One of the pages linked there just says local storage is used to store stuff... yeah? It's still not as wide open as cookies.
You could use local storage while doing other things, but i'm not convinced it's a serious issue with tracking or etc. ... and if ANY storage is considered an issue I think we're in for a big snowball effect on what we should or shouldn't allow from ... anything, including native apps, etc.
A little LocalStorage isn't going to hurt you.
Cookies I get, but I don't know of any dark patterns with localstorage / the benefits are pretty great.