FYI, even if you click cancel it will still advertise you to your friends ("Rob uses this app" in the bottom left corner of the signup popup). Which seems pretty questionable.

I verified with two other friends--I saw both of them in the "so and so uses the app" section and neither of them had ever added the app (only "cancelled").

I didn't know that. Thanks for the tip. In terms of usability, it's a deceptive way to handle opting out of installing their app. A news agency resorting to deception to promote their content ... just what I hope for from someone claiming to be an authority in something.

I discovered that by accident. It's nice once you know about it, but the "cancel" label is very poor --- it reads much more like "forget about even trying to read this article" than "read the article and to hell with the signup page".

I had absolutely no idea!

...which is a problem.

why do i have to "install an app" to be re-directed to an article? these tactics just seem to me as "creative" ways to get people to agree to have more information about them published. I've yet to say "yes" to any such prompt on Facebook.

Heh, it's almost like Facebook learned something from all those spammy apps.

I didn't know about cancel. I guess the issue is why do we have to find out this way? It's not an expected behavior and that's going to piss a lot of people off. So there's an easy way to get what you want, it's staring you in the face, but we all ignore it because it looks as though it isn't going to do what we want. Not a good design but then again design is about choices and maybe they figured it's worth it to make people learn the hard way.