I don't have any conflict of interest. I'm proud of my work and I think it is great. I personally dislike ads as much as the other guy, but I am pragmatic and I have enough sense to understand that this economics has flourished because it maximizes common good: content creators are incentivised to produce good content and get properly and sustainably rewarded, regular users don't get nickel and dimed every time they load some web page.

To paraphrase Churchill, it is a terrible model but others are worse.

I was surprised by the opening statement too. These guys are the literal scourge of the modern web and he's proud he's been at it for 13 years? Not sure we're on the same page, lol.

Or you can read what they said and see that it's neither. Not sure why credentials would have any bearing on the material of their comment.

They're pointing out the article lacks substance implied by its title, and essentially that it would be nice to see the actual bad actors being prosecuted instead of the middleman. Both positive things to hear for me? Who cares if they work for the industry.

(The former thing is positive because it saves me time reading the article for information that won't be there.)