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Comment by cforrester | Hacker News Reader

> Just because you have a good use doesn’t outweigh the all the bad abuse.

Personally, this is how I feel about downloading apps to my phone for every individual service and product. I see no need to download a separate app for each individual service I'm interested in, as the potential for abuse is higher than getting the occasional notification from my browser app and visiting their website.

However, it sounds to me like the focus should be on minimizing the potential for any avenue of information delivery to be abused, not to remove or decline to add features for fear that they will be. From the user side, I'm not interested in being told by a developer, "download my app if it's so important to you." I'd probably never discover how useful a service can be if I would have to download another app to try it. From the developer side, I'm not interested in telling potential users, "you actually don't want that feature."

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99% of apps you download aren’t spam unlike the 99% of web notification requests that are spanmy

I don't find that very convincing at all. 99% of apps I've ever used add no value beyond what a web interface could do, and most of those send me spammy notifications trying to draw me back into the app. App notification spam is a much greater problem for me and everyone I know than web notification spam, and apps pose a greater privacy and security threat.

I agree, because I've become picky about what I install. I tend to use only open source apps, especially from F-Droid.

However I routinely deny notification requests in Firefox so this is not a problem. I also routinely deny the permission to use canvas image data. Firefox warns it can be used to fingerprint browsers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-agai...

Sadly Apple does its best to make more money. If they allow other browser engines they'd end up selling less apps. IMHO they'll care about privacy only until it positively correlates with making money. If it will ever cost them more than it gains, they'll find a way to weaken privacy without losing face.

An example, Apple ruthlessly enforcing in app payments for small companies but bowing to Netflix, Amazon and the like. They know they would sell less phones if those apps won't run on iOS.

And that's expected. Why would a company care about you and me in this age? No more than what you and me would care about ants.

Then 99% of the websites you visit are spammers, that's a different problem.

Removing this feature from all users though is not a good solution either. Chrome allows you to block notifications from all sites so you don't have to dismiss requests anymore which seems like it would suit your needs and at the same time allow others to use this feature.

In my experience the usage of notifications in native apps is hardly less spammy than web notifications.

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter are the biggest offenders here. Its worse cause for these apps if you allow them the send notifications permissions you are automatically opting-in for everything and you need to use their UI to granularly remove the ones you don't want.

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