What’s there to be torn by? If you don’t have access to the source, you don’t own it no matter how you pay. Subscriptions are just a way to make that more clear. Ads are a way to defer your payment through adprofiles and your purchase elsewhere (assuming functional ads and not Googles ad network obfuscation).
The internet was built on non tracking (although sometimes garish) ad banners.
You just need to tone down your expectations of revenue to run something on moral ish ads.
For example you could fire most of the marketing and "engagement" experts since you won't need them any more if you stop spying and trying to making your users addicts.
The reason we assume these are the only two options is the real culprit here, but we rather stick to a broken system we know instead of trying something different.
