if I link to an image, javascript file, or even an iframe to ycombinator.com, your browser will make a request to ycombinator.com most likely without you knowing.

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?