When I was growing up we always paid for the daily newspaper. How is subscribing to an online site any different?
What has changed is
Who is Selling What, to Who. (Probably should have a Whom in that sentence; HS English was long ago....).
Print newspapers didn't monitor:
What you read, How long you looked at it, What you looked at Next, What articles you went back to, What further use you made of the physical paper etc..... If they had, they would have tried to extract more money from Pet Supply advertisers, once they knew how many readers used the old paper to line bird cages.....
That is why all these OEMs want apps on your cell phones, instead of providing low-cost dedicated electronic fobs for you when you buy a new $50k+ vehicle...... they make stupid amounts of money, selling all the data they collect. One young guy I knew that was studying Automotive Marketing went to a major conference - a presenter broke down examples of what the data was worth - your Facebook et al information was worth much more to them than the sale of a typical physical vehicle.
So Yes, the visible Subscription $ noted in this thread re. keeping the vehicle operating
As Delivered New are annoying to most people, but IMO, they are just the tip of the consumer-exploitation iceberg.
It's not hard to argue that we are becoming less of a pure Consumer, and more of a Data Set commodity.....
Rgds, D.