I've once listened to a presentation given by someone from the company behind AdBlock Plus. They were explaining their (back then) new "Acceptable Ads" program and how an overwhelming amount of users chose to let the program enabled.

They even had a pie chart showing over 90% participation in the acceptable ads program and interpreted it as user choice. ("That's how they are")

After the presentation I asked whether they've tested how many users actively enable Acceptable Ads participation in the settings if it's off by default. To noones surprise they did not run such a test.

Not changing the defaults should not be interpreted as user choice if the same settings end-state is not reproducible with other defaults.

Usually any default, no matter how hostile, stays set. The reality is that users can be nudged easily and rarely ever change any settings at all.