[discostrings]

Uber violates this. At least as of a few years ago, there was no way to get notifications about driver arrival without also getting special offer and Uber Eats spam notifications periodically. Not only was there no opt-in consent, there was no way to turn them off without disabling the status updates.

It's particularly bad when apps with legitimate time-sensitive functionality do this.

I denied the app the ability to send any notifications on principle, and now it's very annoying to have to check the app to see the driver status. It makes things worse for both me and them and I use it less as a result.

[adeelk93]

Account > Settings > Communication > Marketing Preferences. Uncheck them all. A bit hidden, but it does work.

[discostrings]

At the point in time when I disabled notifications for the app, it did not. I tried that. Even after navigating dark patterns, digging into the menus, and turning those options off, I still received promotion notifications.

Perhaps they've fixed it since? I don't know because they've already burned my trust and they've done nothing to earn it back. Publicly acknowledging and apologizing for this would have been a way to start getting off my list of bad actors.

Even if they've made it possible to successfully turn those off deep in the menus now, whatever dreamed-up definition of "opted in" it's operating under is a tortured legalistic one that undermines the actual meaning and spirit of opting in.

[tomComb]

I can sympathize. I don’t know about uber in particular but it gets quite tiring trying to find and follow these obscure settings.

And what’s worse is that the companies always seem to find a way to reset it to what they want quite frequently. One of their tricks is to reorganize permissions frequently so the ones that allow their spam to get through are always new.

[rjst01]

I had to completely turn off notifications for Instagram because none of the provided settings appear to disable the almost-daily "for you" and "trending" notifications. Now I don't get notified when someone DMs me there, which has lead to me missing important messages.

[kridsdale3]

Same. And I used to work there, and I raised it with them. They have all their career incentives aligned to getting people to see spammy notifications. I was powerless.

[PaulHoule]

The problem with the user hostility is that, in the long term, people don't use it.

As a web dev I see so many things that are lights-on-nobody-home about Meta. The Meta app on my phone generates numerous notifications, when I get one that says a game that looks really cool is 50% off, clicking on it doesn't send me to the landing page in the their app store, it sends me to the senseless home page of the app which seems to have the message "move on folks, nothing to see here"

The Instagram web application fails to load the first time I load it on my computer and I have to always reload. On either Facebook or Instagram I am always getting harassed by OnlyFans models that want me to engage with them... on the same platform where I engage with my sister-in-law.

When they say they are "careless people" I wonder if they are not just careless about sexual harassment and genocide but careless about making money because we're in a postcapitalist hell where Zuck could care less for making money for his shareholders but rather gets a squee from sitting behind Trump at his inauguration and hires people with $100M packages not because he wants them to work with him but because he doesn't want them to work with someone else.

[aendruk]

I went through a couple rounds of trying to raise specifically this issue with support before simply uninstalling the app out of principle. They had their chance and burned it.

[Tijdreiziger]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44421441

[Tijdreiziger]

On Android:

1. your profile icon (bottom right) > hamburger menu (top right) > Notifications > Posts, stories, and comments > turn off ‘Posts suggested for you’ and ‘Notes’

2. on the same screen, set ‘First posts and stories’ to ‘From people I follow’

3. back out to Notifications > Live and reels > turn off ‘Recently uploaded reels’ and ‘Reels suggested for you’

This works for me, but if you’re still getting notifications you don’t want, you’ll have to figure out what category/type they fall under and turn that off.

[rjst01]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm on iOS but the notification settings look the same.

I already had all but one of the settings you mentioned disabled, along with most of the others. I'll report back in a day or two.

[lacker]

Yes, unfortunately, they have changed their permissions structure a few times, and each time I have had to go back in and re-configure it so that the ads don't show up. It's quite annoying, they seem to be doing everything they can to follow the letter of the law while disobeying its spirit.

[surfearth]

I discovered this a few months ago - it's worth spending the 60 seconds to update these settings to get rid of Uber's terrible promotion notifications!

[devnullbrain]

I can do better than that. Uninstall it.

It's a 600 MB app and you can log back in using only the iOS password manager. Reinstall it when you need to use it.

[CitrusFruits]

I think the 600MB part actually makes it harder to only install again when you need it.

[ghushn3]

It's interesting that 600MB can be perceived as both trivial (e.g. on a fiber connection this is a matter of seconds) and excruciating (e.g. on a rural satellite line this could be 15-20+ minutes).

[daveidol]

I had them all unchecked but still get the notifications in the Uber Eats app

[madhacker]

can't find what you're talking about. Per ChatGPT, "In iOS, there is no universal path like Account > Settings > Communication > Marketing Preferences across the system. That type of menu usually appears within individual apps or websites, not in iPhone’s system-wide Settings."

[lxgr]

So does "Too Good To Go". Missed a pickup notification because I didn't remember having angrily turned off all notifications one day, since they don't have any more fine-grained option.

I let their support know, but they don't care. I guess as long as it still brings in more additional sales than it costs in lost users, it works for them.

This is something I like better on Android: As far as I remember, separate "notification channels" are mandatory there, and deactivating a given one is possible purely from the OS notification UI, without having to dig through inconsistent and hidden in-app options.

[dmurray]

I definitely get unmutable notifications on Android from my first-party phone manufacturer bloatware apps, which is the equivalent here. Would I like to see the new Themes in the Theme Marketplace?

Pretty sure I've had marketing notifications on third party apps I couldn't disable without losing functionality, too. Separate notification channels might be mandatory in theory, but even if so, the Play Store is worse at policing that kind of thing in practice than Apple.

[Tijdreiziger]

Go to Settings > Apps and disable said bloatware apps.

If not visible in the list, turn on ‘Show system apps’.

[hipparchus]

That doesn’t solve the main problem mentioned above: that some notifications from some apps are useful, but they don’t let you fine tune which notifications are permitted and which are disabled: you either get everything, including the marketing / adware notifications, or nothing at all.

[int_19h]

It's still fundamentally down to app to properly use those multiple channels even on Android; if they want to, they can shove ads down the main channel instead.

This is one of those cases where ultimately the app stores need to have a rule about it, and actively enforce it with hefty penalties for non-compliance.

[agurk]

Curiously I have the opposite problem with Too Good To Go - they never give me notifications of available things I might be interested in, even though I've set that I want them.

This is on Android though, so perhaps an ecosystem difference?

[sneak]

DoorDash also. I tend to uninstall apps that do this if I have any alternative to them.

[bdangubic]

I uninstall even if I do not have alternatives, I install/delete Uber every time I use it. When I need a ride with them I install it, when the ride is over I tip the driver and delete the app. Every single time, no exceptions