The correct answer is giving the user choice and education.
Unilaterally choosing for them (either pro or con) by any large company is almost always worse.
Unilaterally choosing for them (either pro or con) by any large company is almost always worse.
Not everyone is informed well enough to make an informed choice, and tracking is not in the interest of the user anyway, so the default being blocking (DNT) is sane. Obviously it isn't in the interest of Google, and Chrome serves Google first, and its users secondary. Education is the long term solution to just about anything and I'm all for that (I can recommend a visit to Berlin-Hohenschoenhausen Memorial [1]) but the truth is that some people are just not going to be interested in certain topics.
Case in point: back in the days, everyone received snail mail spam. At some point, civilians were able to put a standardized sticker on their postbox saying yes/no or no/no (one being more strict than the other). They'd need to pick such sticker up at the city council.
Just now in start of 2018, if you live in Amsterdam, you need a yes/yes sticker to receive spam. Is that wrong as well? Even though the spam is bad for the environment (goes to bin right away), we're living in a digital age, and postboxes in flats and such pile up gigantically? Should we've educated people better instead of making this the default?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin-Hohensch%C3%B6nhausen_M...
Sane defaults should be used because they enhance the user experience tremendously. Nobody buys a gadget for its setup, they buy it to use it, and delaying the user from that end goal is not going to do anything but annoy the end user and ultimately harm the manufacturer's bottom lines.
Even if we limit our self to just security defaults, what linux system don't have default ulimits? There is tradeoffs naturally in every number, but I would assume even linux from scratch users don't need to explicitly set each and every number. If a user prefer making different tradeoffs they can opt-in to make changes, but even a operative system that is designed to be built by hand by the user carries with it some defaults.