This seems like an improvement for probably 90% of the websites out there, so I'm fine with that.
Technically even serving a blank page means you need to also serve a privacy policy because accessing the blank page requires the user to submit personal data for technical reasons and they have no way to know whether you'll store it.
So, no, there is no "safe choice". Minimalise data use, use a generator to get a compliant privacy policy describing that use and treat your users with respect.
Which is perfect, right?
Follow https://www.npr.org/2018/07/03/625544265/pentagon-questioned...
Redirect to https://choice.npr.org/index.html?origin=https://www.npr.org...
Reject the sell-your-soul option and get dumped to https://text.npr.org/
You should instead be sent to https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=625544265
There is no technical reason for these sites to not work without accepting cookies -- this is easily proven with curl. The sId is right there in the URL.
(of course there's no technical reason the full featured site can't be served either without setting hundereds of external cookies to nameless numbers of companies)
My god that site's beautiful. Add a little CSS to limit the line width and it's perfect.