>I feel this fails a user expectation that simply hovering over a link doesn't inform the server of anything. The validity of that expectation died with the ad

>I feel this fails a user expectation that simply hovering over a link doesn't inform the server of anything. The validity of that expectation died with the advent of web analytics probably two decades ago now. The wholly general solution is to disable javascript, possibly re-enabling it on websites you trust. Sites that break without js are oftentimes not worth browsing anyway.