A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”

Post by _cadp » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 9:58 AM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #182

giorgioz wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also www.reddit.com is/was doing the same back button hijacking. From google.com visiting a post, then clicking back and you would find yourself on Reddit general feed instead of back to Google.

I'm pretty sure what you're describing is this long-standing bug[1] I've experienced only when using Mobile Safari on Reddit - affecting both old.reddit.com and the (horrible) modern Reddit. It just doesn't happen in other browsers/engines except on iOS. It's especially annoying on an iPad when I tend to use back/forward instead of open-in-new-tab-then-close on iPhone. [1] At least, I hope it's a bug.

Post by dspillett » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 9:58 AM UTC

bertil wrote: post #217

dspillett wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You get a link from LinkedIn [or such]. You click on it, the URL loads, and you read the post. When you click the back button, you aren't taken back to wherever you came from. Instead, […] I've taken to opening anything in a new tab. Closing the tab is my new back button. In an idea world I shouldn't have to, of course, but we live in a world full of disks implementing dark patterns so not an ideal one. Opening in…

I do that everywhere, but it seems to fail for LinkedIn: they don’t redirect the link if it’s not in the same tab.

Post by magicalhippo » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 10:01 AM UTC

domenicd wrote: post #35

charcircuit wrote: post #15

Google should actually fix this from the browser side instead of trying to seriously punish potentially buggy sites.

We tried a few times. We got as far as gating the ability to push into the "real history stack" [1] behind a user activation (e.g. click). But, it's easy to get the user to click somewhere: just throw up a cookie banner or an "expand to see full article" or similar. We weren't really able to figure out any technical solution beyond this. It would rely on some sort of classification of clicks as leading to "real" same…

Post by CWwdcdk7h » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 10:02 AM UTC

globalnode wrote: post #143

will google really punish sites for doing this? and if so how do i report a site? i guess i could email the site with the google link and suggest they fix it first

Post by ChocolateGod » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 10:07 AM UTC

giorgioz wrote: post #121

firefoxd wrote: post #120

Ok, you can start with LinkedIn, I'll wait... If you are wondering how it works. You get a link from LinkedIn, it's from an email or just a post someone shared. You click on it, the URL loads, and you read the post. When you click the back button, you aren't taken back to wherever you came from. Instead, your LinkedIn feed loads. How did it happen? When you landed on the first link, the URL is replaced with the homep…

Also www.reddit.com is/was doing the same back button hijacking. From google.com visiting a post, then clicking back and you would find yourself on Reddit general feed instead of back to Google.