Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

jacquescorbytuech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 428 posts

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#271

Post by iamacyborg »

brandonwindson wrote: post #258
iamacyborg wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realise that CANSPAM as a law in the US is titled appropriately but I live in the UK where declarative opt-in is a must apart from a couple “soft” opt-in scenarios. People. Opt. In. Stop conflating your preferences with other people’s.

Spammers ignore both opt-in and opt-out, they do not care about UK or US law. That is where hosting provider enforcement matters.

Agreed but I don’t find the framing of labelling marketers as spammers particularly accurate or useful.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#272

Post by nyx »

iamacyborg wrote: post #247
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something might come of introspecting why such controls are being built and desired by consumers instead of trying to frame everything as a "big tech evil!!1" narrative.

I’d recommend following your own train of thought, why is big tech so hell bent on intermediating the experience between their users and everyone else? They’ve done it for email, web search, mobile experiences, advertising, etc. You want to use any of those things, you’ll have to pay their toll booth, figuratively or literally.

I'm not a fan of Apple or Google, and it feels bad that all of our notifications pass through APNS or FCM. Megacorps shouldn't have control over our digital lives to the extent that they do, and anyone talking about this gets my full attention and support.

Except for marketers! I don't think there's a less sympathetic category of technologists, save for maybe CSAM peddlers.

You're upset that you can't get "visibility" into whether the bullshit ad you tried to ram down my throat landed on target? You're worried that I'm a dormant user and my phone will silently delete the spam you sent to try to hook me back into engaging with whatever worthless product you're hawking?

World's tiniest violin, buddy. Boo fucking hoo. Your last paragraph says the "senders" (read: spammers) who make it through the next decade intact will be, to lightly paraphrase, the ones who send messages the recipients actually wanted. You say that like it's a bad thing!

The computer is in my life because it is a tool that does the things I want. It is not an open mic for marketing sleazebags to try to sell me shit. May every single one of your attempts to invade my life and hijack my attention be flushed swiftly down the toilet.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#273

Post by iamacyborg »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #259
iamacyborg wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d recommend following your own train of thought, why is big tech so hell bent on intermediating the experience between their users and everyone else? They’ve done it for email, web search, mobile experiences, advertising, etc. You want to use any of those things, you’ll have to pay their toll booth, figuratively or literally.

The chain of thought is quite straightforward. Functionally nobody wants an intermediary-free channel because there are adversarial entities on the other end.

Do you think that logic holds true for web search as well? Because this is happening there in a much stronger way too.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#274

Post by lionkor »

Turn off all notifications except messaging and see how your day goes. It's not going to kill you. You quickly get used to regularly checking things you actually care about, and the rest has to wait until YOU care.

I've been doing this for many years, and none of my friends or colleagues are aware of it, and they don't need to be. Notifications don't help you respond quickly, they just grab your attention from things YOU wanted to do.

I haven't checked Discord today yet. I haven't checked my email. Whenever I do want to know if my friends wrote me, or if I have some new bills, or if I need to follow up on something, I will open the respective app and deal with it.

I can put my phone next to me for hours and not get distracted.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#275

Post by hennell »

IMO they should be doing way more to control push notifications, there's so much more control they could give the user, and many clear violations of their policies.

One of the best apps I've bought for android is buzz kill which lets you set rules around notifications. I have cool downs on family chats and social media so it doesn't keep buzzing when things kick off, filter Amazon alerts to only "we're two stops away" and "We've delivered" messages and dismiss the rest.

I have custom buzz patterns and sounds for urgent alerts and rules that batch notifications depending what WiFi I'm on, time outs on things that don't matter after a few hours etc.

My notifications list is now way smaller and far more relevant.

Also quickest way to sort out notifications is to take your phone off silent. Hearing everything coming in, you see more when it you can then decide if the notification should make noise, or exist at all on a per app basis.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#276

Post by zem »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #150
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had to setup Microsoft Authenticator. It refused to register a code unless I enabled notifications. You are a two factor app. I should never be in a situation where there is an unexpected login I need to verify.

> I should never be in a situation where there is an unexpected login I need to verify. Isn't that kind of the point? If someone else is trying to login somewhere with your credentials, your two factor will ping up?

huh, is that why my google authenticator app pops up randomly? i always figured it was a bug in the app or in android.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#277

Post by sor1nmarkov »

mikaeluman wrote: post #13

I see the point. But honestly I am more concerned about having to constantly fight to turn off all permission allowances every time I install an app. And the moment I have some faith and trust an app that I deem important, I get promotional junk as a "notification". I would really like to have notifications allowed on certain apps like parking, or health etc., but all they seem to do is abuse the trust they are given…

"having to constantly fight to turn off all permission allowances every time I install an app"

Are you really installing that many apps that this is so hard?

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#278

Post by nottorp »

illiac786 wrote: post #270
nottorp wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS asks you if you want to allow notifications when each new app is started. You can just say no there and you're done. It would be better if they were totally opt-in of course (1), but that's not bloody likely to happen. (1) As in off by default with no questions.

I can see a certain category of people screaming that WhatsApp calls are broken if that were to pass… but I do agree that no one would scream louder than app makers wanting to retain their share of human brain attention.

As far as i know my Whatsapp is muted and the mute is muted again. But it still rings for voice calls.

It's integrated somehow with the phone app on iOS, whatsapp calls show alongside GSM calls.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#279

Post by graemep »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #99
lanerobertlane wrote: post #24

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…

Yeah, this entire article is pretty transparent that it's from the sender perspective, and worried about platforms taking over "sender control". Who is he kidding? The vast majority of apps have absolutely proven they can't be trusted to respect your attention. From my perspective, the more roadblocks the platforms put between unnecessary notifications and my phone, the better. And I don't think Apple or Google are s…

> I do believe their incentives better align with mine than the marketing department of some app I was forced to download because I bought a ticket once or something like that.

Align better for now. It will get enshittified.

I try very hard to avoid installing apps specific to a particular business or organisation. So far I have only had to install a government app and some from banks. Even those are avoidable (but it would be very inconvenient to do so).

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#280

Post by iamacyborg »

npunt wrote: post #208
iamacyborg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a through line from an article I posted last week about the similar situation in email, which has a lot more depth as inbox providers have substantially more published papers and patents showing their intermediation. https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/writing/what-google-yahoo-... The next post will be highlighting the difference between the actual state of the art techniques being deployed by large tech co’s (Li…

> Cool man, but it might surprise you to find out that people knowingly opt into receiving this stuff and actually consent to it. Consent is more than pressing 'Allow' on a notification pop-up. It's often not even informed consent, as those pop-ups are usually a part of some onboarding flow where users are just trying to get to the value the app promises and pressing 'ok' to everything. Even if people do indeed want…

Yeah, that's true about the allow, and for sure marketing and product teams are deploying misleading consent priming which doesn't fully explain to the user what they're actually allowing in the first place, or setting baselines that are too permissive vs what the user is expecting.

> I'm happy that devices and ecosystems are moving in the direction of triaging and filtering sender content, as power needs to lie in the user's holistic

I don't disagree necessarily, but I see it as them putting themselves in a position to act as a toll collector, which has already happened with email and web search and is only getting worse with the introduction of LLM's into both of those things.

It's a bummer this article ended up doing much better than my email one, as I think that might better position the problem in a lot of user's minds and highlight just how much surveillance is sitting on top of those free inboxes.

Post reply on HN