The Seattle Times has had this bad iOS Safari bug for the past month or so. It reproduces always for me on Mobile Safari and Firefox Focus.

To reproduce it, just visit their home page (or any story) on your phone and start to read, and within 7-10 seconds, this pops up, every time.

However, if you try it on iOS Chrome, ads come in and the site works properly.

So, rather than a mobile bug as I first thought, it appears the publisher is taking a passive aggressive approach to ad blockers, making it harder to read even its home page.

Personally, I think it’s more professional for the company to just put up a black screen with a note for visitors using ad blockers. Just be honest, you’re establishing a paywall of sorts.

But hey, they’ve gotta make money. Some of us just don’t want our private browsing history and story interests sold to irresponsible third parties which turn us into products.

Here are some alternative news and news related sites:

I tweeted the bug to a couple of reporters recently. And they either didn’t see my note or chose not to respond.

Posted by Jeff Reifman

Jeff is a technology consultant based in the Pacific Northwest.

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