I on the other hand would prefer that all the commercial websites were honest about what they charge instead of trying to profit off manipulating me into spending money elsewhere.

The idea that there would be no open content on the web without ads is ridiculuous. Most content on the web, like the comments in this discussion, is "user"-generated and the users generating it are typically not paid at all. While less visible in search engines, there are still many websites - personal or otherwise - that have no profit motive and are provided without any charge or ads. Its not uncommon for them to get posted here.

And even for content that you'd want to pay for, ads are a bad way to pay for it because the cost to you (or the average person) is much greater than what the content creator gets out of the deal. Meanwhile, the incentives for ad-supported content creators and users are not really aligned payment is based entirely on engagement rather than any judgement of what value the user gets out of the content. There is so much spam that provides no value to the web (e.g. because the content is literally copied from elsewhere) but still exists because some people may land on the page and end up viewing ads. So many user-hostile features designed to keep users spending as much time as possible on ad-laden website.

Now back to spiegel.de you say you frequented it a lot. Does that not mean that you got any value out of it that you are willing to pay for? If not, is not being able to use it anymore really such a problem?