"In my experience, with tools like Cover Your Tracks (apparently this is the new name for Panopticlick), the more you try and thwart fingerprinting, the more unique you appear."

In the interest of fair balance, I have had the opposite experience.

"I've given up..."

That's probably what "tech" companies are hoping you will do. I see this response repeatedly on HN when the fingerprinting topic comes up. I am wondering if the persons submitting these replies want others to "give up".

Is there a difference between users wanting to appear "the same" and a desire by users to stop supplying maximum amounts of free data/information to "tech" companies and exacerbating the problem of online advertising and associated surveillance.

If a user sends no fingerprinting data/information, then she might be "unique" because most users are sending excessive amounts of fingerprinting data/information. However, IMO, that is hardly a sound argument for continuing to send excessive amounts of fingerprinting data/information. I subscribe to the general principle of sending the least amount of information possible to successfully retrieve a page. This might be "unique" user behaviour, but I am confident it is the correct approach. The big picture IMHO is that "tech" companies, generally, are trying to collect data/information about users to inform online advertising. Uniquely identifying users is only a part of what they are trying to do.

It is a bit like telling a user to use/not use an ad blocker based on what other users are doing, so as to avoid being "unique". This might help with avoiding "uniqueness" but clearly there are gains to be had from using an ad blocker that are greater than the value of trying to appear "the same" as every other user.

Imagine users are all trying to appear exactly the same, so they embark upon coordinating with each other to make the exact same choices. It stands to reason that the number of choices each user has to make is going to be a factor in whether this is successful.

If every user is choosing to send large amounts of data/information (e.g., using browser defaults), then every user has to coordinate their choices on every single data point or bit of information. The higher the number of "correct" choices each user has to make, the less likely that all users succeed in being uniform. There are more chances for error. Whereas if we reduce the number of data points and bits of information so that every user is only sending one or two headers, with no Javascript, CSS, etc.,^1 then that is far easier for users to coordinate.

1. This has been tested heavily by yours truly for decades. One does not need a graphics layer or graphical browser features to make successful HTTP requests. I am not interested in being "invisible", I am interested in reducing the amount of free data/information I give to "tech" companies. Perhaps there is a difference between wanting to "blend in" and wanting to stop "feeding the beast".

"We do not know anything about User A. It looks like she is using TOPS-20 to browse the internet."

Is User A less or more likely to be unique. Probably more. Is User A a more or less viable target for online advertising. To me, it is the second question that matters the most.