Many of the big platforms and their behaviour might validate the point the article makes about an account being used to monitize users further. But me writing a comment here on Hacker News using an account and being able to access this and many other articles freely shows that better models are possible.
Access to information and discussion should not only be accessible to those who can pay for it piece by piece. The advertising based model has huge problems and might be at the end, but I hope other alternatives persist.