Journalists writing critically about tracking should be seen as pretty clear evidence against a bunch of the conspiracy theories you often see floating around[0

Journalists writing critically about tracking should be seen as pretty clear evidence against a bunch of the conspiracy theories you often see floating around[0]. To turn this against them seems strange. Ignoring for a second that "putting trackers on the website", writing these articles, and deciding to publish them are the actions of at least three different people/groups, I don't quite get what you are accusing "them" off? It's perfectly possible to criticise trackers or advertising and still feel the need to use them for economic survival. I'd be surprised if less than 90% of the people in this thread critical of tracking have Google Analytics tags even on their personal websites, where it doesn't serve any purpose except vanity. And that's OK. Running trackers and criticising them is still better than just running them, in the same way that smoking & regular exercise is better than just smoking. [0]: HN being particularly dense (pun not entirely intended), and willing to get itself into the most weird contortions of logic to find mechanisms of how some writer might gain some immediate financial gain from some article.