But that point (that sites give away free content for advertising) doesn't have much to do with blub's point (that many sites use hostile, non-privacy friendly tactics for advertising).

Basing your site revenue on advertising doesn't require trackig across sites/domains, supercookies written in flash, circumvention of user-defined browser privacy settings, etc (which is probably what blub is talking about). Honestly it doesn't even require cookies or retaining IP logs, though I don't think anyone here is arguing that those are malicious.

That's why your comment is a fallacy. Websites providing me content for free, and websites respecting the privacy of their users are not mutually exclusive concepts.