I do agree however, we do not need more laws about that, we just need the people to start using software that respects its users and can be audited by anyone - free software.
if ycombinator.com logs information on that request, is that okay? if not where does the "fault" lie? With the site that linked to a 3rd party (my website in this example)? With the site that is gathering telemetry without opt-in consent (ycombinator.com in this example)?
If it's the former (my fault for including a 3rd party request), what happens when user-submitted content includes a link to a 3rd party? What about if a user-submitted content includes a link but doesn't make a request and your browser decides to prefetch the contents of that link?
True, which is why many people (including me) use something like umatrix with every 3rd party request disabled unless whitelisted. This should be the default to be honest.
> if ycombinator.com logs information on that request, is that okay?
You are willingly letting your traffic be logged by the original site that you connected to. Does it matter if another party (usually trusted by the first party) gets the logs as well?
> and your browser decides to prefetch the contents of that link?
Change browser or configure it properly. Who even thought that prefetching is a good idea?
Anyway, the one at fault at this specific case is your browser (and maybe you, considering how you selected to use that browser or didn't bother configuring it).