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The entire modern internet has been built on platforms that don’t believe in asking for consent. What if we started demanding a culture of consent online? https://www.anildash.com//2025/05/27/2025-05-27-internet-of-consent/
@anildash My first time reading your website, and this pops up a few seconds in. This behavior ensures that in addition to being the first time, this will also be my last visit to your website.
Hey Anil. My first time visiting your website too, and a few seconds in, this popped up for me too. I put my email address in and subscribed! Please confirm that you got my subscription request.
Thanks for writing stuff for free! 
If I do read something that you wrote and I like it, then I will forward it to a friend. Maybe they will like it too.
Anyway, I hope you are having a great day!
@mekkaokereke @nwd @anildash I’ve been reading your blog and following you on RSS and social media since the early 2000s, and the first time I saw that pop-up, I hated it. And as somebody who reads you on multiple platforms, I get to see it multiple times. I get the reasoning, but it’s still a dark pattern in comparison to just having a subscription sign-up callout. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@jemal @mekkaokereke @nwd I will probably tweak it to just be a form at the bottom or side of the page, I think. I actually added it because folks told me that they are used to the substack signup form and expect to see something similar. I don’t love that this is the expectation, but I’m also fine with meeting people where they are.
@anildash What if it appeared in the margin, not as an interruption but an option?
I'm a fan of your writing, and email subscriptions, but not of mid-stream-of-thought insertions.
@metagrrrl @anildash Even at the end of a section (in flow with the content) would be less obtrusive than over the top of the text, at least for me.
@Wevah @anildash Yes, but it has to be clear that that's not the end of the page. If the section winds up in too satisfying a way, it's easy not to scroll over the subscribe blurb to see that there's more article. That's why I like it on the side. In a bigger view it can be the whole blurb, and on a phone, just a little protruding tab that moves out when touched, maybe with the text wrapping around its space a little to make it intriguing.
@metagrrrl @Wevah I had played with a bunch of those variations, and that's honestly how it ended up where it was (I can see how the designers on other sites ended up with that choice) — it's *really* hard to get right when most of the audience is on mobile. I just punted and put the subscribe form at the top, folks can figure it out, or not. Some of it is all fairly performative from folks who were never going to subscribe (by email or RSS or whatever) anyway, but just want to make a point.
@anildash I had a feeling it might be a bear to get to behave.