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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

#111

Post by michaelt »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #102
zaarn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>you need telemetry to find out how users react to abusive notifications You need telemetry to find out how users react to abusive notifications? Wow. I know that A/B testing is in vogue, but can’t they just use some common sense? People despise abusive notification prompts. People despise abusive location prompts. People despised abusive popups to the point that every browser blocks them and websites started emulati…

  You need telemetry to find out how users
  react to abusive notifications?
I run an ad blocker, so my perception of notifications is they're used for things like breaking news notifications on news websites [1]. That's not a feature I personally need, but 24 hour news channels exist so presumably someone feels they need regular news updates.

So no, it's not obvious to me everyone dislikes notification requests, even if I have them all blocked myself.

If you let curmudgeon developers like me dictate products' features sets based on intuition, there'd be no HTML e-mail, no third-party cookies, no WebGL, no emojis, no WebUSB.... :)

[1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/push-notifications-breaking-...

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#112

Post by beezischillin »

Good. The whole notifications thing is BS as it’s used on most of the web and is actively exploited and there’s no “don’t show this again” prompt to be found anywhere. The only sites that do it gracefully show a cookie-consent-like floating div that pops the prompt up if you accept it. I have honestly been looking into completely disabling the whole thing but despite Safari being quite good usually, there is no option to do that anywhere to my knowledge.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#113

Post by scoutt »

Notification requests are really saturating my patience. I appreciate the Mozilla/Firefox efforts for creating a user-first browser, with this and past features.

I always avoided (or at least I try not) to provide any telemetry data, but in the case of Firefox, if these are the kind of improvements we may have, maybe I will opt-in for anon telemetry.

Is the voting-with-your-wallet era moving into voting-with-your-telemetry era?

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#114

Post by veddox »

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…

A couple of weeks ago I had a site that simultaneously showed me an extra-wide cookie bar, a notification request, and a greyed out screen with a half-screen "Disable Adblocker" request. That was two-thirds of my entire laptop screen devoted to popups I didn't want!

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#115

Post by ttctciyf »

lugg wrote: post #48
josephg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I opened a medium post the other day from my phone that did all this stuff. It was amazing - there was a bar up the top asking me to install the medium app. Then another bar below that asking me to subscribe to the author or something. Then a call-to-action pop-over on the bottom of the screen asking me to join a mailing list or something. Only about 1/4 of my phone screen was left displaying the content - which wasn…

Fyi, you might like, Firefox + ublock + annoyances list on mobile fix most of this garbage.

What is "annoyances list" ?

EDIT: Oh, right, inside the ublock options.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#116

Post by freeone3000 »

michaelt wrote: post #111
layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you need telemetry to find out how users react to abusive notifications You need telemetry to find out how users react to abusive notifications? Wow. I know that A/B testing is in vogue, but can’t they just use some common sense? People despise abusive notification prompts. People despise abusive location prompts. People despised abusive popups to the point that every browser blocks them and websites started emulati…

You need telemetry to find out how users react to abusive notifications? I run an ad blocker, so my perception of notifications is they're used for things like breaking news notifications on news websites [1]. That's not a feature I personally need, but 24 hour news channels exist so presumably someone feels they need regular news updates. So no, it's not obvious to me everyone dislikes notification requests, even if…

And what a world we would live in!

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#117

Post by detaro »

ttctciyf wrote: post #115
lugg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fyi, you might like, Firefox + ublock + annoyances list on mobile fix most of this garbage.

What is "annoyances list" ? EDIT: Oh, right, inside the ublock options.

A filter list targeted at removing annoyances. There's a few around, https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances is a popular example.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#118

Post by ttctciyf »

detaro wrote: post #117
ttctciyf wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "annoyances list" ? EDIT: Oh, right, inside the ublock options.

A filter list targeted at removing annoyances. There's a few around, https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances is a popular example.

Right, I found a couple inside the "3rd party" tab in ublock. This is great! Thanks.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#119

Post by IshKebab »

zaroth wrote: post #21

Downgrading the prompt to a non-popup icon in the address bar unless it follows a user action sounds like the perfect balance. This won’t entirely stop sites which are properly trying to request the permission in the worst case, and the navbar icon is unobtrusive enough that if it gets spammed it’s no big deal. Actually I think it makes sense to persistently show the notification icon in the navbar once the permissio…

Aren't there already sites that show a fake permission request dialog? This won't stop them (and I don't see how you could without entirely removing the feature).
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