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

alexanderell.is

101–110 of 366 posts

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

#101

I have turned off all notifications, no sound on my phone either. If I happen to look at the phone while someone is calling, good - otherwise I'll call them back or write them.

That's a really interesting strategy. Thanks for the tip. What about emergency calls? But then I just realized, those are extremely uncommon.

https://support.google.com/android/answer/9069335?hl=en-GB#z...

> Under 'What can interrupt Do Not Disturb', tap People: Calls: Repeat callers. To let a call through if the same person calls twice in 15 minutes, turn on Allow repeat callers.

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

#102
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll go one step farther and uninstall it if I haven't used it recently or often.

I'll go that one step further and cast my phone into a shallow grave, having salted the earth it's buried in so that nothing may grow there again.

I'll go that one step further and build a time machine and go back in time and kill myself before I have a chance to even install the app.

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

#103
Heh. I was woken up by an Uber greenwashing marketing notification. All notifications off (and in any case if I am waiting for a Uber I have the app on waiting for the countdown and I don't need the notifications anyway). If there were a viable competitor to them where I live, I would have deleted the app altogether and given them a 1-star rating.

Apple's policies ban the use of push notifications for marketing purposes, but they don't enforce it nor do they provide a way for customers to report violation, so that policy is completely useless.

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

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really interesting strategy. Thanks for the tip. What about emergency calls? But then I just realized, those are extremely uncommon.

https://support.google.com/android/answer/9069335?hl=en-GB#z... > Under 'What can interrupt Do Not Disturb', tap People: Calls: Repeat callers. To let a call through if the same person calls twice in 15 minutes, turn on Allow repeat callers.

Hah, spammers take note: always call twice in 15 minutes! Easy for them to automate.

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

#105
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…

My rule is: Disable notifications immediately regardless, if I find myself wishing I had gotten a ping instead of opening the app to check, I turn it on (which never happens, it's off for everything).

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

#106
post #26

I always relish in uninstalling apps when this happens but I hope they have stats somewhere that show: "oh, we sent this annoying marketing notification and an uninstall happens", and I hope some analyst is finding that pattern in their data and telling people about it. But I have to assume the answer is, 'probably not', given that nothing seems to change.

Apple's push notification API would actually return a status code to the app if the app was uninstalled (that required opt-in from the user, though). They no longer do it, I believe.

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

#107
post #42
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.

You're able to directly message people that are not your friends and see who saw your profile (no matter their privacy configuration, I believe). For me that's about it. Useful if you are job hunting, but nothing to go crazy over.

Honestly, the only thing keeping me on LinkedIn is FOMO of that spectacular job that a recruiter might reach out about, but reality is that this doesn't happen at all for positions worth their salt.

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

#108
post #56
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They explicitly state in their developer agreement not to use notifications for ads.

This changed a couple of years ago, apps can send you ads so long as you opt in, but what qualifies as opting in can be as simple as a bit of language during signup; it’s pretty easy to bypass this.

> 4.5.4 Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app's UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.

From: https://www.imore.com/apples-updated-developer-guidelines-no...

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

#110
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've found that apps that properly set up channels on Android where your can easily block promotional notifications, don't abuse their notifications, and ones that don't put all their notifications through a couple different channels making it impossible to turn off only the ones you don't want. Amazon and Uber are examples of apps that abuse this.
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