I think 3) is a really interesting point, and probably the primary reason why a model like that may be less viable for e.g. the Guardian. I think having that parasocial relationship is key to having people take interest enough to be willing to pay for the extra content around the main news output. My concern is that a model like that might incentivise being intentionally divisive and/or making the main content be more like entertainment than information.
I think that's largely for the same reason; their legal obligations to ensure they don't facilitate illegal stuff means that the risk of working with companies that do e.g. amateur porn makes the potential consequences (financial processing ban, i.e. effectively the entire company being shut down) massively outweigh the potential benefits.
So you're right that PH's legal liability was part of the reasoning, but that pressure largely came from payment processors, for whom the legal consequences are more severe.
Sure, personalised ads can be seen as a form of an invasion of privacy, and everybody has a right to not engage with any organisation for any reason they like. But ads are an imperfect solution to the fact that it's impossible to run a news organisation at that scale on voluntary donations and un-personalised ads alone, and it's definitely preferable (in my view, at least) to having a total paywall.
Unless you have an innovative alternative income source to propose, I'm not sure I see what alternative there is.
Respectfully, your argument seems to simultaneously be that they:
a) need a better source of income, because ads and subscriptions aren't raising enough revenue
b) are acting unreasonably by asking you to allow them to use one of those revenue sources
"Would you rather pay for this service, or have ads on it?" Doesn't seem like an unreasonable ask, frankly. Especially given that it can be trivially avoided with an ad blocker, anyway, and will not prohibit you from reading the article if you do so (this, to me, is the key difference compared to other outlets that have similar requirements).
As far as I can tell, their statement was that they will always make the content available for free. Serving that content with some ads alongside it doesn't violate that policy.
Edit: as an aside, having "my one news source" is a bad way to engage with the media. Every source will have their own priority, biases, errors and blind spots that will change over time; you should have a diverse set of sources, ideally with different mediums.
Per the above, here's some of the sources in my media diet, in no particular order: The Guardian, Byline Times, TLDR News, BBC News (digital & radio), Al Jazeera, Le Monde, the UN, Novara Media, PoliticsJOE, New York Times, Reuters, AP, Financial Times, Bellingcat
Edit: wrt "Centralist [sic] bore me", yeah, sometimes a reasonable take on the news is boring, but important nonetheless. Sorry 🤷
No, you didn't lmao
Would you call them He if you found out?
Yes I would
if we were friends I might call them the way they want
You specifically said you would actively misgender them, unless they're your friend, in which case you "might" not actively go out of your way to do so. That's a dick move, simple as.
And no, you can't pretend that answer isn't real by adding "I would never interact with or see a trans person" because that's not how life works.
They're both the respective heads of state, and they're both not members of the legislative branches.
So yeah, in this context they are effectively the same.