Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Do not download the app, use the website

idiallo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 760 posts

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#141

Post by frollogaston »

xxr wrote: post #137
frollogaston wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Apple has a rule against push spam, which they toe the line on but it's still a lot less bad than it could be.

Does it work the way CAN-SPAM is supposed to work (marketing can be unsubscribed from with rules about what constitutes "transactional" messages)?

Kinda

"""Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges."""

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#142

Post by aflag »

nmstoker wrote: post #85

I wonder what people do in that one area they are so often reticent to discuss: porn. The (non-scientific) impression I have is that people don't tend to use porn apps, they stick with porn websites. Therefore, do people basically know apps aren't well behaved with their data and yet in other scenarios they turn a blind eye?

I think it's more that people don't want others to see a pornhub icon when they are slowing holiday photos to friends and family. But they don't mind showing a Domino's app

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#143

Post by userbinator »

redbell wrote: post #123

> If you've ever opened Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or practically any popular service on your phone's web browser, you've likely encountered it. Another website that asks to Get The App is https://imgur.com/ , every time you open a link to just view that image you instantly got asked to Get The App. It's really annoying!

I believe that's done based on user-agent header; but it shouldn't be surprising that the UA on a mobile browser is the hardest to change, showing once again that users' control of their computing devices is extremely important. With the appropriate UA, imgur will just give you the raw image data directly.

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#144

Post by johnnyanmac »

hnpolicestate wrote: post #138

I agree. The intended audience agrees. The general population could care less and will continue to use spyware. I think the real question should be how do we go about making the public care?

I don't think we need to. You appeal to regulators and they can manage it in lieu of the public. That's what the DMA is doing in the EU. Most initiatives happen from action of a relative minority interest.

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#145

Post by frollogaston »

dpkirchner wrote: post #117
frollogaston wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple wanted to make PWAs look like apps, users wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Except that's not what Apple wants at all.

If apps were interchangeable with PWAs we'd just call PWAs apps. What would be the difference, besides distribution?

That would be good too, "progressive web app" is a silly name

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#147

Post by kristopolous »

redbell wrote: post #123

> If you've ever opened Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or practically any popular service on your phone's web browser, you've likely encountered it. Another website that asks to Get The App is https://imgur.com/ , every time you open a link to just view that image you instantly got asked to Get The App. It's really annoying!

The "download app" notifications on reddit are like some kind of art project to maximimally annoy you. Probably the worst offender is facebook where they have what can only be called an intentionally broken mobile website - the idea of losing the person's name if you edit a comment, the page deciding to reload you back to the main page if you switch tabs to research something or the post box clearing out if you switch focus, the comment box being nearly impossible to navigate through with the cursor, these are all profoundly egregious bugs that have been there for years.

Basically if you intend it to do something more substantive than comment a series of emojis, they have a bunch of bugs that block you.

I'm guessing someone has made the calculation that being terrible in these ways are more profitable.

Maybe people doom scroll more if the content is vapid?

I'd love to see the user stories. "Brenda is a 52 year old professional who likes commenting "Happy Birthday" to AI generated images of people with cakes. She loves multilevel marketing and buying stuff on Temu. Her husband Greg, reposts memes programmatically generated by content farms using LLMs and topic trackers"

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#148

Post by userbinator »

xxr wrote: post #121
ErrorNoBrain wrote: post #116

I prefer having as few apps as possible so using the web is my go-to i dont have reddit, on my phone for example. Also, all those app icons are just "advertisement" every time you look at your phone screen... i dont need that. if you REQUIRE me to use an app, then i'm only using it if i absolutely have to. (there's almost always an alternative)

>app icons are just "advertisement" You wouldn't believe the volume of actual advertisements that show up as push notifications on my wife's phone

At least relatively recent versions of Android let you turn off notifications per-app:

https://support.google.com/android/answer/9079661?hl=en

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#149

Post by hackingonempty »

i80and wrote: post #4

I 100% agree with this, but a significant way that mobile websites often decay the experience compared to the app is with very short-lived login sessions. Even when the experience is otherwise basically identical, I've found that login sessions in a browser are sometimes measured in days, where in the app sessions never expire. Which feels like app install metric juicing to me.

Do you have an iPhone? Safari for iOS deletes all cookies older than a week unless you add the site to your home screen.

Re: Do not download the app, use the website

#150

Post by sdf4j »

frollogaston wrote: post #131
Mengkudulangsat wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are so infuriating they should be illegal. Especially when they come from apps you can't delete like your bannking app.

At least Apple has a rule against push spam, which they toe the line on but it's still a lot less bad than it could be.

not having a way to divide notification channels, transactional vs promotional, make it worse than android.
Post reply on HN