Not the person you're replying to, but my take is that the website is giving away information for free on an open protocol without requiring a login and I'm jus

Not the person you're replying to, but my take is that the website is giving away information for free on an open protocol without requiring a login and I'm just choosing which parts of it I want to download. I see no moral implications to that other than an implied "thank you for providing that information or service". The parts I choose not to download are designed to psychologically manipulate me into buying something I likely don't want, they run code on my system I don't care for them to run, and they grab what data they can in order to profile me. I don't feel like I'm the one that should be feeling shame here. If the advertising companies showed any kind of restraint and respect, maybe I'd feel differently. From what I've seen, it's been getting progressively worse since the "punch the monkey" days of the web. If the person or entity hosting the content can't support the creation and hosting of their website without trying to manipulate me and track me and without opening my system up to potential malware, then good riddance, I guess. If all they did was show ads as text or static images without any of the tracking nonsense (basically the old print magazine or newspaper model), then I wouldn't care that much. But they don't, so I do.