...and how do they keep track of how many articles each person read each month? Oh right, by cookies.

There are other ways. Local storage, indexedDB, WebSQL, browser fingerprinting.

Control your cookies, dump your storage, Scriptblocker, uBlock Origin, and Random Agent Spoofer.

Your average user has no idea how to do any of that.

Plenty of them use ad blockers, and if the pressure keeps up they'll figure out much of the rest too. The very environment driving this anti-privacy trend is just educating a generation of consumers, in the same way that the very instant people were able to get away from advertising they did.

Or just open it in incognito mode / private browsing.

Or just subscribe.

(though private mode is the easiest way)

I was speaking more broadly to what we should all be doing, all of the time.