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

alexanderell.is

151–160 of 366 posts

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

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is one of the worst. You can turn off all notifications unrelated to your existing rides. They hide this in the app under: Settings, Privacy, Notifications. Lyft has the same hidden structure.

Thanks! Will try it out.

Android let's you disable notifications by category. Since users disable notifications completely, Uber is pretty good at categorizing notifications so you can turn them off.

I still do like promotional offers so I have those redirected to email :)

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

#152
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"luxury" - sorry, wrong skit

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

#153
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!

On Android, long-press a notification, then tap on a gear icon. You will see a list of notification categories for that app.

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

#154
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 used to do it roughly like this, then I noticed how much more pleasant my wife's experience is. She just has them all turned off.

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

#155
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Well, the developers have started fighting against that by not splitting notifications into channels anymore. Now you just get "…

One strike and you're out rule works perfectly fine for me. If they think they can abuse my attention with stuff like this, I immediately uninstall and go on with my life.

I've been struggling with the Uber app and Uber Eats who has been sending me ads which I found no way to disable.

My problem is that I do want notifications for when my driver has arrived.

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

#156
post #52
post #2

In email land, the terms for helpful vs promotional are "transactional email" for the helpful stuff (e.g., https://mailchimp.com/help/about-transactional-email/ ) and "marketing email" for the promotional ones. There are channels to report abuse if it's bad, not to mention just leaving reviews and mentioning why.

Expedia is really bad about calling all their promotions "transactional emails". You see, once upon a time in the distant past, I used Expedia, so based on that transaction surely I care deeply about how "A more rewarding travel experience is coming in February": http://jfloren.net/content/expedia.png

I'm not sure of the bindingness of this page [1], but the FTC says that transactional-vs-promotional is determined by what what a recipient "reasonably interpret[s]" it as, not what the sender says it is. Not that this prevents the kind of abuse that you mention, but I find if I send a email responding to the kind of email you mention and I politely explain how it is a violation of CAN-SPAM and if reported is a five-figure fine per email, then I magically get added to some sort of "do not send promotional emails that we call transactional" opt-out.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act...

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

#157
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 used to do it roughly like this, then I noticed how much more pleasant my wife's experience is. She just has them all turned off.

By default I never allow notification. If I start to notice that it would have been helpful to get a notification from an app, I will see if that's something that can be enabled.

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

#158
Are there any Android utility apps that will route all notifications through a single proxy where I can apply my own app/category/keyword filters, and [ideally] inbox/archive of notifications?

People criticize email, but I still find it the most user-friendly notification/messaging system. I wish for the type of control that I have in email over any other messaging/notification system (app alerts, Instagram messages, Slack notifications, etc.)

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

#159
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 disable all notifications from an app at first strike.

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

#160
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where i live, GDPR and related laws make it illegal to mix advertising permissions with functional permissions. So that's never going to happen.

I've spent plenty of time working on GDPR compliance in EU and I can directly tell you there's nothing in GDPR that would say anything like that. GDPR talks about data collection and says nothing about having your own business spam you with advertisement (as long as they don't collect data outside their GDPR restrictions).

> Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case [...]

https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/

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