Have you tried this in a more text based article? I was reading through something lengthy last night and I thought these pop ups were a lifesaver. They're like a TL;DR, you can avoid the context switch of actually clicking through. Sometimes even just the picture was enough to go "oh ok!".
Also personally I'm prone to going down a wikipedia rabbit hole and if last night was any indication, I think these popups will help stop that.
Sounds like you hit an edge case. Personally in that situation of a list of links I would just move the cursor outside the list. For me at least a minor change in behavior in some edge cases is worth what is otherwise a really awesome new feature.
Also personally I'm prone to going down a wikipedia rabbit hole and if last night was any indication, I think these popups will help stop that.
Sounds like you hit an edge case. Personally in that situation of a list of links I would just move the cursor outside the list. For me at least a minor change in behavior in some edge cases is worth what is otherwise a really awesome new feature.