Not really. They do have an annoying reminder about creating an account (which I wish they’d not show every single article I read), but it hasn’t been put behind anything. You just click the not now button and it leaves you alone until you go to a different article or refresh the page

I do see your point, though. It’s annoying, and they’ve also implemented it in a way where it can’t just be removed by nuking the element in uBlock, which arguably makes it annoying than those “sign up for our newsletter!!!” demands that pop up on shopping websites, since they’re fairly easily removed

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