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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

#61

Post by gnicholas »

dguo wrote: post #23

My rule is: if I get a single notification that I find useless, I'll immediately disable that notification channel (I'm on Android; I'm not sure if iOS has a concept of channel-specific settings) for that app. Even if the channel can include useful notifications, as the article discusses. If the app doesn't bother to categorize its notifications into channels at all, I turn off its notifications entirely, and I won't…

I have a similar rule, but sometimes it's really hard to figure out (1) whether the app distinguishes between different types of notifications, and (2) where the setting is to turn off the new nuisance notification type.

IME, Lyft and Uber are the worst. For Lyft, their notification preferences are buried under "Privacy: Choose what data you share with us". Not the first place anyone would look!

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

#62

Post by Nextgrid »

kmonsen wrote: post #42
b112 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on the fence about a premium account, but thanks for this info.

What's the draw of premium? Cannot see anything there that would be more then marginal useful for me.

It's completely useless, don't waste your time. The UI is just as slow & terrible, all the dark patterns and ads are still there even if you pay.

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

#63

Post by bsedlm »

I don't wanna be opted-in by default into any notification generated by any automated process.

only when a fellow human clicks (i.e. directly triggers) one action (intended to call my attention) should I be interrupted with a full notification by default.

all notifications generated in bulk, by an automated script/bot, or as a side-effect of a human action need to be explicitly activated by me before they can interrupt me.

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

#64

Post by dgellow »

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…

Linkedin is just the worst company ever doing stuff like that, I try to disable all their notifications and almost never engage with anything there (and I check the platform maybe 3-4 times a year max), and they continue to try to tell me some people more or less in my network are doing things I never cared about. God I hate this company.

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

#65

Post by jerieljan »

I highly recommend installing Buzzkill for those on Android.

In addition to built-in per-channel settings, Buzzkill allows you to create rules to auto-dismiss or do certain actions depending on the title or description of the notification, using basic matching or regex.

It also gives you a nicer view of notification history, with more days and scrubbing across time if you ever want to revisit past notifications.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston....

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

#66

Post by alpaca128 »

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…

In the case of Twitter this also permanently broke notifications for my account. It now shows exactly 2 notifications all the time. Both tell me that someone I follow posted a tweet, as if I was too stupid to scroll down the feed myself.

But in return I don't ever get any other notification. The only way to find out whether someone answered my tweet is to manually dig through my own profile.

Needless to say, I don't use Twitter anymore. Because of this, and because 80% of content I saw was just a stream of pure negativity.

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

#68

Post by Nextgrid »

difosfor wrote: post #47

One of the downsides of living in a world where we don't pay for services but are instead ourselves the payment.

The problem is that this also happens to paid products. You'd think that if you already pay money they should leave you alone, and yet there's a product manager, marketing or "growth" specialist that needs to justify their salary so even paid products aren't immune to that.

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

#69

Post by nomilk »

dguo wrote: post #23

My rule is: if I get a single notification that I find useless, I'll immediately disable that notification channel (I'm on Android; I'm not sure if iOS has a concept of channel-specific settings) for that app. Even if the channel can include useful notifications, as the article discusses. If the app doesn't bother to categorize its notifications into channels at all, I turn off its notifications entirely, and I won't…

Useless notifications is a super dangerous game to play, since one lame "McDonalds has 25% off" *cough: Uber Eats* results in notifications being turned off and poorer outcomes for all parties from that moment on.

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

#70

Post by gnicholas »

rapind wrote: post #22
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…

Apple kept a notification badge on my settings icon for Apple Pay until I finally went in and opted out of it. Under the guise of “Finish setting up your iPhone”. It’s not a big deal I guess, but annoying and obviously promotional. Now I partially associate Apple with intentionally annoying.

There's also no way (that I've found) to turn off notifications if you have an Apple Card. It automatically sends you a notification the next day telling you how much you 'saved' via their cash back feature. This actually discourages me from using their card because I hate getting the notifications.
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