In general I find websites asking permission to send desktop notifications extremely impolite. I have the feature disabled, and can see the site. Alternatively, maybe uBlock or Privacy Badger is blocking something which checks whether I've allowed notifications?

I can confirm the behavior - rejecting the notifications permission closed the tab out. I do have uBlock, so I wonder if a "no" takes you to some sort of advertising vendor's "why you should allow this permission" doc.

For such websites, closing and never coming back is a good option. The internet is large and full of alternatives. I often give up reading from offending sites.

I think that the beauty of the internet is that you do not have to wait for the invisible hand of the market to produce acceptable competition. You can simply render what you choose to render, how you want to render it.

I've got uBlock Origin and declined the notifications, but the tab didn't close, and I was able to read the article.

I did okay closing the notification permission, but not rejecting.

I don't mind them asking, but I'd much rather it be via one of those very unobtrusive icons in the url bar as opposed to a pop up with a choice required.

Using Safari's reader mode circumvents all that bullshit. No pop-ups, no large banners, no questions about notifications, no ads. Just the article (though ads were probably downloaded - I never saw them).

Same with Firefox

With NoScript, the article displays completely correctly except for the large banner image at the top, and it is unable to even ask about notifications, let alone close itself.

Yeah, that was pretty passive aggressive, assuming it was intentional. Didn't ask the second time I opened the link, though. Offending scripts come from pushengage.com .

Is this a new dark pattern we're going to see, "Allow us to push notifications or else"?