When I was working on data protection issues, I asked a specialist lawyer more than two years ago how something like this could be reconciled with the GDPR. He couldn’t answer the question, but said that with the best will in the world he couldn’t imagine that this would be OK under data protection law. Nevertheless, this approach is now common practice for the vast majority of news sites in Europe and also in the EU, which has strict regulations regarding tracking, at least in theory. I still don’t know the legal details, but at least I know that there are no serious penalties whatsoever if there is no distortion of competition involved - and since none of the news companies would sue another in this matter, it has probably become common practice.