If I want to be bothered at random I'll install the app. This functionality should never have been bundled into a web browser.
Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox
81–90 of 268 posts
Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox
#82This “feature” is abused terribly around the web. For every site with useful notifications like gmail, there are 10 which misuse it. Yesterday I had the misfortune of misclicking on the prompt from a website. I started getting notifications like “YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED WITH A VIRUS”. Turning off notifications for that website took at least 4 clicks through Chrome settings. Good to know there is a setting to turn i…
>I ask the folks on HN who constantly criticise the collection of such telemetry, what did I lose as a user when Firefox collected this anonymised data? More importantly, how would you have made a decision here without the data? Intuition? (I’d request that no one reply with platitudes like “with enough data nothing is anonymous” and “you’re making a nothing-to-hide argument”) You don't need telemetry to find out tha…
No but you need telemetry to find out how users react to abusive notifications and how they interact with websites where they do genuinely want notifications from. You can't just guess that.
Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox
#83It still boggles my mind how over engineered that prompt is in Firefox [1]. And glad to see that the new prompt follows Safari’s simple “Allow / Disallow”. [1] Of course I got into a shouting match on Twitter about it some time back: https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/920293887746433024 and https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/920373234104700931
I honestly think a patch is a more productive way to deal with this if you're a developer who wants to see the functionality.
Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article: > According to our telemetry data, the notifications prompt is by far the most frequently shown permission prompt, with about 18 million prompts shown on Firefox Beta in the month from Dec 25 2018 to Jan 24 2019. Not even 3% of these prompts got accepted by users. The decision seems very clearly based on the collected data.
No it's not, they quoted some telemetry but the feature and decision may have been decided way before then. The data may only be a justification for it.
Well, there is little proof that they decided something and then went looking for data unless you can find some statement by mozilla that supports your theory?
Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox
#85I'm still shocked that anybody thought the first generation implementation of this (in any browser, not specific to Firefox) was ever a good idea. I can see making the request visible to the end user, but... as a dialog ? Why? At least make it a narrow bar across the top/bottom that doesn't obscure web site content and can be easily ignored. Perhaps better would be to make it a button like there is a button to favori…
I find it particularly weird that Firefox has that great annoying popup for notifications, but reports suppressed pop-ups with an obvious but unobtrusive top bar. Why not use exactly the same construct for notifications?
Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox
#86This “feature” is abused terribly around the web. For every site with useful notifications like gmail, there are 10 which misuse it. Yesterday I had the misfortune of misclicking on the prompt from a website. I started getting notifications like “YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED WITH A VIRUS”. Turning off notifications for that website took at least 4 clicks through Chrome settings. Good to know there is a setting to turn i…
I don't agree with that thinking. I can say the opposite. Why did someone enabled the notifications feature globally? Was it based on intuition? Then they are wrong, they are actually. They should collect data from all people before inserting any such "features".
Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox
#87This “feature” is abused terribly around the web. For every site with useful notifications like gmail, there are 10 which misuse it. Yesterday I had the misfortune of misclicking on the prompt from a website. I started getting notifications like “YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED WITH A VIRUS”. Turning off notifications for that website took at least 4 clicks through Chrome settings. Good to know there is a setting to turn i…
Can't you also block it completely in Chrome and whitelist some websites? Settings -> Privacy.. -> Content Settings.. -> Notifications (Blocked)
I haven't seen any prompts since I changed that. Although I don't use this feature at all.
Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox
#88This “feature” is abused terribly around the web. For every site with useful notifications like gmail, there are 10 which misuse it. Yesterday I had the misfortune of misclicking on the prompt from a website. I started getting notifications like “YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED WITH A VIRUS”. Turning off notifications for that website took at least 4 clicks through Chrome settings. Good to know there is a setting to turn i…
You're making an assumption that their decision was based on data they collected. Not worth discussing data privacy with you over that-- they may have very well done simple user testing or done it on a whim of a few users that put a good case forward.
He's also failing to acknowledge that using telemetry in a constructive way does not preclude using that telemetry in a malicious way as well.
Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox
#89Straw proposal: Get rid of the whole system of permission prompts completely and instead introduce a special input element for each permission.
Example: Instead of calling a JS API to show a prompt for push notifications, you'd embed an [input type="push-permission"] element in your page. This element would render as a special button that grants you the permission once the user clicks on it.
However, embedding it into a context where the user would actually want to click it, is your responsibility.
It would still be possible to spam the user with "self-made" overlay popups, but this is already possible today. The button would also need protection against clickjacking, which, I think, can be done by restricting how it can be styled or layered.
Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox
#90It's insane that the two visible options are "Not now" and "Allow notifications" while 99 percent of the time I want never bother me again, in fact disable this feature entirely. I clicked yes exactly 3 times (my own Nextcloud instance, Protonmail and Whatsapp web), I'd be happy to do some more clicking to enable those at the "cost" of never being bugged again.