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And as I scroll down and read the article you present me with a popup to subscribe, alienating and enraging me.

by WirelessGigabit 3y ago

laserbeam 3y ago
To be fair, that's just substack, it's not the author's fault.
- scblock 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - riwsky 3y ago
    Requires to? No. Pays “very large, much larger than I would have thought possible”[1] amounts of money to? Yes. Power to the guy, though. He’s earned it. [1]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/adding-my-data-point-to-the-discussion https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/adding-my-data-point-t...
  - PontifexMinimus 3y ago
    Substack is less garbage than Wordpress (which I stopped using a few years ago when they brought in their new editor).
  - perch56 3y ago
    Out of the endless streams of garbage on the interwebz, Substack is the last place I’d call out.
    - Semaphor 3y ago
      EH, regarding blogging platforms, it’s better than Medium obviously, but it’s still way worse than Wordpress.
  - labster 3y ago
    Yeah. Scott writes well enough he should be working for the New York Times.
    - johnfn 3y ago
      The irony of saying this when Scott got into a multi-year long debacle because the NYT threatened (and then eventually did) dox him.
- hsn915 3y ago
  Substack let's you turn that off (as the author).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - gwillen 3y ago
    According to the comments, the author has only just today learned that Substack added this new popup without asking him, after he got them to disable the previous popup. So hopefully you're right that it's possible for him to turn off.
    - mulmen 3y ago
      Link to that thread since it is pretty far down: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/every-flashing-element-on-your-site/comment/17841101 https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/every-flashing-element...
quickthrower2 3y ago
But they disclaim that :-) > Creators want money, advertisers demand a certain level of visibility for their ad buys, maybe sites are willing to eat the cost in user goodwill. Fine.
tkems 3y ago
Agreed. I have never and will never enter my email into one of those popups. Just let me read the content in peace! I also hate that there isn't an X. While I now know that I can just click outside the box, my first time I had to read the entire box to figure out to click the "Continue Reading" link. Enraging to say the least.
- thesuitonym 3y ago
  Apparently they get a 10% conversion rate, which marketers think is worth being the worst people in the world.
  - Grothendank 3y ago
    A 10% conversion rate would be incredible. If that were the case, it would be hard to be angry at people for exploiting this factor. However, I would be very surprised if the conversion rate of a popup signup sheet is even 2%. And there is a similar negative conversion effect: If any article asks me to sign up for anything, I stop reading that article immediately, and move on to an article that respects my attention. Yes, I am in a small minority. But I also share many links with my peeps, and I never share links with popups. I hope that puts pressure on authors to share things freely.
- gxnxcxcx 3y ago
  > I also hate that there isn't an X. I have a keyboard shortcut assigned to uBlock Origin's element zapper and now everything has an X. No permanent rules made, and when overdone just reload page to try again.
johnfn 3y ago
...which you can trivially dismiss with a single click. And critically, when you do this, it doesn't come back - that's the difference between the substack modal and what the author is talking about.
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  It comes back on every substack that I read. If I find it interesting I will subscribe to it via RSS. They don't need to have my email address which initially they'll only use for this stubstack, and then for recommendations, and later on they'll sell it to the highest bidder.
MBCook 3y ago
My latest MASSIVE pet peeve is headers and footers that appear or disappear as I scroll on my phone. So when I go to scroll up, all of a sudden the header appears and moves everything I was looking at so I lose my position. Then when I go to scroll down they all disappear and everything moves yet again.
- eviks 3y ago
  Yeah, those are awful. Can't wait for mobile browsers to finally get ublock origin extension so you could delete those elements Though that'd still be tedious :(
  - cwillu 3y ago
    Firefox on mobile has ublock origin, and yes, it is quite tedious given how the UI ends up working on mobile.
  - Larrikin 3y ago
    Firefox on Android has had this for years. Personally I prefer AdNauseam so I can be combative instead of passively blocking.
  - Grothendank 3y ago
    You might enjoy this benchmark: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/zebad6/a_few_android_w_ad_block_browser_benchmarks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/zebad6/a_few_andr... Some highlights: - Vivaldi is suprisingly fast and has good ad blocking - Kiwi plus the Ublock Origin extension (UBO) might be /even faster/ - Firefox also allows UBO, but sadly it is relatively slow
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Well the other option appears to be having them always visible so my 6.1” phone feels like the original 3.5” iPhone with the keyboard up. As we all know, it is completely impossible to have the header and footer just scroll with the content the way it used to in the 90s.
- gumby 3y ago
amatecha 3y ago
Right, I'd love to read the post but some BS I didn't read popped up and covered the entire page with some ~80%-opacity overlay and I closed the page. It's 2023, I don't look at sites that do this shit anymore. (before you say "lol I guess you don't browse the web", you're right. I look at Mastodon, my email, a couple forums and HN/Lobsters. the web is ruined.)
lapcat 3y ago
Disabling JavaScript on substack.com solves that problem. Also use some CSS to hide #nojs-banner
- zajio1am 3y ago
  But that also disables comments there.
seydor 3y ago
I am lucky enough to get another one for cookies
retrac98 3y ago
Came here looking for this comment.
ben0x539 3y ago
Yeah so you put in the address of the author or site owner or something, standard procedure.
Yvain 3y ago
I'm the author of the article. This was added by Substack without my knowledge (it doesn't show up to me since I'm already subscribed) and I think I've disabled it now. Please check to confirm that it is disabled.
- mulmen 3y ago
  Thanks for looking in to this. This is not disabled. I loaded the page a few minutes ago and it gave me the fullscreen popover. It appears about halfway down the page. I just re-loaded to check and there was no popover. When I load the page in a private browser session I still get the popover. So there appears to be a cookie that remembers the dismissal. e: I cleared the substack cookies and my main browser session still doesn't get the popover but private sessions do.

And as I scroll down and read the article you present me with a popup to subscribe, alienating and enraging me.

laserbeam 3y ago

To be fair, that's just substack, it's not the author's fault.

scblock 3y ago
[flagged]
- riwsky 3y ago
  Requires to? No. Pays “very large, much larger than I would have thought possible”[1] amounts of money to? Yes. Power to the guy, though. He’s earned it. [1]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/adding-my-data-point-to-the-discussion https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/adding-my-data-point-t...
- PontifexMinimus 3y ago
  Substack is less garbage than Wordpress (which I stopped using a few years ago when they brought in their new editor).
- perch56 3y ago
  Out of the endless streams of garbage on the interwebz, Substack is the last place I’d call out.
  - Semaphor 3y ago
    EH, regarding blogging platforms, it’s better than Medium obviously, but it’s still way worse than Wordpress.
- labster 3y ago
  Yeah. Scott writes well enough he should be working for the New York Times.
  - johnfn 3y ago
    The irony of saying this when Scott got into a multi-year long debacle because the NYT threatened (and then eventually did) dox him.
hsn915 3y ago
Substack let's you turn that off (as the author).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gwillen 3y ago
  According to the comments, the author has only just today learned that Substack added this new popup without asking him, after he got them to disable the previous popup. So hopefully you're right that it's possible for him to turn off.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    Link to that thread since it is pretty far down: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/every-flashing-element-on-your-site/comment/17841101 https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/every-flashing-element...

quickthrower2 3y ago

But they disclaim that :-) > Creators want money, advertisers demand a certain level of visibility for their ad buys, maybe sites are willing to eat the cost in user goodwill. Fine.

tkems 3y ago

Agreed. I have never and will never enter my email into one of those popups. Just let me read the content in peace! I also hate that there isn't an X. While I now know that I can just click outside the box, my first time I had to read the entire box to figure out to click the "Continue Reading" link. Enraging to say the least.

thesuitonym 3y ago
Apparently they get a 10% conversion rate, which marketers think is worth being the worst people in the world.
- Grothendank 3y ago
  A 10% conversion rate would be incredible. If that were the case, it would be hard to be angry at people for exploiting this factor. However, I would be very surprised if the conversion rate of a popup signup sheet is even 2%. And there is a similar negative conversion effect: If any article asks me to sign up for anything, I stop reading that article immediately, and move on to an article that respects my attention. Yes, I am in a small minority. But I also share many links with my peeps, and I never share links with popups. I hope that puts pressure on authors to share things freely.
gxnxcxcx 3y ago
> I also hate that there isn't an X. I have a keyboard shortcut assigned to uBlock Origin's element zapper and now everything has an X. No permanent rules made, and when overdone just reload page to try again.

johnfn 3y ago

...which you can trivially dismiss with a single click. And critically, when you do this, it doesn't come back - that's the difference between the substack modal and what the author is talking about.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago
It comes back on every substack that I read. If I find it interesting I will subscribe to it via RSS. They don't need to have my email address which initially they'll only use for this stubstack, and then for recommendations, and later on they'll sell it to the highest bidder.

MBCook 3y ago

My latest MASSIVE pet peeve is headers and footers that appear or disappear as I scroll on my phone. So when I go to scroll up, all of a sudden the header appears and moves everything I was looking at so I lose my position. Then when I go to scroll down they all disappear and everything moves yet again.

eviks 3y ago
Yeah, those are awful. Can't wait for mobile browsers to finally get ublock origin extension so you could delete those elements Though that'd still be tedious :(
- cwillu 3y ago
  Firefox on mobile has ublock origin, and yes, it is quite tedious given how the UI ends up working on mobile.
- Larrikin 3y ago
  Firefox on Android has had this for years. Personally I prefer AdNauseam so I can be combative instead of passively blocking.
- Grothendank 3y ago
  You might enjoy this benchmark: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/zebad6/a_few_android_w_ad_block_browser_benchmarks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/zebad6/a_few_andr... Some highlights: - Vivaldi is suprisingly fast and has good ad blocking - Kiwi plus the Ublock Origin extension (UBO) might be /even faster/ - Firefox also allows UBO, but sadly it is relatively slow
- MBCook 3y ago
  Well the other option appears to be having them always visible so my 6.1” phone feels like the original 3.5” iPhone with the keyboard up. As we all know, it is completely impossible to have the header and footer just scroll with the content the way it used to in the 90s.
gumby 3y ago

amatecha 3y ago

Right, I'd love to read the post but some BS I didn't read popped up and covered the entire page with some ~80%-opacity overlay and I closed the page. It's 2023, I don't look at sites that do this shit anymore. (before you say "lol I guess you don't browse the web", you're right. I look at Mastodon, my email, a couple forums and HN/Lobsters. the web is ruined.)

lapcat 3y ago

Disabling JavaScript on substack.com solves that problem. Also use some CSS to hide #nojs-banner

zajio1am 3y ago
But that also disables comments there.

seydor 3y ago

I am lucky enough to get another one for cookies

retrac98 3y ago

Came here looking for this comment.

ben0x539 3y ago

Yeah so you put in the address of the author or site owner or something, standard procedure.

Yvain 3y ago

I'm the author of the article. This was added by Substack without my knowledge (it doesn't show up to me since I'm already subscribed) and I think I've disabled it now. Please check to confirm that it is disabled.

mulmen 3y ago
Thanks for looking in to this. This is not disabled. I loaded the page a few minutes ago and it gave me the fullscreen popover. It appears about halfway down the page. I just re-loaded to check and there was no popover. When I load the page in a private browser session I still get the popover. So there appears to be a cookie that remembers the dismissal. e: I cleared the substack cookies and my main browser session still doesn't get the popover but private sessions do.