I am an advocate of building an ethical business. As the article says, I believe web masters deserve to be paid for the hard work they do to grow their websites. However, it's also an individual responsibility to choose who you partner with.

I always check websites through Ahrefs and read a few of their pages. It always super clear if the website is a link farm.

However, I also agree that something that might be obvious for me, might not be obvious for someone else. So, website owners have to be careful with paid links.