It's called user-antagonistic design, and while it is sometimes inadvertent (like menu links that have a large hover effect but only the text in the middle is c

It's called user-antagonistic design, and while it is sometimes inadvertent (like menu links that have a large hover effect but only the text in the middle is clickable), it is often intentional - especially on sites that measure eyeball engagement instead of emotional engagement. There is no technical reason for it other than some suit somewhere in management felt that there's no reason you would ever want to see the same thing on the screen if you happen to walk away for a few minutes (like to get your spouse to see something interesting) - as soon as you interact with the site again, it refreshes and you have to scroll and scroll again, viewing more ads and "engaging" with more content.