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

eugeneyan.com

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

#91

Post by Workaccount2 »

KOTYAR wrote: post #88
malfist wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we limit promotional notifications to one per user per day That's insanity. Do you really change your prices so often that you have to get that information to users every day? Marketing push notifications are absolutely the worst part of spam because you HAVE to interact with them.

Shows you've never used Poco phone. Old ladies at my job use weird no name phones, which are 120$ tops, and amount of ads they're getting is 10x times more than what Poco has. They all have ads on their lockscreen.

Using my mothers phone is terrifying.

Her philosophy for using her phone seems to be "Just press OK until I get what I was looking for".

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

#92

Post by inquirerGeneral »

gdeglin wrote: post #5

One detail not covered as much in this article is that many options are now available to users and apps to control the push notifications they send and receive. For example, on iOS, when prompted for notification permission, users are now asked to choose if they want the notifications sent to a summary view. iOS will also invite users to disable notifications from apps they haven't interacted with recently. Here are…

> * Apps can implement Notification Channels, a way to categorize different types of notifications so that users can enable some but not others.

This is something that is underutilized by non power users on Android, and makes it FAR better than iOS on top of the already better notification delivery system

recently got an iPhone 15 Pro and man, iOS sucks

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

#93

Post by notyourwork »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #67
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…

I delete DoorDash after every usage because they're excessive with the push notifications. I want notifications during order/delivery. I don't want the push notifications any time after that.

Don’t text notifications suffice?

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

#94

Post by pydry »

carlosjobim wrote: post #80
TylerE wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like that would be a cheap way to destroy a competitor. Pay a bunch of people on some sketchy freelancer site to install the app, do whatever easily trigger notications.. and then report every single one. Sort of a spin in the concept that it’s much easier to create bullshit than debunk it.

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.

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

#95

Post by IncandescentGas »

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 in this too. Product addiction drives smartphone addiction, so don't expect them to take any real steps to protect the average person from this sort of psychological abuse by their phones.

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

#96

Post by IncandescentGas »

chris-orgmenta wrote: post #53

This interested me, as it would be a nice concept to build a manual around. On the face of it, it could have suited me ("What to push: Being helpful and engaging") But looking into it, I feel the writer has a more cynical worldview than me, and I found this a bit distasteful. I think that this resource is not useful to me, because it is undermined by greed. The end goal with this article is, IMO, people's pockets - n…

They must know this right? It seems the "Be helpful and engaging" is a bit of self delusion to pretend they aren't having such a wide negative impact on all of humanity with this kind of research.

If the premise is to determine how many alerts the user will tolerate before taking action to silence them, it's known up front the alerts are unwanted and harm the user. The alerts are intended to drive product addiction. By definition, that's unhelpful to the user.

The user is tricked by their phone, using the same noise and vibrations a direct message from friends or family that requires immediate attention causes, to force the offending product's brand into the forefront of their mind and make them decide to ignore the notification, investigate the notification, or silence the app's notifications.

They want to maximize the number they can send, because they are studying the individual recipient to learn what they're more likely to respond to. Once they know that, they can barrage the person with those things they can't resist until product addiction is achieved, and yet another smartphone zombie is created. Yet another person who will not put down their phone to drive their car, have dinner with their families or tend to their own needs.

The author must know the damage their work has done to people's lives, and this "be helpful and engaging" nonsense must be how they rationalize it.

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

#97

Post by ianburrell »

twism wrote: post #85
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…

Android has notifications channels ... mute the spam/ad ones. I only have the payment and delivery status channels on alert, the others are not muted but "silent" (i.e. the show up in the notification tray but doesn't alert me). you do get some deals sometimes. Android gets a lot of shit for a lot of things but the notification is top-notch ... on iOS it seems like an afterthought (e.g. how long it took for iOS to ge…

I have rule that audible notifications are urgent, mainly messages and alerts. Silent notifications for everything else and can be sorted in bulk later. I haven’t had to mute any notification channels yet.

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

#98

Post by JohnFen »

winkelwagen wrote: post #46

It’s not only push notifications, it’s the combination of everything communication channel combined. I recently unsubscribed to a services that kept spamming me their “lifetime subscription” product, while I already was on their yearly premium plan. Over the course of 2 weeks, I received 4 push notifications, 4 emails and 2 times when I opened the app it had a full screen ad. I’ll never use this product again. Ironic…

I agree. Push notifications could have been useful, but companies abuse them so heavily that they're the opposite of that, and I keep them disabled across the board.

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

#99

Post by JohnFen »

joshmanders wrote: post #89
ranting-moth wrote: post #54

I might be in the minority group. But any app that sends me a push notification that I haven't specifically opted in for is going to have all notification privilege removed right away. A lot of the time it's actually a reminder for me to uninstall the app.

You're not alone. I do the same thing. Maybe not so overzealous though. I'll let a few through because I know it CAN be abused but some don't abuse it so badly. A marketing notification here and there is fine, but a few of them send me multiple DAILY. Those get muted and then the next time an app causes me to go to my notification settings, I notice the previously muted one and I determine "Have I used this meaningfu…

> A marketing notification here and there is fine

Not to me. Any use of push notifications for marketing purposes is an abuse of push notifications in my view.

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

#100

Post by malfist »

KOTYAR wrote: post #88
malfist wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we limit promotional notifications to one per user per day That's insanity. Do you really change your prices so often that you have to get that information to users every day? Marketing push notifications are absolutely the worst part of spam because you HAVE to interact with them.

Shows you've never used Poco phone. Old ladies at my job use weird no name phones, which are 120$ tops, and amount of ads they're getting is 10x times more than what Poco has. They all have ads on their lockscreen.

What does my comment have to do with poco phones at all?
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