Something quiet happened to the web over the last few years. Tools that used to demand your email address before showing you anything now just... work. You open a browser tab, and the tool is there. No form, no verification email, no password to invent. This isn't accidental. It's the result of three separate forces — economic, technical, and legal — converging at the same time. And it's reshaping what users expect from online tools. The Signup Wall Was Never About You Here's the honest version of why websites demanded accounts: it was about them, not you. Your email address had value. It went into a CRM, got added to a newsletter list, got retargeted with ads. Requiring signup was a way to monetize attention before delivering any product. That calculus started breaking in 2018 when GDPR came into effect. Suddenly, collecting an email address wasn't free anymore — it came with obligations.…