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Comment by julianwachholz | Hacker News Reader

Yet all of this could also be easily done with a PWA that could present with a much less intrusive "add to homescreen" bar.

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Not on iOS! PWAs can't send push notifications on that platform, ever.

Fortunately Apple can't prevent PWAs from telling users that Apple is the reason they can't have good things. I'm disappointed however in Apple also blocking PWA's from the App Store.

Despite what many might think, everything doesn’t need to be an “app,” PWA or otherwise. Reddit is literally a message board, one of the earliest types of website. It doesn’t need my location — ever. Email works just fine as a notification, if I want it as a “push” notification, I could VIP-enable the notification email address in Mail. Does Reddit need my accelerometer? Or direct access to my camera or microphone? Or address book? Or graphics APIs like Metal?

Nope. It’s just a message board. Sell contextual ads for the different subreddits, don’t bother tracking people, and be done with it. Of course that would likely require a significantly smaller workforce.

What are you on about? Being a PWA doesn't mean it needs to access any of those things.

And no, email does not fit all the same use cases as notifications.

A PWA is a web page and uses the browser engine. You don't have to enable notifications and still get prompted just like the browser.

It’s been under consideration recently, though what the current internal consensus is is anyone’s guess.

https://twitter.com/othermaciej/status/1170808259264958464

Well, good. Being spammed with notifications is the primary reason I refuse to install many apps. Sure, you can turn it off but they really make you hunt around for it.

In that case you'll be happy that learn that notifications on the web are opt-in instead of opt-out! :-)

Yes, that's one big reason I avoid installing apps. But the requests are also a pain. Can I permanently opt out of all requests across all sites, and never see a page ask again?

Yes, in all major browsers you can set notifications to auto-decline just like most web permissions (camera, location, cookies, etc...)

Reddit doesn’t care about being less intrusive. If they did, they could stop the aggressive app-nag today. A PWA doesn’t instantly make them want to be subtle.

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