If HN was so perfect of an experience, then I and many others wouldn't use an app to consume and interact with it. I come here for the conversation and curation, but the UX on mobile is awful. It's far too easy to make mistakes. I can't even upvote properly without a very high probability of down-voting instead (at least we can cancel the down votes now). Just because You don't care about the design doesn't mean the design isn't useful or even necessary for an application's success.

I agree with your point about nagging, popups, and analytics, but I don't think the existence of those annoyances are an argument against the OP.