There's nothing axiomatic about our disagreement here, it's not like I'm unaware of the existence of inefficient businesses. Individual companies may choose to leave money on the table, but industries and markets as a whole do not (not intentionally, anyway).
You've just described the status quo, where businesses have to sacrifice their lifeblood to achieve your ideals. Those businesses tend to be beaten by more focused competitors, which results in the industry you see today, filled with winners that don't achieve your ideals.
But good luck trying to champion an efficient web industry by essentially moralizing.
I'm not trying to champion anything, I'm speaking my mind. I don't expect the NYT to change because I'm writing an HN comment. If market forces or legislation are insufficient to force companies to respect user privacy across unrelated domains, then I'll rely on my own setup: a Pi-Hole VPN for mobile devices, and uBlock Origin for desktop devices. I happily whitelist domains with non-intrusive ads and respect for Do-Not-Track.
But more to the point, you're presenting an argument which implies the NYT is a business which will be beaten by its competitors if it doesn't track users through their unrelated web history. I don't think that kind of tracking is an existential necessity for the NYT. It's not their core competency. Their core competency is journalism - if they are beaten by a competitor it won't be because the competitor has superior tracking, for several reasons:
1. Journalism is not a winner take all environment,
2. Newspapers were surviving in online media well before this tracking was around,
3. The NYT already has sufficiently many inefficiencies that if they actually cared about user privacy, they could trim the fat elsewhere so they wouldn't have to know to within 0.001% precision whether or not a user will read an entire article just to be profitable.
I really don't think this is too idealistic. It's not like I'm saying they need to abandon advertising altogether. I don't even have a problem with the majority of advertising. It's the poor quality control and data collection that I take issue with. All I'm saying is that they don't need to do what they're doing to be profitable.
So? I'm not sure how this means that news orgs won't suffer from losing business to competitors with superior tracking.
> Newspapers were surviving in online media well before this tracking was around
Markets change. Advertisers have different expectations. Readers have more news to choose from. This is a silly argument.
> The NYT already has sufficiently many inefficiencies that if they actually cared about user privacy, they could trim the fat elsewhere
Sure, but why? Why would they do that? Why wouldn't they trim the fat elsewhere AND keep the tracking to make more money?
The point you make doesn't really make sense. Yeah, it's theoretically possible for news orgs to stop tracking in the same way that it's theoretically possible for me to take out a knife right now and cut off my legs. News orgs can make up their losses elsewhere and survive in the same way that I can still get around with a wheelchair.
But why on earth would I or the NYT do that?
I respond to you with these questions because it seems to me that both you and the OP speak out against these practices because you feel they are unnecessary. My point is that they are necessary. You just don't acknowledge the forces that make them so.
You've just described the status quo, where businesses have to sacrifice their lifeblood to achieve your ideals. Those businesses tend to be beaten by more focused competitors, which results in the industry you see today, filled with winners that don't achieve your ideals.
But good luck trying to champion an efficient web industry by essentially moralizing.