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Comment by mapt | Hacker News Reader

The entire idea of push notifications on browsers was obviously toxic from the start, especially the privileged status "Do you want to enable notifications?" popups had.

I think the idea comes from the 2010's hype about Phone-Ifying The Desktop. Someone clearly thought they were recreating the Google Reader / RSS ecosystem (Mozilla had RSS in the browser in a flop)... but everyone else was just enthusiastic about dark patterns that were viable in mobile apps that didn't exist in a desktop browser.

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I use this feature all the time and I love it. Not having to install dozens of apps just to see the occasional notification is a dream come true.

The way it's trivial for browsers to fake OS notifications on some platforms is a clear design flaw, though. I get the need for it (PWAs and such) but unless the website sending a notification is a PWA, there's no need for a notification to be that ambiguous.

The current system, where Chrome (the only browser that matters) collects information about websites and only shows the permission popup on some websites has mostly killed useful notification support for a lot of websites.

I can think of exactly two use cases for web browser push notifications:

- Web-based email

- Web-based chat

That’s it. Every other use case seems to be solving a “them” problem (how do we increase engagement?) and not a “me” problem.

Even if I wanted to hear about updates from a website (and I never do), I could sign up for emails. And If I don’t trust a website with my email, I certainly don’t trust them with sending me push notifications.

In fact, let me take chat apps off that list, because if I don’t have the webapp open in a browser window, the chat app should have the option to just email me about someone trying to message me (and ideally, letting the other party know I’m unavailable and letting them choose whether to send me the email.) So no, really just email and that’s it.

I’m super curious what your use cases are if you use web-based push notifications “all the time”.

Youtube uses it well. You can get notifications when people upload videos or to recommend you suggested videos you may like. Sure engagement increases, but that is because I'm watching videos that I find entertaining. It's a win win for YouTube and the users.

I can see that being useful if it’s important to you to start watching someone’s videos within minutes of them posting it, but I’ve never understood why that’s desirable for anyone.

To me, I watch YouTube when I have some time to do so and make the active decision to open the app… then let me know about which of my subscriptions have recent videos. I just can’t imagine being in the middle of something else and dropping everything because someone posted a video. But different people are different I guess.

You don't have to click on notifications right away. I let them build up over the day until I have time to go through them. But there are also some like livestreams or video premiers where being there on time does matter.

Another factor is that videos are not permanent. If you don't watch a video immediately the creator may take it down or private it.

If you’re gonna let them just build up over time, why not just open the app and see the latest videos in there?

Time sensitive stuff I… kinda get. But I would get stressed out if that was actually the norm. I really don’t like the idea of “engage now or you’ll miss out” in my entertainment.

I spend way more time on YouTube than I ought, but it's on a pull basis, not a push basis. I go to YouTube and go to my subscriptions or to recommendations on the Home screen.

I can't imagine wanting YouTube to be able to push content onto my phone at arbitrary times of its choosing. What benefit does that give you over the subscription feed and home screen?

IMO random websites prompting to access your location data is far more problematic

DocuSign tracks your location when you sign a document unless you disable it in the browser. Learned that a few years ago.

The biggest problem there is that several browsers don't want to remember your response of "No" for more than one day. They want you to be constantly tracked. I'd like to be able to tell all browsers, never track my location or send me a notification from any website but that's not what they want. Orion by Kagi is a breath of fresh air in this department.

I think notifications came about as part of Progressive Web Apps (PWA).

Its a progressive webapp feature and would be a necessary tool tobescape Apple and Google stores and hardwarw lockin. Like all tech, hindsight is 20/20 with malicious actors.

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