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I'm sure its interesting but I am making a conscious choice to not read or linger on user hostile articles. As soon as I want to scroll I am interrupted by a page takeover requiring action and subsequently compelling me to lose interest.

Did you want me to read it or click buttons for you? Too bad your UI gets in the way of the U.

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Substack is definitely scummy in this regard, it's not really the author's choice (although a conscious decision was made to host it on Substack).

I read a Substack article almost every day and still consistently get a little jolt of rage when the overlay fades in.

I guess they do it because it works, and if the average person felt the same way, they wouldn't be doing it?

> if the average person felt the same way, they wouldn't be doing it?

You might think this, but I tend to doubt it's true... people making these decisions end up being in their own little bubble, and not really have a good idea what people's actual response is.

That said, I find Substack's pop-up tolerable: I am after all getting someone's work for free, and I'd rather have a simple pop-up that I know I can get rid of than ads or other aggressive forms of pop-ups.

Yeah I'm aware of it. But it's less annoying than Medium.

Firefox's reader view gets rid of all that on top of reducing other distractions

So does closing the tab.

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