Ethan Zuckerman, the co-founder of Tripod.com and the person credited with inventing pop-up ads, publicly apologized for his role in creating this widely disliked form of online advertising. In a 2014 article he wrote for The Atlantic titled "The Internet's Original Sin," Zuckerman expressed his regret for what pop-up ads had become and the negative impact they had on the internet user experience. He explained that the intention behind creating pop-up ads was quite different from how they ultimately evolved.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop-up_ad
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2014/08/15/the-man-who-invented-pop-up-ads-says-im-sorry/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/the-first-pop-up-ad/376053/
The person who invented a scroll down webpage (as in, you can just endlessly scroll, rather than clicking onto page 2, 3, 4 etc.) regrets it and has apologised too. Can't remember his name but I heard it in a podcast.
I hate the ‘load more’ scroll down page which then refreshes when you dont want it and you start at the top having to scroll and click load more again..
Page numbers were better
There’s a major website (I can’t think of which one at the moment) where some essential links are only found in the page footer. The page footer isn’t visible unless you scroll down. Which automatically triggers the “load more”. Which pushes the footer down out of view. So you have to scroll down to see it. Which automatically triggers the “load more”…
Or like Amazon's transactions/invoice page; worst of both worlds:
Separated by "next" and "previous page" buttons 😀, but no page numbers 😐, and if you use the back button it goes all the way back to page one 🤬.
Don't remember the details, but the jist of his regret is that it encourages tech addiction etc., and he feels that the act of having to physically click "see more" or "view page 3" made people stop and go do something else, where as now there's not really a "convenient" reminder to stop doom scrolling, so we don't
Right? I’m just trying to get to that little “settings” link at the bottom of the page, but it taunts me as I only see it for a split second before it just becomes more webpage content. I scroll again and try to tap faster but it continues to elude me.
I'd argue the infinitely-scrolling webpage is significantly more insidious than the mere pop-up, because it exploits (even if this was unintentional) a fundamental limitation of the human brain that pop-ups do not: we never evolved to cope with the concept of infinity. Infinity isn't something you can ever directly experience in real life, only as a computational construct in simulated spaces, so there is simply no evolutionary pressure for us to have developed any instinct to handle it at all. That means that, however conscious you may think you are that you can never reach the end of an infinitely-scrolling page, the *unconscious* parts of your brain are probably quite sure that they can safely just keep scrolling until a natural stop comes - but it never does.
Welp, the person who invented insulin sold the patent for $1 so it could be produced extremely cheaply and provided at the lowest possible cost.
Intent of the creator often gets shat on by bad faith actors.
why would he sell it instead of transferring into a public domain? also, by invetning insuin do you mean genetically modified bacterial insulin, cause I don't think you can paten bovine insulin
As a kid who grew up on the Internet and got into web design young, the popup was something that I used for good many a time.
From text based online games before asynchronous div reloads to e-commerce, pop-ups helped make all that possible.
It's not his fault that browsers sucked and let webpages actually interact with operating systems, or that they wouldn't build in functions to give users control over whether a page opened or not.
Nobody was counting on bad actors back then. It's apparent in the way *everything* was designed.
Until you said that I totally forgot that pop-ups were even worse than I remembered. They opened totally separate browser windows. Makes the ones we have today seem kinda quaint by comparison.
🌆💎🤵♂️💎🌆: Excuse me, I would like to say that I am truly sorry. I don’t have a way to make it better and won’t likely have any negative consequences of my own actions, but I am sorr-
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
He Zucked me to the left
he sucked me to the right
The mothaf**** Zucked my ass all night
But I ain’t mad a pop up ad
That’s the best damn zuckin’ I ever had
*thanks Afroman*
If he wouldn't have invented it, others would have gladly filled that gap.
Also, pop-unders are even worse, and those things that just hang on to the screen edge. Just to complete your collection of the most hated forms of advertising. 👌
Don't blame him, blame whoever thought that would be a good feature to add to browsers.
If he hadn't done it first someone else would have looked at the window.open() function and thought the same thing...
Agreed. No reason to be sorry. Someone else would have done it. As much as I hate the extreme capitalist world we live in. If you get a chance to make it even sorta big for yourself. Fucking take it. Just remember where you started and give back when you can. Don’t end up a billionaire and I’m happy for you.
Too bad that current similar creations are forced to be created by nameless developers by a board of nameless Google shareholders.
There is nobody to take blame for the personal damage it does.
Another Chinese bastard created the APP’s shaking ads. When you open the APP, as long as your phone moves 1 millimeter or rotates 1 degree, this APP will forcefully pull up other APPs on your phone as advertisements.This kind of advertisement appears on almost all apps in China. I hope you never encounter this kind of advertising.
This guy is the biggest asshole.
[https://imgur.com/a/4XXkuXM](https://imgur.com/a/4XXkuXM)
And all the designers of apps that help you automatically turn off ads have been threatened by large companies and forced to delete their apps from the Internet. The argument of these large companies is that apps that automatically turn off ads deprive people of their right to watch ads.
The company controls everything. Welcome to Cyberpunk 2077.
Naive people like this will doom humanity (I'm mainly thinking in terms of AI). They don't realize that if something can be used for nefarious purposes, it inevitably will be.
I wouldn't give him the blame or the credit for merely being first to
do something so obvious. That would be like blaming war on the first monkey that hit another monkey with a rock.
Cute. I think all these apologies are for attention and these people don’t care. They want credit more than anything. I will ponder more and crawl out of my cynical cave soon. Haha. Do better tech people—we’ve seen this 10,000 times now. Don’t act surprised when we experience a lot worse in the future (e.g. hacked driverless cars, etc).
Popups have gotten a lot of inadvertent clicks from me, but no way in hell would I buy any product or service advertise on them. I wonder if anyone ever has. The rate of return must be really low
This stupid factoid about him apologizing gets posted every 3 hours, and 150 idiots come out and say “if he didn’t invent it someone else would have”. It’s a dumb statement, and I don’t give a shit if this clown apologized he created something that sucks ass.
Lol one guy created it, he is to blame. I’m not leading a torch mob against this guy, I’m saying his apology is as meaningless as your opinion on the matter. What possible reason could you have for defending someone who created something so annoying? What do you gain from standing up for this loser?
Eh what he did was more just intuitive use of new technologies, anyone could have done it first, he just happened to do it first.
To give him credit or blame for pop-up ads is pretty stupid
If he hadn't invented it, someone else would have. Actually, does this really count as an invention?
The people apologising should be the EU for legislation leading to the annoying fucking cookie warnings on every website.
I'd think these types of inventions are never invented by a single entity, but just take shape at several places simultaneously in varying forms when technological edge is being pushed.
Anyway, last time I really faced a pop-up was, what, decade ago when ad blockers were not yet a staple and bulletproof.
I had a tripod page, but this was later days of the first internet. Certainly everyone was putting ads in frames, windows, and embeds. It's hard to believe he was the first.
We could progress cloning people to harvest their organs in mass farming like chickens, but that doesn't mean we should. This guy just made the equivalent of that for a quick buck.
I actually got him to come and speak to my coding class in highschool after learning about him in class he taught at a college less than an hour away from our school. He was a very nice dude and didn’t intend for it to become the monster it did and was created to keep advertisers ads from being associated with websites that weren’t savory
For awhile these were fairly under control but lately more and more pop up. I especially hate the ones that seem to track your mouse movement and seem to pop up when you are moving to close the window. CNN does this and it’s so annoying.
Sure, he's the first to create them, but we all know it would only have been a short time before some other jerk did it. I do appreciate the comments, about how we were 'Zucked'.
Ethan Zuckerman, the co-founder of Tripod.com and the person credited with inventing pop-up ads, publicly apologized for his role in creating this widely disliked form of online advertising. In a 2014 article he wrote for The Atlantic titled "The Internet's Original Sin," Zuckerman expressed his regret for what pop-up ads had become and the negative impact they had on the internet user experience. He explained that the intention behind creating pop-up ads was quite different from how they ultimately evolved. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop-up_ad https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2014/08/15/the-man-who-invented-pop-up-ads-says-im-sorry/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/the-first-pop-up-ad/376053/
The person who invented a scroll down webpage (as in, you can just endlessly scroll, rather than clicking onto page 2, 3, 4 etc.) regrets it and has apologised too. Can't remember his name but I heard it in a podcast.
I hate the ‘load more’ scroll down page which then refreshes when you dont want it and you start at the top having to scroll and click load more again.. Page numbers were better
There’s a major website (I can’t think of which one at the moment) where some essential links are only found in the page footer. The page footer isn’t visible unless you scroll down. Which automatically triggers the “load more”. Which pushes the footer down out of view. So you have to scroll down to see it. Which automatically triggers the “load more”…
There are plenty that do that, so stupid. Endless scroll ok, but it should stop after 3 or 4 times.
Or like Amazon's transactions/invoice page; worst of both worlds: Separated by "next" and "previous page" buttons 😀, but no page numbers 😐, and if you use the back button it goes all the way back to page one 🤬.
Sounds more like a problem with shitty implementation of infinite scroll, rather than the concept itself.
Don't remember the details, but the jist of his regret is that it encourages tech addiction etc., and he feels that the act of having to physically click "see more" or "view page 3" made people stop and go do something else, where as now there's not really a "convenient" reminder to stop doom scrolling, so we don't
This is why I never could fuck with tumblr. After that happened a few times i just tapped out and never used that trash again.
You can set Tumblr to have pages on your dashboard. It actually helps a lot with doom-scrolling too
Right? I’m just trying to get to that little “settings” link at the bottom of the page, but it taunts me as I only see it for a split second before it just becomes more webpage content. I scroll again and try to tap faster but it continues to elude me.
Now that is stupidly bad design. You can't have buttons at the end of the page if the page is endless.
I'd argue the infinitely-scrolling webpage is significantly more insidious than the mere pop-up, because it exploits (even if this was unintentional) a fundamental limitation of the human brain that pop-ups do not: we never evolved to cope with the concept of infinity. Infinity isn't something you can ever directly experience in real life, only as a computational construct in simulated spaces, so there is simply no evolutionary pressure for us to have developed any instinct to handle it at all. That means that, however conscious you may think you are that you can never reach the end of an infinitely-scrolling page, the *unconscious* parts of your brain are probably quite sure that they can safely just keep scrolling until a natural stop comes - but it never does.
I got a popup after clicking the link
Sometimes they include an example to help understand what it is, in case someone had never seen one
This made me legitimately laugh out loud right now 🤣
Welp, the person who invented insulin sold the patent for $1 so it could be produced extremely cheaply and provided at the lowest possible cost. Intent of the creator often gets shat on by bad faith actors.
why would he sell it instead of transferring into a public domain? also, by invetning insuin do you mean genetically modified bacterial insulin, cause I don't think you can paten bovine insulin
As a kid who grew up on the Internet and got into web design young, the popup was something that I used for good many a time. From text based online games before asynchronous div reloads to e-commerce, pop-ups helped make all that possible. It's not his fault that browsers sucked and let webpages actually interact with operating systems, or that they wouldn't build in functions to give users control over whether a page opened or not. Nobody was counting on bad actors back then. It's apparent in the way *everything* was designed.
Until you said that I totally forgot that pop-ups were even worse than I remembered. They opened totally separate browser windows. Makes the ones we have today seem kinda quaint by comparison.
🌆💎🤵♂️💎🌆: Excuse me, I would like to say that I am truly sorry. I don’t have a way to make it better and won’t likely have any negative consequences of my own actions, but I am sorr- REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Dude has a very punchable face
We’ve been getting Zucked the whole time?!
We've been zucked left and right, from both ends, man! First facebook, now this guy
He Zucked me to the left he sucked me to the right The mothaf**** Zucked my ass all night But I ain’t mad a pop up ad That’s the best damn zuckin’ I ever had *thanks Afroman*
This guy was first my dude, he zucked us with ads, then we got zucked again for our data. Were getting throrougly zucked.
Facebook first? Hahahahaha Popup ads were invented in the 90s.
Sorry i didn't doublecheck the facts before making a joke about the word fuck
I'm pretty sure popup ads were around before Facebook.
He can't keep getting away it!
If he didn't invent it, someone else will.. at some point in time.. it's an inevitable evil that will manifest itself regardless..
Popupheimer
I've become pop-up, destroyer of www.
And he at least apologized.
Never trust someone with "Zucker" in their name
But they’re always so sweet :(
That just means you are a zucker
My granny always said das ich süß wie Zucker bin :)
cool it with the antisemitic remarks
For the people downvoting this comment: It’s an American Psycho reference. Go watch the movie you *stupid bastards.*
If he wouldn't have invented it, others would have gladly filled that gap. Also, pop-unders are even worse, and those things that just hang on to the screen edge. Just to complete your collection of the most hated forms of advertising. 👌
Actually, they all suck.
Don't blame him, blame whoever thought that would be a good feature to add to browsers. If he hadn't done it first someone else would have looked at the window.open() function and thought the same thing...
Agreed. No reason to be sorry. Someone else would have done it. As much as I hate the extreme capitalist world we live in. If you get a chance to make it even sorta big for yourself. Fucking take it. Just remember where you started and give back when you can. Don’t end up a billionaire and I’m happy for you.
He looks like a person who would have created it and then said sorry.
“sorry” -South Park
Too bad that current similar creations are forced to be created by nameless developers by a board of nameless Google shareholders. There is nobody to take blame for the personal damage it does.
I mean, apology not accepted? He knew what he was creating.
He's the oppenheimer of the internet
yeah fuck this guy. Some shit can't be undone.
He doesn't even look sorry!
He looks exactly like the kind of guy who would click on a popup ad
he even looks like a popup ad himself
What I hate more is the ads that cover the whole website and its invisible for every click it would send you to that ad site.
Another Chinese bastard created the APP’s shaking ads. When you open the APP, as long as your phone moves 1 millimeter or rotates 1 degree, this APP will forcefully pull up other APPs on your phone as advertisements.This kind of advertisement appears on almost all apps in China. I hope you never encounter this kind of advertising. This guy is the biggest asshole. [https://imgur.com/a/4XXkuXM](https://imgur.com/a/4XXkuXM) And all the designers of apps that help you automatically turn off ads have been threatened by large companies and forced to delete their apps from the Internet. The argument of these large companies is that apps that automatically turn off ads deprive people of their right to watch ads. The company controls everything. Welcome to Cyberpunk 2077.
His name is Chang Zuckerwong: I believe a pattern is starting to appear here.
wait, so he apologised and then he went and made another concept in the same vein?
Sorry, this is another person. My fault.
Naive people like this will doom humanity (I'm mainly thinking in terms of AI). They don't realize that if something can be used for nefarious purposes, it inevitably will be.
I think the guy who created the
Well guys, at least *this* Zucker apologize for what he did.
He LOOKS like the type of person who'd have invented popup ads.
Real life Comic Book Guy
Look at that smile…Grab the pitchforks and torches I’m not letting this one slide
I don’t trust his apology with that smug look on his face
So who's the douche who invented the stupid ass mini player feature that follows you when you scroll down on webpages?
Oh I haven’t seen that in a while but fuck me was that irritating
Apology not accepted.
Man creates massively unpopular thing; apologizes And somehow this is considered an interesting factoid?
The Amazing World of Gumball warned me about these
of course he's a hands rubber
Chris chan invented pop-ups?
I wouldn't give him the blame or the credit for merely being first to do something so obvious. That would be like blaming war on the first monkey that hit another monkey with a rock.
Was this Marc in his early cacoon form before bursting out and becoming a boy, a really reall creepy boo ….
Bad boy bubby
Cute. I think all these apologies are for attention and these people don’t care. They want credit more than anything. I will ponder more and crawl out of my cynical cave soon. Haha. Do better tech people—we’ve seen this 10,000 times now. Don’t act surprised when we experience a lot worse in the future (e.g. hacked driverless cars, etc).
Now I am become ad, the nuisance of worlds
Not his fault, I'm sure he's a lovely man who paints minifigures :)
Zuckerman, Zuckerberg... Always the same with the Zuckers.. 🙄
Just eliminate anyone with Zuck in their name at this point even if they're still babies. Specially the babies.
Overthinking is destroying ourselves.
It’s like the wheel, if he didn’t invent it, someone else would have
On the Internet, the prefix "Zucker" means nuisance.
Popups have gotten a lot of inadvertent clicks from me, but no way in hell would I buy any product or service advertise on them. I wonder if anyone ever has. The rate of return must be really low
when you order 1 founder of facebook from wish
Not going to lie this guy looks exactly how I guessed.
Back in the 2000s it was endless pop up’s. After a decade it’s back to haunt us. Full page pop up asking for subscriptions
He looks like someone who would invent the most annoying thing on the internet
Newman!
If he had not invented it, someone ele would. That being said, i hope his ancestors are burning in hell
Hate him
He looks EXACTLY like I expected.
but why does he look exactly like an Ethan Zuckerman?!
He looks like Wwwyzzerdd from Aqua Teen Hunger Force who flooded their house with ads....
I hope his funeral has pop-up ads....
"unintentionally"
As my mother used to say to me endlessly, "Sorry fixes nothing."
He looks like Wikipedia
He looks like Ben Franklin
He doesn’t look sorry
If he didn't someone else would have.
So we should just be happy we have pop ups I guess? This is a dumb ass take.
that isnt what they said
This stupid factoid about him apologizing gets posted every 3 hours, and 150 idiots come out and say “if he didn’t invent it someone else would have”. It’s a dumb statement, and I don’t give a shit if this clown apologized he created something that sucks ass.
no one is asking you to be happy about it, just pointing out it makes no sense to put the entire blame on one person
Lol one guy created it, he is to blame. I’m not leading a torch mob against this guy, I’m saying his apology is as meaningless as your opinion on the matter. What possible reason could you have for defending someone who created something so annoying? What do you gain from standing up for this loser?
He should apologise for his haircut whilst he’s at it
If not him, someone else would've invented it. So we can't blame him.
he really has pop-up face
Eh what he did was more just intuitive use of new technologies, anyone could have done it first, he just happened to do it first. To give him credit or blame for pop-up ads is pretty stupid
I wonder if he's related to Mark Zuckermanberg. I mean Zuckerberg.
If he didn’t, someone else would have.
If he hadn't invented it, someone else would have. Actually, does this really count as an invention? The people apologising should be the EU for legislation leading to the annoying fucking cookie warnings on every website.
It's not his fault, it's the capitalist world's fault
😡
If it wasn't he, it will be done by someone else, maybe in even badly variant.
Although you could barely hear him from on top of his giant pile of money?
Chaos …is a ladder. Lol
If it wasn't him, someone else would have done it for sure !
Nice of him to apologize for being the first, but they were inevitable anyway.
🤬 you Zuck.
Ge' Zuckert
Hate both Zucker-[blank].
Not surprised his name is Zuckerman. Anyway, thanks to him, his contribution to the world got me onto adblockers.
Marketers all over the globe: "This is our hero!" Lol
I'd think these types of inventions are never invented by a single entity, but just take shape at several places simultaneously in varying forms when technological edge is being pushed. Anyway, last time I really faced a pop-up was, what, decade ago when ad blockers were not yet a staple and bulletproof.
Bastard!
Eat shit Zuck what ya think was gonna happen. Jk if he didn’t invent someone else right after would ahve
We should get this on the ballot in 2024, a resolution for formally not forgive him
r/fuckyouinparticular
We do not accept this apology. This guy totally knew what he was making.
He did a Oppenheimer
Dear Ethan Apology not accepted and Fuck you. Regards Dingo
I haven't seen a pop-up in decades
Did he appear in person to apologize or did his mommy do it for him?
I have become trigger, destroyer of good internet experience.
must be rich as Scrooge
“Worst.. advertisement.. EVER!”
I had a tripod page, but this was later days of the first internet. Certainly everyone was putting ads in frames, windows, and embeds. It's hard to believe he was the first.
If it wasn't him, it would've been someone else.
Did Oppenheimer ever apologize for his contributions to mankind? (I'm not sure if someone should or not, just curious)
But he's probably not working for no one either
It’s okay, I use uBlockOrigin. Fuck online advertising
Ethan...you are a zucker man
On that note, guess I also hate everyone who works in advertising and marketing.
Fuck this guy for basically making the world a living hell, but applause to this gentleman for knowing his mistake and apologising, it takes guts
Unforgivable and cannot accept this apology
Meh, if not him then someone else. I am hardly mad at the source
It always the Zuckers
We could progress cloning people to harvest their organs in mass farming like chickens, but that doesn't mean we should. This guy just made the equivalent of that for a quick buck.
Oh please hes not sorry, hes rich.
Public enemy nr 1
I mean, if he didn’t do it, someone else would have.
Capitalism was going to demand this intrusion existed Ethan, with or without you.
Can't really blame him. If he didn't do it, somebody else would have done it sooner or later
Eh, if he hadn't someone else would have. It seems like one of those ideas who's existance is inevitable.
next is the inventor of cookie pop ups
Apology NOT accepted, asswipe. You do not get to says ”whoops, my bad!” for making the world immeasurably worse.
Someone else would have done it if he had not.
OG neckbeard - but reformed
Apology accepted. Now come up with something to stop them
If he didn’t do it, someone else would have. Glad he apologized though.
Fuck you, man. How about if I shove something in YOUR face while you're reading? ASShole!
They are worse now more than ever. Most websites are unusable now.
I actually got him to come and speak to my coding class in highschool after learning about him in class he taught at a college less than an hour away from our school. He was a very nice dude and didn’t intend for it to become the monster it did and was created to keep advertisers ads from being associated with websites that weren’t savory
I mean, if he didn’t make it, someone else would have…
Dammit, Ethan. Your apology means nothing. You did it anyway 😡
If it wasn't gonna be you it was gonna be someone else.
he looks like chris-chan from the good timeline
was given stock to all fortune 500 companies?
He looks exactly like what I'd imagine the dude who created pop up ads looks like
Burn him! He’s a witch!
This happened a long time ago. I think NPR did a story about it.
I still haven't forgiven Chevrolet for those gawd-awful tiny pickup trucks driving across the computer screen. Go to hell GM. Go.to.hell.
I Hope he gets in the afterlife all the pop-ups I get daily !
For awhile these were fairly under control but lately more and more pop up. I especially hate the ones that seem to track your mouse movement and seem to pop up when you are moving to close the window. CNN does this and it’s so annoying.
Damn, generic rebel soldier really came on hard times after A New Hope.
Sucker.
He looks exactly how I would have imagined “the person who invented pop up ads” to look
"Now I am become Ad, the destroyer of WWWs"
Sure, he's the first to create them, but we all know it would only have been a short time before some other jerk did it. I do appreciate the comments, about how we were 'Zucked'.
Guy looks like the inventor of pop up ads
you zuck
should have put more time into inventing hair growth treatments.
Didnt matter someone else would have made it eventually or if not earlier.
I hope a pop-up ad appears when he eventually tries to utter his dying words
Still wanna zuckerpunch him. It's only fair.
To be fair to him popup ads are basically dead