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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
by tantivy 9mo ago
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 9mo agoClearly the market is always efficient and optimal. This is the solution it chose.
- somerandomqaguy 9mo agoThe market did choose it's most optimal. The real burning question is who's the customer.
- loloquwowndueo 9mo ago[flagged]
- encom 9mo agoThe Market didn't create mandatory EU-banners.
- zelphirkalt 9mo agoEU law is not at fault here. At fault are the websites that feel the need to be so obnoxious in their behavior, that they are told to have those consent prompts for all the obnoxious shit they engage in. Basically, the EU is doing the Lord's work here, making these sites annoying, so that people might be persuaded to leave those websites. Unfortunately, the EU does not persecute harshly enough, so that all kinds of grifters do not follow the law and get away with it.
- PaulHoule 9mo agoI am tired of people making excuses for the EU. The EU has had almost a decade to respond to the numerous complaints about those cookie banners and their answer has been "talk to the hand" -- and they wonder why they are being overrun by right wing populists. It is the worst of German "incumbents über alles" and American legalism. "Respect DNT or go to jail" would have been fair and easier to administer but Big Tech lobbyists helped design the GDPR to stifle smaller competitors who couldn't laugh at the occasional fine for malicious compliance.
- zelphirkalt 9mo agoCan you refer to some examples or procedures, that you think fit the "talk to the hand" description? I would think that upholding the law is a matter of countries and only in big cases with EU-spanning big tech being the task of EU courts. Countries however, have failed to persecute tons of websites that don't adhere to the law. But that doesn't translate to "talk to the hand". It translates to tolerating crimes and not protecting citizen rights. Which actions or inaction specifically are what you are referring to?
- troupo 9mo ago> Big Tech lobbyists helped design the GDPR to stifle smaller competitors who couldn't laugh at the occasional fine for malicious compliance It is actually trivial to comply with GDPR for smaller companies than for incumbents simply because smaller companies don't collect and sell copious amounts of user data. What people are tired about is "technologists" completely absolving the tech (that they are a part of) of any wrongoping in this. "Oh, the EU made these mandatory" they cry and happily impöement dark patterns to collect and indefinitely store all your data. The only blame you can lay on EU is not enough enforcement.
- orangecat 9mo agoThe only blame you can lay on EU is not enough enforcement. That's a very big "only". Malicious compliance (and non-compliance) was an easily predictable consequence of the law, they've completely failed at responding to it, and the web is now worse as a result.
- troupo 9mo agoAh yes. The Market only created "we care about your privacy by selling your precise geolocation data to be stored for 12 years" https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541 https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541
- immibis 9mo agoThe market didn't create hazard warning signs - the government did. Therefore, hazard warning signs must be abolished.
- calvinmorrison 9mo agoI once dated a woman who had every store card, always signed up for the coupons, sign up here for free checkout, etc... and NO it did not bother her. She would see 'sign up now for 20% off!' and smile! like it positively hit her like she just won the lottery
- kogepathic 9mo ago> She would see 'sign up now for 20% off!' and smile! like it positively hit her like she just won the lottery If you intend to purchase an item from the merchant anyway, why would you pass on 20% off? I sign up for newsletters to get a discount then immediately unsubscribe. If merchants are going to offer a discount for me to input my email, copy the code they email me, and GMail unsubscribe why would I turn that down?
- loloquwowndueo 9mo agoBecause once they have your email and can link it to your identity via your purchase details they’re going to sell that list to some marketer sleazeball and you’ll get spam from other sources until the end of time?
- thrill 9mo ago“you’ll get spam from other sources until the end of time?” So … ops normal?
- loloquwowndueo 9mo agoHah you got me there.
- wat10000 9mo agoMy email has been out there for 25+ years now. Filtering has been able to handle it for all but the first couple of years of that period.
- dpark 9mo ago1. Pop up demanding I make a choice about their cookies. 2. Pop up telling me my adblocker is bad and I should feel bad. 3. Pop up suggesting I join their club/newsletter/whatever. Every. fucking. site. The newsletter one is especially obnoxious because it’s always got a delay so it shows up when I’m actually trying to read something or do something. Edit: Oh, yeah. 4. Pop up to remind me I should really be using their app.
- isodev 9mo agoIt’s because they care about your privacy, they want you to know just how much their care, so much so they’re ready to show you popups /s.
- bingo-bongo 9mo ago“We care about your privacy..” Followed by something about 1800+ companies they want to sent my data to .. :|
- mnw21cam 9mo agoNo, it's "We value your privacy". That's different. That means they see your privacy as having value, and they want to extract as much of that value out of it as they possibly can.
- plagiarist 9mo ago> We and the 1600 third-parties care about your privacy.
- econ 9mo agoYou forgot to sub to push.
- BuyMyBitcoins 9mo agoFor a while I would put “f***yournewsletter@gmail.com” but then I realized no one would ever see it, and it probably just helps their click numbers. I detest newsletter modals.
- analogpixel 9mo agobtw, if you use https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/ , they have a workflow for this: if you are on a site, and they popup a modal asking for you to sign up for something, you click back to the kagi.com search results, click the shield icon, and then click block. Now you'll never see that site show up again in your search results. I've found those sites that want you to sign up for stuff usually have poor content to begin with, so this is just helping you curate out all the bad content out there.
- isodev 9mo ago[flagged]
- jjtheblunt 9mo agowhy would you say that?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- DANmode 9mo agoSay more, or say less.
- neodymiumphish 9mo agoUh, what? Wanna explain why?
- reciprocity 9mo agoHow does one make a comment like this, I wonder, and not substantiate.
- wolvoleo 9mo agoI assume you mean because you have to be logged in in order to use kagi? They do have anonimised logins for this though: https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass which is a pretty good mitigation IMO. As it's a paid service of course proving you paid is a must. And as for control, I can't agree there. Kagi offers more control than any other search engine through its lenses and the ability to influence the ranking of search results from specific sites. I don't use their service at the moment, I'm pretty ok with my self hosted SearXNG and I like being able to customise the look and feel there too. But Kagi is excellent as search engines go.
- sixtyj 9mo agoSimilar people who used animated banners in '00s. And as they don’t use Posthog or any other tool for monitoring users’ behaviour, they don’t see patterns. Yes, websites popups, asynchronous ads or autoplay videos are such annoying that someone should come with a solution. I think that a lot of people would pay for it - e.g. collected money could be redistributed back to visited sites. (As micropayment projects weren’t successful due to transaction fees.) I use Adblock, cookies consent autoclick, Facebook antitracker - but others must be mad as they see all popups and ads. But I understand that sites have to have some revenue stream to pay authors…
- zelphirkalt 9mo agoThere are other approaches than ads. (1) Be a business that makes an actual product that people want sufficiently to buy it and cover the costs, because your website is in itself the ad for your company and product. (2) Have your small blog as a private person and shoulder the minimal cost of running a blog, if any. (3) Have valuable content and ask people for donations, if you are not willing to shoulder it yourself. (4) Have a community of people, who are interested in keeping things running and chipping in. We would be better off following those approaches, than infesting everything with silly ads, which don't work anyway and are blocked by 60% or more, depending on viewership.
- LexiMax 9mo ago> Be a business that makes an actual product that people want sufficiently to buy it and cover the costs, because your website is in itself the ad for your company and product. And how do you suppose people find out about that product? Like, I hate the modern ad ecosystem as much as the next person, but I also understand the abstract need for the existence of advertisements of some kind.
- sumalamana 9mo ago> Like, I hate the modern ad ecosystem as much as the next person, but I also understand the abstract need for the existence of advertisements of some kind. We used to have catalogs and yellow pages before ads were everywhere.
- econ 9mo agoMe too!
- aaplok 9mo agoBeing obnoxious works well. Obnoxious people get elected to power. Obnoxious companies (and CEOs) generate hype that increases stock prices. Obnoxious youtubers call themselves influencers and make a good living out of it. Or more charitably it is difficult to be successful without annoying many people.
- BuyMyBitcoins 9mo agoThere was some company a while back, I forget what they were called, but their claim to fame was a much higher click through rate on modal popups due to them “guilting” people with dynamic messages like “No, I don’t want to save up to 50%” or “I would rather let children starve than sign up for this newsletter”. One, I can’t believe this worked. Two, some website owners were convinced that being patronizing towards visitors was worth the extra clicks.
- burningChrome 9mo agoSomeone made a funny video about this approach with a guy at Petsmart and you hear the lady say, "Ok, just follow the prompts." and gets worse/funnier from there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDUvykJVmMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDUvykJVmMU
- ranger_danger 9mo agoWhat I've seen lead to success: * Arrogance * Overconfidence * Schmoozing with the right people * Doing flashy work, whatever that means in a given situation What I have seen lead to failure or, at best, being undervalued and ignored: * Caring about teammates and your future self * Caring about the end user and the business itself, when it conflicts with something sales, marketing, or a PM want * Creating resilient, well-engineered systems It's the same problem as anywhere else. Well-crafted systems are invisible and taken for granted. Saving the day by putting out a fire is applauded, even when you're the one who laid out the kindling and matches. Managers at all levels care about their own ego more than the company, product, or team. Maybe I just spent too much time with ex-Microsoft hacks.
- 9mo ago
- Findecanor 9mo ago> Do so many people really sign up for newsletters when prompted? It's the same economic model as for spam: You'd need only to get a critical number of clicks for it to become profitable.
- appreciatorBus 9mo agoAt a small company I used to work for, a couple of marketing adjacent people occasionally advocated for a modal newsletter sign-up pop-up on the homepage. Each time it came up, I would argue against it, believing that it was not only a bad experience and that people would click away, but that few people would actually sign up. Eventually, a more assertive marketing person came on board, made the case for the pop-up, and won the argument. We added the pop-up. The result? I was wrong. 100% wrong. Not only did our site metrics not suffer in any way, but tens of thousands of people signed up to the newsletter and it became a much more important communications and conversion channel than it had been. To this day, I still hate it, and I hate pop-ups in general, but I try to have some humility about it. I have no doubt that my previous intransigence cost the company some business.
- hollandheese 9mo ago>I was wrong. 100% wrong. Not only did our site metrics not suffer in any way, but tens of thousands of people signed up to the newsletter and it became a much more important communications and conversion channel than it had been. You were absolutely correct that it's a bad experience, and that probably a lot of people hated it and think less of your company for doing it. But since every site behaves this way it's not a deal-breaker for people anymore. People either find a way to get around it or just suffer with the crappiness of the modern web and your metrics just go brrrrr.
- padjo 9mo agoI think it’s caused my data asymmetry. It’s very easy to show that x users signed up for the newsletter and to show that newsletter subscribers have a better retention rate or whatever. However it’s much harder to quantify the negative impacts, so pop ups proliferate. At least this is my experience anyway time I tried to push back against this sort of pattern.
- globalnode 9mo agothe vast majority of web users arent technical like HN readers. especially boomers, they actively solicit ad's to tell them what to buy.
- barnabee 9mo agoIf it takes an ad for someone to buy something, chances are they shouldn’t buy anything.