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Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

utcc.utoronto.ca

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Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have those users download some simple app if this is so important to them. Or let them enter their phone number to get more reliable text notifications. Just because you have a good use doesn’t outweigh the all the bad abuse.

> Just because you have a good use doesn’t outweigh the all the bad abuse. Personally, this is how I feel about downloading apps to my phone for every individual service and product. I see no need to download a separate app for each individual service I'm interested in, as the potential for abuse is higher than getting the occasional notification from my browser app and visiting their website. However, it sounds to m…

99% of apps you download aren’t spam unlike the 99% of web notification requests that are spanmy

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#142
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CVS has no problem sending text notifications. You can send informative alerts without any sensitive info. Push notifications are subject to the same HIPPA rules as sms. You can’t included sensitive info.

Push notifications go through apple/google servers. The advantage of PWA notifications is that they can be local - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web... .

You don’t get it, 100s of billion of these notifications have been shown already to users on desktop with a less than 1% accept rate. These are spam .

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#143
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about sending notifications over email?

This speaks to your inexperience in making applications for the average user - they barely use email.

The speaks to your inexperience making applications - using anecdotes and assumptions about "the average user" to determine what to do is nowhere near as useful as asking your actual users. Real data is better than guesswork.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#144
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we optimizing the case of users browsing bad websites? Why not cater to good websites instead? Isn't a notification receiver of the most important uses of a phone?

> Why are we optimizing the case of users browsing bad websites? Why not cater to good websites instead? I would say it's not so much optimizing for good websites vs bad websites, as optimizing for real-world websites. Real-world websites are overwhelmingly shitty, push dark patterns, invade users' privacy, abuse any APIs they are given access to, etc. Limiting the amount of things they can do is an enhancement to th…

But surely we can devise a way to minimise abuse and still let people who wants the features have them? This defeatist attitude is pretty sad, we have to be careful when designing new features, but we shouldn't let bad users just make it worse for everyone and give up.

For instance, you could forbid websites from requesting the notification permission, but the user could manually go and allow it. It would probably cut 99% of the spam while allowing people that really want notifications to have them. As for the 1% left, we're not talking life and death scenario here, at that point the good outweighs the bad I would say.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#145
post #79

I love Safari as a browser, but I hate the fact that it neuters the web and makes it feel much less powerful. Web Bluetooth and webUSB are ignored by Safari and unsupported. Notification support is lacking last I checked. No PWA functionality to speak of and webNFC won’t be added. Extensions are lacking largely due to being basically native apps that bring with them all the cost and overhead of being such. As a brows…

>to exist in their own little world. Today, the iPhone has 66% market share in the United States, 75% of U.S. App Store revenues, and over 80% of time spent on the mobile internet.

Apple sell phones globally, so really you should be using global statistics to determine what Safari needs to implement.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m the same as the the users of Firefox who deny 99% of notifications https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/11/04/restricti... We are the the 99%

99% of notification requests being blocked is not the same as 99% of users blocking notifications. If every user visits 100 sites and accepts notifications from one of them, then 100% of users actually want notifications despite 99% of requests being denied. I'm not defending stupid notification popups from some website you'll only ever visit once. Those are annoying. I'm saying you can't tell what users want unless…

I would imagine that 99% of people wouldn’t be happy with a service that is 99% spam.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#147
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This speaks to your inexperience in making applications for the average user - they barely use email.

The speaks to your inexperience making applications - using anecdotes and assumptions about "the average user" to determine what to do is nowhere near as useful as asking your actual users. Real data is better than guesswork.

I have built global apps, and found that users struggle to even accept email address confirmations. The reality is that email is dying.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because you have a good use doesn’t outweigh the all the bad abuse. Personally, this is how I feel about downloading apps to my phone for every individual service and product. I see no need to download a separate app for each individual service I'm interested in, as the potential for abuse is higher than getting the occasional notification from my browser app and visiting their website. However, it sounds to m…

99% of apps you download aren’t spam unlike the 99% of web notification requests that are spanmy

I don't find that very convincing at all. 99% of apps I've ever used add no value beyond what a web interface could do, and most of those send me spammy notifications trying to draw me back into the app. App notification spam is a much greater problem for me and everyone I know than web notification spam, and apps pose a greater privacy and security threat.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why Apple is holding anyone back. Just build an app that doesn't work on iOS. There's lots of apps exclusive to iOS and Mac - why not exclusive Android? If the app really is a game changer, if it's that compelling, Apple will absolutely change its tune.

Because any app that is social in nature (where interactions between users is required really) that can only reach 50% of users does not have 50% of the potential value, it's closer to 0. As an example, my girlfriend's a nurse, and they have a really bad paging system. Basically, the doctor calls the hospital reception who calls one person who is on call, who calls the second person on call. Of course, this breaks up…

> Because any app that is social in nature (where interactions between users is required really) that can only reach 50% of users does not have 50% of the potential value, it's closer to 0.

This wasn’t true 10 years ago when Instagram launched, and was iPhone only for a considerable time.

Clubhouse seems to think it’s not true today either, also iPhone only.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#150
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about sending notifications over email?

This speaks to your inexperience in making applications for the average user - they barely use email.

> This speaks to your inexperience in making applications for the average user - they barely use email.

Do you find that most users do authentication via phone number instead of email?

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