Click a link and need to go back 10x to get back. Yes, I enjoy the footballs.

  • officermike@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Yeah, I also hate back-button hijacking. I suspect some websites do it to artificially force more page views for ad revenue. Try a long-press on the back button to view the history for that browser tab and click on the most recent page you think won’t redirect.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      I usually right click the back button and go 2 entries back. Done.

      Microsoft also does this a lot on some of their sites.

      • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@lemmy.today
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        2 months ago

        Usually with this, it’s like 20 entries, so pushes everything else off.

        The ones where it’s only a couple entries mostly seem to be the ones where there’s multiple articles on a single page and it’s at least might be attempting to be helpful?

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Youtube does it, and it just continues to blast the wrong video you accidentally just auto-started because instead if fucking off, it shows other videos with the bad video getting just reduced.

      Aaargh for the state of todays internet

  • The Pantser@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    This could easily be fixed by the browsers but they don’t. Sure wish these back button tricks would stop. Especially news sites try to keep you from getting back to your search and makes your page refresh over and over. I wonder if that behavior counts as hits to their advertisers.

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I don’t know about “easily.” replaceState() is actually intended to make single-page apps easier to use, by allowing you to use your back button as expected even when you’re staying on the same URL the entire time.

      Likewise, single-page apps are intended to be faster and more efficient than downloading a new static page that’s 99.9% identical to the old one every time you change something.

      Fixing this bad experience would eliminate the legitimate uses of replaceState().

      Now, what they could do is track your browser history “canonically” and fork it off whenever Javascript alters its state, and then allow you to use a keyboard shortcut (Alt + Back, perhaps?) to go to the “canonical” previous item in history instead of to the “forked” previous item.

      • SplashJackson@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        I can handle life without the legitimate use case if it means no more clickjacking bs from companies that should know better

        • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I’d prefer not to let the bad actors dictate browser design.

          “Let’s get rid of images since companies can use images to spoof browserchrome elements.”

          “Let’s get rid of text since scammers can pretend to be sending messages from the computer’s operating system.”

          “Let’s get rid of email since phishing exists.”

          Nah. We can do some stuff (like the aforementioned forked history) to ameliorate the problem, and if it’s well-known enough, companies won’t find it necessary anymore. Heck, browsers like Firefox would probably even let you select Canonical Back as the default Back Button behavior, and then you can have the web the way you want it (like people who disable Javascript).

          • ggppjj@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I’m frustrated that removing bad functionality is being treated as a slippery slope with obviously bad and impossible jokes as the examples chosen.

            I see a bad feature being abused, and I don’t see the removal of that bad feature as a dangerous path to getting rid of email. I don’t ascribe the same weight that you seem to towards precedent in this matter.

      • deejay4am@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Pop a window open with a your app in it (with the user’s permission) without a back button if you want that.

        A web page should be a document, not an experience.

        • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          That would absolutely make everything worse, no question; the web should be more integrated, not less. We shouldn’t incentivize even more companies to silo off their content into apps.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      2 months ago

      It’s not for this, of course. It’s because in the world of single page applications built in react and angular where there is no physical back, like no actual server page to go back to just JavaScript, you have to code in what the back button means. Even though there’s no server calls to ask for a new page. New page. Most people still expect that forward and back will still go forward and back in standard navigation.

      Sites like this it’s pretty clear that they just overwrite that with the last 20 calls to their own page, but the alternative is that single page applications would not be able to have forward or back functionality

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It’s a very “dumb” implementation of a generally useful feature. Browsers don’t keep track of how many times you’re redirected to the same site or try to consolidate the back-button list accordingly, but they certainly could. Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a plugin to this effect.

      • groet@feddit.org
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        2 months ago

        They actually do. To avoid infinite loops. If a URL redirects to the identical URL for more than ~5 times most browsers will refuse to load and show an error instead.

        That’s why sites like this will generate new URLs with the same content.

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Also: Algorithmic generated feeds where you try to click on one thing, but you click on the next thing in the list and when you click back, the feed looks completely different because it has new information on you. That thing you wanted to click on is gone and will never return.

    • IndiBrony@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      That’s actually how I do my Lemmy feed. I have one chance to comment on a thread and if I don’t do it, when the page refreshes I lose it forever.

      I’ve learned to accept that there are just some things the universe never wanted me to comment on.

      • Skyhighatrist@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        What’s worse is that YouTube sometimes doesn’t do that, i.e. when you hit back it shows the same list from the cache or something. It gives you hope and makes it worse on those occasions when it does fully refresh on back.

    • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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      2 months ago

      What helps with this is clicking links with mousewheeldown, I automatically opens in a new tab. Also MWD on the tab label will close it, so you don’t have to aim for the ‘x’.

      A mouse with thum buttons is really handy as they do foreward and back, double clicking that gets you out of the issue caused in op

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Three things.

    1. Yes. Sometimes this is malice. Sometimes this is an attempt to drive impressions and page views.

    2. This can also be caused by poorly configured web applications that update in real time. If, say, some sports website is giving you real-time data about the game as it progresses, a poorly configured web application might be creating a dynamic URL for every change. When you access the older page, it will be instructed to take you to the most recent data, so pressing back is taking you to old data on that page, and then immediately realizing that data is old so refreshing it with the most relevant data.

    3. This is a super common misconfiguration in single page web applications. Domain.com will take you to an application that renders at domain.com/en-us/home. Pressing back takes you to domain.com, and guess what happens next?

    This is basically 99.99% of these cases. I would say if its on some shitty news site with 1000 ads that somehow sneak by AdBlock and UBlok Origin, it’s case 1. Otherwise, it’s case 2 or 3.

    The picture instance is either case 1 or 2.

    • ajikeshi@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      and neither case provides a service in a state that should be exposed to the outside. Either due to malice or incompetence.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Any website managed/developed by someone certified in the last decade or more knows not to do that.

      It’s absolutely malicious, both to drive SRO and to keep “accidental” clicks from backing out so quickly

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    This is one of the absolute greatest reasons to support opening most everything in a new tab (as long as you don’t end up like my mom who at one point had over 100 tabs on her phone). Doesn’t matter if it’s a link from the same website, from a search engine, or whatever else there is. New tab.

    • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Then on android Firefox you accidentally hit the back button and it closes the tab and you can’t go forward and you already navigatedc away from the originating page on the other tab forcing you to open your history and try to figure out where the hell it is.

  • TedZanzibar@feddit.uk
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    2 months ago

    You’ve reminded me of a similar frustration that I’ve never found the answer to - though it may be adblock related - in that whenever I open a link to eBay it completely wipes the history for that tab. Or possibly it opens a new tab and kills the parent. Either way I always forget about it until the next time and then it drives me mad all over again.

    • deejay4am@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Reddit has been doing this when I click a result from a Google search (yeah, sometimes you have to)

      It’s fucking annoying and I hope whatever JavaScript trick lets them do this gets blocked

      • gh0stcassette@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 months ago

        I use a Firefox based browser and this hasn’t happened to me, are you using Chromium or Safari? Could be a browser specific issue

  • Eiri@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    I’ve always wondered. Is there really a benefit to a ton of redirects like that? Like, do they gain anything by making it harder to back out?

    Or is it just extremely incompetent website programming?

  • njordomir@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    This is why I have dozens, if not hundreds of tabs open. Usually I open links in a new tab so I can easily tab back to where I came from. Using a hierarchical tab manager makes this work better because when you’re done with the topic, you close the whole branch… theoretically.

    This tactic also seems targeted at mobile users where it’s harder to break the loop.