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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

#31

Post by gkfasdfasdf »

If a website presents a pop up to me asking if I want notifications, I click yes then I click block when the browser dialogue appears. No more notification pop ups on that site.

I realize I can categorically block all notification permissions, but there are some sites where I want to allow them.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#32

Post by DanHulton »

jtokoph wrote: post #2

I think that no matter what solution the browsers decide on, we will always have to fight the “pre-permission prompts” from websites. These are the homemade prompts in JS and html that the sites pop up that essentially ask if you want to be prompted for the real permission. Once you click accept on their dialog, they hit the real browser api to show the native dialog.

I actually mind those a lot less, since these prompts can be used to properly set expectations about how the notification permission will be used.

Or at least, I mind these a lot less in theory, since it feels like they're rarely implemented this way. It's a golden opportunity for app developers to explain why they want to send you notifications, what benefit you'll get from it, and how often you should expect to be notified, and recipe sites are using it to trick you into effectively signing up for a mailing list.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#33

Post by dmitriid »

It still boggles my mind how over engineered that prompt is in Firefox [1]. And glad to see that the new prompt follows Safari’s simple “Allow / Disallow”.

[1] Of course I got into a shouting match on Twitter about it some time back: https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/920293887746433024 and https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/920373234104700931

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#34

Post by nobrains »

There is one more reason why the acceptance rate of notification prompts is low (3%), other than the two points mentioned by Mozilla.

THAT reason is that simply people do not want to be notified. They value their attention in these times of constantly being bombarded by attention seeking prompts, ads and notifications, that if asked, people surely chose not not being bombarded more.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#36

Post by 43920 »

adrianmonk wrote: post #22

I'm still shocked that anybody thought the first generation implementation of this (in any browser, not specific to Firefox) was ever a good idea. I can see making the request visible to the end user, but... as a dialog ? Why? At least make it a narrow bar across the top/bottom that doesn't obscure web site content and can be easily ignored. Perhaps better would be to make it a button like there is a button to favori…

As long as the websites that request the permission have a legitimate reason to show notifications, a dialog is actually a good idea - it makes it easy for users to enable notifications, whereas a toolbar button would be easy to miss. If browsers had anticipated every random news site asking to show notifications, I imagine it would have been designed differently.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#37

Post by amanzi »

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 you're actually interested in reading....

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#39

Post by 43920 »

bitt wrote: post #6

Websites should not ask users for permission notifications. It only annoys the people using it. It is a bad idea! If users are interested enough in your content, they will find a way to opt-in for notifications like email; an opt-in for notifications button or even RSS. Why would website owners assume that users want to get notifications only after 5 seconds of visiting a random site?

I almost wonder if sites are hoping people will enable notifications by accident, and then read the content after getting notified. I know at least a few people who've clicked the "allow" button by mistake, and then couldn't figure out how to turn the notifications off.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#40

Post by ptaipale »

bitt wrote: post #6

Websites should not ask users for permission notifications. It only annoys the people using it. It is a bad idea! If users are interested enough in your content, they will find a way to opt-in for notifications like email; an opt-in for notifications button or even RSS. Why would website owners assume that users want to get notifications only after 5 seconds of visiting a random site?

A do appreciate that browsers provide a standard way to ask for these permissions. For instance, I deny most of the "know your location" queries, but it is not infrequent that I do wish to use a Web service that asks to know where I am.

Pop-up is a bad way, the above proposal for (admittedly some more clutter) buttons in address bar is better.

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