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Recently this new (to me?) button appeared, I assumed I would see it once and when I dismissed it that would be that. Instead it appears on every single page I've visited for the last few days - it's unneccesary, distracting and adds no value.

  1. How do I permanently banish it?
  2. Who do I report this to stop nonsense like this happening again in the future?

I'm not running any type of script etc that would stop the state from being saved.

This is not a duplicate of 345977 although probably related - in their scenario they are unable to close the prompt whereas I can.

Follow prompt

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  • 1
    Do you use any adblockers, userscripts, browser extensions, some sort of cookie removal? That might interfere with the site remembering that you have already dismissed this popup.
    – Marijn
    Commented Apr 1 at 7:27
  • 1
    And turns out it's a four years old bug.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Apr 1 at 7:53
  • 13
    @ShadowWizardLoveZelda I don't know if it's the same problem or a regression. I've been getting these popups recently on websites that I haven't seen them before (say, before last week or so). I've had a registration on those sites for some time. Doesn't seem to just be about first time visits.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Apr 1 at 9:12
  • 3
    @VLAZ good point but still, most likely same root cause. Started bounty on the older bug, in case developer will pop up I'll turn their attention to this one as well.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Apr 1 at 9:46
  • 2
    @ShadowWizardLoveZelda I don't think it is. The other bug seems to be entirely different: when the notification about the Follow features show up, then you click the Follow button, then it can't close. While this bug here is simply that the notification about the Follow feature shows up at all not that it doesn't close when clicking the Follow button. When it does show, then click the Follow button does clear it which is not what the dupe shows.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Apr 1 at 10:25
  • @VLAZ but it does show up on every page load, so this bug is at least part of the older one. Anyway, I can't use hammer anymore as I've retagged, but did cast reopen vote as well.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Apr 1 at 10:34
  • 9
    @ShadowWizardLoveZelda yes - showing up is the bug. Not it being not-closable which is what the dupe is about. Digging through the code, closing the introductory popup sets the user flag DismissFollowQuestionIntroPopover to true for the current user. Presumably the popup shows because the flag is missing. This might be because it was "lost" (who knows how) or maybe reset or changed or something. Once set the popup does not show up again for the same site. If this flag was lost/reset/changed somehow, then maybe user flags had the same fate. I think this is potentially a bigger issue.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Apr 1 at 10:48
  • 6
    For reference, I'm pretty sure that pop-up has existed for ages, ever since the Follow feature was introduced in 2020. Dismissing it on a site once should mean it doesn't appear again, at least on that site. But a recent change may have caused it to start appearing again for some folks, even if they previously dismissed it.
    – V2Blast
    Commented Apr 1 at 21:54
  • 1
    A quick and effective workaround is to write a little local CSS to prevent it from being displayed. This should do it for the current implementation of the prompt: #divQuestionFollowFeaturePopover { display: none !important }
    – Amazon Dies In Darkness
    Commented Apr 2 at 3:42
  • Thanks but where would you place that css?
    – deep64blue
    Commented Apr 2 at 7:38
  • Is this a bug you are still experiencing? I can't seem to reproduce it on our end. Once we dismiss the notification, it goes away and doesn't popup on new ones. However, it does appear on every question page you visit until you dismiss it.
    – SpencerG StaffMod
    Commented Aug 5 at 19:09
  • 2
    @SpencerG the problem isn't they keep reappearing every time after being dismissed. When these notifications were added (with the follow feature), they worked exactly as you described. When the bug was posted that's because they started showing again, as if the flag for their initial dismissal was cleared. They have to be dismissed again once. But that's still for each stack you visit (+ again for its meta). And yes - I still occasionally visit a stack I know I have been to in the past (say, a year ago) yet I am met with the notification explaining to me how following works.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Aug 5 at 19:17
  • 2
    I have been trying to reproduce this for a while and have been unable to. Since there is some indication that something might be going wrong for some users, I am sending this over to a backlog to have a look at it. I am marking this as status deferred for the time being.
    – SpencerG StaffMod
    Commented Sep 20 at 19:21
  • 1
    @SpencerG perhaps local cache. Can you check if something changed in the cache settings of the files involved in recent months, leading to some browsers to cache it? (I suspect some less known Cloudflare setting, so maybe ask Josh (Zhang))
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 21 at 8:05

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