(disclaimer: I run a 5k DAU social network with no ads).
The problem [for me] is not the advertising as long as it's reasonably done (static, textual, non-invasive). It's the fact that every third party has their own behaviours, and I have no idea what any of them are. I instead must rely on the judgement of the person running the site - and most of them appear fairly unaware of the privacy implications associated with both advertisements and analytics services.
I agree that ad-supported is terrible. But how else? I'm hopeful for donation-crowdfunding and simple, liquid micropayment options online. But I don't know that that could significantly displace ads.
Very true. This says something about how we as a society values those works and how our economic organization discourages some kinds of work/content.
maybe site-owners should pressure ad-providers to provide a track-free service ?
Of course you could argue the moral and inconvenience cases as sites make these judgements when choosing advert networks already but "a bit of tracking" does not have the same moral weight to most as "porn and gambling" or "the annoyance of pop-ups/unders and drive-by install attempts" when deciding where they are comfortable to take money from.
Without the latter the ads being compulsory is just enforcing advertising on your users without knowing if they even want it.
Also it is much easier (for a non-technical user at least) to just skip the ads on the web using browser plug-ins, than it is to get around them in an app, so to an extent this extra work may be wasted and the number of people who take up the "pay for no ads" option might not be enough to warrant the work that goes into maintaining it.
There are some sites that offer the "ads or pay" option so it presumably works out worthwhile for some sites, but I've not seen it often.