[firefoxd]

Ok, you can start with LinkedIn, I'll wait...

If you are wondering how it works. You get a link from LinkedIn, it's from an email or just a post someone shared. You click on it, the URL loads, and you read the post. When you click the back button, you aren't taken back to wherever you came from. Instead, your LinkedIn feed loads.

How did it happen? When you landed on the first link, the URL is replaced with the homepage first (location.replace(...) doesn't change the browser history). Then the browser history state is pushed to the original link. So it seems like you landed on the home page first then you clicked on a link. When you click the back button, you are taken back to the homepage where your feed entices you to stay longer on LinkedIn.

[giorgioz]

Also www.reddit.com is/was doing the same back button hijacking. From google.com visiting a post, then clicking back and you would find yourself on Reddit general feed instead of back to Google.

[DaiPlusPlus]

I'm pretty sure what you're describing is this long-standing bug[1] I've experienced only when using Mobile Safari on Reddit - affecting both old.reddit.com and the (horrible) modern Reddit. It just doesn't happen in other browsers/engines except on iOS. It's especially annoying on an iPad when I tend to use back/forward instead of open-in-new-tab-then-close on iPhone.

[1] At least, I hope it's a bug.

[_cadp]

A bug that just coincidentally affects the only reddit visitors that are worth any money?

[embedding-shape]

Just like finally getting rid of r/all on mobile just happens to bury a bunch of political stuff reddit executives and their friends don't agree with

[100721]

Huh? I exclusively view r/all and its loading fine for me across all devices.

[embedding-shape]

Even manually typing reddit.com/r/all (or r/All, which was a workaround for a while) in the address bar on iOS Safari redirects you to reddit.com/. Since I'm guessing you're not browsing reddit.com, what client are you using?

[notatoad]

https://www.theverge.com/tech/906314/reddit-r-all-deprecatin...

it's dead, per official comment from reddit.

[Ohmec]

You probably use old.reddit and a legacy app, right?

[mrandish]

> I exclusively view r/all...

You and I are very different Reddit users. I don't think I've even seen r/all for at least a decade. I exclusively view Reddit via the old.reddit.com URL in desktop mode with the Reddit Enhancement Suite add-on + uBO + a custom CSS theme. I'm automatically redirected to my 'Subscribed' page showing only the dozen or so niche subreddits I care about, none of which have more than 100k subscribers (most are under 25k). It's glorious... like a time machine to before Reddit enshittified itself and spammers, astro-turfers, shills and influencers took over.

[Pay08]

Do you treat every iOS bug this way?

[radicality]

For mobile Safari on iOS/iPad, the back button imo is just completely broken. It’s either a bug, or Apple might say I’m ‘holding it wrong’. One version it just stopped doing its one job correctly and it’s messing with my mental model of how I arrived at each tab. Currently:

Safari iOS: Be on a page, tap hold a link, click Open in new tab, go to new tab. The Back button should be grayed out and isn’t, and clicking it closes the tab. (???)

Chrome iOS: Be on a page, tap hold a link, click Open in new tab, go to new tab. Back button correctly grayed out as the tab has nowhere to go back to.

[creaturemachine]

"You're browsing it wrong." This and other bizarre behaviours are why you'll never catch me using the thing.

[Bombthecat]

News sites are doing it too. Displaying a full display ad when you try to leave

[jeffbee]

I would just like to point out that this was one of the things that the AMP straightjacket prevented. The whole online news industry has conclusively demonstrated that it can't be trusted with javascript and must be hospitalized, but they refuse to acknowledge their own illness.

[kube-system]

Is it news sites fault or is it the fault of web standards/browser developers for failing to build any viable mechanisms for monetizing content?

The issue is hardly isolated to news outlets. It's endemic to the web.

[LorenPechtel]

Yeah, and I think it's pretty much impossible to solve.

Look what happened with Netflix. They actually got it right, a reasonable price for a bunch of stuff which would end up appropriated based on demand (they needed to have the disk to rent.) And how you have a bunch of players trying to compete in the space, each with it's exclusive content to try to make you choose them.

And look what's happened with Google's "news". It's more and more and more clickbait. I used to think the answer was a small charge per article, run through some aggregator that tracked payment. But these days we see things designed to get you to open the page, not to actually provide value. Or look at the problems Amazon has had with it's Kindle Unlimited stuff--books designed to game the metrics, groups engaging in read each other's books behavior etc.

[kevin_thibedeau]

AMP sites listed on Android Assistant routinely messed with back button behavior to trap you.

[tim333]

I wonder if Google will actually de rank them. Maybe a warning first for the big ones?

[cli]

I do not see this behaviour on the latest version of Firefox. I do use old.reddit, however.

[TeMPOraL]

Old Reddit doesn't do this, it's the "new" one that pretends to be an app, that does it and host of other stupid/user-hostile shit.

[J_Shelby_J]

In any case, Reddit lets open links in a new tab in their settings, which resolved the issue for me.

[myrion]

I don't use old Reddit, and haven't noticed this behaviour either.

[moritzwarhier]

Sounds like maybe some prevention against this is already implemented in either particular Android browsers, or ad blockers, maybe even for specific sites?

Just speculating, I can't imagine a reason why they'd implement this especially for Safari.

Other than A/B-testing or trash code that coincidentally doesn't work in all mobile browsers.

Maybe they use the same AI that generates their fictious relationship stories to add these dark patterns to their code base :D

[fluidcruft]

My understanding is that Apple keeps Safari fairly broken and doesn't care to implement the Googleverse and leaves a lot of things E_WONTFIX. I have read speculation that broken Safari encourages apps in the App Store.

[moritzwarhier]

hm yeah but the History API is not new or exclusive to Google, also my understanding was that the discussion is about the annoyance "working" on iOS Safari, but not on other platforms. Any way, too many variables here.

[ChocolateGod]

I usually find the back button just doesn't work on new Reddit at all.

[SilasX]

Even on old.reddit, it breaks the back button. When you navigate back, it usually reloads the entire page you were on and ignores all your collapse actions on conversations.

[hobofan]

IIRC Reddit is also doing the same thing on their mobile (Android) app.

[venusenvy47]

Regarding Google and LinkedIn, I keep complaining to them about a stupid feature of Gmail. If I get an invitation from someone, Gmail puts "accept" as a button in the subject of the email - so if you aren't careful you can accept while you are scrolling through the subject lines. That is just the worst feature to put in their subject line.

[Barbing]

I like Gmail asking me for no reason to stay on the page when I try to leave.

New spam policy for navigate-away blocking, hope that's Google's next article.

[Barbing]

Does "accept" support "undo send"?

[venusenvy47]

Actually, it looks like they fixed this problem. I just checked all the messages with the LinkedIn label and I don't see it popping that "hotspot" anymore. The only thing that pops up in the subject line is now "Unsubscribe", so that is really good.

[Barbing]

Wow they’re fast! :)

[venusenvy47]

I don't think so. At least not from the inbox, where it happens. I'm not in the message - I'm just dragging on the subject lines to scroll, and these "hotspots" light up on the right portion of the subject.

[dspillett]

> You get a link from LinkedIn [or such]. You click on it, the URL loads, and you read the post. When you click the back button, you aren't taken back to wherever you came from. Instead, […]

I've taken to opening anything in a new tab. Closing the tab is my new back button. In an idea world I shouldn't have to, of course, but we live in a world full of disks implementing dark patterns so not an ideal one. Opening in a new tab also helps me apply a “do I really care enough to give this reading time?” filter as my browsers are set to not give new tabs focus - if I've not actually looked at that tab after a little time it gets closed without me giving it any attention at all.

Specifically regarding LinkedIn and their family of dark patterns, I possibly should log in and update my status after the recent buy-out. I've not been there since updating my profile after the last change of corporate overlords ~9 years ago. Or I might just log in and close my profile entirely…

[bluGill]

When I intentionally want to read something that is what I do. However once in a while I'm scrolling, selecting a window, or some other activity; and I happen to click on a link: instead of whatever action I intended I end up on a new page I didn't want to read (maybe I will want to read it, but I haven't go far enough cognitively to realize that). That is when I want my back button to work - a get out of here back to where I was.

[docmars]

Exactly, it has the potential to make you lose something important, forcing you to dig through browser history to find it again. If it happens to be a long-lived tab, you might be searching for a while if you forgot the name or site you were on.

[sidewndr46]

given the level of hostility most businesses have towards their customers, we should probably be opening links in disposable virtual machines

[dspillett]

Or just log all cookies and other localstorage against the domain of the top-level window.location which would achieve most of what a VM would with much lower overhead.

The only problem is that this would break some things like certain SSO systems, so you would have to implement a white-list to allow shared state, and the UX for that would be abused to nag users to whitelist everything. Most people would just click “OK” by default like they do with everything else, and those of us with more sense would have a new reason to be irritated by incessant nagging.

[troupo]

> Closing the tab is my new back button.

In Safari if you open a new tab, don't navigate anywhere, and click back, the tab closes and takes you back to the originating page. I've gottent so used to it, I now miss it in any other browser

[znort_]

>I've taken to opening anything in a new tab.

this is the way.

[cortesoft]

I have always done this, although mostly so I don’t have to reload the page I am coming from when I hit the back button.

[Baljhin]

Many years ago I was 'converted' to browse like that, one of the reasons was just that - to prevent back-button fatfinger.

Here's the setup I use:

[1] install this userscript, keep the default `include` i.e. 'every link": https://greasyfork.org/scripts/12367-open-links-in-new-tab; add to the `exclude` section the sites from [2].

[2] install this one and turn OFF the default: https://greasyfork.org/scripts/4416-open-links-in-current-ta...; add any sites you want to stay in the same tab to the `include` section (e.g. see [0]). Depending on how you browse, this will be a small list.

You can couple this with a tab-memory addon: example-- set [1]-Tabs to 'sleep' after a certain time; that way they're not using resources but still available later.

AND if you decide you're not gonna read those tabs anyway, just manually close them with having to activate them.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47763404

[dspillett]

This too. Particularly required for broken SPA-style sites that reset when you re-enter instead of properly maintaining their state, or infinite scroll based pages that don't remember where you scrolled to/through.

[RajT88]

This is the way. People think I am eccentric for the number of tabs I keep open.

[dspillett]

I am eccentric, née properly insane, which is part of why I have so many tabs left open over my various devices. Sometimes a browser crash that loses some or all that context is a benefit!

[bertil]

I do that everywhere, but it seems to fail for LinkedIn: they don’t redirect the link if it’s not in the same tab.

[dspillett]

Bad design on their part, another reason not to revisit! If a site breaks my workflow I generally stop using the site, rather than changing my workflow.

Though I'm guessing it would work in the cases being discussed in this article & thread: when you are navigating into a site (such as linkedin) from another, rather than following internal links.

[abustamam]

Facebook does this as well.

Thanks for explaining how they do it BTW! I didn't really think about it. I just knew it was shitty.

[globular-toast]

LinkedIn is malware and it's frankly embarrassing that we seem to be stuck with it. It's like a mechanic being stuck with a wrench that doesn't just punch you in the face while using it, it opens your toolbox just to come out and punch you randomly.

[SunshineTheCat]

You know what's funny, just the other day I tried to do an "export" of my data from my account.

The option I chose was "profile data" because I wanted to get my whole work history/projects/etc. for a new resume.

The export took several hours.

When I finally downloaded it, it included my name, Email, short description, and my Email address...

[integralid]

What do you mean "stuck with it"? I just don't use LinkedIn. Do you need it for job hunting for example?

[adithyassekhar]

> Do you need it for job hunting for example?

God I hope you are being funny. Why else would anyone install this crap?

[input_sh]

The amount of times I saw a "LinkedIn profile URL" as a required field on job applications outside of LinkedIn is concerning, to say the least.

[NetMageSCW]

I think it’s kind of companies to tell you they don’t want applicants.

[Baljhin]

What I do is put the link to the job listing in that field. haha, suck to be in HR if you think you're getting my profile info!

I've never seen any ATS that required Linkedin for login, but even having it as an option I've always thought of as weird.

Then again, I have see many an ATS that include Facebook and other slop sites, so welcome to another layer of jobhunting madness.

[jarek83]

LinkedIn won't bother - they don't rely on SEO

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Would this actually fall afoul of their new policy, though?

Assume the way that universal links work, is that the site main page is loaded, and some hash is supplied, indicating the page to navigate to from there. That's annoying, but perfectly valid, and may be necessary for sites that establish some kind of context baseline from their landing page.

[bastawhiz]

It's not valid. You went to a page. They said "no, you're actually on the feed," and then immediately navigate you to the page you'd actually intended to visit. This is that they're doing today, and it's terrible. If I go to a URL, I'm NOT going to your homepage feed. I never wanted to go there.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Well, a lot of content, these days, is really data presented in a “window.” You don’t have the old HTML address, anymore.

It’s like reading an eBook in a reader. You always use the reader to interpret, format, and present the data.

It kind of sticks a spike into the old “each page is a document” model.

[bastawhiz]

The experience you're describing still doesn't need to break the back button. Going back means going back, not closing a window I never opened. If that's an awkward experience, don't build one that works that way.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Fair ‘nuff, and I agree, but would they be able to argue that they never explicitly “broke” the back button?

I remember when JavaScript became a big Web site driver. The arguments against using it to fetch and build content usually included broken back button functionality.

I don’t think a lot of folks really paid much attention to it, though.

[Simulacra]

and then if you click the back button again it just reloads the page, trapped in a vicious loop!

[01284a7e]

Can we reach out directly to Reid Hoffman? Or is he too wrapped up doing damage control from being all over the Epstein Files?

[zozbot234]

The fix is to hold down the back button so the local history shows up, and pick the right page to go back to. Unfortunately, some versions of Chrome and/or Android seem to break this but that's a completely self-inflicted problem.

[Rygian]

That's not a fix. It's a workaround.

[zozbot234]

It's a fix because it completely solves the issue on any site, without requiring changes from LinkedIn or any other actor.

[vitro]

My car leaks oil. So I refill it here and there. This fixes issue with any car maker and does not require action of any other actor.

[nkrisc]

Yes, it’s a workaround because it doesn’t require anyone to fix the issue.

[Spare_account]

>it completely solves the issue on any site

It doesn't solve the problem with Instagram links, which in my experience do the following:

1) Open a new browser tab, with no history. 2) Close the original tab, so I can't easily get back to where I was.

[zozbot234]

That's a different kind of dysfunction, though. You can address it by copying the link and pasting it in a new tab, or if that's not possible, copying the current page to a new tab and clicking on the link there.

[jdwithit]

I've noticed that on Instagram, too. Absolutely infuriating.

[marak830]

It's a work around to them making changes to deliberately change the expected results of pressing "back"

[TeMPOraL]

It's also not a very effective workaround, because some of the websites in question end up spamming multiple instances of their home page in the history stack.

[zozbot234]

You can usually address this by going back as far as possible, then holding the button again so more of the history shows up. And IME, it's only really broken sites that have this problem in the first place.

[neya]

The fix is to not to implement anti-user patterns. What you're describing is a loophole around it.

[zozbot234]

> The fix is to not to implement anti-user patterns.

That's not a fix the user can implement themselves. Holding down the back button is comparatively trivial.

[lxgr]

Why on Earth would the user be expected to implement a fix for a problem they didn't cause themselves in the first place?

[zozbot234]

Why the Earth should the user not want to implement a fix/workaround/whatever for a problem they didn't cause themselves but can trivially solve?

[lxgr]

Because I expect my browser to work for me instead of having memorize workarounds for the new web annoyance of the day.

Clicking "back", noticing that the site broke it, moving the mouse and long-pressing "back" (I normally navigate with a mouse thumb button or a trackpad gesture) is much more annoying than my browser just preventing this from happening in the first place.

[miki123211]

The problem is, there are two conceptions of the back button, and the browser only implements one.

One conception is "take me back to the previous screen I was on", one is "take me one level up the hierarchy." They're often but not always the same.

Mac Finder is a perfect example of a program correctly implementing the two. If you're deep in some folder and then press cmd+win+l to go to ~/Downloads, cmd+up will get you to ~/, but cmd+[ will get you back to where you were before, even if this was deep in some network drive, nowhere near ~.

I feel like mobile OSes lean towards "one level up" as the default behavior, while traditional desktop OSes lean more towards tracking your exact path and letting you go back.

[TeMPOraL]

Desktop had this solved, on Windows there was and remains a distinction between "back" (history) and "up" (navigation).

Browsers actually used to have hierarchical navigation support, with buttons and all, back in the age of dinosaurs - all one had to do is to set up some meta tags in HTML head section to tell which URL is "prev"/"next"/"up". Alas, this has proven too difficult for web developers, who eventually even forgot web was meant for documents at all, and at some point browsers just hid/removed those buttons since no one was using them anyway.

The "Back" remains, and as 'Arainach wrote, it's only one concept and it's not, and never has been "up one level in the hierarchy".

EDIT:

The accepted/expected standard way for "take me up one level in hierarchy" on the web is for the page itself to display the hierarchy e.g. as breadcrumbs. The standard way to go to top level of the page is through a clickable logo of the page/brand. Neither of those need, or should, involve changing behavior of browser controls.

[Arainach]

> The problem is, there are two conceptions of the back button, and the browser only implements one.

In web browsers, there is only one concept.

There is no concept of "up one level in the heirarchy". If you want that make your own button in your website.

[blooalien]

> There is no concept of "up one level in the heirarchy". If you want that make your own button in your website.

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-move-up-one-url-level-in-chrom... *shrug*

[hrimfaxi]

> Chrome/Firefox: Ever been reading a site and wish not to go back to the last page you visited, but the last page in that web site's hierarchy?

This statement makes no sense to non-tech people. Most people don't think of sites hierarchically, at least not from a url path perspective.

[Arainach]

Those are third party extensions, not browser features, and they're not consistently applied.

Going from an image to a root domain is not a hierarchy and as a pathological data hoarder who has downloaded a lot of images from a lot of sites I don't understand why I'd ever want that feature. It's wild that that's their first example use case on the article.

Similarly, going from page N of results to page 1 isn't "up a level in heirarchy".

[christoph]

Isn't the problem already solved at the browser level? Most (all?) modern browsers support a press/click & hold of the back button to view the back history and quickly jump to any page in that tab's history.

*Edit - I left this in the wrong place, those extensions behave slightly differently.

[sznio]

amazing, took me 5 clicks of the back button to finally get back from that link

[Baljhin]

Agreed. I remember addons from the XUL Firefox era that did this.

I miss that feature. And that era.

[thn-gap]

> one is "take me one level up the hierarchy." They're often but not always the same.

Who expects this behavior? It doesn't make sense. You just want to go back where you were. Most file browsers I've used wanting to implement going up a level in hierarchy, have an arrow pointing up.

[ButlerianJihad]

GNU Info and many Web 1.0 navigation schemes involved a hierarchy which did involve "Next", "Previous", "Up", and "Home" type dimensions.

For example, the Bacula documentation is still online, as a prime example of this: https://www.bacula.org/9.6.x-manuals/en/main/Getting_Started...

[bfivyvysj]

Nobody

[neya]

If you reached point B from point A - and you tell someone "I would like to go back", then you are expecting to go back to A. Not some intermediate, arbitrarily chosen point C.

[eviks]

You're describing 2 different concepts, back and up, not 2 backs

[matthewkayin]

Exactly. It is crazy that they described MacOS finder as doing this correctly when finder has no concept of up, it only has a back.

[mzd348]

Command–Up Arrow: Open the folder that contains the current folder. (https://support.apple.com/en-us/102650)