For real though, does ANYONE instantly sign up on the first visit to a website?

Why does anyone continue to think this is a good idea?

I immediately closed the article as well.

If you are using uBlock Origin or similar you can enable 'Annoyances' filter lists (off by default) that take care of many overlays, cookie popups, etc.

Even better, you can just leave websites that do this. I have no interest in helping anyone beef up their numbers by hanging around longer if they're going to be outright hostile to their readers/users like this.

My browser doesn't run javascript by default, and the website is not an webapp, so it appear to be fine

Would you run a web app?

Checking my strategy to avoid Apple's app store.

The meaning there was that the web page is a web page with content pre-installed and everything, as opposed to an enormous but content-free javascript container that then does a lot of unnecessary work on your machine to fetch the content, piece by piece, and assemble and render the content that should have been assembled at the server before sending it to you.

It's quite unreadable on mobile too, unfortunately. I'm not sure you're not missing out.