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by hr2016 2010 days ago
I was just venting to a friend about the massive comeback of popups/banners. "We value your privacy" is a huge part, another one is after the first few pixels of scrolling, "Please support/subscribe to xxx today". So the popups may have a bit more of justified content, but there are plenty of them. And this is while using adblock, pi-hole and other stuff.

Related, currently on HN front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25457440

5 comments

You‘re right, i didn‘t see it like this. The current state of the web (past years) feels really like in the old times: many nagging „popups“ and despite using blocking solutions you cant get rid of all of them. Wikipedia is a good example: Their yearly call to you to spend for money is using about 1/3 of your vertical screen and you cant remove it. Sadly it seems to be very effective.
Why is Wikipedia a good example? It's a freely available encyclopedia without tracking nor ads.
Yeah Wikipedia is about the last thing I would accuse of egregious spamming given it’s incredible (and ridiculously under-appreciated) value.
The user seems to be posting about UX and navigability rather than ad tracking. Wikipedia's banner ads that take up an entire browser window before you can scroll down to the content is definitely a good example of that.
Just donate a few bucks and that nagging “pop up” will disappear entirely for another year.

Seriously, Wikipedia is a good cause and you can donate as little or as much as you can afford.

Does that work? I donate a 5er monthly and I’m still getting the Wikipedia “please donate “ appeals...

It’s like listen to public radio pledge drives after you’ve donated.. necessary but still slightly annoying.

I give a donation once a year when their campaign pop-ups appear. For me this works and I don’t see the appeals again until the next campaign.
You might need to enable cookies in wikipedia, otherwise they won't know who you are and that you've already donated.
I would say that wikipedia is a good example of an honest way of using ads.
For some reason storefronts don't seem to understand that when they all do this, it just pushes me to do my shopping through Amazon or some other online "everything store." I'm currently shopping for a new sofa, but the experience of finding reviews and going to individual sites is just so painful. I'm having to dismiss 1 or 2 modal pop-ups per page view AND dismiss a cookie notification bar. It's enough to make a man just go to WayFair instead, but then I'm never sure if I'm getting decent stuff or something off Wish at a 30% markup.

There is absolutely no pleasure in "surfing" the web anymore. If we still use the surfing analogy, it's like trying to surf but being swarmed by seagulls and jumping fish any time you get out into the water.

I think that one is fairly reasonable, since it is the host party doing the advertising for their subscription programme (to their detriment, since nobody wants to be interrupted when browsing content unexpectedly). Banner ads and popups are far more annoying though.

Recently got my older relatives to install Brave, and although I'm not wholly supportive of its business model (which is significantly rooted in crypto and crypto advertising), I can appreciate that my older relatives have begun to see far less scammy popup ads and banners.

The fact that these popups are contained within the frame of the website makes them less abusive, although it also makes it harder to dismiss them.
>first few pixels

The ones I see tend to be triggered by moving the mouse off the page, as if that entirely meant that you were about to leave the page forever.