This isn’t about ads. I am specifically complaining about news companies embedding live social media widgets in their articles instead of screenshots with alt-text or, even better, blockquotes with the necessary attribution. There are three major problems with this: it loads third-party spyware onto every article you read (most ads do this too, which is also unacceptable); it’s far less user-friendly and accessible; and the article breaks and half its text goes missing when a social media company changes their API or goes under. Some of them even want you to log in to their surveillance social website in order to see the embedded widget (cough instagram).

Also, I do pay for news reporting, but I would never pay the Huffington Post.