It was a resolved problem before that, by letting the browser do what the browser is good at, instead of implementing new UI paradigms on top of it.

> Besides, open in modal don't even mean the url won't change. Fb, reddit both open in popup AND change the url.

So I add more code, and thus more complexity to websites, in order for the browser to behave in the way it would have already behaved in the first place, had I not thrown the modal in there, and instead let it work as intended.