Or taking your subscription money and tracking you anyway. Knowing your interests on one site helps target you elsewhere.

ArsTechnica (obviously a very different site compared to SO) has an ad free subscription model where it also removed all trackers for paying subscribers. It's possible to do this in an ethical way. Whether the site publisher is interested or not is a different matter.

> what's stopping you from "double dipping" and serving ads anyway?

People looking at the source code, like what happened here.

You think the NY Times, Linkedin, etc. is going to have the same response as StackOverflow? Good luck even getting in touch with someone who knows what you're talking about.

If LinkedIn (to choose a random example) advertises one of the perks of subscribing is that you won't be tracked, and then tracks you anyway, that's a story for The New York Times et al.

Sure. But my point was that the NYT is an example of a paid service that openly serves you a big pile of invasive ads, even if you're a paying subscriber.

Imagine if all the ads in the print edition were spying on and tracking your every move.