I've had this a few times, particularly on mobile, where you're doing something and some pop-up will steal focus, but of course you were tapping or swiping or something the exact instance it popped; it stayed just long enough for the after-image on your retinas to catch a single word and you realise it might have been important, but it's gone now, with no sign.
This happened to my just the other day; I was purchasing something online with a slightly complicated process, from my mobile, I didn't want to f* up the process, and I was tapping occasionally to keep the screen awake while it was doing "stuff"; needless to say, something popped up, too fast for me to react, I have no idea which button I tapped if any, or if I just dismissed it, to this day no idea what it wanted but I know it was related to the payment process.
I've seen this solved in dialogs/modals with a delay on the dismiss button, but rarely; it would also make sense to delay a modal/dialog of some kind by a couple hundred milliseconds to give you time to react, particularly if tapping outside of it would dismiss it.
I find myself using Notification History on Android more and more often, but a lot of the time it's not even notifications, it's some in-app thing that's totally within the developer's control.
You can use this fact to see deleted messages on whatsapp. Just enable the notificaion history and Now whenver someones sends you somethign regrettable and deletes it you can still see it in notif history. The reason you need the notif history is whatsapp actually live wipes the notifictions for deleted messages.
I believe it's an INTENTIONAL BEHAVIOR in Facebook. Particularly the mobile web interface...want to show someone a video, but you're on the can, and really, it's going to be a minute while you wash up (or similar example lasting 40 seconds)
You're not going to be able to do it. They're not on facebook, you can't just link to the video, you're going to hold the phone carefully but the bared fraction of their palm will register with the screen, or the page will refresh, or the screen (now 27 feet deep in the doomscroll) will scroll all the way to the top of the screen.
This happened to my just the other day; I was purchasing something online with a slightly complicated process, from my mobile, I didn't want to f* up the process, and I was tapping occasionally to keep the screen awake while it was doing "stuff"; needless to say, something popped up, too fast for me to react, I have no idea which button I tapped if any, or if I just dismissed it, to this day no idea what it wanted but I know it was related to the payment process.
I've seen this solved in dialogs/modals with a delay on the dismiss button, but rarely; it would also make sense to delay a modal/dialog of some kind by a couple hundred milliseconds to give you time to react, particularly if tapping outside of it would dismiss it.
I find myself using Notification History on Android more and more often, but a lot of the time it's not even notifications, it's some in-app thing that's totally within the developer's control.