Yeah, I find that really obnoxious. I've stopped reading the Quora email and clicking on links because of this. I actually have the Quora app installed, but I think they must have screwed up the app links in the email, so it doesn't open the Quora app anymore (I'm on iOS, and I use the Spark app for emails.) So it's just a bug that opens the browser instead of the app, then they hide the whole page with a popup and there's no way to continue reading the answer. Really frustrating.

Anyway, I guess they've done a lot of testing for the popup and it's better for their business model. Maybe they can show more ads in the app. But not sure why they can't just show the same ads on the website. The weekly digest email is actually great and it would keep me coming back to Quora, but they've ruined the whole experience.

Why do companies think this is “good”? They basically assault the very subset of people that actually stuck around longer than most, actually showed some interest in their content. Instead of encouraging that to continue, they cut you off.

Imagine if you were in a physical store. Then, after 2 minutes of walking around, someone suddenly pulled you aside, erected a bunch of cardboard walls around you and said “sorry, if you want to keep looking, you need to sign up for a store account!”. You’d mutter some curses and walk straight out the door, obviously; exactly zero people would say “why, sure!”.