Comment by shevy-java
7 hours ago
I've also noticed this recently. Python has a slide-in "donate now or we mug you". I consider this abuse of the visitor.
I want my browser to protect me from ALL those things. Ublock origin did precisely that, then Google went in to kill ublock origin. Ublock lite is nowhere near as good.
I consider this betrayal - naturally by Google, but also by random web designers such as on the python homepage who consider it morally just to pester visitors when they do not want to be pestered. I don't accept ads; I don't accept pop-ups or slide-in effects (in 99.999% of the cases; notifications for some things can be ok, but this does not extend in my book to donation Robin Hood waylanders).
Note that ads like this have a negative effect on me, that is, if e. g. python resorts to pop-ups to pester people to donate, it will be permanently blocked by me and as a consequence never receive any donation ever. This is my policy for dealing with such malicious actors. This includes corporations, but as the example of python shows, also python-devs who think they can abuse users. I understand that some companies depend on ads, but this is not my problem; I could not care about their thinking that it were ok to waste people's time. This is why ublock origin was so important: it helped people waste less time with crappy ads and annoying UI. We need to take the web back from Evil such as Google. We should not allow them to hijack our computer systems and make excuses about it. The browser is too important to leave it in the hands of Google or anyone else who thinks pester-pop-ups are ok. Can someone fire the guy who made this decision for the python homepage and ban him for life please?
> I've also noticed this recently. Python has a slide-in "donate now or we mug you". I consider this abuse of the visitor.
To see it on python.org I had to enable JS (using noscript) AND disable uBlock Origin.
> then Google went in to kill ublock origin. Ublock lite is nowhere near as good.
Use Firefox
Or use other chromium based browsers! Thorium still has working uBlock origin!
the catch is Widevine support if you still want to play videos from commercial sites
all other chromium browsers cannot have signed widevine support?
Firefox however solves both ublock and widevine
Helium likewise
2 replies →
> I consider this abuse of the visitor.
Why can't anything simply be "disliked" anymore?
I get you don't like it.
But abused?
Because there's a slide-in?
On a site run by volunteers?
For open source software you get for free?
That you freely choose to visit?
Calling that abuse seems... off. I have no concerns with people saying the don't like something. But the current nature to be hyperbolic is off-putting to me.
It is abuse.
It's not a flavor of ice cream.
It's an intentional act performed by a party upon another party, in the full conscious deliberate knowing intent to do something other than be nice or even neutral to the other party, but to bother and annoy them, to consume attention and time that they did not willingly give.
It's not the worst crime of the century and so it is a small abuse, but abuse is still the correct word. And it's not a small abuse when performed on a million people instead of one.
If you don't think so then you must be ok with me stealing a single cent from you, and everyone else. Surely you merely dislike that and would defend my behavior against anyone trying to do something so dramatic and hyperbolic as to involve law enforcement over something so small.
How about "user-hostile"?
A thing that the user does not want, but is presented on top of content that they do want, is not serving user intent.
Of course, it's serving the needs of the project, theoretically. (Organizational capture of organizational perpetuation at the expense of organizational goals are a common problem, but I don't have any opinion or knowledge of this case.)
Adopting the user-hostile behaviours of advertising and perpetual fundraising are not a great way to make users happy. But they work, I guess. At some cost.
Don't ask me, I voted by disabling JavaScript and running Firefox. I don't have these problems.
Abuse has a meaning of misuse or use in an unintended way, as in “bringing a large bottle to take home is an abuse of the restaurant’s free refill policy”.
It doesn’t imply the strength of the word in “sexual abuse” or other law-related contexts.
It's abuse. Sugar coating it will only empower the perpetrators. Is it the most inhumane thing possible? No, obviously not. But these sites are taking advantage of the fact that you're there to do something, learn something, get something done, etc and they have your eyeballs. What they're doing is intentional, distracting and getting worse.
I don't care what the commercial status of the site is that I'm visiting, you will not hijack my attention.
> I consider this betrayal - naturally by Google
You're using a web browser built by a company whose primary income is advertising. What did you think would happen instead?
A lot of people have this weird idea that companies are their friends and would defend their interests despite large financial incentives to betray that trust.
Financial incentives, while a large motivator for companies, are frequently not the exclusive one.
Google for quite a few years was seen as a good steward of the free and open Internet.
To assert people shouldn't feel betrayed because "it's a company" fundamentally ignores why people had different expectations for Google to begin with.
I’m sure they’d love to include a blocker in Chrome that blocks all the competitive ad networks.
Why waste effort on something that's a rounding error at best?
1 reply →
But then they'd be one antitrust investigation away from losing it all.
If they'd ever allow such a thing to exist.
"That's just how they make their money," is a common and terrible excuse.
It's not making an excuse on the part of Google, it's pointing out the naivety of expecting otherwise from Google.
Firefox still allows uBlock origin, and even on mobile.
7 replies →
Explanations are not excuses.
If you use a service, but never compensate the creators for it, how can you possibly reason they are immoral?
Not directly at OP, but just in general, the Internet needs to look at itself in the mirror and ask "are we actually the ones driving the problem?"
Free service with strings attached does sound like a "some day - and that day may never come - I will call upon you"[0] type of bargain.
[0] https://youtu.be/HTTxJRAs-uA?t=48
you have a tracking "si=..." parameter in the youtube link
1 reply →
Except the terms aren't vague. They are spelled out. Usually the deal is to accept exposure to ads. While the terms may change in the future, the switching cost of a different browser or website are often quite low.
8 replies →
I disagree with this idea. The current model (generally free content that is supported by advertisers) is not the only model that can exist. Yes the Internet would be vastly different if there were no ad revenue. But the Internet existed without ads before, and certainly could do so again. Services like Meta/X couldn't exist in that market, but would that be so bad?
The OP is not complaining about free with ads. They are complaining about a free software site that is asking for a donation.
> If you use a service, but never compensate the creators for it, how can you possibly reason they are immoral?
A lot of times nowadays it's actually the users themselves creating the content which the platform uses to secure its network effect to have visits in the first place. Should those creator users then be paid as well or not?
Because they don't understand the rules of the game.
If you create something in a field that is so infinitely commoditized that there aren't even any paid options and thousands of competitors that would instantly jump at the chance to be a replacement just for popularity's sake, you are frankly deluded to expect anything in return for your work. Best you can expect is to have some influence over others through your direction of the project, which is something that you could actually sell and I'm sure they do. Just look at Zig.
Any donations they get are completely against any market common sense and just people's good will. Demanding anything is so hilariously out of touch with reality.
I feel like the tech user community has completely lost the plot sometimes.
Remember when we had to listen to Windows users complaining about irritating OS behaviour (performance problems, BSOD, ribbons, clippies, Activation Keys, terrible networking protocols)? After we reached age 15 or so, we learned to politely hold back from saying "yeah we know, use a better OS"?
This feels very similar. I'll be polite. :)
> I feel like the tech user community has completely lost the plot sometimes.
You're mixing "badly implemented operating system", "UX patterns I disagree with", "dark patterns pushed by corporate greed", and "Turns out you need money in order to pay developer salaries even in an open source project".
I'll be polite as well and not elaborate further...
You make a fair point that my attempt at humor is a bit oversimplified.
But it's also the best-available solution. The problems described do not exist on the other side of the fence. Others have different criteria, but we are happy with ours and wonder if y'all might be too.
I haven't used chrome in years.I can't even imagine the user experience you're describing. Just use FF.
> Note that ads like this have a negative effect on me, that is, if e. g. python resorts to pop-ups to pester people to donate, it will be permanently blocked by me and as a consequence never receive any donation ever.
How much were you donating to them before the pop-up?
You think Python is being malicious for asking for donations when they give away so much for free?
Had you already paid for it ahead of time?
Personally I wouldn't mind the ask, it's the pop-up that covers content that I mind.
No, the issue is the intrusive way of asking.
are the donations being distributed among the actual contributors, or do they largely go towards funding DEI initiatives? :)
Looks like you think you know the answer, so for all of us who don't, please enlighten us
2 replies →
It’s not Python asking for donations, it’s the Python Software Foundation. Which means donations won’t necessarily go to improving Python or running PyPI, but your money might end up funding a conference in Trumpistan, outreach for the world’s most popular programming language, or political activities.
This is very important. It's one thing to have your money improve CPython, it's another to have your money go towards an outreach program to help disadvantaged girls in Uganda write a Tetris clone in Python. It's similar to what happens with Mozilla. A way of choosing what exactly will be done with your money is fundamental to get donations.
You apparently can donate to PyPI more directly if you want (same popup, but redirects to a more specific donation site), though since that site is run by PSF, that money goes through PSF and it is unclear if it is earmarked along the way: https://psfmember.org/civicrm/contribute/transact/?reset=1&i...
> I understand that some companies depend on ads, but this is not my problem
It is their problem, though, and they have figured out that pop-ups work. It is not their problem, however, if you decide to never go to their website again. They likely do not want you to go anymore to their website if you are never going to contribute anything.
Pop-ups working on (to pick a number out of thin air) 0.01% of viewers and alienating 5% to never visit the website again is still incentive to use pop-ups.
Pop-ups working to get money and pop-ups working to alienate users are not mutually exclusive.
Short-term thinking is how hegemonies end.
Revenue is how businesses and even no-profits survive. You can be idealistic about it all you want, but if there is no cash flow, those websites will go away.
I had to disable uBlock Origin to test this and... wow, what a load of bullshit. If anything, this kind of stuff makes me want to _not_ donate to that project. All projects I've donated to in the past were the ones which didn't bother me with these things.
I wonder now how many of these I've been missing because of uBlock Origin + DNS Blocking + JS disabled. Last time I tried a normie browser (my mom's), I had to install uBlock Origin there, because I just couldn't use it that way. I feel sorry for the majority of web users, who don't have any protections against popups and invasive advertisements.
For that matter the GNOME desktop asked me for money the other day
KDE started doing a similar thing in 2024. They pop up a notification asking for donations once yearly. Whether you click "Donate" or "No Thanks" on the pop-up, it will go away until the next year. I don't mind them doing this, as it clearly works (see https://pointieststick.com/2024/12/02/i-think-the-donation-n... and https://pointieststick.com/2025/12/28/highlights-from-2025/ ). Historically, contributions to KDE mainly came from companies/government agencies funding work on specific technologies/parts of the desktop, and volunteers working on their special interests. This meant there was a giant blind spot for work on areas that weren't relevant for corporations/governments and weren't fun to work on in someone's free time. All the small individual donations make it possible for KDE to act independently of these large companies/government bodies and hire its own developers to work on tasks that may not be commercially relevant or fun, but are important to the project.
IMO it's only fine as long as it respects the user's choice and doesn't keep on asking. If I choose to not donate, do not nag me about it the next year either. If I choose to donate, do not remind me to do it again. I will do it myself if I decide to.
Perhaps it's cultural - where I live repeatedly asking for money is highly frowned upon and only lowers the reputation of the non-profit doing it. The non-profits who only ask once are much more likely to receive multiple donations from the same person.
Google own products have pop ups. Ad Sense automatic ads generates pop ups. I imagine this is hundreds on millions a month, there’s no way to justify shutting this down in their new “be evil profit at all cost” motto.
"did"? still does.
Just don't use chrome.
uBlock Origin it's very alive and working fine in Firefox and forks of it.
> Ublock origin did precisely that, then Google went in to kill ublock origin.
Advertising company's browser makes it hard to block ads. Film at 11.
It's enshitification of the web. As time moves forward, the web becomes less usable and more about implementing dark patterns to squeeze a few bucks out of you. Anyone would have likely eventually made this decision. It's just a natural conclusion of capitalism.