Firefox experimenting with blocking “we’d like to send you information” requests by default
Ever notice how every website you visit wants to send you more information? Well Firefox sure did and they’re working on disabling website notifications until you’ve clicked around or entered text on a site, which is pretty cool.
I’m not sure if most people work both sides of the blogs, but the method we use to send out push notifications doesn’t really have good configuration options that make sense for targeting returning visitors or being less spammy.
Like, I’d like to not display the request to follow us immediately as the first thing they see but my options are floating bell that you can dismiss or annoying address bar popup asking if you want to follow us. As the very first thing you see. Ever.
Website notifications shown on most sites as the first thing you see, and really who in their right mind wants to follow a site as the very first action they take having never read the content? It’s absurd.
OneSignal, which is what most people use I think, just needs to modify their WordPress plugin (where most of the notification spam comes from I think,) to allow it to be a link at the bottom of the page, or popup after so many visit.
Hopefully the plugin notification developers will take note of Firefox’s actions and help website operators stop spamming people with notification windows they don’t want.
On a related note, if you ever subscribe to a site by accident and want to remove it from being able to push you notifications, click the lock or unlock icon in the address bar and choose Notifications: Block.
