[spacelizard]

I've noticed Facebook seems to be really good at spamming me with useless notifications, it even somehow manages to do it after I've unfriended 90% of the people that I am not close friends with and blocked most notification types. Yeah I could prune my friends list even further and only check it passively, but then all I'm stuck with is basically an incredibly bloated email/chat service that is loaded with ads. Then again this is the 21st century, a lot of other tech products seem to fit that exact description too. In any case, I'm a lot happier after deleting it.

[MilnerRoute]

Some time last year Facebook began giving me notifications within the application that... "Your friend uploaded a photo" or "your friend updated their status."

Maybe this is because I stopped using Facebook for so long, there weren't any real notifications to give me. They wanted it to seem like I'd missed something.

[sundvor]

Biggest mistake I did with my Instagram account was to link it to my Facebook. I believe it is impossible to unlink them, even having disconnected all external application access as far as I could go in both.

Why? "Your friend Xxx is now on Instagram". Etc etc. I don't want to know, and I don't want my account visible to everyone there. Please just respect my wishes to make the integration go away!

[gaius]

I recently spent a week out of any mobile signal range and when I got back, I had email from FB (normally I don't get notifications by email, just in the app) for the most banal things like "Friend X has just uploaded a photo!". FB definitely enters panic mode if a regular user doesn't use it for a short while.

[jfroma]

Yes, it does this when you stop using it, also it will spam you with "do you know person Foo?" messages. I guess is because they assume you stoped using it because your timeline was boring.

Source: I have the same experience.

[3131s]

I don't use Facebook that much, but I definitely used to associate a notification with something important, like being tagged in a status / photo or invited to an event. Since a year or two ago for me as well, it's usually useless or sometimes a straight-up advertisement. If you admin a group, you'll even get the "boost this post" messages as notifications.

[suneilp]

I turned off all Facebook email notifications and I'm much happier with it now.

[kahoon]

Can't you just disable notifications from the Facebook app? Android allows it, and I reckon iOS does too. I found this to be a nice solution to deal with obnoxious apps because you remove the annoyance but can still use them should the need arise.

[mattnewton]

Or uninstall the app, the mobile website works well and doesn't slurp your battery in the background.

[jhasse]

Unfortunately you can't on most phones ... Facebook is a system app.

[doubleplusgood]

Can't those be "disabled" via the app manager? I'd flash a custom ROM if I had to deal with FB being a "system app"(!).

[jhasse]

Not every phone can be rooted though :(

But yeah: The app can be disabled at least.

[omegaworks]

You can disable notifications, but on Samsung android you can't get rid of the red badges without disabling them for all apps.

[throwaway55523]

I had the impression that it was a probing thing. Trying to figure out who in my friend list I'm interested in keeping up with. Annoying enough that I decided to uninstall the app.

[mikosty]

This might be something to do with effect of not winning every time: it's studied method to get and keep us addicted. You will get a bigger dopamine hit when only some of notifications are "wins" like tagged photo etc. Slot machines are a great example of this along with other gambling.