Hang on though. The people calling the shots, or at least providing feedback, should be the end users, not the developers. Usually the developers do not use the software they're building. In rare cases, the developers "eat their own dog food" but this is often not the case.

I absolutely agree when the web site is a tech product/application. I was more taking a stab at major news/media outlets and other "content" sites, whose non-technical "executives" blithely dictate that their devs perpetuate this buffoonery.

Yep. The latest one seems to be newsletter popups that are suddenly infecting the web at large.

Pop ups are bad in general.

IMO, the worst are the full page, content-blocking, app install requests that appear on thin-content sites.

It's preposterous.

You've proven that you can't be trusted to present your website content in an acceptable manner, and you want me to install your software?

Instant back button.

At least newsletters support open-standard email "push" rather than the walled-garden-de-jour, after publishers lost their investments in "followers" to filter algorithms.