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My web browsing just got interrupted by a new tab that opened without asking me, informing me of this acquisition. I have a 'one strike' rule for abusive behav

My web browsing just got interrupted by a new tab that opened without asking me, informing me of this acquisition. I have a 'one strike' rule for abusive behavior in extensions, and immediately removed it.

crooked-v 4y ago
In my experience this is fairly common for "what's changed" listings for extensions. It's probably mostly to do with how browsers don't provide any good native mechanism for that.
- krageon 4y ago
  Nobody cares what changed, and nobody should have to care.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Unless it's a security vulnerability, I quite often find that I would have preferred for the update to never been made in the first place.
  - nneonneo 4y ago
    I do care - I install tools because they're useful, and if they become more useful from new features, that's useful to know. I've definitely found some good gems to improve my workflow that I don't think I'd have discovered without the changelog. What I don't particularly care about is "performance optimizations and bug fixes". If that's all you have to say about your latest release, just don't bother telling me. I suspect that's where some of the fatigue from release notes comes from.
    - KMnO4 4y ago
      I recently received a phone call from Dexcom, since they make a continuous glucose monitor that I wear. The call was to warn me not to upgrade to iOS 16 as their app would immediately crash and I wouldn’t be able to view my blood sugar. I was told a fix was being deployed and I would receive an email when it was safe to upgrade. Sure enough, a week later I received an email saying it was safe to upgrade to iOS 16, provided I updated the app in the App Store first. And as frustrated as I was that a company that large with a product so safety critical had waited literally months after the iOS betas before testing iOS16, I was more frustrated when I read the release notes for this incredibly important update: “Bug fixes and performance optimizations”
  - Ajedi32 4y ago
    In most cases yes, but a change in ownership is definitely something I want to know about. I'd prefer a less intrusive way of notifying me of the change, but in this case the extension in question is one that works passively in the background, and doesn't have a UI that users regularly interact with. I can't really think of a better way to inform people, except maybe via the notification API?
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  For good reason. It's a pretty safe bet you can throw any mail that has "IMPORTANT" printed on the envelope in the trash. Every online store, software vendor and web site wishes they could get my attention for an "IMPORTANT" message at least 100x more often than I wish they did.
  - chucksmash 4y ago
    Browser extensions already have access to privileged APIs that websites cannot use, however, so providing this ability to extensions !== providing it to medium.com. The kind of company that would abuse an extension API like this for marketing is just the kind of company I wouldn't trust for extensions, so even spammy marketing messages would still be a useful signal (to uninstall).
Klaster_1 4y ago
Sublime Text extensions do this too, quite annoying when you open an editor for for a quick note and several seconds in the typing focus switches to a new tab. Of course, browser extensions that do this are annoying too, especially when you get bombarded by new tabs if you didn't use the browser in a while. This is so user-hostile, how come the issue wasn't tackled by browser vendors yet?
- reaperducer 4y ago
  several seconds in the typing focus switches to a new tab I've never understood why operating systems allow focus switching. It's always been a pox on Windows, but macOS does this more and more these days. Just this morning, I plugged in a USB hard drive, then returned to my other work while it mounted. Suddenly, I'm typing a memo into Finder's password field to unlock the drive. Just. Stop. It. If you need my attention, there is no shortage of methods to do that — Beep. Bounce the icon in the dock. Notifications messages. Your stupid program is not more important than whatever I'm doing at that moment in time.
  - madeofpalk 4y ago
    Agree, but the flip side of this is that occasionally Windows will prompt for admin access in the background, I won't notice, and a hour later wonder what happened to that app i tried to install.
    - reaperducer 4y ago
      I'm not a regular Windows users, but I believe Windows has lots of other ways to get people's attention, other than stealing it. Isn't that what the icon tray is for? Or blinking the program in the task bar?
      - Fatnino 4y ago
        No, when windows pops the admin auth prompt into the background the best and most reliable way to notice is to intuit that such a window should have appeared by now and go looking for it.
rjh29 4y ago
It's like with phone apps. Every single phone app thinks it is the centre of the universe and is "only" sending you a few notifications per day, but if you extend this to every app on your phone you'll get hundreds a day and the only recourse is to disable them entirely.
- Swizec 4y ago
  Teachers: "My students are smart and diligent, 30min of homework per day should be well within their abilities" Students: have 4 hours of homework per day The latest app that needs their notifications disabled on my phone is Amazon. Shame really, knowing about packages was useful. But I really don't need spam about "Hey this thing you glanced at is on sale now" every 2 days.
  - joshmanders 4y ago
    DoorDash is terrible at this too. Notice that when you turn notifications off on these apps then every time you open them to use them, you get popups "please enable notifications to keep up to date on your orders!!" and the options are always "Yes enable notifications!" or "Remind me later" Excuse me, I disabled notifications for a reason, don't make me disable usage of your app completely.
    - Swizec 4y ago
      Oh yeah UberEats was one of the first notification permissions to go. Sorry I’d rather check my phone every 2 minutes when awaiting delivery than deal with you on the other 95% of days.
      - autoexec 4y ago
        Why not disable all notifications by default? Is there something you actually really want to get interrupted by? I want to know when I get a call or an text, but pretty much everything else can wait until I'm actively engaged with it. Every new app I installed gets every permission I can disable disabled including notifications and if it continues to function well enough for my needs why let it do anything more? Why even give new apps opportunity to be obnoxious?
TheJoeMan 4y ago
Then there is someone nearly the same who cries foul when they aren’t told a new company owns the extension. What if Google bought it and was going to harvest that “ability to read and change website data” permission?
- Ajedi32 4y ago
  Yeah, I dislike the intrusive nature of the notification, but I can't really think of a better way off the top of my head. The notification API could work in theory, but if you don't already have that permission it would be odd to request it just for a one-time message like this.
- ls15 4y ago
  It should tell you before you install or update the extension, not randomly when they decide that now is the best time.
  - andrewstuart2 4y ago
    I'm assuming that an extension update is precisely what triggered this behavior. It sounds like the extension had no need for alert functionality, and that this was a first occurrence, so I'd also assume they had to add code to trigger an alert rather than just blasting a brand new alert to users via written but previously-unused code.
  - mh- 4y ago
    I'm fairly sure the Chrome Extension API doesn't have a way to implement "before self-updating, do this thing". This might have been their best/only option. The only other approach would be to notify them post-update.
Flimm 4y ago
This is the polar opposite of abusive behaviour.
- OrvalWintermute 4y ago
  I think the "stealing of focus" is what the commenter took issue with. Many people complain about OSes and apps for that matter, stealing focus inappropriately.
ouid 4y ago
Yesterday discord asked me, upon install, for permission to capture keystrokes when it is not in focus.
- gibspaulding 4y ago
  Do you have push-to-talk enabled, or a keybind for toggle-mute? That's a super abusable permission and this isn't to say they aren't abusing it, but there is a reason for it to exist.
- jasonlotito 4y ago
  Part of that is handling the Discord overlay. So, when you are in a game, and you are in a Discord VC, you can display who is talking. There are keyboard shortcuts that come along with that which you can use if you want. In order to detect those keyboard short cuts, they need to listen for them. You are free to not give them permission. Posting about asking permission under a comment talking about "abusive" behavior is a bit odd.
  - ouid 4y ago
    Opening a new tab telling you about changes in the ownership of a piece of software that has the ability to open tabs autonomously is not abusive. Moreover it is not even a problem with the extension, it is a problem with the opersting system it runs on. Analogously, i am sure that discord would have preferred to have finer control over the permissions it requests, but Apple's mission is security theater. If apple exposed a set of "application specific out of focus keybinds". The security breach would not be necessary. As it stands lots of software in the apple ecosystem has identical permissions to discord, but those don't get scary warnings associated to them. This constitutes a (clearly illegal) competitive advantage for Apple and they have no interest in removing this advantage by offering finer permissions controls, even in the case where they do not offer competing software.
petesergeant 4y ago
That's _exactly_ what I'd want to happen? Transfer of ownership of an extension that has access to my most intimate data, I want a klaxon to go off...
dylan604 4y ago
That sounds like somethign that should happen on new window launch or after a relaunch of app kind of thing. For the browser to just randomly open a tab is very uncool
andrepd 4y ago
What an odd complaint. The annoyance of 1 pop-up is negligible compared to the extreme usefulness of letting me know that the extension was acquired. That is what makes me uninstall the extension.

crooked-v 4y ago

In my experience this is fairly common for "what's changed" listings for extensions. It's probably mostly to do with how browsers don't provide any good native mechanism for that.

krageon 4y ago
Nobody cares what changed, and nobody should have to care.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Unless it's a security vulnerability, I quite often find that I would have preferred for the update to never been made in the first place.
- nneonneo 4y ago
  I do care - I install tools because they're useful, and if they become more useful from new features, that's useful to know. I've definitely found some good gems to improve my workflow that I don't think I'd have discovered without the changelog. What I don't particularly care about is "performance optimizations and bug fixes". If that's all you have to say about your latest release, just don't bother telling me. I suspect that's where some of the fatigue from release notes comes from.
  - KMnO4 4y ago
    I recently received a phone call from Dexcom, since they make a continuous glucose monitor that I wear. The call was to warn me not to upgrade to iOS 16 as their app would immediately crash and I wouldn’t be able to view my blood sugar. I was told a fix was being deployed and I would receive an email when it was safe to upgrade. Sure enough, a week later I received an email saying it was safe to upgrade to iOS 16, provided I updated the app in the App Store first. And as frustrated as I was that a company that large with a product so safety critical had waited literally months after the iOS betas before testing iOS16, I was more frustrated when I read the release notes for this incredibly important update: “Bug fixes and performance optimizations”
- Ajedi32 4y ago
  In most cases yes, but a change in ownership is definitely something I want to know about. I'd prefer a less intrusive way of notifying me of the change, but in this case the extension in question is one that works passively in the background, and doesn't have a UI that users regularly interact with. I can't really think of a better way to inform people, except maybe via the notification API?
PaulHoule 4y ago
For good reason. It's a pretty safe bet you can throw any mail that has "IMPORTANT" printed on the envelope in the trash. Every online store, software vendor and web site wishes they could get my attention for an "IMPORTANT" message at least 100x more often than I wish they did.
- chucksmash 4y ago
  Browser extensions already have access to privileged APIs that websites cannot use, however, so providing this ability to extensions !== providing it to medium.com. The kind of company that would abuse an extension API like this for marketing is just the kind of company I wouldn't trust for extensions, so even spammy marketing messages would still be a useful signal (to uninstall).

Klaster_1 4y ago

Sublime Text extensions do this too, quite annoying when you open an editor for for a quick note and several seconds in the typing focus switches to a new tab. Of course, browser extensions that do this are annoying too, especially when you get bombarded by new tabs if you didn't use the browser in a while. This is so user-hostile, how come the issue wasn't tackled by browser vendors yet?

reaperducer 4y ago
several seconds in the typing focus switches to a new tab I've never understood why operating systems allow focus switching. It's always been a pox on Windows, but macOS does this more and more these days. Just this morning, I plugged in a USB hard drive, then returned to my other work while it mounted. Suddenly, I'm typing a memo into Finder's password field to unlock the drive. Just. Stop. It. If you need my attention, there is no shortage of methods to do that — Beep. Bounce the icon in the dock. Notifications messages. Your stupid program is not more important than whatever I'm doing at that moment in time.
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  Agree, but the flip side of this is that occasionally Windows will prompt for admin access in the background, I won't notice, and a hour later wonder what happened to that app i tried to install.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    I'm not a regular Windows users, but I believe Windows has lots of other ways to get people's attention, other than stealing it. Isn't that what the icon tray is for? Or blinking the program in the task bar?
    - Fatnino 4y ago
      No, when windows pops the admin auth prompt into the background the best and most reliable way to notice is to intuit that such a window should have appeared by now and go looking for it.

rjh29 4y ago

It's like with phone apps. Every single phone app thinks it is the centre of the universe and is "only" sending you a few notifications per day, but if you extend this to every app on your phone you'll get hundreds a day and the only recourse is to disable them entirely.

Swizec 4y ago
Teachers: "My students are smart and diligent, 30min of homework per day should be well within their abilities" Students: have 4 hours of homework per day The latest app that needs their notifications disabled on my phone is Amazon. Shame really, knowing about packages was useful. But I really don't need spam about "Hey this thing you glanced at is on sale now" every 2 days.
- joshmanders 4y ago
  DoorDash is terrible at this too. Notice that when you turn notifications off on these apps then every time you open them to use them, you get popups "please enable notifications to keep up to date on your orders!!" and the options are always "Yes enable notifications!" or "Remind me later" Excuse me, I disabled notifications for a reason, don't make me disable usage of your app completely.
  - Swizec 4y ago
    Oh yeah UberEats was one of the first notification permissions to go. Sorry I’d rather check my phone every 2 minutes when awaiting delivery than deal with you on the other 95% of days.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      Why not disable all notifications by default? Is there something you actually really want to get interrupted by? I want to know when I get a call or an text, but pretty much everything else can wait until I'm actively engaged with it. Every new app I installed gets every permission I can disable disabled including notifications and if it continues to function well enough for my needs why let it do anything more? Why even give new apps opportunity to be obnoxious?

TheJoeMan 4y ago

Then there is someone nearly the same who cries foul when they aren’t told a new company owns the extension. What if Google bought it and was going to harvest that “ability to read and change website data” permission?

Ajedi32 4y ago
Yeah, I dislike the intrusive nature of the notification, but I can't really think of a better way off the top of my head. The notification API could work in theory, but if you don't already have that permission it would be odd to request it just for a one-time message like this.
ls15 4y ago
It should tell you before you install or update the extension, not randomly when they decide that now is the best time.
- andrewstuart2 4y ago
  I'm assuming that an extension update is precisely what triggered this behavior. It sounds like the extension had no need for alert functionality, and that this was a first occurrence, so I'd also assume they had to add code to trigger an alert rather than just blasting a brand new alert to users via written but previously-unused code.
- mh- 4y ago
  I'm fairly sure the Chrome Extension API doesn't have a way to implement "before self-updating, do this thing". This might have been their best/only option. The only other approach would be to notify them post-update.

Flimm 4y ago

This is the polar opposite of abusive behaviour.

OrvalWintermute 4y ago
I think the "stealing of focus" is what the commenter took issue with. Many people complain about OSes and apps for that matter, stealing focus inappropriately.

ouid 4y ago

Yesterday discord asked me, upon install, for permission to capture keystrokes when it is not in focus.

gibspaulding 4y ago
Do you have push-to-talk enabled, or a keybind for toggle-mute? That's a super abusable permission and this isn't to say they aren't abusing it, but there is a reason for it to exist.
jasonlotito 4y ago
Part of that is handling the Discord overlay. So, when you are in a game, and you are in a Discord VC, you can display who is talking. There are keyboard shortcuts that come along with that which you can use if you want. In order to detect those keyboard short cuts, they need to listen for them. You are free to not give them permission. Posting about asking permission under a comment talking about "abusive" behavior is a bit odd.
- ouid 4y ago
  Opening a new tab telling you about changes in the ownership of a piece of software that has the ability to open tabs autonomously is not abusive. Moreover it is not even a problem with the extension, it is a problem with the opersting system it runs on. Analogously, i am sure that discord would have preferred to have finer control over the permissions it requests, but Apple's mission is security theater. If apple exposed a set of "application specific out of focus keybinds". The security breach would not be necessary. As it stands lots of software in the apple ecosystem has identical permissions to discord, but those don't get scary warnings associated to them. This constitutes a (clearly illegal) competitive advantage for Apple and they have no interest in removing this advantage by offering finer permissions controls, even in the case where they do not offer competing software.

petesergeant 4y ago

That's _exactly_ what I'd want to happen? Transfer of ownership of an extension that has access to my most intimate data, I want a klaxon to go off...

dylan604 4y ago

That sounds like somethign that should happen on new window launch or after a relaunch of app kind of thing. For the browser to just randomly open a tab is very uncool

andrepd 4y ago

What an odd complaint. The annoyance of 1 pop-up is negligible compared to the extreme usefulness of letting me know that the extension was acquired. That is what makes me uninstall the extension.