the marketing department probably decided that it needs to be done and the safari engineers realized this would completely destroy usability for a majority of users, so they quietly abandoned it.
Especially as it isn't as simple as a standardized list of fonts when the Canvas hash is 100% unique for everyone.
The Safari team has not "abandoned" this effort: they are still working on reducing the fingerprinting surface area (of recent note, Safari has removed its "do not track" preference, which was used as a fingerprinting datapoint, no longer presents installed third-party fonts to websites, and no longer supports most plugins). The issue is that they have not "solved" the issue yet.
Intelligent Tracking Protection is a work in progress in which Apple actively checks what trackers are using and disables it. The next iOS/MacOS releases will have the next version with new restrictions on tracking.
The issue will be solved when all tracking companies have collapsed and that industry is dead. Clearly we aren’t there yet.
Here's a quote: "There will also be new security measures to prevent digital fingerprinting, or the use of things like installed fonts and plug-ins to help track users across the internet even with privacy settings active. Websites will be given a stripped down, simplified system configuration so every user's Mac looks like every other user's Mac."
Especially as it isn't as simple as a standardized list of fonts when the Canvas hash is 100% unique for everyone.
Still very disappointing.