Now Betty needs to "login" to her news site every time in order to disable the ads (not to mention pay, and renew service each term) I don't think that will improve the process, and it ad more steps with potentially confusing instruction to her process. Even if the site was able to store along term cookie for Betty, I doubt the sublt difference between versions would do much as there is typically a lot of other "junk" (around the article) that can distract the user.
It's even worse than that: not only does she need to login, she needs to remember a separate username and password for each site (which, good luck), or she needs to use a password manager. And if she uses a password manager, she needs to know how to select a usable/secure one, load her passwords into it, integrate it with her browser, sync it across all her devices, keep its contents secure... which, good luck.
In practice, of course, Betty will do neither of these things; she'll just use the same username and password everywhere. So then it's just a matter of time until a hack on one of the sites she visits opens her up to all kinds of new problems.
Username/password authentication is so, so utterly broken.
Agreed. OAuth isn't a whole lot better and has it's own cons. I have seen SQRL (https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm) but not being much of an encryption expert couldn't say how secure it is, and it doesn't seem to be gaining any adoption. But it is at least a novel approach.
Now Betty needs to "login" to her news site every time in order to disable the ads (not to mention pay, and renew service each term) I don't think that will improve the process, and it ad more steps with potentially confusing instruction to her process. Even if the site was able to store along term cookie for Betty, I doubt the sublt difference between versions would do much as there is typically a lot of other "junk" (around the article) that can distract the user.