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I only care about the helpful notifications, not the promotional ones

alexanderell.is

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Re: I only care about the helpful notifications, not the promotional ones

#11

Post by technothrasher »

grose wrote: post #6

I've noticed this in social networks as well. If you don't get enough transactional notifications for a while they start making up fake ones like Twitter's "in case you missed this Tweet", Facebook's "[someone] posted for the first time in a while", all the while lighting up the notifications badge. Leads to a "boy who cried wolf" scenario in which I stop trusting notifications entirely and just ignore them, possibly…

I don't know if Facebook still does this, as I've completely nuked it from my life, but when I had an account I asked it to turn off all email notifications. But if I didn't log on to Facebook after about two weeks I would get an email saying they were concerned I would miss out and so they helpfully turned email notifications back on for me.

Re: I only care about the helpful notifications, not the promotional ones

#12

Post by superb-owl »

It seems like every new communication channel follows the same basic pattern (phone, email, SMS, push notifications, ...). It starts with friend-to-friend communication, but quickly commercial entities realize there's an opportunity to connect with customers. They usually start with something small and helpful, but before long you're overrun with spam.

I'm counting the days until my flashlight app tells me I've won a free cruise.

Re: I only care about the helpful notifications, not the promotional ones

#13

Post by tsuujin »

emsy wrote: post #8

Isn’t the justification of Apple that they have a monopoly on the App Store so they can protect users from notification abuse? In reality this is not enforced at all and even Apple themselves will send you ads.

No? The walled garden is a safeguard against malicious apps, not against marketing shenanigans.

Re: I only care about the helpful notifications, not the promotional ones

#14

Post by p49k »

night-rider wrote: post #5

I only care about NO notifications. Disabling all notifications is the first step to more saner approaches to technology. I turned my digital life into a pull medium where I check SMS messages etc when I want to, and not having real-time notifications of every little event gives me more peace. It’s a form of digital veganism that I employ. Turn your digital life into pull mediums instead of push.

The subject of the article is about apps bundling time sensitive notifications that you can’t realistically disable with promotions.

You can turn off most notifications for a calmer life, but when you order an Uber you need to know if it’s arriving or if the driver sent you an important message.

Re: I only care about the helpful notifications, not the promotional ones

#15

Post by theamk »

night-rider wrote: post #5

I only care about NO notifications. Disabling all notifications is the first step to more saner approaches to technology. I turned my digital life into a pull medium where I check SMS messages etc when I want to, and not having real-time notifications of every little event gives me more peace. It’s a form of digital veganism that I employ. Turn your digital life into pull mediums instead of push.

I think this only works when you are alone. Once you miss a few important notifications from your friends/spouse/kids/parents, like "the place A was closed, we went to B", you'll want to reconsider.

Re: I only care about the helpful notifications, not the promotional ones

#16

Post by samwillis »

night-rider wrote: post #5

I only care about NO notifications. Disabling all notifications is the first step to more saner approaches to technology. I turned my digital life into a pull medium where I check SMS messages etc when I want to, and not having real-time notifications of every little event gives me more peace. It’s a form of digital veganism that I employ. Turn your digital life into pull mediums instead of push.

Same here, have turned off all app notifications. Email set to only notify for a short list of about 10-15 people who I regularly communicate with.

Re: I only care about the helpful notifications, not the promotional ones

#17

Post by cproctor »

This is when you email the company's head of marketing and/or security expressing naive concern about hacking/phishing. "I received an email that looked like it's from your company, but I know it's not real because I didn't sign up for any of your lists."

Re: I only care about the helpful notifications, not the promotional ones

#18

Post by hericium »

I wish iOS had some "allow notifications from this app for x minutes" option similar to "share location once".

Uber is a good example of an app I would like to see notifications from, when using their service, but disabled them completely.

Uber abuses this feature to show ad banners for scooters or food when I am not using their app and it's not even open (as in not present on the open applications list).

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