No, browsers haven’t stopped blocking pop-ups - they’ve gotten more selective

Reports of pop-up blocking being “over” miss the technical nuance. Modern browsers still block unsolicited windows by default; what’s notable here is that more pop-ups are now riding on legitimate user gestures. Under the hood, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari tie window-opening to a transient “user activation” token (e.g., a click), cap how many windows can open per gesture, and suppress background attempts. To avoid breaking OAuth logins, payment flows, and multi-window web apps, they allow narrowly scoped openings that ad tech and aggressive sites increasingly leverage. The result: fewer outright blocks, more pop-ups that look “allowed,” because they are - technically.

The bigger picture: this is an arms race between anti-abuse heuristics and growth hacks that piggyback on real interactions. Browser teams are balancing usability (don’t break auth flows) with abuse prevention, pushing bad actors toward in-page overlays and interstitials that blockers don’t treat as pop-ups. Worth noting: extension-based blockers and stricter site settings still give users control, and the indicators (“Pop-ups blocked”) haven’t gone away - they just trigger less when a click provides legal cover. For developers, the takeaway is to design flows that rely on explicit user activation and avoid surprise windows; the less you resemble an ad network, the fewer heuristics you’ll trip.