[HN Gopher] Web Browsers have stopped blocking pop-ups
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       Web Browsers have stopped blocking pop-ups
        
       Author : coldpie
       Score  : 22 points
       Date   : 2025-12-31 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.smokingonabike.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.smokingonabike.com)
        
       | darthoctopus wrote:
       | I would absolutely love for this proposed blocker to happen, but
       | I have zero faith in it actually happening given the user-centred
       | nature of this feature and the user-hostile origin of Mozilla's
       | funding situation...
        
         | s3graham wrote:
         | It's also pretty challenging since they're not OS-level windows
         | any more.
         | 
         | It's the same problem as video ad blockers and YouTube: the
         | ads/sponsorships have just become embedded in the main stream
         | so they're much more difficult to obviously delineate from the
         | actual video.
        
           | quink wrote:
           | SponsorBlock. Granted, doesn't do much for my iPhone but on
           | computers it's a solved problem.
        
       | jmclnx wrote:
       | I noticed the same on a site I have been reading for over 30
       | years. I am about to abandon that site.
       | 
       | Hope this issue is solved.
        
       | tantivy wrote:
       | I'm often so flustered to be interrupted by yet-another-
       | marketing-modal that I will just close the tab and abandon
       | whatever task, or purchase, I was undertaking. They are actively
       | harmful to my holistic state-of-mind and make me into a more
       | agitated and cynical user of the web.
       | 
       | Who are the people who decided this is how 90% of web pages
       | should act, and how did they win? Do so many people really sign
       | up for newsletters when prompted?
        
         | mrtesthah wrote:
         | Clearly the market is always efficient and optimal. This is the
         | solution is chose.
        
       | wincy wrote:
       | If I'm using the AdGuard safari extension on my iPhone, I noticed
       | the Etsy website didn't work at all (there's some fantastic
       | costume sellers there, and I was looking at what it'd take to
       | dress like a Viking). Anyway, on load the screen becomes grayed
       | out with no way for me to fix it or interact with any underlying
       | elements.
       | 
       | If I disable the content blockers temporarily, it's because it's
       | trying to direct me toward the Etsy iOS app, which I would never
       | in a million years install.
       | 
       | It does this at least daily, I tried it just now and it'll go
       | away for maybe 24h before the invisible pop up comes back.
        
       | rcxdude wrote:
       | Adblockers are the right kind of tool to solve this problem, but
       | it's hard to do so generically like the pop-ups of yore (which
       | were, to be fair, even more aggravating, since they could come
       | from a website in the background and even try to overwhelm you
       | with more windows than you could close).
        
       | jart wrote:
       | They have solved the popup problem. It's called AI. If I ask
       | Claude to browse the web for me and report back what it finds,
       | then there's no popups, no ads, no newsletters. I'm insulated
       | from all the awful things people do. That's what I love about
       | technology. It always comes along at just the right time to solve
       | the greatest problem people have ever had, which is other people.
        
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       (page generated 2025-12-31 23:00 UTC)