It may not have been a physical gatekeeper, but things that overlay the main content while I'm reading them (even if it was meant to show quickly, before I started reading and was delayed because of download or javascript execution times) communicates that the author/maintainer of the website considers their content to be less important than whatever the overlay's content is. I don't have time for this, the internet is quite vast. There are a bunch of other hacker news entries to review.

The only advantage you have now is that I don't even remember the name of the site that I so quickly closed due to annoyance, and my browser is now flagged as having visited it previously, so if I happen across it again, I presumably won't get a popup/overlay telling me I'm a new visitor.

I'm not sure why a new visitor needs to be told that they are a new visitor.