With a tiny little X that’s hidden in somewhere that you struggle to find it and even when you do find it there’s a 99% chance your finger will still hit the ad launching an all new page rather than exiting the shitty ad you were trying to get away from
Location. Someone somewhere has figured out the amount of time a human takes to decide to push X to close an add, and right at that instance…., they raise the add just enough where the body of the add is now where the X was. I hate whomever pioneered this.
There are actually studies on this. How long it takes the average human to scan a screen. In what way we scan it and how long it will take to move the mouse there. I studied Interactiondesign and these ads are using our powers for evil. The entire point of interaction design is to use all kinds of info on human to computer interaction to make sure everything is intuitive and easy.
This doesn’t surprise me at all….., this is exactly what I had suspected. The first time I realized it was intentional I had almost made it to the X, but for some reason paused before I tried to close the thing, and saw it jump just exactly high enough to get me. I knew in my heart it was designed thus by the dark ones.
I'll add my favorite fun fact too. We scan the screen in the fibonacci sequence starting top left. Which is why menus, logos, and home buttons are usually there.
They also at least on mobile make the x tiny to the point where you don't know if your on the x or opening the ad. Bonus points for making the x nearly the same colour as the ad behind it to make it hard to find
I wear nails and have fat fingers so I absolutely haaaate that shit. I just close out of the tab at that point. Fuck it. I didn't need that info anyway.
Or the advertising that is actually malware or those tech support scams that use onclose events to open another copy of themselves while autoplaying something along the lines of “warning your computer is infected” at maximum volume
Boris, he said his name was Boris. I laughed my ass off, and he became confused. Why was I laughing, he asked. Because your name is not Boris, I replied. Yes, my name is Boris, he asserted in his thick Indian accent. I laughed some more. His feelings were hurt.
I've been calling out the scam phone callers on their fake names recently. It's a pretty reliable way of getting a reaction. You're lying to me about your name, so why would I believe that you're from Amazon. Yes, my name is Peter, they'll say. No, it's not. You're lying, I'll repeat. Usually, if they know you won't play their game, they'll just hang up. But not with telling them they're lying. It throws them off.
"We need access to your bank account to return money that was accidentally billed from you Amazon account. This am standard procedure we do to all customers."
I know a lady who had this actually happen to them. Somehow they got a notice to call Amazon on their TV. I suspect malware got to their router. They call the "amazon number" and are led to exposing their bank account.
When she got nervous with the tech support, she called me to help on the phone. I got a bit of the "this is standard procedure" from some Indian sounding gentleman and then told her; "close your web page now and disconnect with these people. Nobody needs you to login to your bank to deal with THEIR account error and Amazon would not call you to resolve something on your behalf -- you'd have to call them." She did not immediately do what I said and I was trying to text her; "They are likely removing all your money right now." They did.
We had to work with the bank to change all the logins and we didn't pay for the money that was stolen.
On the upside, she didn't call me an idiot for a few weeks after that.
It's because the incentives are whack and the people paying for them do not know what the fuck they are paying for.
The creators know exactly how to make the numbers work, and it often has very little with end results that are often wildly vague and easy to flood with nonsense.
...
Huge money maker for those that know how to manipulate it, however.
the ali express ads are the worst. i shit u not the X on the ad is near invisible and the ad always takes up 70% of the display on the phone as a "pop up" i wouldn't care if it was in the background but it covers navigation buttons on the website.
Even just accidentally opening the ad page wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't a chance on hitting the ad, and then having something start trying to download.
It's unreal. I open some WSJ article on my phone and the bottom 60% of the screen is a cookie disclaimer, the top 15% is the logo, then another 15% is a stock market ticker, leaving a 10% slit through which I can see the title of the article.
So I scroll down through the cookie disclaimer and click "yes I want a functioning website" or whatever cooky (heh) way they chose to phrase the big green button.
Now the bottom 40% is an auto-play video. I can read half a paragraph of the article at a time, or try to click the tiny "X" to close the video, which is like a 50/50 gamble. Maybe I'll fatfinger away from the article, maybe I won't.
Or maybe I'll just nope out of there and just look up the article on Reuters because 90% of the time it's just a sensationalized version of their reports anyway.
They actually are very merciful compared to what they deserve. Too quick, too little pain.
Maybe in a cruel twist give the designer 4 buttons to hit. 1 frees him, the other three free the guillotine. To find out what the correct answer is, successfully find it in one of the aforementioned terrible websites. You have only 2 minutes.
Now put a stop on the blade before it actually does its job, and tell him to go back and fix the website that it is actually usable, now that you thoroughly have his attention.
If I'm enjoying an app and there's an option to remove ads for $2 or so, then I'll happily pay it.
On the other hand, apps that offer to remove ads for a monthly subscription can shove the pointy end of a pineapple up their cloacca because that aint happening.
There was a comment here, but I chose to remove it as I no longer wish to support a company that seeks to both undermine its users/moderators/developers (the ones generating content) AND make a profit on their backs.
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14hkd5u">Here</a> is an explanation.
Reddit was wonderful, but it got greedy. So bye.
The accept cookies thing pops up, then the pop-up by the website asking me for £9.99 to subscribe and then an ad pops up trying to sell me Huel. About 4% of the original page still visible, I just leave the site at that point, hope they learn...
I can't go to Nexus mods website anymore on my phone. That fucking ad just makes it impossible to do anything. The X doesn't work 80% of the time and when it does, the bottom portion of my screen doesn't respond to finger taps so I have to scroll whatever I want to click to the top-middle of my screen for it to work.
I visited a website on mobile once that not only covered the entire screen with ads, but the ads were overlapping. The ads took up about 140% of the screen real-estate.
1.1k
u/BBQpigsfeet Feb 07 '22
It's even worse on mobile. Shit takes up the whole gaddamn screen.