Hacker News Reader

Comment by pigggg | Hacker News Reader

Just curious, how come at least once a month signal bugs me to turn on notifications? I said no for a reason, every single time - why does it keep asking?

Not implying anything evil but it feels a bit weird esp after this.

View on HN

Signal developer here. It's just because notification reliability is always a top support complaint, and a lot of people turn off notifications and don't realize they've done so. Admittedly, once a month is likely too aggressive.

Is there some "no means no" additional setting that could be added where someone has to go into settings that would prevent that?

I fear that with the notifications pop up asking me this I might hit the wrong button and woops turn it on.

Try from inside the signal app itself instead of system settings? On android Signal has an option at hamburger menu > Settings > Notifications > Notifications (toggle switch)

Oh... hmm, two toggles actually. One at Settings > Notifications > Calls > Notifications toggle, and the other at Settings > Notifications > Messages > Notifications toggle

How about instead of prompting to enable notifications, you leave a small banner or other unintrusive/non-annoying UI noting that they're off, which users can tap in order to learn more about how to reenable them?

For an app that prides itself on privacy, it's kind of crazy that you're making it so easy to accidentally blow it.

That would drive me nuts. I do not want a banner permanently on I cannot remove.

And before someone suggests it: If the banner can be removed, you’re back to having lots of complaints for users that did not realise they turned off notifications.

Doesn't have to be prominent and doesn't even have to be a banner. The ultimate point is to make it hard to reenable by accident, and to not make it annoying. Lots of ways to do that.

True. Lots of ways to do it wrong too. I have seen this done wrong significantly more often than right.

Anyway, I agree it’s worth a try.

Making the product worse for everybody because a minority can’t manage their own settings is a terrible strategy.

Do most people keep the notifications disabled for their messaging apps?

I disable notifications on every app that is not on the critical path to me earning a living. Notifications are largely unnecessary. Either you are actively engaged with something, in which case you didn't need the notification, or you are doing something else and don't need the distraction, in which case you didn't need the notification. Only my employer gets a right to demand my time during work hours, which is why notifications are enabled during work hours for work apps.

We as a society have gotten way too comfortable expecting every single person to be available at all times to provide us some kind of immediate response. Let people live. If I'm hiking through the woods with my camera doing bird photography, even if you're my best friend you can wait until I get back to my car and manually check my messages, I don't need a notification. If it's an emergency, dial my number and call me, which will make my phone ring. Novel concept, I know.

Signal notifications are the #1 thing in the critical path for me earning a living. Isn’t this normal in our industry?

Nope.

Okay, well you should probably have them enabled then. For me, Signal is for personal messaging. My work messages are mostly Slack, Webex, and Teams.

It's just a mental compartmentalization thing for me. When I want to get into slack/signal chatting mode or read messages I load such an app and look/interact. When I'm not doing that I don't want to be bothered with messages. I'm already sacrificing a portion of my life to work related tasks and being in front of a computer at many hours, when I'm not in that mode I don't want to be interrupted - people who need to reach me in an emergency have other ways to get ahold of me.

But maybe _you_ are the minority

Personally, I have multiple messaging apps. I have notifications on for work slack, which is high signal, and I have notifications off for personal discord which is noisy and low priority.

> notification reliability is always a top support complaint

I know octogenarians who use signal daily. "You called me and it didn't ring" or "messaged and it didn't beep" are definitely the top support complaints I receive. Thanks for being sensitive to this use case.

Any time after a user switches it off on purpose is too aggressive.

> why does it keep asking?

Why does any software keep asking you to do things you explicitly told them you don't want to do? Because it's in the software developer's best interest to get you to do them, not yours. We've gotten way past the point in software where we no longer expect the software to serve the user's interest and solve the user's problems. Now, the expectation is that the user gets nagged and coerced into serving the software's interest and solving the developers' problems.

EDIT: Looks like a developer confirmed this in a sibling comment already: It nags you because that solves their support problem.

The Proton Drive app keeps asking me to turn on backups of photos and video. There is no option to say "don't ask again."

I guess they /want/ more storage to be used? Or is there a support issue they are trying to deal with?

Yes Google constantly asks me to backup my pictures to their platform No, I don't want this. But regularly when I go to my photos it'll pop up with a box asking and the default option is yes please back up. Sad.

You know you can just use a different picture app?

"Consent" has become this mystical foreign concept to software developers. If the world of computing was a night club, "Silicon Valley" would be that creepy guy who goes up to everyone asking "Do you want to dance? [YES | Ask Me Later]".

They probably want to avoid situations where a customer turns off backups, then loses data and makes it the problem of support.

But it would be nice to have a "don't ask again" option regardless, even if it's hidden in settings.

We build Signal for everyone, and that includes a lot of people who are not as technologically literate as the average tech worker. For a lot of people, they don't even know they dismissed the notification permission prompt, they were just closing boxes. For them, the reminder is helpful and prevents them from experiencing missing notifications. Striking a balance between helping these people and annoying more technologically-literate users is very difficult, with compromises everywhere. We're just trying to make sure Signal works for people, nothing more.

Ask frequently but add a "don't ask again" option. Then everyone is happy.

Not really. A portion of users will randomly tap that just to get rid of the question. They don’t read.

The easiest way to experience that yourself is to set your device to a language you barely understand. You’ll find yourself dismissing dialogs just like all those illiterate normies.

Thanks for the reply. I know it feels noble to do it that way, and I admit I get dogmatic over this one principle: a computer should first and foremost obey the user. It shouldn't have its own agenda. It shouldn't second guess. It shouldn't "did you mean?" I command the computer, and the computer executes that command and then waits for the next command. If I command it to not display a particular output (notifications), then I expect it to never display them, full stop.

I don't see my computers as partners or helpful assistants or eager interns. I see them as tools for reliably performing computation, and I expect them to operate that way.

I fully understand that this means that fewer and fewer developers are "building their software for me" and I find that pretty disappointing.

Have you ever built and distributed communications software? This is a very common problem.

I'm sure everyone loves it when they accidentally press "Delete", and the app instantly deletes a thing forever without showing any confirmation dialog. After all, if the computer asked you to confirm it, it would mean it disobeyed your direct order!

HN truly never fails to make me laugh when it comes to discussing user experience.

I broadly sympathise, being a nerd myself also, but this just isn’t a way to build software for a general audience.

Can you add a "tech-savvy user" mode, off-by-default, that opts out of these sort of reminders?

I think we're capable of finding it ourselves if you do.

It's pretty shortsighted, bordering on intentionally obtuse, to insinuate that the only person that benefits from solving the support problem is the person on support.. Take the example of automatic backups others brought up in this thread. Are you really going to imply that there's zero benefit to the person who didn't lose their data because the app reminded them to turn backups on? I don't disagree that it could be improved with a simple "don't ask me again" style setting, but that doesn't change the fact that every time someone doesn't issue a support ticket, it's because they didn't run into an issue. Any effective solution to a support problem is mutually beneficial for the user as well as the support staff.

If a person says “no” to a prompt multiple times then either they aren’t reading it and never will or they definitely know they are not interested and at some point it needs to stop.

At some point it is just not beneficial anymore.

“Their support problem” is a regular person’s problem getting the software to work how they want. That frustrated them enough to complain about.

I don’t follow how it’s necessarily selfish for the developer to reduce that.

There certainly are selfish ways to reduce support load, like making it harder to ask for help at all. But this way seems like the right way: listen to users’ problems and act to avoid them.

If your remedy causes more pain and frustration than the status quo, you’ll end up with more support load, not less.

Sure it’s greyer when the developer’s trying to sell something, but what does Signal gain from pushing notifications on users?

This seems to be about making the software humane and forgiving—meeting users where they are, not tricking them into something they don’t want.

Messaging platforms where people receive and promptly respond to messages are more successful in the long run. That's why SMS overtook email. If you own a messaging platform there isn't anything inherently nefarious about pushing people to enable notifications.

There is if they have repeatedly said no

imagine someone shows up to your door and tries to sell you garbage. you ask him to leave and he says he'll show up again soon. and these idiots defend this behavior. at the end of the day, the people on this site are muppets, they just dont like facebook is all.

What I don’t understand is why anyone can’t imagine scenarios where folks don’t want to turn on notifications. Also, why on a site where all I ever read is “users should be allowed to choose, users should be allowed to control their computers, users should have their consent respected,” etc. (especially when Linux comes up) are we seeing “no, users should keep getting nagged to turn on a feature they explicitly said they don’t want to use”? It’s not like it’s hard to go enable notifications. They can easily change their mind.

Does Signal magically show up on people's phones and open itself at random point in time? I have a suspicion, that you might not be too good at this whole "making analogies" thing.

Pretty sure that's just iOS behavior + app design. If notifications are off, apps will occasionally prompt again to make sure you didn't disable them by accident or miss something

No, the OS will not do that, nor is the developer able to trigger the system prompt again when they detect the user has notifications off. Only thing they can do is present their own prompt and link out to the Settings app for the app's settings. Can't even deep link to the app's notification settings.

Reminds me what Whatsapp if you set up a 2FA PIN, which forces you to type it about every week to check if you forgot it. So annoying.

Sorry, I really cannot tell if this is sarcasm or not.

One of the TOTP apps had a periodic test that you still knew the paraphrase. It started frequent and then backed off to like once a month. There’s definitely a benefit even if it’s annoying.

It depends on whether one has it stored in a password manager or not. If stored, there is no benfit. Giving users a choice would be better.

That app was authy by Twilio. Twilio screwed over everyone using that app

That’s not sarcasm and it doesn’t allow any backup, it literally just to make sure you didn’t forget the PIN. It’s once a week, forever. It’s a good way to make sure people don’t activate 2FA.

https://faq.whatsapp.com/1278661612895630/

> WhatsApp will regularly ask you to enter your PIN as a reminder. As long as you don't reset the PIN, you will get a reminder once a week.

NSL, perhaps?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com