Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox • Hacker News Board

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#221

Post by solarkraft » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:08 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #119

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).

This type of cancer is what we need in-page popup blockers for.

Mozilla has been promising to work on it and started a data collection program that I contributed to, but there are no news to share and the data doesn't seem to be publicly accessible. What a disappointment.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#222

Post by _alastair » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

LeonM wrote: post #133

Serious question though: has anyone here ever used the notifications for anything other than web based IM (slack, whatsapp)? I think the use case for legit notifications is very small, thus the UI should be an opt-in, rather than an intrusive pop-up. I never understood why browser makers gave it such a prominent UI, and of course in this attention seeking market it was bound to be abused. The new UI that Firefox is s…

I was part of a team that used web notifications as an experiment in sending live election results to people's devices:

https://medium.com/the-guardian-mobile-innovation-lab/genera...

It's a pretty fascinating feature set. You can attach images, update the content of an existing notification, attach buttons to perform custom actions, choose to make it silent or not... I think there is more utility than most implementations in the wild would suggest. One fascinating aspect of it for me is that you can do very time limited things (e.g. send election results) - users might be reluctant to download an entire app just for one evening of updates, but being able to send notification through the browser sidesteps that entirely (and more broadly, it puts a useful tool in the hands of people who can't afford native development).

That said, I agree that it's total madness that the default UI allows you to ask for permission on page load. We always had the prompt behind a button on the page and it worked great, so I think Mozilla have the right idea here.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#223

Post by chrisjc » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:19 PM UTC

LeonM wrote: post #133

Serious question though: has anyone here ever used the notifications for anything other than web based IM (slack, whatsapp)? I think the use case for legit notifications is very small, thus the UI should be an opt-in, rather than an intrusive pop-up. I never understood why browser makers gave it such a prominent UI, and of course in this attention seeking market it was bound to be abused. The new UI that Firefox is s…

Yes, calendar apps like google calendar. Push applications like Pushbullet for Android. But I think your point remains... there are only a few good reasons for notifications.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#224

Post by kgwxd » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

It would have been better if the notification API never existed and RSS had become the de facto standard for subscribing. The only good use for a notification API is urgent information, almost nothing on the internet qualifies. Giving everyone the power ruined the whole thing.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#225

Post by ackfoo » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

I don't understand what is wrong with the folks over at Mozilla. Are they stupid, or are they taking bribes?

How about an option for, "No, I don't want notifications from any website, ever!"

How about an option for, "Don't auto-play video, including silent video, ever. Not audio either. Never. Just don't."

How about an option for "I know what cookies are. Never, ever warn me about them again. Ever."

I don't know if the devs are just young and inexperienced, or if they are truly brain-damaged, or if they are corrupt and some advertiser said, "Here's a million dollars to leave those notification prompts in, heh, heh, heh".

At this point it's like smoking in movies. There has to be some cigarette maven with a pallet of cash going into the production office on the back lot somewhere, because otherwise why does every young director show all the 'cool' people puffing away on something that's going to waterboard you with COPD for the last 40 years of your life?

Mozilla, we don't want any of that shit. Fuck that shit.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#226

Post by dingus » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

_yields wrote: post #185

Reason077 wrote: post #174

These are super annoying in Safari, too. Apple needs to take note and follow Firefox’s lead here.

You can completely disable them for all websites, and allow notifications for some websites. I disabled them and never see them anymore.

I disabled the allow push notifications checkbox in Safari, but still get prompted with the native Safari modal. I'm not sure how this is done, and it's infrequent, but I'm guessing Safari left a hole in their notifications web API that is being exploited.

Safari's implementation could also be improved. The modal forces you to chose without the ability to cancel, and saves the website into your preferences, even if you just want to immediately close the tab.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#227

Post by simias » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

bachmeier wrote: post #209

bunderbunder wrote: post #202

> Most prompts are dismissed, while almost 19% of prompts caused users to leave the site immediately after being confronted with them. Guilty. I've started taking requests for permission to send push notifications as a strong signal that I've accidentally clicked on clickbait.

It's hard to interpret a push notification as anything other than a sign that it's a shady site.

The problem is that many high profile websites behave like shady actors with plenty of dark patterns these days. Reddit is one of the most glaring examples, but even Google makes you go through hoops to tweak your privacy settings for instance.

It seems that we've gone through a strange curve, early internet (up to the early 00's I'd say) was a pretty shady place with scams and malware around every corner if you weren't careful, then we had a decade of relatively smooth sailing as things settled a bit and the players who actually provided good service managed to take over (e.g. Amazon) but now these big players have a monopoly and they are getting greedy and start becoming actively user-hostile again.

I wonder what the next step will be.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#228

Post by krelian » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

rypskar wrote: post #161

krelian wrote: post #154

Maybe I missed it but I don't see a discussion about how the majority of sites are actually showing a "pre-prompt" for notifications before triggering the actual prompt from the browser. This is similar to how apps ask you to rate them using some internal UI and only if you rating is the desired one (5 stars) send you to the app store so you can rate them there. With the notifications a 3rd party script is used to di…

>>the majority of sites are actually showing a "pre-prompt" for notifications Do a majority of sites do this? I have never seen it, but have seen the browser notification prompt several times

I'm in ecommerce so I visit a lot of online stores. I'd say about 80% of them are doing this.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#229

Post by inetknght » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:39 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #193

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…

>> Downgrading the prompt to a non-popup icon in the address bar unless it follows a user action sounds like the perfect balance. I disagree. There should be no UI for these. A site should essentially say "click here to enable XXX" as part of the page. Anything else is essentially a pop-up. I don't want buttons or controls in my browser to be controlled by a web site. BTW that includes the back button - why browsers…

> A site should essentially say "click here to enable XXX" as part of the page.

> why browsers ever allowed sites to take control from the user is beyond me.

These two statements don't fit together in my mind. Can you try to reconcile them so I can understand better what you're trying to say?

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#230

Post by nerdponx » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

MrGilbert wrote: post #203

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…

I'm afraid this will backfire. We might see another wave of "click this icon in your browser to receive the latest notifications!" pop-ups showing up. Which would then require an adblocker to block these kind of popups. So we use an ad-blocker to block a popup, which only appears because a browser vendor decided to hide a popup. This is absurd.

No, that's fine. Because the "click this button in your browser" popup is part of the normal webpage DOM and can be blocked using existing tools. As opposed to this notification, which was (ab)using the browser itself to spam the user.