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Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

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Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#131

Post by satvikpendem »

joshmanders wrote: post #128
twism wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i guess the solution in the comment i described as anticompetitive is solving a problem that really isn't a problem ... you have the ability to turn off notifications (or notification channels in the case of Android) if they seem spammy. why is the mothership turning off notifications for an app due to heuristics of a broad set of users. if i don't want the notification i'll disable/silence/mute/lower the priority of…

Because there needs to be some kind of penalty for being a shitty person to your users. Like I get it, marketing matters a lot, and being able to market to your existing users is something that makes sure companies survive and I accept that. But because I find your app worthy of being on my phone doesn't mean I find your desire to constantly control what I'm looking at on my device or take away from that. And I think…

The penalty is they lose their privilege to notify you because you turn it off, thereby losing out on your future revenue through marketing to you via notifications. Again, the question is why must Apple or Google do something each person can decide to do themselves?

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#132

Post by satvikpendem »

joshmanders wrote: post #87
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both operating systems already require opt in (at the system level) for applications to be able to send notifications. I think Android enforces this even for apps targeting older API levels, except you just get prompted for the permission when you open the app.

The thing I have a problem with in this method is you're blanket opting in or out of notifications. I'd much rather have notifications bucketed into two systems. Transactional and marketing, just like email. I should be able to opt out of Amazon's marketing push notifications without ALSO opting out of getting delivery alerts.

On Android, there are notification channels you can opt in to individually.

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#133

Post by JohnFen »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #40
sakjur wrote: post #30

Something I wish Apple and Google would support is notifications that are only delivered if you’ve opened the app during the last 2 hours. Taxi and food delivery services for example have a reasonable usecase for push notifications, but only around the time when I’ve opened the apps. I think adding such dials to the operating system could help align the user interest of not being spammed with the engagement metrics u…

Don’t assume that a push notification is going to be shown to the user. It may be for consumption only by the app, to avoid the need for polling a remote server. I expected this article to discuss push-notification payloads and use cases, but no… it’s about spamming the user about products. It’s as if the author doesn’t even understand what push notifications are.

> It may be for consumption only by the app, to avoid the need for polling a remote server.

I don't want this to happen, either. Does disabling push notifications also disable this use of them?

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#134

Post by JohnFen »

pydry wrote: post #94
carlosjobim wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this argument always used against any kind of improvement beneficial for the end user? Let's at least try to improve things before giving up.

Cynicism. It amuses me to think that some people probably believed that email would never go anywhere as a technology because spam.

Email was solidly established on the internet before email spam existed.

The emergence and frowth of spam has greatly reduced how much people use email, though. It appears that spam is well on its way to effectively killing it.

Marketers do seem to eventually kill anything they touch.

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#135

Post by jerlam »

stackskipton wrote: post #129
IncandescentGas wrote: post #95

These regularly spaced and frequent junk notifications are so important to tech companies because they drive product addiction. Interrupting your day 16 times forcing someone to decide to scroll their feed yet again today, until they're as helpless as Pavlov's dog. How is this kind of computer science any more ethical than the chemists who worked to modify tobacco to be more addictive? Apple and Google are complicit…

I'm shocked Apple hasn't tried to fix it and use it as selling point. Smartphone companies don't need to hook the user anymore, almost everyone is high on the smack at this point.

Apple used to not allow ads in push notifications when the iPhone was first released. Sadly, that restriction was removed in 2020:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/4/21165087/ios-apple-push-no...

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#136

Post by JohnFen »

satvikpendem wrote: post #132
joshmanders wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I have a problem with in this method is you're blanket opting in or out of notifications. I'd much rather have notifications bucketed into two systems. Transactional and marketing, just like email. I should be able to opt out of Amazon's marketing push notifications without ALSO opting out of getting delivery alerts.

On Android, there are notification channels you can opt in to individually.

How is this done? I couldn't find an explanation on a quick web search, nor could I find controls on my phone.

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#137

Post by satvikpendem »

JohnFen wrote: post #136
satvikpendem wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Android, there are notification channels you can opt in to individually.

How is this done? I couldn't find an explanation on a quick web search, nor could I find controls on my phone.

https://support.google.com/android/answer/9079661?hl=en#zipp...

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#138

Post by joshmanders »

satvikpendem wrote: post #131
joshmanders wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there needs to be some kind of penalty for being a shitty person to your users. Like I get it, marketing matters a lot, and being able to market to your existing users is something that makes sure companies survive and I accept that. But because I find your app worthy of being on my phone doesn't mean I find your desire to constantly control what I'm looking at on my device or take away from that. And I think…

The penalty is they lose their privilege to notify you because you turn it off, thereby losing out on your future revenue through marketing to you via notifications. Again, the question is why must Apple or Google do something each person can decide to do themselves?

Because some apps unfortunately are a necessity and we can't vote by removing them from our devices, but that doesn't mean we also decide to accept getting promotional notifications every hour on the hour from them because they take advantage of the fact that they're a necessity on our devices.

And why must Apple or Google do something? Well because I can't make the iPhone or Android so I cannot change the underlining code to make sure that the notifications I need (delivery notifications) aren't drowned out or not received because I don't want the "We used a bunch of machine learning to determine this thing that you don't want is something you may want, you should add it to your cart!" notifications.

"Eh just wholesale disable notifications" isn't always the best solution and the device manufacturer should be aware of that.

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#139

Post by satvikpendem »

joshmanders wrote: post #138
satvikpendem wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The penalty is they lose their privilege to notify you because you turn it off, thereby losing out on your future revenue through marketing to you via notifications. Again, the question is why must Apple or Google do something each person can decide to do themselves?

Because some apps unfortunately are a necessity and we can't vote by removing them from our devices, but that doesn't mean we also decide to accept getting promotional notifications every hour on the hour from them because they take advantage of the fact that they're a necessity on our devices. And why must Apple or Google do something? Well because I can't make the iPhone or Android so I cannot change the underlinin…

They are, that's why Android enforces notification channels. I don't know about iOS though as I don't use it.

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#140

Post by bavell »

JohnFen wrote: post #130
twism wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

push notifications and the ability to silence them is fine ... there's no issue to solve here other than the misconception that notifications can't be turned off per app basis unless the app store does it for you

The issue here is that the abuse of push notifications makes push notifications borderline worthless. That's why I don't allow them at all on my machines. The value they provide is swamped out by the abuse of them.

Yeah but it's on an app-by-app basis. Just disable push on the noisy/spammy ones and keep it on for well-behaved apps.
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