Because we've been there, done that. How many local or small news outlet subscriptions do you have? I'm pretty sure it's not a lot.
> We've had ad supported websites, forums and blogs since the 90's, but those were generic and harmless, and wouldn't track and target YOU.
And as a result any website with reasonable traffic, would have to put up a million ads - to just break even. Attendance was rising, costs associated with maintenance as well. Advertisers don't want to pay just to show random individuals ads that have close to 0 chance of being useful.
Generic advertising effectively excludes smaller companies from advertising space. If your advertising budget is $50k today, with targeted ads, you can effectively spend it to show your product to people who would be interested in it. Without, you have to spend $1mil on ads to show it to everyone and get results equal to spending $1k with targeted ads.
> weaponized ad-tech
Yes, yes... The "mid 20ies, IT person, with interest in HN" is definitely a weapon to take "you" down. Quit with the hyperbole, no ad tech keeps anything remotely interesting about you.