[mediaqueries-5] Privacy concerns about the prefers-reduced-data media feature

[frivoal]

As noted in the Privacy and Security Considerations section of mediaqueries-5, the prefers-reduced-data media feature may be an undesired source of fingerprinting, with a bias towards low income with limited data.

Is the tradeoff worth it? Can the downsides be limited? Can a different design address the same use case without compromising (as much?) on privacy?

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cc: @fantasai

[zachjensz]

I predict on mobile that turning on battery saver mode/network limiting features will impact this query even on high-end devices and therefore fingerprinting will not be too impactful

[capjamesg]

Has there been further discussion on the privacy implications of the prefers-reduced-data media query?

I wanted to share a use case I have for the media query.

I have been designing a search engine for my personal website (https://jamesg.blog/search-pages). I like offering search-as-you-type, but I don't want to enable the feature by default if the user would prefer reduced data. Right now, I have a heuristic where I disable search-as-you-type and require a user to press the Search button on mobile devices. But, screen resolution is not an ideal selector since one can have a slow connection on desktop too.