They might have. I've seen other similar launches before I've submitted mine. I had some chats with their support on unrelated matters, but no one seemed bothered by the fact that it's a newsletter
Mine is a newsletter, not a blog. But just sharing the things I've tried and the results.
1. Sharing a direct link to a specific, interesting news headline on HackerNews - 0
2. Buying ads on Reddit. Two experiments - specific, clickbaity headline, and generic newsletter pitch. The specific one performed better, but in general, the whole experiment was a bust. 0.5% click-through rate, 1% conversion rate. ~14$ to acquire a single subscriber. Ain't nobody got money for that.
3. The best performance I got was out of a ProductHunt launch. 2/3 of my subscribers came from PH. And the most surprising bit was the long tail - more than two weeks after the launch, I'm still seeing subscribers come in from PH.