Do we have any evidence that these issues are really the causes of people consuming news elsewhere?
- Clickbait headings with misleading information
Does this really put off more than about 10% of people? Even if people find it distasteful, do people actually resist clicking?
- Disabling the user from reading if ad-block is present
What percentage of users use ad blockers these days? And how many just disable it to read the thing they were willing to click for?
- Tracking the user with 3rd party scripts
Ok who actually leaves a site they believe tracks them? like 0.0001% of web users?
- Taking massive performance hits (specifically on mobile due to huge JavaScript blocks)
Maybe getting closer to what users actually care about
- Pop-up ads
Again - any evidence this puts normal internet users off so much they'd stop using a site? There must be a reason MEDIUM.COM and every single recipe blog pops up their newsletter subscription as intrusively as possible.
- Fixed headers or footers which leads to harder readability / accidental element interactions
Here's again an actual deterrent - if someone physically can't use a site, they might actually give up.
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I'm not saying news sites are not dumpster fires, but I'm a techie and love a good boycott.
I'd question the premise of this article - it seems to be very much from a techie privacy-active (not just concerned, but actually willing to take action) perspective which I suspect does not represent the majority of the internet.
I suspect that if people are actually using news sites less, it's because of much simpler reasons...like that Google intercepts a user's attempt to read news linking to their favourite publications.