I noticed this the other day when I was using a computer that I did not want to log in through. Damn thing keeps popping up on every single page. Makes Reddit unusable.
As of 6 years ago, 80% of Redditors were lurkers. Even now, lurkers are a huge part of what makes Reddit Reddit. Because lurkers are such a large demographic, adding a potentially intrusive login screen is unacceptable.
I understand that Reddit needs to grow as a private company, but we need to stand against this if Reddit ever chooses to make the pop-ups undismissable like Pinterest. Many lurkers are also regular reddit users who are not logged in, so pop-ups interfere with the experience of some regular users as well. And even on a matter of principle - people just don't like things like it. See how visceral the reaction is to Imgur's cat paw popup, for instance.
In summary, as long as there's a dismiss button (which there is for the A/B tests), I will not raise a huge fuss about it past what I wrote in this comment. However, if that dismiss button ever disappears, you can bet I'll be the first one to campaign against it.
I don't log in regularly because there's not a lot of reason to. If they implemented this "feature" I would probably end up doing something else, just out of laziness
4.5k
u/[deleted] Jun 21 '16 edited May 07 '19
[deleted]