(Author of the post and Microsoft Edge team member here.)
This is actually an active area of discussion for browser vendors, and we're all experimenting with "interventions" that are designed to benefit users at the expense of web developers. Our most recent efforts can be browsed at https://github.com/wicg/interventions , and you can see things in there like "passive-by-default" event listeners, timer throttling for background tabs and cross-origin iframes, requiring user intent for vibration, etc.
Not all of these efforts have been popular with web developers, and some of them may even need to be rolled back. But browser vendors are indeed trying to address this problem! :) You'll note that Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and WebKit representatives are all involved in this effort.
This is actually an active area of discussion for browser vendors, and we're all experimenting with "interventions" that are designed to benefit users at the expense of web developers. Our most recent efforts can be browsed at https://github.com/wicg/interventions , and you can see things in there like "passive-by-default" event listeners, timer throttling for background tabs and cross-origin iframes, requiring user intent for vibration, etc.
Not all of these efforts have been popular with web developers, and some of them may even need to be rolled back. But browser vendors are indeed trying to address this problem! :) You'll note that Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and WebKit representatives are all involved in this effort.