As many others have also commented here, I strongly disagree with the author's argument that fraud prevention is legitimate: the word "fraud" here is tantamount

As many others have also commented here, I strongly disagree with the author's argument that fraud prevention is legitimate: the word "fraud" here is tantamount to propaganda - the only thing being defrauded is a system of surveillance that shouldn't exist to begin with, and that every non-internet form of advertising has done perfectly well without. The other argument about the Der Spiegel paywall-or-ads model is also tricky. I do understand where they're coming from, but the argument only holds in a theoretical situation of perfect knowledge (a visitor to your website fully understanding the implications of accepting ads). Requiring this level of consumer understanding isn't reasonable imo. This doesn't even work in Der Spiegel's favour: the only reason to offer the free ad-supported model is that they're forced to compete with free ad-supported alternatives. Otherwise the incentive to pay would be higher for visitors. Ultimately though, the biggest argument to allow things like the above is corruption: currently we're very slowly seeing the GDPR being enforced many years later in just one or two large cases. There are millions of potential cases that'll never be prosecuted, not only because doing so would generally be unviable (it could still be an effective disincentive) but also because there's massive amounts of government lobbying to disincentivise prosecution and to defund independent data protection offices (keeping the level of enforcement even further below what it should be).