My solution was to use an extension – Make Medium Readable Again – that, as of its features, removes the intro fullscreen ad. It's available for Chrome and Firefox, as far as I'm aware.

I understand there are browser plugins available but when reading text content requires installing extra software to improve the experience my solution is just to go read content somewhere else.

That's fair. My experience with Medium has so far ranged from neutral to highly-positive, with a lot of articles on cutting-edge web design technology or methodology.

If you don't wanna read it, that's fine. I'm just saying that if you do, there's a way.

Could also use your browsers reader mode which does an amazing job at making websites usable.

I’ve been using reader mode for months and love it. I set it to auto open all links in reader mode and now hardly ever look at the styles version. It’s amazing how much more readable websites become with the extension. I’m also a UX designer, hows that for irony.

It is available for both indeed. It makes it usable by removing all those horrible "features" and design choices.

I don't understand the level of complaints on HN about that sign up overlay. Are they testing multiple nag screens and I got lucky and always get the minimally intrusive one, and the rest of you getting the terrible ones?

Yes, it is slightly annoying, but it is extremely easy to dismiss. Unlike the nag screens at many sites you don't have to find and click an 'x' in some weird location. It goes away if you click anywhere on the page outside the nag screen.

It also goes away if you hit ESC on the keyboard. (I don't know if other keys also dismiss it too. I've only tried ESC).

Furthermore, also unlike many other sites, it comes up right away rather than waiting for you to get into the article and then interrupting you. So it is click on a Medium link, get shown the nag screen immediately if it is going to be shown at all, and then hit ESC or click somewhere and it goes away.

The "pardon the interruption" modal is the only one that I have ever seen.

And it's not immediate, there's time enough for your eyes to adjust to the content of interest before that modal pops up. It's as if it's designed for maximum obtrusiveness.

The experience is further degraded by a header and footer that not only take up significant screen real estate but also only seem to exist to also prompt me to sign up.

So that's three obtrusive prompts asking me to sign up - the modal, the header and the footer. This is unique in that the annoyance has a depth of redundancy.

Not quite unique - Reddit’s mobile experience is similarly full of misleading and redundant prompts to sign up.

Try old.reddit.com - it was originally created for users who want to revert to the old desktop layout but it has an additional, unintended feature: even on mobile, it maintains the desktop layout without switching to the mobile site (note: it is not responsive so you will have to zoom - but personally I prefer zooming compared to the nagware "features" of the mobile site).

You can use i.reddit.com on mobile, it's even better.

Thank you! I didn’t know that!

I really don't want to live in a dystopia where basic text content from random companies, startups, blogs, etc can't be read without being subjected to a startup's conversion flow.

I can't believe that I could get free cPanel/PHP/wordpress hosting when I was a teenager, and people will live with a fullscreen nag ad for their company blog 17 years later.

As always, silent downvotes for pointing out illogical group-think behavior. Never change. Heh, maybe it's startup hustler types that think intentionally-delayed, fullscreen ads are the pinnacle of innovation and hacker culture. Anything to make a buck.

Just because it's easy to get rid of, doesn't mean it should be there in the first place.

There's a lot more to say about such practices, but that's the gist of it.

I can’t highlight/select text without it getting all hyperactive on me. I just want to read an article.