It does. Though this is a gray area, do they really need the consent for this feature to work? I guess this is their argumentation - which is allowed.

Data protection agencies opinion is you do not need ad consent to view news (media companies argued that way), but it's open for other features.

Data protection agencies don't get to interpret the GDPR, courts do.

The GDPR does not contain any clause that someone has to provide a service for free without any kind of tracking. That would basically eliminate Facebook and Google as valid business models. There was such a stipulation in discussion for the e-privacy directive but it was legally half-baked and IIRC it is out of discussion by now.

I'm pretty sure it does - or maybe it's the e-privacy directive or something else, they all get called GDPR. But you have to make clicking no obvious, easy, and not degrade functionality.

Please provide a source for such a statement. Even the e-privacy directive has changed a lot lately. Your interpretation would render many business models illegal (e.g., Facebook, google).