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