Notifications

Using notifications responsibly

We see an increasing number of websites using notifications irresponsibly. The moment you visit the site, you get prompted by the browser to sign up for notifications. Not only is it annoying to be asked immediately, but it is unlikely to be effective.

We wanted to set a good example for responsible use of push notifications. So we don’t ask for permission to send push notifications until the user selects the button asking to turn notifications on. And we only provide the option to subscribe at the bottom of articles.

Once someone selects that button, then we trigger the browser alert asking for permission to send notifications. If the person signs up, we send a quick notification thanking them and update the button to indicate how they can turn off notifications.

For more on using web notifications responsibly, we recommend Best Practices for Push Notifications Permissions UX by Owen Campbell-Moore.