this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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Open browser
Browser demands updates
All extensions update simultaneously. Each opens its own tab to proudly announce bug fixes for bugs you never noticed.
Close ten tabs you didn’t open
Miss one. It autoplays a video ad.
Type in search bar. Autocomplete offers suggestions that are 5 years old, NSFW, or both.
Search for a product. Top results: Ads. Sidebar: Ads. Bottom: Ads. An actual organic result is wedged between an ad and a newsletter signup modal.
Click real-looking result. Redirected to a shady dropshipper site.
Back button doesn't work. It reloads the same scam page five times. You lose the original tab somewhere in a pile of redirects.
Click Amazon link. It’s a new seller with the business name “USB_Cable_Amazon_Partner_Official.” 13,000 reviews. All 5 stars.
Try to read reviews. Most are for the wrong product. Many are AI-generated gibberish. The rest complain about shipping.
Add to cart. You are not logged in.
Log in.
CAPTCHA challenge: Pick all the traffic lights. Traffic lights are 1 pixel wide. One is technically a lamppost. Verification failed.
2 factor authentication push. By the time you get the authenticator open, the session expired. Start over.
Try to close browser. Are you sure you want to close 37 tabs?”
Yes. It crashes.
Reopens all 37 tabs next launch.
Give up and use your phone
4 popups, fingerprint required, and every link jumps when the page loads because of delayed ad banners.
App store ad appears for the site you’re already on
Clicking "x" opens the ad anyway.
You close the phone browser
Go outside
Get a push notification: “You left items in your cart.”
This should be etched into gold as a perfect description of life in 2025.
I once responded to one of those "you have items in your cart" emails that I received like a mere half hour after finishing browsing with a "fuck off", and a short while later somebody responded and said some things and ended with "same to you too"
I immediately replied and said oh wow a real person replied, don't take it personally, it was directed at the automatic message.
they started berating me and telling me that I should just unsubscribe if I don't want the emails (that I never fucking subscribed to in the first place???), and then deleted my account and banned me from the store, it seems. I tried to buy something over half a year later, but it was declined without reason, and support told me it was "flagged for fraud" and didn't elaborate
Oh fuck them
I think it's interesting that in 2005, the internet had a ton of popups and scammy ads that told you "you just won a free iPod!" and everyone knew that was a thing. There was even a gag about it in Scary Movie 3 (2003):
Yet you don't hear people complain about that as much today. It's like so much of the internet has been cordoned off into walled gardens that most users don't see pages out in the open.
Those popups were so prolific that all browser developers responded by implementing popup blockers.
Which kind of led to the absolute mess of banner ads (and the adblockers created in response) that we still have today. I dare you to deactivate your adblocker on any of the major (commercial) news sites.
I also recall not a single one of those builtin popup blockers working as intended, random popups would show up anyway. Hell, that feature still leads to annoyances when a site actually needs to open a new window (happens with some internal systems being used where I work)
I read an interesting article about that: https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/ads/
You missed scroll hijacking because reinventing how things move on the screen is important for some reason?
Because phones. The reason behind fucking up scrolling is phones. Swipe upwards once and get the next pretty animated scrolling to the precise place, wooo!
I'm sorry, I can't read this.
Can someone put it in greentext?
One trick for the "back button doesn't work" is to right click it and select the page you want to go back to from that list.
Though I do wish back buttons worked on clicks rather than loads or anything a site can override with javascript. I hate the sites that treat scrolling to the next article as a new page. It trains me to not scroll to the next one, even if it looks interesting, because they fuck with my browser like that (even though I can work around it, fuck them for the attempt).
I also hate how some sites block middle mouse clicks or ctrl+click, which opens a new tab. So I'm forced to follow the stupid link then either middle click the back button, or right click back - open in new tab
The other day I found one that I'm pretty sure somehow removed the earlier entries from the back button list.
Like removed them removed them or just filled it up with spam "clicks"?
Second one is annoying and shouldn't be possible but first one is concerning and really shouldn't be possible. Makes me wonder if there's a way to access the links in the back list via js. What browser btw?
First one, and Firefox.