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.
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.
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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.
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.
Have you ever built and distributed communications software? This is a very common problem.
I broadly sympathise, being a nerd myself also, but this just isn’t a way to build software for a general audience.