Outside of HN, most content creators, especially professionally, don't have the option to make significant changes to the platform on which their content is published. I agree that an entire publication's site can be trash, but good writers can still write on bad platforms.
They do as much as engineers at Google or Facebook do to change their companies.
That is to say, each one cannot make much of an impact, but the responsible thing to do would be to not contribute or at least openly advocate for change from within. If enough people inside shift, then change can happen.
I just don't see a world where journalists walk out on their jobs over cookie pop-ups. It doesn't feel like the same level as what Google/FB do, not to mention the supply/demand looks completely different in their industry vs tech so the power dynamic is a bit different.
It isn't theoretical. Google is currently facing a lawsuit (Brown et al v Google LLC et al) for tracking people who assumed Chrome's incognito meant Google would stop tracking them. [0]
