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Comment by progbits | Hacker News Reader

Off-topic but the archive.org page is unusable for me on mobile due to the donation banner: the close button is obscured by the timeline and can't be clicked, "maybe later" replaces it with a different banner asking for contact info which I also can't close.

I love IA and have donated to them before but this is slowly sliding into the dark UX patterns making web unusable.

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> I love IA and have donated to them before but this is slowly sliding into the dark UX patterns making web unusable.

This is ironic because the internet archive made this just last year https://wayforward.archive.org/

The post is still up on the author’s self-hosted blog, no archive needed: http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1363672582&count=1

Your description immediately reminded me of Wikipedia. It's a shame these good projects fall to these levels.

Nonprofits gotta solicit donations. NPR does this, PBS' infamous pledge week does this. This isn't "falling," it's an old practice.

I don't know IA's budget (might be just the pandemic has tolled its finances), but I have reservations about Wikimedia's use of money. (Only the main foundation, others like the German affiliate is efficient about money and except for 2020 has a surplus which obviously went to cover inevitable shortfalls.)

IA is fighting a lawsuit over its pandemic digital book lending service - where they begged for a lawsuit by deliberately offering unlimited lending of scanned books. This is obviously something they must win, so it's going to get really expensive.

A quick search shows that the lawsuit is currently in the discovery phase, which is around the time that lawsuits start to get really, really expensive. And apparently the two sides are fighting, leading the judge to extend discovery while they work out the issues. $$$$

Why is the lawsuit that they intentionally begged for "obviously something they must win"?

The publishers that sued them are asking for a seriously large amount of money and the deletion of all the books they've ever scanned. That's a pretty big deal, don't you think?

Yes that is fine. I'll donate to them again.

But can it please be without the annoying banners, "we need to talk" or similar email subjects and so on? I'm sure it helps convince some people, but doesn't it discourage more?

It broke reader mode too. I got the text of the donation banner and nothing else.

Had to zoom into the corner so I could tap the microscopic close button on the timeline so I could then close the donation banner.

No banner on Firefox Android. Maybe it's uBlock Origin. But I had to use reader mode to read the tiny non reflowing text.

That banner was annoying enough for me on desktop that I removed it with my ad blocker a while ago.

I use default safari on iPhone and was able to hit the x to hide the timeline and then another x to hide the donation banner.

It works for me. I am using chrome on android

Same.

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