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.
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.
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.
There's a lot more to say about such practices, but that's the gist of it.
If you don't wanna read it, that's fine. I'm just saying that if you do, there's a way.
