Comment by hulitu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hulitu | Hacker News Reader

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> And in my experience, users are too stupid to handle fine-grained permissions. Every time I see my parents, I need to go over all of the websites they've somehow managed to permit notifications for (despite my disabling that shit by default),

so the user is at fault because the browser ignores the user's setting

> and I'm not the only one. Research shows people will click "allow" without thinking

It is because "app developers" insist until the user gives up. Earlier was " ok and " cancel", then " ok and don't ask me again" and now " ok and ask me later".

> and leave apps running and updating in the background for months before cleaning house.

Apps which run by default in the backgroung, with no possibility to stop them. Why does Android does not respect my "force stop" ? Why does it restart the app ?

But yes, blaming the "idiot user" is the way to better UX.

Just jumping in to say that while I absolutely agree that app developers engage in hostile dark patterns, the end-users are nonetheless NOT infinitely blameless. We often forget, those of us here on Hacker News, that we are not the average end-user.

jeroenhd is absolutely correct that people, generally speaking, do not care about fine-grained permissions. We try telling them to use different usernames and passwords, to use pseudonyms, to only give the minimum required access, etc, and yet it just keeps happening. This isn't an access to education issue, it's a stubbornness issue: they don't care to learn it. And in fact, they will look at us weirdly for caring about it so much: I've seen people say that anyone with a protonmail email should get their harddrives checked because only paedos would want that kind of service.

This doesn't AT ALL absolve the app developers for engaging in hostile dark patterns. But I do have to agree that even if the permission system was fixed to be perfect, it wouldn't matter for the vast majority of people because they'll allow everything anyway.

> people, generally speaking, do not care about fine-grained permissions

Even if many people don't care, still it should possible if someone does want fine-grained permissions, to be able to do so (although I think proxy capabilities that I had described elsewhere, would be better than merely "allow" or "disallow", regardless of how fine-grained these "allow" and "disallow" might be).

You are right that it does not absolve app developers.

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