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Comment by xibalba | Hacker News Reader

Why? So this author wants to promote a newsletter. Is it so onerous to click an "X" that you would discredit the information in this article?

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Yes. If you want me to read your content, stop blocking me from reading your content while I am in the middle of reading your content.

Even if you subscribe, what's the odds that this pops up again every time you open an article from the newsletter?

Onerous? Meh. An annoying interruption and a dark pattern? Absolutely.

Sometimes when I'm reading I'm just interested enough to keep reading. Then one of these pieces of garbage pop up and I immediate close the tab.

No kidding - it's the sign too that you are kickbait junk usually!

You get free content and all it costs is clicking an "X"? Does no one realize how absurd it sounds, that we're whining over the cost of content being less than 1 second of our time.

They owe us nothing but likewise we owe them nothing.

It shows that the author is incentivized by drawing traffic, which increases the likelihood of hyperbolized articles.

> author is incentivized by drawing traffic

Of course he is, that's the whole point of writing.

No, that’s the whole point of advertising. Writing is about communicating ideas in good faith, otherwise I’m not interested.

> Writing is about communicating ideas in good faith

Writing is a tool for whatever purpose the writer wants to use it for. To some that's advertising, for others it's writing online content and hoping to grow a newsletter list.

Everyone has different priorities and motivations, for sure. I'm just saying that, if someone's priorities are growing a newsletter list first, and communicating ideas in good faith second, that's so much less interesting, and there's so much competition.

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