1570674 - Default to "Never Allow" for notification permission prompt denials

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Site Permissions, enhancement, P1)

Description

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Attachment: Screenshot 2019-08-01 at 17.47.33.png

Our analysis of Nightly permission prompt interaction data suggests that only a fraction of users reconsiders their decision to deny a notification permission prompt when asked a second time, to quote

Figure 1 shows that the first time a site prompts a user (during the study period), the user is more likely than not going to grant the site permission: the blue bar at x=0 shows a 52% accept rate. However, if the user does not grant permission and the site prompts the user again, then on each subsequent prompt, the user is less likely to grant permission. After only one denied or ignored prompt, the next prompt only has a 14% accept rate. After ten or more occasions, the accept rate dropped to less than 1% - yet there was a heavy tail of such prompts, as can be seen from the blue line in Figure 1.

So, given that a site has previously prompted a user, it is unlikely that any given future prompt is going to be accepted, and the likelihood drops as the number of previously not-accepted prompts grows. From this perspective, we probably should simply refuse to prompt the user more than once per site.

I have attached said figure to this bug.

I agree with the document that we should refuse to prompt more than once and we should start shipping this and evaluate if it improves our Telemetry numbers for this prompt

Comment 1

[(no longer active)]

Do we want to wait for data from non-Nightly users before making this change?

How are you going to treat denials vs silence here?

Are you planning to send an intent to ship for this once the plans solidify?

Thanks!

Comment 2

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Great questions.

Do we want to wait for data from non-Nightly users before making this change?

I should have been explicit about this, my plan is to add a pref that can be turned off when we receive release data (while this is in Beta) that does not confirm our Nightly analysis.

How are you going to treat denials vs silence here?

For now I would prefer to no act on silence and allow the site to re-prompt again. Felix's research shows that ignoring the doorhanger is as good as a denial, but allowing only a single doorhanger to show is quite a strong restriction vs. simply changing the effect of an explicit user interaction (with a label that clarifies the user choice).

Are you planning to send an intent to ship for this once the plans solidify?

Not for this, no. This is a UI change that only impacts our user experience and does not impact the web platform significantly (i.e. websites will still be able to ask for notification permission the same way they did before). Do you disagree? :)

Thanks!

Comment 3

[Anne (:annevk)]

It might be nice that once you click "Never" we show a little popup "You can revisit your decision anytime" or some such pointing to the UI to revisit past decisions to let users learn that it is possible. Similar to the "undo" UI you see popping up in software.

Comment 4

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

(In reply to Anne (:annevk) from comment #3)

It might be nice that once you click "Never" we show a little popup "You can revisit your decision anytime" or some such pointing to the UI to revisit past decisions to let users learn that it is possible. Similar to the "undo" UI you see popping up in software.

I actually think this is a really nice idea. We have been using this style of notification a lot more recently (e.g. when you disable protections in the protections panel) and we could show a similar popup pointing to the identity panel when the user makes a permission decision. This would probably allow us to enforce stronger defaults and IMO it's a great pattern.

Doesn't sound like something I want to do in this bug, though. This needs some UX work. I'll file a new bug.

Comment 5

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Attachment: Bug 1570674 - Default to "Never Allow" for notification permission prompt denials. r=ehsan

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/15d0f55c9720
Default to "Never Allow" for notification permission prompt denials. r=Ehsan

Comment 7

[Alexandru Michis [:malexandru]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/15d0f55c9720