Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?
I don't remember the timeline. I believe browsing Pinterest anonymously was always limited, therefore I pretty much always avoided this site. At some point LinkedIn changed to require a login to view profiles, well most of the time. Maybe this change occurred around the time Microsoft bought them. I avoid LinkedIn too. At some point both Instagram and Twitter also started aggressively limiting content for anonymous users. Medium and Substack have been increasingly nagging and/or limiting content too. Spotify seems to be trying to increasingly cross sell podcasts and audio books. Just within the last week they've also made multiple attempts to get me to enable push notifications for various communication. And then just this morning I browsed Indeed to keep an eye on what's going on in the local area and found they are limiting search results to one page without logging in. The only one of these I pay for is Spotify, so I guess fair enough, except for Spotify. This certainly isn't a comprehensive list. I feel I'm having to be increasingly defensive. I'm finding I'm spending more and more time blocking, dismissing or having to give up on sites and services.
Is this trend increasing? If so what are some reasons why this is occurring? Is it the changing economy? Because companies dominate the product and so they feel they can get away with it? Because companies grow and lose their first principles? Because of the pressure to always be growing?
I'm interested in hearing the thoughts of others on this topic? Is this behavior increasing? What is contributing to it? Is this something we will need to learn to accept or is this something to contest? Is there a positive aspect to this, such as this behavior will create opportunities for other players?
130 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] thread1. Obtrusive messaging / sign up modals / exit intent modals work. I hate them. But they convert.
2. There is a large group of people who don't blink at the 'account required' messages. They just sign up.
3. If you don't have an account, you're not a useful customer. There is no reason for the company to cater to you.
Lesson: target the content, not the viewer. You know the general demographics of who is engaging positively with the tweet, and you show ads relevant to that group. A small fraction of the viewers need to be logged in for that to work.
Maybe it's only on desktop or because I have never logged in?
In case anyone hasn't seen it, here's a godsend to get rid of that crap: https://github.com/t-mart/kill-sticky Works on mobile, too.
I get that a newsletter modal might be worth it, but there's just no way they're not losing users by making them close 3 bullshit windows (cookies, privacy, black friday!, newsletter) before they get to useful content. A user needs to see the site before they choose to subscribe/spend money on it!
I'm happy to tell a company that doesn't want my eyeballs to pound sand. I'm not buying 200 subscriptions to yet another BS service.
Spotify in particular can go straight to hell (and the Amazon app+video stuff). If I'm paying money, don't hit me with billboards and ads.
Then I bought a device that doesn't support uBlock and got a taste of the modern web. Not pissing off your visitors has to be a competitive advantage by now.
Any data on the quality of the converions?
Like, if you convert more, but they're marginal customers who won't spend much, or quickly bail, and it negatively impacts conversion of high end "good" customers, it could easily be a net loss (not even counting things like reputational damage).
Where do designers learn to be so pushy when they are not acceptable in real life? Is there a reference guide for designers that teach these patterns?
Reddit, Pinterest et all definitely were super pushy before the economy changed to the worse.
Ergo, companies are getting ever more pushy, trying to convert the "78% of viewers who are not subscribed" (as YouTubers put it), so that they can continue hitting their exponential metrics and stave off the effect of their existing user base spending less.
Now they are facing existential risk and they don't really have a choice, if pissing users off is the way they can punt on revenue then they are going to do it.
Ultimately I think it signals that a lot of these companies (not ones that have been bought by FAANG) are functionally insolvent and are in a slow death spiral.
I bet many of them will start looking to illegally broker user data as that reality gets closer.
There used to be a period of “Patrick McKenzie way of doing business” during 2005-2020 (https://www.kalzumeus.com/):
- Be nice with customers,
- Reimburse when they haven’t used the software,
- Provide value, even with 3 fields on a webform,
- And you’ll get positive feedback loop into higher revenue, even with a crappy layout,
It was the time of Basecamp and Joel on Software. It was the time of Atlassian. It was the time of entrepreneurs being cool kids.
What happened is the Schumpeter cycle (40-70 years, as opposed to Kondratiev cycles, 5-7 years due to stock movements). Internet entered a more stable phase, instead of the startup phase. The cake is now limited, everyone has reached peak time spent on phones, the eyeballs you get are eyeballs someone else doesn’t. The goal is to stay big. Now, to be heard, you need a designer, not only for your services, not even for your software, but even to publish your CVE (Heartbleed). If it’s not sexy it’s not worthy.
Unless, of course, unless all of these Twitters and AirBnbs were fluff that can go away without any part of the economy depending on it, in which case we’ll just see another short cycle until we invent the final technologies/services which will stay.
Revenue alone just isn't enough. You have to turn a profit
I thought I was going to miss them, but I haven't.
just fyi: old.reddit.com accesses ALL subreddits
I use Apollo on iPhone, but I've heard Sync for Reddit is good on Android.
It makes me feel a little sad every time I don't look at something there. There are a lot of Medium posts written by people that clearly thought (or think) that they're writing a blog that's available to all, when they're not.
The sad thing is the next generation never sees what’s been taken from them, and our absence merely solidifies the new norm.
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.
yeah, I basically just stopped using the site. I used it for a while when job hunting, but now I maybe login once a week or something. otherwise, since the site blocks anonymous use, I simply don't use it.
> Instagram
I have an account, but I don't post or comment, so I am not going to log in just to view shit. So I basically don't use the site anymore. If someone links to a post I will check it out, but usually you get login prompt after viewing like 5 posts, so at that point I am just done with Instagram for the day.
> Twitter
Twitter gives you like 10 comments before login prompt, so I just leave the site for the day after that.
> Medium
Medium is horrible, so nothing lost.
At least... this will work until Elon kills the API, which I fully expect to happen eventually...
- Browser privacy / VPNs lead to an arms race where account. age/reputation become critical signal.
- Apple/Google play store apps provide device integrity check which improves confidence in account reputation / Ad targeting.
- Everyone already has a Google/Apple account and are unlikely to convert if they wont just signup via SSO which takes couple of clicks.
Why? Capitalism. Money to be made capturing a particular market. Quarterly goals at each company to increase X by Y%, so how do we do that...
I think we are seeing the advancing erosion of (generic)ad-supported free content and services. Which is not necessarily a Bad Thing.
If you can't be bothered to identify yourself with an account, then these services do not get much value from you, and many times see you as loss/overhead, so limiting access to their content is logical on their end.
My take on is that it’s a trend to follow the big guys, just like other faang-led movements like microservices etc
Everything on the internet is a metric (likes, subscribers, mins viewed, followers, etc.) and pushing those metrics higher gets more money from advertisers. I'm finding less and less quality content across the board. That and the pushy-ness could result in less of those metrics they all want to increase.
There's something psychotic about it all.
The culprit has got to be all of the tech and more specifically, social media. It causes more damage than most realize. It's basically a narcissism breeding machine and the advent of social media lines up perfectly with so many serious problems in society.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33724569
I've not seen one for awhile now, but I have no logged in ever.
Lest you think that’s cynical, note that all the companies focused on what is likely to be our “next generation computing experience” are all advertising giants.
Substack and Medium are clear poster children for this.