I swear this is the 3rd HN submission to pop up today where I had to click the 'fuck off and let me read' button. All of the sites were custom domains (not wordpress.com/substack.com/medium.com domains)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(btw, I'm not disagreeing with you. We have that guideline because these things are annoying, not because they're not)
What is it about email newsletters that gives companies such a boner? Do they actually work? They annoy the hell out of me. I switched coffee company because the previous one had a popup asking for newsletter signup on every visit, and it was annoying difficult to get out of on a mobile screen when I was trying to order coffee beans. And worse, I was already signed up to the newsletter!
tl;dr: it's a source of traffic that isn't at the mercy of another company
Substack is edging closer to Medium-like behaviors ever so gradually.
A couple years ago, I changed my uBlock Origin settings to disable JS by default on every site. I only re-enable JS when necessary on a per-site basis.
I find myself having to do it a little more often these days, but it's still made everyday web surfing so much more pleasant — and secure, too.