Every webpage and their dog has now started to ask for permissions to popup notifications. I find this really annoying. Sure, I can disable it for one site, but then the next one I visit pops up the same question if it's OK to spam me.
I've turned it off browser-wide as a result.
If asking for permissions is to be an option in the future, I hope it is a completely manual opt-in, available in some kind of site-specific settings thingie (that makes no effort to distract the user by noises, popups or red badges by itself).
I think this is reasonable given the ratio of sites a user should be willing to grant any permissions to, vs the amount they should want as sandboxed as humanly possible.
:) Browser permissions are also ahead of mobile on this one.
What they're starting to do is force some permission prompts to be behind user actions - so, you can request a permission as a response to a user clicking on a specific type of button, but you can't just request it anywhere.
A big reason notifications are spammy is because they don't have those restrictions, I suspect because <tinfoil_hat>Google was heavily involved in their design.</tinfoil_hat>
I suspect that browsers will start to move in the direction of "let the user turn this on via a button someplace" as notification prompts become more common. And I suspect that, like with everything else, those controls will get implemented on the web before mobile.
You're upset that every website can ask you to display notifications. With native apps on Android, they don't even need to ask. Apps I install are by default allowed to spam me with notifications, and I have to opt-out after the fact.
If we're comparing permission models between native and the web, the web is definitely giving users more control right now. I don't understand the perspective of someone who feels safer downloading an app than they do visiting a website.
iOS's permission model is the web model. Your app requests notifications and a user prompt pops up.
It's even advised by a lot of devs on iOS to copy the web's dark pattern of putting up a dummy permission request before requesting so that if the user says no you can re-request in the future.
True enough, Apple's ahead of Android, because there is at least a permission, but they're still behind the web, because there's no setting to universally block all apps from requesting notifications (at least none that I can find, correct me if I'm wrong).
I've yet to see a permission scheme on a mobile OS where I felt like it was ahead of the web. The point I was making was (at best) native permissions are keeping pace with the web, but they certainly aren't surpassing it and the dominant platform in the space is significantly behind.
That's what I said though, you are given the option to opt out entirely, or it could be the default as you said. This can be as fine grained as necessary so it is not intrusive but still allows you to use features if you choose so.
What I object to is the Apple approach to simply take away the option whether you want it or not. It's not user friendly at all, it's patronizing and stifling.
Every webpage and their dog has now started to ask for permissions to popup notifications. I find this really annoying. Sure, I can disable it for one site, but then the next one I visit pops up the same question if it's OK to spam me.
I've turned it off browser-wide as a result.
If asking for permissions is to be an option in the future, I hope it is a completely manual opt-in, available in some kind of site-specific settings thingie (that makes no effort to distract the user by noises, popups or red badges by itself).
I think this is reasonable given the ratio of sites a user should be willing to grant any permissions to, vs the amount they should want as sandboxed as humanly possible.