191–200 of 438 posts
You know where we need lots of marketing people? Mars. I think we should send them there first to build the consumer society that will be necessary for colonizing a new planet, perhaps in some sort of space Ark.
Jonathan Haidt has done a great job advocating this problem and is writing a book coming out this next year called "The Anxious Generation": https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/phone-free-schools https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/sapien-smartphone-repor... https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill... This isn't something that can be solved with "better tech". It is something that is solved with…
i don't believe that. I love technology and always want to have access to a computer (although I also love leaving it off and using paper or analog tools).
But I have a pretty unforgiving standard for people-misusing-technology. Last week I went into a store I hadn't seen before, specializing in imported Asian liquors, drinks, cocktail stuff. I decided to buy a fruit drink. Approached the counter, pulled out a $5 bill, and the guy said 'oh we're not taking cash' and waved at the terminal. It would have been just as easy to whip out my card, but instead I said 'I don't shop at stores that don't handle cash' and put the drink back (though with hindsight I should have left it on the counter, or left the $5 and walked out with my drink, giving up the change).
This was rude behavior on my part. But the squeaky wheel gets the grease, at least in the US. If you're polite, nobody cares.
Some idiots at Apple apparently decided that users work for the software, rather than the other way around.
I run my phone on DND all day, everyday and block notifications from almost all apps. The amount of garbage we have vying for our attention on an hourly basis is overwhelming sometimes. The worst is the apps where you do want notifications on, like your food delivery apps so you know when your food is at the door, but those companies take that as an invite to send you daily marketing notifications and it all feels li…
These app developers are taking advantage of an unrelated function the cell phone to spam people.
If you don't keep the avenues of interruptions into your daily life in check they will overwhelm you.
Everyone everywhere wants you to look at their thing or listen to their thing every time they have a new thing. You have to aggressively pare down what gets through and when.
Only the absolute most important things should be able to interrupt you. You can probably count those things on one hand.
Calls from spammers are not on this list.
Email newsletters are not on this list.
Notifications of new comments on a post are not on this list.
New articles on a publication you read are not on this list.
At the end of the day, everyone's list is different.
Turn off notifications on most things. Unsubscribe from most things. Push notifications off for most things. Persistent notification dots and numbers off. Sounds off.
Take your attention back. It doesn't always come naturally to learn this skill but in 2023 deciding if, when, and where you will pay attention to something is paramount.
I run my phone on DND all day, everyday and block notifications from almost all apps. The amount of garbage we have vying for our attention on an hourly basis is overwhelming sometimes. The worst is the apps where you do want notifications on, like your food delivery apps so you know when your food is at the door, but those companies take that as an invite to send you daily marketing notifications and it all feels li…
Maybe Apple should add a similar distinction between transactional and marketing notifications as we have with email.
Apple isn't interested in fixing this, they allowed it to happen in the first place.
I think it's vital to strictly manage what notifications we allow our phones to give us. Unfortunately, I've noticed a trend where apps are becoming less cooperative. Many apps will have a single all-or-nothing notification setting. Others have dozens of vague, poorly-labelled categories. And all of this is hidden several clicks deep in configuration settings. The result is that we can't be sure which notifications t…
Also the UI would be a mess. UX would be terrible. Most people would probably ignore the massive list of options, and then complain later as to why the app isn’t notifying them :dead:
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It is a breach of trust. I give apps access to my immediate attention so they can notify me of things that need my attention. Not for telling me about their new features or some crappy partner deal. For this reason I have a one strike policy for apps. One marketing notification and permissions are revoked. Missing out on surprisingly little although it has made me stop using some services entirely.
Starbucks is like this. They deliberately bundle together "Promotions & Order Status" to make sure you receive their junk.
Instagram I had to disable from notifications entirely, so now I miss messages from friends frequently, because the app bombards you with so much unrelated junk.
I suspect these companies know this, they know we don’t want spurious notifications, but they abuse whatever notification policies the OS provides in order to deliver you them anyways.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a breach of trust. I give apps access to my immediate attention so they can notify me of things that need my attention. Not for telling me about their new features or some crappy partner deal. For this reason I have a one strike policy for apps. One marketing notification and permissions are revoked. Missing out on surprisingly little although it has made me stop using some services entirely.
That's exactly what I do! Google and Apple could instantly fix the problem (of co-mingling essential and marketing notifications) if they wanted to . The current situation is like getting opted in to "street signs and flashing billboards". It's stupid.
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It's been asking me about these and from what it tells me on my phone I don't understand what they are getting at. But more importantly, how does it differentiate between "Your delivery has arrived" and "this weekend, 10% off all deliveries paid with mastercard from chase banks"
On android, each app's notifications are categorized. For, say, Uber, I can enable the obvious useful notifications and can disable promotional notifications. Presumably Google penalizes ignoring or abusing this system.
Of course changing any setting on Teams has catastrophic unpredictable effects on it... But at least they tried.