Right? The 2000-2010s saw a massive rejection of popups. Blockers became common. Best practices emerged that avoided them like the plague. I recall hand-wringing on the difference between popups and modals in our webdev shop.
Now popups are fully back as login, sign up, cookie and deal spam. We've actively regressed on this front back to "pop-ups everywhere!"
> I recall hand-wringing on the difference between popups and modals in our webdev shop.
I hate modals even more than pop-ups. There are valid reasons to use either, but in most cases they are a form of abuse.