I'm just amazed they still rank relatively high in google's search results for many of their long tail Q&A type pages. Google is usually pretty quick to penalize sites which use such shady tactics, and I've seen them slap sites for significantly less.
To say it's annoying is an understatement. I wish google would penalize all sites which throw up entry barriers, no matter how quick they are to bypass or mitigate.
That's extremely misleading and generally over exaggerated by anti-drug advocates. The cravings get weaker as the weeks progress and by a full year or so, they're completely gone. What remains is the nostalgia. You think back on the time you were doing them and remember how good you felt (while conveniently forgetting all the bad times) and you crave it like you crave something from a memory.
For me, (8 years clean) it's like remembering Christmas morning when you were a child. Now that I think about it, it's almost exactly like that. I don't crave it like a cigarette (You don't have an "urge"), instead it's like recalling a happy memory and feeling nostalgic. Why it's misleading is because the same could be said about virtually anything you can feel nostalgic about.
To say it's annoying is an understatement. I wish google would penalize all sites which throw up entry barriers, no matter how quick they are to bypass or mitigate.