For users that already have nvidia-drivers installed and rely on persistenced, the addition of the persistenced use flag can result in a significant change on their system with no warning when they update. The flag should be enable by default to restore the current behavior. Reproducible: Always
I understand this can come as a surprise if not paying attention to new USE during an update, but the majority of users do not need this (i.e. all desktop users given display will maintain the state) making little sense as a default (setups a new user + pull a dependency for nothing).