@dalias@hachyderm.io
@mcc@mastodon.social @leo@60228.dev No, it's very explicitly malicious.
@kornel@mastodon.social
@dalias@hachyderm.io @mcc@mastodon.social @leo@60228.dev It's been added (along with <a ping>) as a lesser evil, because sites can already do such tracking via hacks (sync xhr, busy-looping, worker polling). This doesn't enable more tracking, but avoids jank caused by the workarounds, and theoretically allows users to disable it.
However, the plan failed. Since it's explicitly a tracking feature, it ended up being usually unimplemented or disabled by default, so sites that want to track keep using the hacks.