They've been mass-spamming this on Reddit using multiple accounts and sockpuppeting to promote it too. They also promoted this in a Show-HN 5 days ago as well and it flopped: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29733982
I couldn't stand magazines back in the day for the same reason. Frankly, magazines are worse in my mind as I've already actually paid several dollars to purchase it. You'd think that'd allow them to get away with less ads as a result but apparently not. TV is the same way - I'm already paying for cable, stop showing me MORE stuff! I cut the cord in 2011, I don't miss it and I'd rather that model of payment+more ads not make a comeback.
Banner ads don't masquerade as content and aren't nearly as screen-covering as that on-average in my experience. The only way this is better is that there's no chance for malicious JS to be served from the ad (Forbes, cough cough)
This post is just an ad. It's a brand new Substack with literally only one article that's more than 50% ad text. All of the comments here are addressing overall HN sentiment or the title, not the article and the giant ad text which I would think would stick out to more people if they had actually read it??