What does playing fair mean in this context? It would be one thing if you were a paid subscriber complaining that even paying sucks so you left, but it sounds like you’re not.

It is strange to hear these threats about avoiding websites from people who are not subscribers and also definitely using an ad blocker.

News sites aren’t publishing their content for the warm fuzzy feeling of seeing their visitor count go up. They’re running businesses. If you’re dead set on not paying and not seeing ads, it’s actually better for them that you don’t visit the site at all.

I am a paid subscriber to NYT and have been reading it paper / internet for 30+ years. It is an Enshittification winner in terms tracking and click bait. It doesn't feel like a serious news outlet anymore, feels like Huff Post or similar.

I'd like to answer that in detail but it's impractical to do so here as it'd take pages. As a starter though begin with them not violating users' privacy.

Another quick point: my observation is that the worse the ad problem the lower quality the content is. Cory Doctorow's "enshitification" encapsulates the problems in a nutshell.

You're right, it means nothing. But it cuts two ways. These sites are sending me bytes and I choose which bytes I visualize (via an ad blocker). Any expectation the website has about how I consume the content has no meaning and it's entirely their problem.