Just mandate an opt-in default. If the “3–10% of people [that] want this”, wish to get out of their way and explicitly enable spyware, I believe this is a much more reasonable overall baseline (with respect to the other 90–97%). And considering most web-users rarely clear cookies, the preferences are effectively persistent already: which really appears to be the lobby’s primary interest. If people were conditioned by dark patterns to accept, while holding onto cookies, excessive data collection happens without user-awareness and potential for reevaluation.
I’m no fan of browser signaling, because to me it seems like yet another unique identifier: to potentially, and ironically be (ab)used to improve browser-fingerprinting.
That’d be ideal, and would affect adtech’s ability to track without consent. So that’s a good goal.
Requiring adtech to honor an automated signal would still be progress, hopefully reducing enshittification and making it easier to refuse tracking.
It would be an extra bit or 2 that could be included in fingerprint. IMHO it’s worth it if there’s regulation that makes it easier to go after companies that ignore those signals
My lion browser adblocker blocks these.
