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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

#51

Post by luckylion »

amanzi wrote: post #37

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…

Imho only Google can solve that. Give sites that do non-interaction overlays -100 and it will be a thing of the past.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#52

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

amanzi wrote: post #37

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…

NoScript fixes a lot of this crap. If you want to deal with less breakage you can use the uB:Origin element zapper to remove annoying overlays.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#53

Post by _nedR »

Just a couple weeks ago i was helping "disinfect" an android phone for a acquaintance (shopkeeper) here in India.

The "virus" in question was chrome notifications for spam/porn/malware probably from malvertisements embedeed in some websites. It took me several minutes to locate and disable them. You would think that chrome on android would give an option to disable an offending notification from the notification bar but no, you have to go digging in the chrome settings and scan through the permission list to find the offenders.

While i certainly think it is a useful api needed for the free web(i still prefer websites over apps which are essentially websites with undeleteable hypercookies), Mozilla and Google need to do a better job protecting the literally billions of people who are less literate (either in tech or english) from the cesspool that is online media.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#54

Post by valtism »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #9
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?

Some of them do have legitimate uses, like chat apps (messages.android.com for example). Otherwise though I do agree that they are a fairly bad idea.

Even then, notification permission should not be requested without some sort of prior input from the user. A simple red bell icon with the hover text "enable notifications" would work so much better than the user being assaulted with the dialogue box right away.

It really is a shame to see how terribly these permission requests have been abused, especially by news sites. I see this is a push for engagement by management, and not sufficient pushback from developers against this dark pattern.

This is not a difficult feature to implement well, and we should know how to do it properly after years of mobile permission request design.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#55

Post by gsich »

Someone1234 wrote: post #25
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…

Agreed completely. - Why are dialogs still a thing? - Why is stealing focus still a thing? Browser makers, operating system manufacturers: Stop it. Dialogs are hot garbage, and users ALONE should have control over input focus. If you need the user's attention flash/animate. If you cannot make a thing without a dialog, focus lock, or focus theft then maybe the thing you were trying to make was inherently a bad idea. W…

Firefox and Chrome don't steal focus in this dialog. It's not modal either.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#56

Post by _nedR »

43920 wrote: post #36
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.

It is literally being used to abuse less tech literate ppl (elderly, children, non english speakers, non-tech savvy people, people from third world countries).

Such people just click yes yes yes to these popups without reading them (thinking theyre EU cookie, T&C, privacy prompts, etc). Its a prime vector for malwartisements these days.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#57

Post by feanaro »

lugg wrote: post #47
43920 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it's not. Currently on legitimate and decently built sites I get a custom JS modal popup that asks me to accept the location request before they even request location access. They do this because otherwise their location request gets dismissed by users out of habbit and then people don't know how to reenable it. It's shit UX. Notifications and always on location access should be a bell icon in the url bar. Think…

I think this bell meme is less widespread than you think. I can't imagine the people I know concluding that the notification permission is hidden under a bell icon, let alone find it intuitive.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#58

Post by reshie »

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…

it seemed more a protest to having to. as is it is bad and i could not believe the way they did it.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#59

Post by anonymousab »

amanzi wrote: post #37

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…

I've found that the "Kill Sticky" bookmarklet works wonders for obliterating most of these in a single click.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#60

Post by jasonkester »

Global setting: “I will never choose to receive notifications from a website.” Linked directly from that popop.

Sorted.

Chrome already does this right with language translation: “do you want to translate this website?” “No”/“Never translate this site”/“Never translate French”

Do that with notifications And well never need to see that prompt again.

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