51–60 of 428 posts
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Agreed. I have a doc appointment app, where I like the notifications to be on for reminders etc. Lately they started sending marketing messages through that channel. Now I’m sure it’s possible to turn off the marketing messages. But I bet most people don’t know and won’t change that. It’s super annoying.
And soon, those appointment reminders might quietly be dismissed by your phone without you being any the wiser.
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> (read: spam) is it unironically incomprehensible to you that the owner of the device should in the one who gets to decide what is and isn't spam? it's not email where you can get bombarded with shit from any random server - you can mute or uninstall an app.
It should but apps don't let us decide. An intermediate seems to be trying to fix it. Is it ideal? No. But it's the spammers who are to blame.
Spam filter push notifications.
Ideally enough spam reports for Uber Eat’s constant marketing abuse and they lose APNs access for the Bundle ID associated with the spam reports. For example.
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> (read: spam) is it unironically incomprehensible to you that the owner of the device should in the one who gets to decide what is and isn't spam? it's not email where you can get bombarded with shit from any random server - you can mute or uninstall an app.
It should but apps don't let us decide. An intermediate seems to be trying to fix it. Is it ideal? No. But it's the spammers who are to blame.
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Apart from this, what is most needed in both platforms is an application firewall - not every app needs to be allowed to connect to the internet.
I can't believe this still isn't a thing outside of GrapheneOS. Being able to revoke network permissions is a fundamental security and privacy tool that's willfully left out of both Android and iOS. There's zero reason not to include it as a toggle.
We are partly there in spirit with App Transparency keeping track of the IPs and hostnames apps connect to.
Push notifications are for the user, not the marketer. From the author's blog: "I do Revenue Operation, helping Marketing, Sales and Customer Success teams with data, process and technology."
You think there might be some sort of interaction between both facets there? How is bad summarisation good for a user, for example?
For me the notification is the point, and the point of notifications to me is that they deserve my attention. Of the vanishingly few apps I install these days, almost nothing can say it deserves my attention. Even my bank doesn’t get those privileges.
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You think there might be some sort of interaction between both facets there? How is bad summarisation good for a user, for example?
Probably depends on the user. Along with push notifications for almost every app on every one of my devices, I disable the summarization. For me the notification is the point, and the point of notifications to me is that they deserve my attention. Of the vanishingly few apps I install these days, almost nothing can say it deserves my attention. Even my bank doesn’t get those privileges.
If my phone interrupts me, it should either mean someone genuinely needs my attention right now or it should not be disrupting me at all. That's my notification set up. Apps allowed to receive push notifications Phone, Messages, Whatsapp, Apple Health, [brand] bank. That concludes the list. There is no reason any other app needs to be able to instantly ping me. Most apps are not notifying you because something matter…
The biggest problem are apps that do both. For example, I want Uber to notify me when my driver has arrived, but I don't want it to notify me when they have a special 10% discount on my next 5 rides. It's not straightforward to block one but not the other.
This is how taxis worked for decades before smartphones existed. You phoned for a taxi, then remained vaguely aware that it would arrive shortly.
The question is whether a single “it has arrived” notification is worth the surrounding noise: “driver accepted”, “driver is nearby”, “rate your driver”, “here’s 10% off your next ride”, and so on.
In most cases, it is not. The useful information is either already obvious (you can see the car outside) or you have re-opened the app to check where they are.
Operational and marketing notifications should never share the same permission. Until that is enforced at the OS level, I will treat them all as unnecessary spam.
If my phone interrupts me, it should either mean someone genuinely needs my attention right now or it should not be disrupting me at all. That's my notification set up. Apps allowed to receive push notifications Phone, Messages, Whatsapp, Apple Health, [brand] bank. That concludes the list. There is no reason any other app needs to be able to instantly ping me. Most apps are not notifying you because something matter…
The biggest problem are apps that do both. For example, I want Uber to notify me when my driver has arrived, but I don't want it to notify me when they have a special 10% discount on my next 5 rides. It's not straightforward to block one but not the other.
it's a tradeoff. eliminating notification spam means behaving more synchronously when booking a taxi. i don't mind waiting outside for five minutes. especially if i'm not getting a random ping when i'm definitely not booking a taxi :shrugs:
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The biggest problem are apps that do both. For example, I want Uber to notify me when my driver has arrived, but I don't want it to notify me when they have a special 10% discount on my next 5 rides. It's not straightforward to block one but not the other.
I don’t know about uber specifically but most of the apps I use have a separate toggle for things like marketing. Maybe it’s an EU thing?
Then next month, you create a new notification channel for your new promotional messages because too many people opted out of the old channels. You default that new channel to opt in, to make sure the user gets their chance to experience it and share in the delight you mean to share with them.
Presumably, you continue this until you have hundreds of such toggles and presumably some kind of dedicated Toggle Engineering Department that oversees them all. Nextdoor, Meta apps, LinkedIn, and countless others all appear to be competing for the most such toggles.
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It should but apps don't let us decide. An intermediate seems to be trying to fix it. Is it ideal? No. But it's the spammers who are to blame.
You know, I would love a feature that lets me mark push notifications as spam, and optionally send them to Apple. The last part is important for a variety of reasons, one of which is that notifications can be end to end encrypted. Spam filter push notifications. Ideally enough spam reports for Uber Eat’s constant marketing abuse and they lose APNs access for the Bundle ID associated with the spam reports. For example…
Apple could fully enforce their policies and fix this in a heartbeat, but they won’t.