To try and think of an upside for the user, it might help people detect phishing by making the domain name more prominent.
I've seen phishing sites like support.google.com.8n.cn where the right side (the most important) just disappears into the /path. Though this attack is even more brilliant on mobile devices that truncate the right hand side and leave with you with "support.google.com...".
Aside, I encourage fellow HNers to purposely visit seedy websites in a VM without an ad blocker. Especially if you haven't been exposed to crappy behavior since the popup/under days. Great way to see the state of hostile web practices, like unblockable popups and fake macOS notifications.