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by tgsovlerkhgsel 1296 days ago
I agree that this seems to have increased.

Pushiness is advantageous to companies unless it disgusts so many people into leaving that it makes up for the added conversions (in the broadest sense: a conversion can be a sign-up, sign-in, consent for targeted ads, etc.)

People seem to be too willing to put up with them. Long term brand damage is likely not much of a concern nowadays, given that it has been normalized.

Everyone is now trying to become a unicorn and exit by selling the company for $$$$, and public-facing tech companies are mostly valued based on the number of users.

When people start publicly complaining about it, ending contracts and providing the popups as a reason etc., this will change. Until then, it will just become worse.

Edit: Rule-by-metric likely also contributes. "Signups go up" is easy to measure, "users hate it" and "the popup has put the user off so they will never trust us or sign up, ever" isn't.

1 comments

Also, there's an increasing push in internet marketing circles to get people to sign up for things, even free things. The reason is that it bypasses a lot of antispying tech and law.
At the same time, not having a mailing list is suicidal when big tech is ramping up erroneous removal of accounts, pushing users elsewhere (Twitter potentially. And Facebook has reputation of being for old people now), or killing organic reach (Facebook since a few years back: pay up).