> Pop-up windows were a plague in the 90s and early 2000s, and remained that way until browsers started blocking them by default.

And they've come roaring back, on the wake of the well intended but arguably misguided GDPR specification about cookie notifications. It's now common to see popups on many sites in the exact same style.

Popups are such terrible UX that it forced websites to mostly abandon them, but once people were used to them for another reason, ads were quick to follow. They are usually an ad from the site itself rather than a 3rd party, but that hardly matters.

Even the cookie notifications are rife with dark patterns, making it difficult to get to the option with minimal necessary cookies.