Yeah, if you click too many links without an account it'll bring up a sign-up pop-up that takes you to the previous page when you close it. You can get around it by opening the link in a new tab, or save yourself constant hassle by disabling cookies on twitter altogether.

While we're here, take another pro-tip: Set yourself up with an RSS/Atom reader and "Follow" accounts you are interested in through Nitter. No account, no random "We thought you might like", and no ads, just posts and retweets from the accounts you're interested in.

Twitter is also hellbent on associating accounts with phone numbers. This is a dealbreaker for me. I will look into Nitter.

Well with France making it illegal to use Google analytics, I expect many more websites to move forward with forcing you to login. They force you to have an account, which makes you agree to them tracking you, and they'll use you being logged in to track that. When they can use third party analytics it's not as important, but still obviously a plus to them to have people have an account.

*making it illegal to use Google Analytics because GA moves identifying data to the US. Tracking with an account doesn't solve this. Let's not be reductive.

In other comments they mention that user consent would be enough to allow this.

Unfortunately I'm not going to read another country's laws to see if this is actually the case.

> I guess tracking and monetizing your users earns a lot more than displaying ads for everyone.

During a gold rush, sell shovels.