Currently, when making a permalink, you can share your layer settings by checking the "Include layer settings" checkbox. This will add the "s" parameter to the permalink so that anyone who opens it will see the map with your layer settings.
In my experience this feature is literally never used and is frankly quite annoying. If someone sends you a PL this way, you will lose all your own layer settings and have to re-check all the layers that you had enabled.
In my opinion, removing this feature would be the most effective solution as it is never used.