Google show signs of reconsidering auto mute after developer critique • Hacker News Board

Re: Google show signs of reconsidering auto mute after developer critique

#31

Post by some_account » Thu, May 10, 2018, 12:00 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #28

ChrisSD wrote: post #5

Usually when a major web browser decides to do something that has the potential to break existing websites they do extensive testing and put the call out for dev feedback before they release. Why didn't that happen here? Also it's odd that Chrome decided to explicitly whitelist some sites. Surely that's an admission that their automated workflow doesn't actually work well?

Google is starting to show a pattern of addressing the concerns of the large players (which themselves are a part of), and ignoring or degrading everyone else's experience. Good luck trying to get predicable deliverability to gmail without your mail being put in the spam box as a small mail sender. Google refuses to even tell you anything about why or why not mail is being delivered unless you send hundreds of messag…

Why don't you move away from Google? It's like intentionally sticking to one of the worst companies and then complaining about it.

Try fastmail, it's really great.

Re: Google show signs of reconsidering auto mute after developer critique

#32

Post by ameister14 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 12:00 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #27

cm2187 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it creates a disincentive for websites to use unnecessary audio. I don't think any user will be surprised or annoyed by seeing youtube or pluralsight asking them permission to play audio/video. For some random website where audio is unsolicited, it creates an incentive to not even ask. Like you don't want to necessary access the location of your users if you don't want to piss them off. I am actually happy when…

It's not about being surprised, it's about not reading the dialogue at all. I make a barcode scanning app in the browser. Our users know that the app scans barcodes using the camera, they receive training on the app before using it, and yet about ~15%~ (Edit: it's closer to 8% now) of our users click "no" when asked to allow camera permissions to scan barcodes. It was causing so many support calls that we ended up do…

Yeah, clearly they read the dialogue if by adding more dialogue you change their action.

The problem may have been that simply asking for permission to use the camera in general and not stating when and how you would use that permission, people thought about the fact that they didn't really want to give the app blanket permission to use their camera.

The solution to that problem is to point out what you are using it for and tell them it is necessary, which is what you did.

Re: Google show signs of reconsidering auto mute after developer critique

#33

Post by Klathmon » Thu, May 10, 2018, 12:04 PM UTC

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #26

Klathmon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often do you see the "want to allow X to display notifications?" or "want to allow X to access your location?" It's a shitty UX for everyone involved. It's shitty for the user because they get asked it on SO MANY sites. I see friends/family browsing the web and they will go to a news site, click "no" to notifications, need to click away the fullscreen "want to subscribe to our newsletter" modal, then scroll down…

To be honest I'm not bothered by that UX at all. The browser remembers my choice for each site, how many new, different sites do most users visit per day (that would need audio)? If a user doesn't want to be bothered by the prompt, they can always configure the browser to always accept or always reject. Or use a whitelist/blacklist. This is very different from the EU "this website has cookies" prompt, which does anno…

>The browser remembers my choice for each site, how many new, different sites do most users visit per day (that would need audio)?

How many sites need notifications? And why do I need to decline that permission at least once a day if not more often?

And the issue is that putting this behind a notification removes the downsides of asking for it. Currently if you play audio un-prompted you piss off (a percentage of) your users. If that was behind a notification, you would only inconvenience those users, so there's less of a downside of trying it assuming that only people that want it would click "yes".

My "perfect solution" would be for the major browser developers to get together, and come up with a web standard for where these notifications/prompts will live in the browser chrome, and roughly what they will look like, so that everyone can standardize on a similar UI. Then move from a prompt to a "badge" of sorts, and give websites the power to instruct users how to discover and switch that permission on/off when needed.

I believe on desktop chrome most permission prompts live in the upper-right corner of the address bar, if we could all standardize on somethign like that (at least on desktop, then figure something out for mobile) website owners could then instruct users "to see notifications, click the (standard-notification-icon) up there and select 'yes'".

For "rare" things like notifications, camera access, gps location, and others that seems like a good tradeoff to me, but for "more common" things like audio/video, I don't think it fits.

Re: Google show signs of reconsidering auto mute after developer critique

#34

Post by fifnir » Thu, May 10, 2018, 12:04 PM UTC

some_account wrote: post #31

throwaway2048 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is starting to show a pattern of addressing the concerns of the large players (which themselves are a part of), and ignoring or degrading everyone else's experience. Good luck trying to get predicable deliverability to gmail without your mail being put in the spam box as a small mail sender. Google refuses to even tell you anything about why or why not mail is being delivered unless you send hundreds of messag…

Why don't you move away from Google? It's like intentionally sticking to one of the worst companies and then complaining about it. Try fastmail, it's really great.

Read it again: it's his clients that are using google

Re: Google show signs of reconsidering auto mute after developer critique

#35

Post by throwaway2048 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 12:04 PM UTC

some_account wrote: post #31

throwaway2048 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is starting to show a pattern of addressing the concerns of the large players (which themselves are a part of), and ignoring or degrading everyone else's experience. Good luck trying to get predicable deliverability to gmail without your mail being put in the spam box as a small mail sender. Google refuses to even tell you anything about why or why not mail is being delivered unless you send hundreds of messag…

Why don't you move away from Google? It's like intentionally sticking to one of the worst companies and then complaining about it. Try fastmail, it's really great.

I have moved away from Google, that is the point of this mailserver. My point is that Google isnt interested in doing anything I send to @gmail.com addresses except classifying it as spam.

Now it would be nice if the people I want to email would move away from Google, but I highly doubt that is going to happen anytime soon.

Re: Google show signs of reconsidering auto mute after developer critique

#36

Post by userbinator » Thu, May 10, 2018, 12:04 PM UTC

some_account wrote: post #31

throwaway2048 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is starting to show a pattern of addressing the concerns of the large players (which themselves are a part of), and ignoring or degrading everyone else's experience. Good luck trying to get predicable deliverability to gmail without your mail being put in the spam box as a small mail sender. Google refuses to even tell you anything about why or why not mail is being delivered unless you send hundreds of messag…

Why don't you move away from Google? It's like intentionally sticking to one of the worst companies and then complaining about it. Try fastmail, it's really great.

It's not about receiving mail, it's about sending to others using Gmail accounts.

Re: Google show signs of reconsidering auto mute after developer critique

#37

Post by userbinator » Thu, May 10, 2018, 12:08 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #18

cm2187 wrote: post #4

What I don't understand is why they went this convoluted route of trying to assess what's legitimate or not, what's a user interaction or not. Does anyone know why they didn't go the route of other permissions like notifications or location, with a discrete popup that says the page is attempting to play some audio (or video), do you want to allow? If it is legitimate, the user clicks allow once and the site works for…

How often do you see the "want to allow X to display notifications?" or "want to allow X to access your location?" It's a shitty UX for everyone involved. It's shitty for the user because they get asked it on SO MANY sites. I see friends/family browsing the web and they will go to a news site, click "no" to notifications, need to click away the fullscreen "want to subscribe to our newsletter" modal, then scroll down…

I see friends/family browsing the web and they will go to a news site, click "no" to notifications, need to click away the fullscreen "want to subscribe to our newsletter" modal, then scroll down to the content. Adding a "want to allow this to display video" is just another step you need before being able to use the site.

NoScript / JS off by default will get rid of 99% of those annoyances and give you the article content immediately. (I am aware of the sites which hide the content behind JS, which are truly "shitty UX", but if more people used this config, perhaps they wouldn't proliferate as much. Fortunately most news sites aren't like that, in my experience.)

Re: Google show signs of reconsidering auto mute after developer critique

#38

Post by Klathmon » Thu, May 10, 2018, 12:08 PM UTC

ameister14 wrote: post #32

Klathmon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about being surprised, it's about not reading the dialogue at all. I make a barcode scanning app in the browser. Our users know that the app scans barcodes using the camera, they receive training on the app before using it, and yet about ~15%~ (Edit: it's closer to 8% now) of our users click "no" when asked to allow camera permissions to scan barcodes. It was causing so many support calls that we ended up do…

Yeah, clearly they read the dialogue if by adding more dialogue you change their action. The problem may have been that simply asking for permission to use the camera in general and not stating when and how you would use that permission, people thought about the fact that they didn't really want to give the app blanket permission to use their camera. The solution to that problem is to point out what you are using it…

>Yeah, clearly they read the dialogue if by adding more dialogue you change their action.

No, because with our first-stage dialog we can just keep showing it until they click yes, but with the native dialog we only get one chance, and if they click "no" we might not even get a callback that they clicked anything at all on some browsers (which I honestly kind of like from a privacy standpoint).

But to be clear, i'm not happy with the 2-stage dialog. It feels condescending to ask for permission to ask, and for non-business applications it just slows down the "thing" that you are asking for permission for even more. But thus far it's the only thing that has consistently worked for us.

>The problem may have been that simply asking for permission to use the camera in general and not stating when and how you would use that permission

Our app is a business-oriented application that is running on dedicated company-owned phones in most cases. Users are trained on how to use it, how to set it up, how to create accounts and more.

About 8% of our new users still click no on average 2-3 times spending less than a second on the dialog according to some analytics I have on it. It dropped from 15% with the change from 1-step to 2-step permissions, but that's still a LOT of users that instinctively click "no".

Re: Google show signs of reconsidering auto mute after developer critique

#39

Post by jamessb » Thu, May 10, 2018, 12:11 PM UTC

troydavis wrote: post #24

michaelt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox -> about:config -> media.autoplay.enabled -> false Edit: troydavis points out this Chrome option doesn't actually block autoplay: Chrome -> chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy -> Document user activation is required

The Chrome flag doesn't do what it sounds like it does (and what it should). Essentially everyone logically interprets it as blocking all auto playing videos, audio or not, but that isn’t one of its options. Given the number of people who hate unauthorized autoplaying video (including silent video), it’s sort of amazing that Chrome’s product management team hasn’t added a way to prevent it - at least as a buried conf…

> Given the number of people who hate unauthorized autoplaying video (including silent video), it’s sort of amazing that Chrome’s product management team hasn’t added a way to prevent it

I wouldn't hold much hope for them doing this - the official autoplay policy announcement blog post says [1]:

> One cool way to engage users is about using muted autoplay and let them chose to unmute (see code snippet below). Some websites already do this effectively, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

[1] https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...

Re: Google show signs of reconsidering auto mute after developer critique

#40

Post by disiplus » Thu, May 10, 2018, 12:12 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #28

ChrisSD wrote: post #5

Usually when a major web browser decides to do something that has the potential to break existing websites they do extensive testing and put the call out for dev feedback before they release. Why didn't that happen here? Also it's odd that Chrome decided to explicitly whitelist some sites. Surely that's an admission that their automated workflow doesn't actually work well?

Google is starting to show a pattern of addressing the concerns of the large players (which themselves are a part of), and ignoring or degrading everyone else's experience. Good luck trying to get predicable deliverability to gmail without your mail being put in the spam box as a small mail sender. Google refuses to even tell you anything about why or why not mail is being delivered unless you send hundreds of messag…

microsoft is the same, one day our emails started to go directly to spam for office365 customers, the only effective thing that i could do is to move to mandrill. there is zero spam, and all our emails are b2b notifications so no spam, not even newsletters.

sending emails (if you care about delivery) became very centralized