Running and measuring ads is one of many things that delivers value to a business, yes. The privacy issue in this case is clearly an implementation mistake and seems to have been resolved.
Ignoring the situation and context to make a comical statement doesn't really add anything to the discussion.
The overwhelmingly mentality on HN is that All Ads are bad.
And all targeting Ads is bad. Because by their definition, All ads are tracking ads.
This mentality also fits the current Internet and Twitter narrative. Especially true when it is from Facebook. Which happens to be pure evil on HN, twitter sphere and MainStream Media.
Ads are micropayments that work. I don’t like them per se and run an ad blocker and PiHole, but the fact that others don’t allows me to micropay for a lot of content with my time.
When I read a 5 minute Medium article, I'm paying with 5 minutes of my time. If I decide to bail out 1 minute into the article, I have still lost 1 minute of my time.
The creator isn't getting any benefit from it, but I'm still paying.
＞ Because by their definition, All ads are tracking ads.
John Gruber has an ad at daringfireball.net, currently for a company called Simris. IIRC the ad is pure text, not loaded by a script, and does not track you. Other blogs (usually security professionals ime) have text-based ads that are probably part of the theme in a static site generator.
Ignoring the situation and context to make a comical statement doesn't really add anything to the discussion.