Please make the pop-ups stop

When I first started using the internet, pop-ups were rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Programmers and users recognized how annoying these ads were, and put web browser based blocks on them. Everything was good!

Today I’m beginning to see pop-ups come back in the form of ”alerts” for the primary service provider. The above picture is a pretty good example from CreditKarma. It’s an advertisement for a feature on credit karma for credit karma.

Like pop-ups , these alerts don’t seem to go away. I’ve clicked that little X button pretty much every time I log in, and it’ll pop back up every time I log in. The verbiage around the alert is also disingenuous. If I recall correctly it isn't that alerts were off, but that they didn't have permission to track my credit rating.

Even more annoying is this pop-up that I frequently get from Snapchat. Sharing my contact information would be a huge invasion of privacy and the privacy of those whose contacts I've collected. This one will also show up from time to time, usually when initially opening the app. If you were to accidentally share your contacts once, they would have them for ever. Far more likely is that someone you know has already shared their contact information, so they've built a graph of friend connections, phone numbers and names with you in it regardless.

Here’s one from Google. Google is slightly nicer in that it seems to only prompt me once a day, but I do find the modal to be much more annoying. And no, for whatever reason I don‘t want to sign in, that should be my choice and it should be respected.

The reason they want you to sign in is also stated plainly in the modal as well. They want me to sign in so they can better track my data. I believe they're probably tracking me anyway and this is likely more of a "pretextual stop" where if they were to get in another privacy lawsuit they could claim I was signed in and agreed to the tracking.

The ones from Robinhood tend to be far more predatory. They’re always pushing me to engage in more risk than I’m willing to take on, presumably for their profit. These ones also seem to pop back up once a quarter.

Another enshitification in Robinhood is the carousel. Back in 2017 or so the carousel would show you news relating to investments you’ve made. Today it’s just ads for Robinhood. If I remember correctly they use to show ads for other companies in there as well, but no longer.

I’m biased towards Apple, and I know android will also give you these notification ads but that really doesn’t excuse it. When did operating systems start popping out ads like this?

I wish this would stop but it probably won‘t as long as there’s a profit motive. Some may call this a dark pattern, but I think it’s just being an annoying twat.