There is a new trend among websites where they want my email address before I’m allowed to read their free content. The more each site tries to create its own little walled garden, the less valuable the open web becomesAnd confidential to Substack: if I have clicked into a newsletter on the web, blocking my view of the thing I’m trying to read with a subscription pop-up isn’t going to make me more likely to subscribe. It’s why people are using DALL-E for newsletter header images to make sure their newsletter gets a bigger card in a social media feed — because it doesn’t matter what the image looks like as long as it exists