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Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

blog.nightly.mozilla.org

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Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#91

Post by deanclatworthy »

xg15 wrote: post #89

Straw 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 int…

This will only result in people finding clickjacking methods to trick you into pressing. I would prefer that you can only trigger the request (using JS) on a top-level click-event, similar to how audio works on iOS (maybe Android too?).

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#92

Post by dillondoyle »

lugg wrote: post #47
43920 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the websites that request the permission have a legitimate reason to show notifications, a dialog is actually a good idea - it makes it easy for users to enable notifications, whereas a toolbar button would be easy to miss. If browsers had anticipated every random news site asking to show notifications, I imagine it would have been designed differently.

No, it's not. Currently on legitimate and decently built sites I get a custom JS modal popup that asks me to accept the location request before they even request location access. They do this because otherwise their location request gets dismissed by users out of habbit and then people don't know how to reenable it. It's shit UX. Notifications and always on location access should be a bell icon in the url bar. Think…

Also because some browsers once you deny you can't re-request. but you can show as many html 'overlay prompts' as you want

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#93

Post by Zarel »

gpm wrote: post #23
jdsully wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea gitter is the only website I've given this permission to. It makes the user experience much better and so far they haven't abused it.

I'd add lichess.org as an example of well used notifications - telling you the opponent moved.

Pokémon Showdown uses it for both – telling you your opponent moved, and message notifications when used as a chat app.

It doesn't ask for the permission until you start a game or send a private message, though. I think the original version of the spec required an interaction before the permission prompt when I implemented it – I'm surprised the restriction was removed.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#94

Post by josteink »

teekert wrote: post #90

It'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.

> It's insane that the two visible options are "Not now" and "Allow notifications"

I agree the “Never” option could be more visible for some prompts, like notification.

For other things, like location data, where temporal access actually makes sense, I think making the “Never”-option less susceptible to accidental/blind clicking is a good idea.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#95

Post by nindalf »

birksherty wrote: post #86
nindalf wrote: post #62

This “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".

What? You want them to “collect data from all people” on how they use a feature right now ... before adding the feature? How would that work, exactly?

> they are actually.

Ok.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#96

Post by nindalf »

anon12413 wrote: post #71
askvictor wrote: post #69

Earlier 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.

> May have been

That’s a huge assumption. I’m going with a smaller assumption that Mozilla wouldn’t publicly lie for no obvious gain.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#97

Post by nindalf »

darkpuma wrote: post #88
anon12413 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Firefox’s source code is open. So is Visual Studio Code. Could you please tell us what is collected that could possibly be used maliciously?

You can get started here - https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-extension-telemetry and https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#98

Post by Vinnl »

amanzi wrote: post #37

Good work from Mozilla, but it won't help prevent those sites that pop up a HTML modal asking you to subscribe by email AND then a few seconds later pop up another HTML modal asking to send you notifications to keep you up to date AND then sliding in something from the bottom with "relevant" posts AND maybe also slide something else in from the top or sides with some other thing that just ends up blocking the content…

I'm not sure if they're still actively working on it, but Mozilla at least intended to find a way to block those as well: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/in-page-pop-u...

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#100

Post by Double_a_92 »

amanzi wrote: post #37

Good work from Mozilla, but it won't help prevent those sites that pop up a HTML modal asking you to subscribe by email AND then a few seconds later pop up another HTML modal asking to send you notifications to keep you up to date AND then sliding in something from the bottom with "relevant" posts AND maybe also slide something else in from the top or sides with some other thing that just ends up blocking the content…

I just close the whole tab and never visit again if that happens...
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