alt Hacker News> why does it keep asking?
Why does any software keep asking you to do things you explicitly told them you don't want to do? Because it's in the software developer's best interest to get you to do them, not yours. We've gotten way past the point in software where we no longer expect the software to serve the user's interest and solve the user's problems. Now, the expectation is that the user gets nagged and coerced into serving the software's interest and solving the developers' problems.
EDIT: Looks like a developer confirmed this in a sibling comment already: It nags you because that solves their support problem.
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“Their support problem” is a regular person’s problem getting the software to work how they want. That frustrated them enough to complain about.
I don’t follow how it’s necessarily selfish for the developer to reduce that.
There certainly are selfish ways to reduce support load, like making it harder to ask for help at all. But this way seems like the right way: listen to users’ problems and act to avoid them.
If your remedy causes more pain and frustration than the status quo, you’ll end up with more support load, not less.
Sure it’s greyer when the developer’s trying to sell something, but what does Signal gain from pushing notifications on users?
This seems to be about making the software humane and forgiving—meeting users where they are, not tricking them into something they don’t want.
The Proton Drive app keeps asking me to turn on backups of photos and video. There is no option to say "don't ask again."
I guess they /want/ more storage to be used? Or is there a support issue they are trying to deal with?
It's pretty shortsighted, bordering on intentionally obtuse, to insinuate that the only person that benefits from solving the support problem is the person on support.. Take the example of automatic backups others brought up in this thread. Are you really going to imply that there's zero benefit to the person who didn't lose their data because the app reminded them to turn backups on? I don't disagree that it could be improved with a simple "don't ask me again" style setting, but that doesn't change the fact that every time someone doesn't issue a support ticket, it's because they didn't run into an issue. Any effective solution to a support problem is mutually beneficial for the user as well as the support staff.
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.