> Here in Germany we have news pages like Spiegel Online, whose journalists criticise Facebook et al. in quite harsh words, but you can't read any of these articles without loading a bazillion tracking cookies on your browser.

There is some good part about this: There is some amount of separation of journalism and business. The journalists should be free to report anything they consider worthy to cover and the business running the site and going out to advertisers etc. doesn't influence this. This is good as it prevents big advertisers from preventing bad reporting. Of course it doesn't fully work, but in Germany it is better than in many other places in that regard.