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Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?

by ciwchris on 11/28/22, 8:09 PM with 124 comments

• by kokanee on 11/28/22, 9:35 PM

  User and business priorities are aligned during the growth phase, when user acquisition is the most important thing for the business. Once there is a self-sustaining level of user activity and new signups, revenue per engagement becomes an increasingly important metric. At that point the user's priorities and those of the business are no longer aligned, and the company starts asking more of its users.

  A third phase occurs when phase two is successful enough that competitors lose traction. If you can achieve a monopolistic position in your market, then you can stop asking for attention and money, and start demanding it. Pay up or else you don't get to stream music. Sit through more and longer ads with increasingly insipid UX and privacy issues, or else you don't get to stream videos.

  My view is that the Internet is in a consolidation phase where a smaller number of companies are getting a larger share of traffic, resulting in monopolistic dynamics.

• by matt_s on 11/28/22, 8:56 PM

  It does feel like every website is turning into a bad 90's infomercial - instead of "buy now and get 2 for $39.95!" its "like and subscribe!" multiple times per video, even more fluff in the video to lengthen them or ad reads by podcasters that don't care what they are advertising because just 1% is all they need to click/follow the link.

  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.

• by amflare on 11/28/22, 8:31 PM

  IMO its because the demand for ever growing growth (not only must we grow on last year (growth up 5%), but our growth must be faster (growth trajectory up 5%)) is running headlong into a shrinking economy. Anonymous users have always represented the best potential growth since they already use the service, so convincing them to convert should be easier than convincing someone who has never heard of the product.

  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.

• by tgsovlerkhgsel on 11/28/22, 8:38 PM

  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.

• by compiskey on 11/28/22, 9:19 PM

  I mean it’s the Walmart model; be cheap early, get less cheap over time.

  My 5,000 foot philosophical take is because they were never making money in a day to day business way and relying on low interest rates to inflate values through money shuffling schemes to game attention.

  Over time models made it apparent they would never make long term business sense as software improved and automation took over, so it’s a medium term pump and dump jobs program fueled by low interest rates to attract information workers into providing them code shapes to train AI that writes code and let big tech own all the copyrights.

  So we’ll have MPAA/RIAA owning all art, and FAANG or whatever owning all technology. A modern patronage system kind of sort of.

  Not saying it’s good or bad. Just an attempt at a meta viewpoint of society.

• by themanmaran on 11/28/22, 8:21 PM

  Things I've noticed:

  1. 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.

• by d23 on 11/28/22, 9:14 PM

  It's a downward spiral. Short-term-focused metrics and promotion cycles have no way to see beyond local optimization. With each cycle of changes, the product is increasingly user hostile and the corporate culture gets further away from knowing how to build product features that are usable and enjoyable. It gets harder and harder to get the numbers to go up legitimately, so PMs and complicit engineers resort to even more user-hostile behavior.

  It's a cancer that has infected the industry under the guise of being data driven. We've thrown out basic reasoning in favor of juicing vanity numbers. And then the people responsible for driving the product into a ditch fail upward to another company, get a bigger title and salary, and start grabbing at the wheel of a new car to repeat the cycle.

• by edp on 11/28/22, 9:04 PM

  On Instagram, when you create an account, you now need to submit a selfie picture while holding a code given to you while registering. For suspicious account, it can even be a video selfie. I know bots are an issue but they should ask for this only when posting/commenting, not for browsing. No way I'll send a picture or video to facebook linked to my email/phone number.

• by lm28469 on 11/28/22, 9:15 PM

  Most of the web and apps feel hostile these days

  On Playstation starting the YouTube app now gets you a full screen unskippable ad before even reaching the app

  Prime video show you ads even if you're a paying customer

  Every now and then I listen to a podcast to fall asleep, 50% chance I'll be jump scared by a 0.1kbps ad in German that has the volume 4x louder than the podcast itself

  Google removing video previews form YouTube links in search results so it's harder to visually ignore video tutorials when you look for a written one

  The golden age of internet died a while ago but until recently it was still somewhat useable, it's degrading rapidly these days

• by PragmaticPulp on 11/28/22, 9:26 PM

  The reason is simple: These companies are ad-supported. When you create an account and log in, the ads they show can be better tailored to your interests. This is especially true for companies like Pinterest, where users catalog their interests on the site.

  I think this is surprising to people for two reasons:

  1 - We've been told the "companies sell your data" narrative for so long that many people don't realize that Facebook and similar mega companies don't actually profit from selling your data. They target ads, and they keep their customer data close because it's their competitive advantage. Note that there are a lot of companies that do sell your data, but they're not the ones people generally think about (Facebook, etc.). It's a fundamental misunderstanding of these business models.

  2 - The whole economy was unusually hot for many years, largely due to low interest rates. Funding was available everywhere in huge quantities, which drove tech companies into pure growth mode even if serving their websites came at a loss. That story doesn't work forever, though, and now we're seeing those companies turn the knobs to look for profits.

  It's actually kind of amazing that we've been able to use gigantic Big Tech services, developed and operated by engineers making $$$ total compensation, for so long without actually paying for much at all. I wonder if we'll look back at this era as an unusually 'free' period of the internet, much like how we look back at the early days of VC-subsidized Uber as being very cheap relative to what it actually costs to buy these services today.

• by danwee on 11/28/22, 8:36 PM

  Agree. There's a bunch of websites I don't visit anymore: Pinterest (you need an account just to browse pictures? c'mon!), Reddit (some subreddits are only available via the app... I'll never install the Reddit app), Instagram, Medium, Twitter, lots of newspapers.

  I thought I was going to miss them, but I haven't.

• by naet on 11/28/22, 10:00 PM

  Big companies hire "digital marketers" who try to push metrics up to justify their jobs and salaries and demonstrate some form of growth.

  Why do you see intrusive cookie banners on every website? So they can force people to hit accept and get their GA metrics higher. Why do you see login required on many pages? So they can get their login / registration numbers higher. Companies might lose some anonymous viewer traffic when requiring a login, but the money is largely made off of targeted advertisements for logged in users so they want to push you in that direction and harvest that data.

  You might be deterred into not using a service by that popup, but the data shows that enough people will just go ahead and sign in or register and so it's worth it to the company to add it. One of the first companies I work for had me add a big modal that asked you to sign up for their newsletter when you visited their homepage after you scrolled down for a second. I thought it was intrusive, but it absolutely got people to sign up so I couldn't really argue with it.

• by allenu on 11/28/22, 9:20 PM

  I definitely get the sense that it's getting worse. It's very hard to visit a site without getting a popup to subscribe, purchase, or donate. Apps are constantly pushing you to subscribe or create an account.

  I wonder what the end game is for all of this. Is this just the way things are going to be from now on? Is the pushiness going to die down a little bit?

  It certainly makes me want to visit sites less. If there's any friction now on a site, such as a pop up requiring sign in, I simply don't have the patience to try it out and more often than not just close the tab. It makes my experience of reading dead-tree books and magazines such a joy nowadays. I know I can flip the page without anything popping up.

• by jp57 on 11/28/22, 9:21 PM

  Substack in particular seems to have pulled a bait-and-switch in terms of strategy. Their original line was "Each newsletter is a separate publisher and separate business and we're just a platform. You can take your list and leave at any time." But in the last months they've been rolling out feature after feature designed to bind publishers and readers tightly to Substack as a brand: A reader app, app-only chat, checkmark-badges for high-sellers, semi-mysterious (algorithmic?) promotion features for driving subscriptions, etc.

  At this point it seems like actual email newsletters are kind of a nuisance to them, and they're trying to be more Medium than Medium.

• by ergonaught on 11/28/22, 9:02 PM

  Consequence of everyone thinking the purpose of anything at all is to make money (which is almost never the point of anything). Everything is always an advertisement, everyone is always selling. There’s no positive end game to it, it’s just drain circling. The EU and such will horribly mangle “solutions” because they don’t understand anything, and “governments” move too slowly even when they do understand things.

  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.

• by qark on 11/28/22, 8:55 PM

  I work for a popular web app. We restricted anonymous access just a few weeks ago. The argument was that “no other major platform offers so much without login”.

  My take on is that it’s a trend to follow the big guys, just like other faang-led movements like microservices etc

• by bsnnkv on 11/28/22, 9:14 PM

  Interestingly, TikTok feels like the exact opposite of this; I used it without an account for a while and enjoyed the experience so much that I created an account and started making videos myself. It's quite rare that I have an experience with this kind of app /service these days where I'm invited to see the best of what it has to offer without being pestered in the same way that I am if I ever try to use Twitter, Instagram or Facebook while logged out.

• by globalvisualmem on 11/28/22, 8:42 PM

  - Scraping is a major issue.

  - 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.

• by svnpenn on 11/28/22, 8:38 PM

  > LinkedIn

  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.

• by annoyingnoob on 11/28/22, 8:38 PM

  Anecdotally, seems like there has been an increase to me. I just no longer visit those sites, if they don't want me for free then so be it. There is a lot more internet to be had out there.

• by durnygbur on 11/28/22, 8:48 PM

  I figure there are two main reasons. First are aggressive bots and scrappers, here the login walls are only a side effect. Everyone wants to be "smart" and takes but no one gives. Second are marketing and managers demanding more tracking and profiling. This is the New Internet for now, I don't see any seeds of paradigm change at this stage. Users will adapt unfortunately, at most they'll be pissed off by losing track of how many accounts they are signed in to.

• by omoikane on 11/28/22, 8:58 PM

  Twitter recently removed the login prompt[1], so at least one website is now slightly less pushy.

  [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33724569

• by nyanpasu64 on 11/28/22, 9:04 PM

  (to post again) Imagine if the people designing the Discord, Windows 10+, Telegram UI, and Amazon Prime cancellation UI to manipulate you into paying for services, were in charge of designing airliner cockpits and industrial plants. User interfaces can and should do better in preventing unintentional user error, and people should refuse to implement, use, or accept dark patterns.

• by Hamuko on 11/28/22, 8:28 PM

  >Is it the changing economy?

  Reddit, Pinterest et all definitely were super pushy before the economy changed to the worse.

• by FrontierPsych on 11/29/22, 8:20 AM

  I'm starting to use the internet less and less for this type of thing. I can't abide using youtube, they bleep out curse words because of advertisers and other things like that.

  How did the "wild west" of the internet become New England Puritan culture of 1620? Makes me sick.

• by richardwhiuk on 11/28/22, 9:07 PM

  This is cyclical - sites lock down access and push popups/nonsense etc, new sites are created "designed to make reading content easier", those sites gradually decay until they are locking down access, a new wave begins.

  Substack and Medium are clear poster children for this.

• by ElevenLathe on 11/28/22, 8:42 PM

  The free money train is over, so companies are trying to actually make a profit. Part of that is that they can't provide a free, non-monetized service for a decade+ before making people pay for it.

• by sys_64738 on 11/29/22, 12:54 AM

  The BBC has started doing it which I abhor. I saw it with Twitter too but don't scroll too far anymore. I generally don't sign up and stop going to those stupid websites instead.

• by bcrosby95 on 11/28/22, 8:42 PM

  It's the cycle of life in the pursuit of ever increasing profit. As companies age and need to squeeze more blood from a stone, they resort to increasingly drastic measures.

• by brk on 11/28/22, 8:52 PM

  (Anonymous)Visitors is not a very useful or valuable metric. Blindly pumping content into the ether isn't going to convert to value, or cashflow.

  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.

• by everdrive on 11/28/22, 8:56 PM

  This is merely my assumption, but I would guess that it's simply much easier to monetize users who have clearly identified who they are. (ie, they have provided an account name with email, name, phone number, etc.) If that's the case, then users without accounts are "free riders" who are getting the benefit of the service without "paying" since they're not as easy to track and sell their data.

• by yamtaddle on 11/28/22, 9:46 PM

  The wisdom—which likely was already around before but became the common sort that everybody making and funding software projects knew by some time around 2010-2015—is that there's no real money in the open Web. To make serious cash you have to own a platform. That means exclusion and lock-in. You only really participate in the open Web for initial growth, if even then.

• by piva00 on 11/28/22, 10:31 PM

  Isn't that just a result of public companies having to chase forever growth to keep their valuation?

  A company starts with a product, sees growth and investors pour in with the expectation of accelerated growth (and hence profits), at some point their product can't really attract many more customers, it grows until the market it is in starts to saturate and growth slows down. They need to chase other verticals to validate to their shareholders they are still aa valuable and so it begins the slow downfall of the product, not necessarily of profits.

  I really don't see another way given the incentives of the current crop of capitalism, a public company that stops chasing growth will see their valuation drop and with that the board might decide it's time for a new CEO. If the board sticks to their guns and stop chasing growth, a mutiny of shareholders will ensue to replace the board.

  The incentives are wrong if what you expect is the best product ever, they're aligned to chase growth as the only metric and everything goes to Goodhart's Law from there.

• by ne0flex on 11/28/22, 9:00 PM

  I noticed this too. After a decade break or so, I've started getting back into music mixing as a hobby. I noticed a lot of sites to I used to frequent in order download free sound samples now require an account in order to download. There are a few no-signup needed sites but compared nothing compared to what it was in the late 2000s.

• by twiceaday on 11/28/22, 9:40 PM

  I think the global recession triggered enough companies to worsen their products (cost more, get less, more ads, etc) in order to increase / maintain profits that a tipping point was reached and other companies simply followed suit. A new norm is building; one that hopefully goes away when the money tide goes back in.

• by grantsch on 11/28/22, 9:39 PM

  Unprofitable companies suddenly realizing at the last possible moment that they need to be profitable or they’re done.

• by rootsudo on 11/28/22, 9:07 PM

  I like it, I find it limits myself tremendously if I browse said sites not logged in or a browser that disables cookies. That login wall/prompt is easy to bypass but when I see it, I capture myself and quit the tab.

• by andirk on 11/28/22, 11:18 PM

  Medium.com

  Quora.com

  Luckily both of those websites have almost no value to me.

  And what happened to BugMeNot [0] ?? Saved a lot of time.

  And Mailinator [1] email addresses are now blocked from so many websites.

  These types of demands have C-suite loud talkers written all over them.

  [0] https://bugmenot.com/

  [1] https://www.mailinator.com/

• by nicbou on 11/29/22, 8:10 AM

  Yes, it's happening across the board. I shut down a lot of it with ad blocker rules, and in the last year I had to keep adding rules for new growth hacks.

  Modern tech is a non-stop sales pitch, and it keeps getting worse.

  I think that the modern business model is to grow at any cost, take over a market, and extract a toll. We're experiencing the toll being raised.

• by dfxm12 on 11/28/22, 9:44 PM

  If so what are some reasons why this is occurring?

  They want your info so they can track you more easily. This is mostly about selling ads.

  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?

  It's like passive income or free money.

• by jvm___ on 11/28/22, 8:43 PM

  The internet is slowly being monopolized or corporatized.

  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...

• by throw_this_one on 11/30/22, 2:46 AM

  These companies were funded with the idea of future profits. The high interest rate environment has made the demand for those future profits move forward in time. They need the profits now and will adjust strategy to get that.

• by sgtfrankieboy on 11/28/22, 9:16 PM

  Meta just got a 265 million euro fine because their stuff was too open and people/companies scraped the data of 533 million users.

  Best way to stop people from scraping (and getting fines) is to require an account.

• by __derek__ on 11/29/22, 12:44 AM

  It seems reasonable to assume that this is a byproduct of laws/regulations requiring more specific consent for tracking users. We're not in the wild west any longer.

• by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on 11/28/22, 8:57 PM

  Yes. I called it as soon as these companies started reporting bad quarters. These services are all about to get more annoying.

• by flax on 11/28/22, 10:58 PM

  I work for Indeed, and was surprised to hear your experience. So I brought up the site in a non-logged-in browser, did a search and verified that I can still see multiple pages of results.

  There may be an a/b test or something, but as far as I know we're not limiting results to push logins. But I wouldn't know, I'm not on that team.

• by nicoburns on 11/28/22, 9:27 PM

  This is what people mean when they about "Late Stage Capitalism":

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism

  Yes, this trend is increasing. And it's essentially a long-term consequence of the laissez-faire capitalist model of attempting to govern almost entirely via the profit motive. It strongly incentivises businesses to prioritise profits at all costs (and those who don't will be outcompeted by those who do). And while most businesses will prioritise value-generating activities in their attempt to generate profit, eventually that isn't enough and so they turn to aggressive user/consumer hostile approaches.

  Can we do something about this? Yes, we can regulate and heavily penalise companies who do this. We can also bias the economy towards smaller companies (through progressive taxation on businesses) who are much less likely to engage in such activities as they tend to be more connected to their customer bases and subject to much stronger competitive pressures.

• by faangiq on 11/30/22, 3:30 AM

  Race to the bottom. These yachts ain’t gonna pay for themselves.

• by jacooper on 11/29/22, 12:15 AM

  That's why one should use nitter, bibliogram, proxitok etc.

• by Vikerchu on 11/29/22, 5:23 PM

  It's cus They sell your informatioooOOOOOOoon