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What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

jacquescorbytuech.com

291–300 of 428 posts

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I order an Uber, I already know it is coming. I was the person who ordered it. 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 s…

The point of notifications is the convenience of not having to constantly check your phone for every single app you have (amazon delivery? just eats delivery? uber booking? claude finished its task?).

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Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes… seeing my wife’s email inbox is mind blowing. Maybe she didn’t opt in, but she will never unsubscribe from anything. Emails from every site she’s ever shopped at.

I mean, it's kind of an insurmountable obstacle. Why bother trying to unsubscribe when you're always gonna get spam anyway? It's just gonna come back. Also, websites are shady. If you put in a required email, they'll usually automatically check a little box for you that says "allow us to ruin your inbox?" How helpful of them. And, I'm not even convinced that checkbox does anything.

"Report as spam and block sender"

Repeat until the emails stop.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#293

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…

I also allow emails, but I'm very agressive at filtering promotion/junk emails with skip inbox rules: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6579?hl=en

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's kind of an insurmountable obstacle. Why bother trying to unsubscribe when you're always gonna get spam anyway? It's just gonna come back. Also, websites are shady. If you put in a required email, they'll usually automatically check a little box for you that says "allow us to ruin your inbox?" How helpful of them. And, I'm not even convinced that checkbox does anything.

I just flag every marketing email as spam. It's much more effective than unsubscribing since it tells your email provider to just redirect everything from them to spam, and it causes trouble for the sender.

Exactly. Unsubscribe is for newsletters you consciously subscribed to but no longer want. Anything unsolicited that isn't a genuine one to one communication is spam and all the "unsubscribe" option does is verify that your email is active and will be able to receive more spam.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#296
post #31

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 failure of iOS architecture to not force applications to tag each notification with labels. App developers have to build notification management themselves for fine grained control.

Android has notification channels, but I'm not sure how widely it's used: https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/compose/notificatio...

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#297

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…

Fully agree, the apps are to blame for misusing notifications for marketing and ads, they are the ones doing this to themselves.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#298
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 failure of iOS architecture to not force applications to tag each notification with labels. App developers have to build notification management themselves for fine grained control. Android has notification channels, but I'm not sure how widely it's used: https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/compose/notificatio...

This is the kind of thing where we actually would like to have store policy enforce correct use of APIs.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#299
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all a consequence from running software that doesn't respect you and notification are just one of many symptoms. I'd rather choose better software than let Google/Apple decide what software running on my device is allowed to do.

You mean it's a consequence of very large amounts of people refusing to pay for software, at essentially any other cost ... Of course you could describe almost all of the internet that way.

I don't pay for most of my software and yet it still respects me. Of course it also isn't made by large corporations with marketing and sales departments.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I want that? If it is not me, I am not going to allow the login. Making it a notification makes it more likely I could fat finger an approval. I guess you can make the argument that you are then made aware of login attempts, but that feels more like something the host service should control.

> Why would I want that? Because to get that far they entered your password? Which you might like to change? You did mention: "You are a two factor app." If they've got past your first factor, you might want to know.

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