in this behavior, so it can’t make that cut. Users are of course always welcome to manually add Qwant if they trust it or wish to use it.

Also, I just tested creating a Qwant account, and I received the following prompt:

Welcome to Qwant ! In order to offer more diverse advertising and better align with your browsing, Qwant and its partners use limited data to improve your user experience, ensure the proper functioning of our site, and analyze how we can enhance our features. You can modify your cookie preferences at any time via our cookie manager by clicking on our Privacy policy. If you wish to maintain browsing without any processing and/or sharing of your personal data with our partners Qwant recommends that you click on “Refuse all”.

This is extremely vague, doesn’t mention that the partner is Microsoft, that this data is used for tracking and profiling users, etc. - it reads to me like something I’d see on the CMP of Google or YouTube… I don’t think it’s fair to say that users are voluntarily sharing their data or consenting to this.