[TylerE]

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.

[carlosjobim]

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.

[twism]

so many examples of this type of anti-competitive strategy already being used. why implement something with known deficiencies?

[joshmanders]

Because you're taking the solution to the absolute bare minimum implementation to achieve the desired result and then applying a ton of thoughts and considerations on how to get around THAT implementation and saying "Yeah this is gonna get abused" and throw your hands in the air.

Or you could think just as hard about blocking it as you do about circumventing it, like in the case of this scenario, add weight to users. Obviously newly installed app users who are rating badly is a sign of something fishy, weigh their ratings a LOT lower than someone who has say many hours of usage in the app.

[twism]

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 it either on installation of the app or when it starts to offend.

[joshmanders]

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 personally as the device manufacture its your job to safeguard YOUR customers too with the ability for them to report nefarious apps.

[satvikpendem]

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?

[JohnFen]

> why implement something with known deficiencies?

That argument could equally be used to argue that push notifications shouldn't be implemented at all.

[twism]

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

[JohnFen]

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.

[bavell]

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.

[pydry]

Cynicism.

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

[JohnFen]

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.

[pydry]

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

No shit. The postal system was solidly established before postal spam existed too.

Email spam's existence was anticipated though.