It’s the indy developer on HN who thinks that if only mean old Apple would enable this they could make millions by having a cross platform poorly performing web app without having to deal with the “App Store tax”.

Yes, unfortunately there are a lot of bad players. But you say it yourself: "websites" have asked you. Its mostly news sites that think they need to push you. There are proper web apps, that will have the "Enable notifications" button in their settings/preferences and are not spamy in any way.

A web app built with notifications as a core feature? Like conversation reminders.