I have nothing against Firefox, it is one of the best web browsers out there but there’s a slight difference between spreading the truth and spreading flat out inaccurate reports and that’s the case here.

Someone over on Digg reported that when visiting this website, it spawned over 100,000 pop-ups and indeed, it does, sort of.

When clicking one of the photo links (if the pop-up blocker is on) will begin showing a counter of how many pop-ups were blocked, this is because of a recursive error in the website, there really aren’t that many pop ups.

In fact, there is only one, the image that was clicked on opens in a new window but the pop-up blocker when enabled keeps blocking window after window after window resulting in a faulty report of how many were actually blocked.

Some users on Digg called it inaccurate and got buried for it, some users didn’t get buried but still got ridiculed for stating it was inaccurate and a few just got ignored.  It’s sad that some of you are actually too lazy to confirm this before burying or calling someone’s comment inaccurate.  I suppose it would be too much to ask of the Digg community to actually confirm something for themselves.

I tried this myself in both Firefox, Netscape and IE, of course Firefox and Netscape reported numerous pop-ups were blocked, IE reported one pop-up blocked.  Disabling the blockers in Firefox and Netscape resulted in one pop-up opening, the image in question itself, no shoot the monkeys to win a prize, no beat up the President banners, just the image.

And people wonder why I have such a low and dim view of Digg, yeah, it’s not obvious at all.

I am also aware that people post these claims on purpose even if knowing the truth and I’m not sure which way is worse.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 3:30 pm under Internet, Opinion.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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