Since you seem to be overly fond of coming across as highly sophisticated, I will have you know that you said it in language the OP understands, not in a language, good sir. Furthermore, I disagree with you in substance, and although I don't feel motivated at this point in time to write an essay on the matter, I do sincerely hope this quote from the movie "Network" might suffice:
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
Dead right. It's people with pitchforks outside the Bastille. It's starving people rioting to reclaim common land taken as 'enclosures' by the rich people.
I somehow think that saying something like "Relax. For fuck's sake." isn't going to help.
"It's starving people rioting to reclaim common land taken as 'enclosures' by the rich people." == Complaining about having to click a cancel button on a mobile browser.
You've completely missed the point. At the moment we have a free web and we can use a variety of browsers to access it.
If instead we can only access the web via apps and those app are controlled by the likes of Apple or Google, then we don't have a free web anymore. Maybe today the apps are free (as in beer), but maybe tomorrow they won't be. We would no longer be in charge and the web would have been appropriated by business interests.
Huh? The original post wasn't about bringing a walled garden approach to the web; it was about modals encouraging visitors to download an app.
I don't think you need to worry about only accessing the web via apps - it just won't happen.
FWIW, I abhor the popups in question but I can understand a company's decision to add them to their site. However, the way to stop this pattern is by showing decision makers statistics that prove they don't work (if that is true of course). The blog in question just seems like one big hissy fit - not the most convincing of arguments.
Relax. For fuck's sake.