Comment by EGreg
3 days ago
Accidentally visiting a website doesn’t give it permission to send notifications.
Seriously, it is not that difficult to let users choose whether to receive notifications, how often, and manage them later. Apple just had negative incentive to do that on the Web!
They have to agree to a pop-up.
Guess what, people do that all the time. They get tricked into it. They just press a button really fast to get it to go away. They don’t remember doing it but then later that day or a week from then or whenever they might start getting notifications.
And of course they’re incentivized to get you to go back to their website with any notification they want to show. That way they can get more views, or try to run a scam on you if it was a scam website.
We already have ways of doing notifications from arbitrary third parties. It’s called email. Or you can make an app. Or you can get someone to add your site to their home screen. All are extremely clear measures of consent.
At work I’m not allowed to run an ad blocker. I get stupid little pop-ups asking me if I want to enable notifications on websites all the time. As far as I’m concerned it’s all spam.
I LIKE Apple’s stance. I LIKE they’re preventing me from having to see a stupid little permissions dialogue on every new website I go to asking me if I want to enable notifications.
That's a bit like when people like their abusers. "I like that they're strict, they have my best interests in mind, they restrict me for my own good." Don't worry, it also happens with large corporations of all kinds, including Facebook, Google, X, etc.
Well, it's really not that difficult for Apple to provide simple way to install an app on the home screen. Or enable notifications. Or manage notifications. Or get rid of that stupid bar on the bottom of the phone, without going into "guided access mode". They just won't. They lock you down and you like it. You can't trust yourself to manage your own notifications.
Also, email is not notifications. And it's full of spam, because unlike notifications which give a capability only to a specific private key, email addresses can be shared with others who spam you.