Its baaaaack!!
I’ve gotten two redirects so far in the past hour on mobile. No url as I close the browser before the redirect finishes.
On mobile I am getting tons of redirects that totally hijack the browser. I can’t get the URL and have to close the tab.
The ad states I won a prize.
This is annoying as hell
Slee
No, I dot run an as blocker. I don’t use sites that require them. If the ads big me I stop using the site.
Particularly over the past week or so, I’ve had a number of instances in which the script in the ads on the board pages (note: not the one-a-day pop-up ad) causes Firefox to grind to a halt. I eventually get a “script unresponsive” message in most cases. IME, this is usually a sign of a poorly-made ad.
I got the Popular Science TV pop-up again, the very annoying one with the loud self-starting video.
Same problem with the pop-up for Working Mother TV-loud auto start video.
After a few months where I rarely visited the SDMB I have been back recently and found the board lagging hugely. As I type this I am having to wait for a few seconds for the text to catch up with my typing. The problem seems to be related to ads, as I get messages in the status bar saying “waiting for [advert server sites]” when the hangups happen.
The URLs in the status bar change regularly. fw.adsafeprotected.com is the one that seems to be hanging it up at the moment, and has just crashed the Flash plugin on Chrome.
So, then, it appears that the Popular Science TV ads and others of that ilk are coming from the Straight Dope. This seems to me to be a breach of contract of some kind, since we are promised* that paid members should not have to see any ads at all.
Can the settings for these ads not be tweaked so as to be aware of who is a paid member and who is not? Or does no-one in authority care?
*I have not actually been able to find this anywhere in writing, at least not in any of the stickies. I’m sure I have read this in various posts on this site, but searching for it seems a Herculean, if not Sisyphean, task. If there is no such promise, I might as well stop paying for a membership, because what the hell other benefit is there?
As mentioned in this thread, there is a problem on mobile browsers that when a new page loads, it auto scrolls right to the bottom of the page. andrewm mentions having this problem on iOS Safari, but I’m having it, too, on Android, Lollipop 5.0.1.
There is an ad for something but I can’t tell what it is. It looks like it has a night shot of the Empire State building.
Anyway, (and I don’t know the computerspeak term, so forgive me) it won’t let me scroll past it. I’ve used the mouse scroll and the scroll bar on the right of the screen. It keeps grabbing and pulling my view back up to the ad.
I can usually make it stop by refreshing the screen, but it’s annoying.
Same here.
Just chiming in to say I’m having similar issues, using Google Chrome. No other sites cause this problem, and I’ve checked to see that I don’t have shockwave double-installed or anything. I usually have multiple tabs open, which is probably part of the problem.
Typically, what happens is that the site won’t scroll, or is really slow to respond, presumably because of the background activity from the ads. Then it will announce that shockwave has crashed. It’s annoying, nothing more, but it does make it difficult to read.
I have the issue with some kind of audio as well. I only notice when I’m browsing from Chrome on Android Samsung Galaxy S5 and I have audio playing from another source. The audio from the website load conflicts with the ongoing audio. It causes incredible slowness to respond, scroll, select, etc.
Some busted ad is causing a file named “sugr.swf” to be downloaded by the browser (instead of rendered in the page).
Also had another ad that when loaded redirected to a page telling my my browser was infected and had a timer countdown to click a link. I didn’t click it, and unfortunately didn’t get a screen cap.
I have been reading the dope on my phone, an Android LG phone running KitKat. I use Chrome as my browser. I never had any problem reading the SDMB on my phone until a couple of weeks ago.
Suddenly, whenever I load up a thread or switch forums, whenever I try to scroll down below the ads so I can see, you know, the CONTENT, then an ad automatically takes over and displays instead of the thread or forum. It’s almost like the ads are completely overlaying the display space, including the space where the actual content is.
At first I thought it happened because I was reading with the phone rotated horizontally and somehow touching the ad inadvertently with my finger. But I tested it several times, and it happens even when I am very careful to touch only the thread or only the forum topics. Boom, there’s the damn ad.
So then I thought that it happened because maybe I was trying to read the thread/topics list before the ad had completely downloaded or something. But no, whether the ad has completely downloaded or not, as soon as I touch the screen, boom. There’s the damn ad.
As I said, this completely irritating, totally obnoxious behavior just started a week or so ago. And it happens EVERY time on EVERY thread, as soon as I try to scroll down to read the thread content. After I close the ad, it’s fine.
Is anyone else experiencing this? It’s really pissing me off! Is there some setting in my browser or phone that is causing this?
Help me to make it stop!
Happening again today.
New issue today—trying to read http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=801669 on Chrome, and the page won’t let me scroll—every time I go down, it keeps jumping back up so I can see the Energizer video ad. I have sound off, so I don’t know if it was playing. Once it finished, it was replaced with a still ad and scrolling abilities resumed.
(it did it again on another page. Force me to watch the stupid ad once, okay, but if the website is nothing but the energizer bunny, I’m out of here.)
I’ve been having trouble with a pop up ad that says I need to download an app to unlock content. I downloaded one of the apps, for uber, but that has not made any difference. This add pops up about two thirds of the time and is making the message board almost unreadable. I’d be happy to sign up for a membership if that would fix the issue, but try as I might, I can’t find a link anywhere on how to sign up.