The worst part of trying to read articles being published by very legitimate orgs like National Geographic are the mobile website decisions they allow their product teams to make.
In this case, just as I'm getting into the first few paragraphs of the paper some popup or override kicks in. Usually asking for a signup.
I think it's time to stop this destructive practice of attention grabbing instead of READING THE ARTICLE.
I've mostly stopped reading websites on mobile because of this. On desktop I have various plugins and scripts in place to get rid of most of the annoyances.
It's not only subscription popups these days, there are also the goddamn GDPR popups (which don't even apply to me), Intercom popups, and ads of sorts that pop up separately from the newsletter signup.
Very often within a few seconds these mobile websites have 80% of the content covered by sometimes 2 or 3 separate annoyances, at which point I generally think it's not worth dealing with them anymore and just quit.
I refuse to do actual browsing without NoScript in place. No ads, no popups, nothing.
Well, sometimes there's literally nothing, because SPA, but most of time it's just some kind of cover or body opacity set to 0. Totally worth the tradeoff on desktop and mobile. No ads, man. No fucking ads
I use NoScript and have for years but it sure gets exhausting to go to a site and find, in many cases, several dozen scripts that have to be "temp trusted" to get anywhere. I usually give up.
In this case, just as I'm getting into the first few paragraphs of the paper some popup or override kicks in. Usually asking for a signup.
I think it's time to stop this destructive practice of attention grabbing instead of READING THE ARTICLE.