Every site has logs. They can all see where I've been, what I've looked at, how long I looked at it and so on. I get that part. I'm a developer. I build that stuff myself.
However, I need to draw the line somewhere and using UBlock Origin and never ever seeing an on-page advertisement AND minimising all tracking is the threat-model I'm targetting. And, I'd reckon that most people who care about privacy would stop about there too.
With HN, there are no distractions on the screen. Nothing flashing or moving or asking me to sign up or anything... that's what I am trying to prevent.
In any case, lets say I could stop everything and still let the text on a web page through on my browser... just the text, nothing else: we've seen in the past how even that is a signal that can be tracked.
We can't stop it completely but I feel that I'm doing my bit to make it less effective and hopefully, eventually, pointless.