They want to get paid in some way and they offer the reader the option: pay with your privacy or pay with your money?
Or feel free to close the tab if both options are unacceptable. There are a lot of spamblogs written by chatgpt that allow to read the regurgitated content without accepting cookies, for example.
Maybe it’s infuriating because if you really want to read the content you’re forced to waste 1 second to right click => open in incognito window or waste 1 minute to sign up for a subscription, but I don’t think it’s asshole design, because they have to pay bills. You don’t want sponsored news pieces and fake reviews in that website either, no?
Now if it was like Facebook where the option is “pay with your privacy or pay with your privacy AND with your money”, that would be asshole design