[lanerobertlane]

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 matters; they are notifying you because they want your attention.

I do not need notifications about streaks, sales, recommendations, delivery updates etc. All that can wait until I choose to open the app. It is not urgent enough to justify interrupting me.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Yeah, this entire article is pretty transparent that it's from the sender perspective, and worried about platforms taking over "sender control".

Who is he kidding? The vast majority of apps have absolutely proven they can't be trusted to respect your attention. From my perspective, the more roadblocks the platforms put between unnecessary notifications and my phone, the better. And I don't think Apple or Google are some sort of heroes here, but I do believe their incentives better align with mine than the marketing department of some app I was forced to download because I bought a ticket once or something like that.

[tambeb]

Notification categories are like mailing lists now. You may have unsubscribed from the daily deals email but you're still going to be auto subscribed to every new slightly modified category in perpetuity. Unless you fully disable notifications for an app (in Android at least, in my experience), new enabled by default notification categories are added all the time.

[leonidasv]

When they exist at all. Many apps that provide important notifications (like delivery tracking, drop-off time etc) put them under the same category as marketing stuff. You can't have just the transactional tracking, you have to opt-in for the marketing notifications as well.

[alexlesuper]

The ridesharing apps are the most annoying about this. Yes I want to be notified when my uber driver is almost here to pick me up. No, I don't want a notification about yet another sale.

[wavemode]

It baffles me that they do this. I have to disable push notifications from Lyft entirely, so instead they send me ride updates as text messages, which surely must cost them way more money. Why not just introduce a "ride updates only" push notification category and stop this madness?

[monkpit]

It needs to be enforced by the OS or by law. Like how you get transactional emails without getting marketing spam. I want the same for notifications.

[vkou]

Have you looked at the Uber app recently? 90% of it is promotionshit.

I am just looking for a fucking taxi.

Are there any VCs looking to give away a few billion dollars to disrupt the ossified, wasteful, poor customer experience taxi app market?

[iamacyborg]

> Are there any VCs looking to give away a few billion dollars to disrupt the ossified, wasteful, poor customer experience taxi app market?

Waymo are rolling out, slowly. No one'll be in a real position to compete against them.

[abhinavk]

On iOS atleast, Live Activities are separate from Notifications. So I can still monitor food or grocery delivery even though I have turned off their notifications.

Now a few apps have started sending notifications through WhatsApp because they have my phone number. e.g. Amazon

[leonidasv]

Yeah, but I still see apps that don't implement those features. Mostly React Native/Flutter apps that don't bother implementing native features. On Android it's even more depressing.

[tambeb]

I'm not worried about missing food notifications because they send me an email and a text (... and a fax and a hardcopy confirmation letter in the mail.)

[reaperducer]

On iOS atleast, Live Activities are separate from Notifications.

Should be, but not always. There are plenty of apps that still mix marketing and functional notification.

Hell, even Apple does this, especially on new devices.

[Settings]: Log in to your iCloud account to sync data.

Three minutes later…

[Settings]: You qualify for three free months of Apple Music!

[post-it]

Tbf both of those are promotional. If I'm not logged into iCloud, it's for a reason.

[samuelec]

I had to disable from Android settings all LinkedIn notifications. I check it from time to time but I haven't missed anything, nowadays LinkedIn is mostly garbage

[jmbwell]

There’s the other direction too. You only get a couple toggles, and something you actually need is behind both, so you can’t not get all notifications

[tambeb]

Another sneaky behavior in Android is that categories that have yet to send a notification, which of course includes newly added auto-enabled channels, are collapsed under the 'show unused categories' button.

[nottorp]

iOS asks you if you want to allow notifications when each new app is started. You can just say no there and you're done.

It would be better if they were totally opt-in of course (1), but that's not bloody likely to happen.

(1) As in off by default with no questions.

[illiac786]

I can see a certain category of people screaming that WhatsApp calls are broken if that were to pass… but I do agree that no one would scream louder than app makers wanting to retain their share of human brain attention.

[nottorp]

As far as i know my Whatsapp is muted and the mute is muted again. But it still rings for voice calls.

It's integrated somehow with the phone app on iOS, whatsapp calls show alongside GSM calls.

[WorldMaker]

On iOS Scheduled Summaries are really great. That's become my personal default on my phone. Scheduled Summaries roughly every 4 hours during waking hours and the default choice every time the question pops up for a new app is "In Scheduled Summary". I could see with some modest UX improvements Scheduled Summaries becoming the default for more people.

Heavy use of Scheduled Summaries does also lead to me wondering why there isn't a "default notifications to Ask/On/Scheduled Summaries/Off" global setting, though I would want that choice between Scheduled and Off at least.

[vitally3643]

That's one of the reasons I simply do not allow anything on my phone to auto-update. 98% of app updates these days are effectively malicious. I'll only update individual apps when and if I deem it to be actually necessary.

Except F-Droid. I trust their moderation enough to allow auto updates.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

I recently had to setup Microsoft Authenticator. It refused to register a code unless I enabled notifications.

You are a two factor app. I should never be in a situation where there is an unexpected login I need to verify.

[dwedge]

I want scopes like Graphene has for storage scopes. I want this on my phone and browser - let the site/app think it has everything (cookies, storage, microphone, camera, notifications, whatever it wants) but it's all empty and does nothing.

[1718627440]

Apps can know whether you granted permission?? That sounds like a security flaw.

[miki123211]

This is basically required for clueless (and even not so clueless) users.

If there's a chat app I installed 3 years ago, with no intention of giving it camera access, and I suddenly need to use that app for a video call, I don't want to be stuck debugging broken camera issues for two hours. I'd much rather have the app tell me that it doesn't have camera access.

[xmprt]

This is fair for permissions. But for notifications, the app shouldn't need to know. It can just send them into the void for all the app cares. If the notification doesn't work then it should never break critical app functionality and apps should be built with the assumption that users will never see/interact with notifications.

[Ntrails]

> This is basically required for clueless (and even not so clueless) users.

I can actually confess that this hit me. Almost nothing on my phone has permission to use my camera, including my web browser (why???). I assume this was done in a fit of pique upon discovering that the setting even existed.

Roll on (god knows how many years later) and I cannot get into the gym with the link I was emailed to have my browser read a QR because my browser is just a grey screen. It was only when the member of staff suggested permissions that I realised what was going on.

I'm the problem, it's me

[1718627440]

The OS could tell you instead. If it is a camera app, the OS could tell you on install, that you can't start the app without given camera access, because that's what the app is.

[noirscape]

They can, but there's an OS option that basically is "I'm going to say yes, but then effectively do no". Basically it'll pretend to the application that a permission is granted, but then just keep returning empty information or doing nothing with it. So notification perms would then be seen as enabled, but nothing is actually being send to the user.

Unfortunately Google isn't really exposing this to users, so you need something like App Ops or adb to set it up.

[djhn]

Yes, and they’re bound to abuse it.

There’s a similar thing going on with emails. Dozens of services ”decide” that you need to update your email address, because ”they can’t reach you”. Many of them even stop sending you emails you explicitly subscribed to, perhaps to maintain an archive, ”because you don’t seem to open them”.

No, dear Linkedin and others, you’re reaching me just fine, and it’s none of your business whether, when and where I open them. Maybe I just read my emails offline and strip your tracking links (and avoid clicking on links in emails in general).

Inexplicably LinkedIn’s UX for changing the old email address, the one they cannot reach you at (!), to a new email address, starts with confirming your current email address (THE ONE THEY CANNOT REACH YOU AT). Brilliant.

[autoexec]

Of course, that way they can so they can refuse to work until you uninstall or give in to their demands. There are other operating systems that present fake data at least.

[subscribed]

Yep. Just today I had a tram/bus ticket purchase app refuse to work unless I grant it Phone access.

[implements]

Tip: The iPhone Passwords App has basic TOTP functionality (manually create a password entry and click “Set Up Code”). I have a few dummy passwords which are effectively just labels for some login codes - it’s one less App to install.

[account42]

Unfortunately Microsoft Authenticator does more than TOTP and usually its not up to the user to decide which two factor implementation is accepted.

[robbiep]

Some Microsoft setups ONLY allow Authenticator - can’t use 1pass etc. I have recently fallen into this pit

[wazoox]

AFAICT any TOTP app (FreeOTP+, Aegis...) works just fine with Microsoft services (or Google, etc). You don't actually need to install several TOTP apps.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Microsoft Authenticator is not standard TOTP, but their own private flavor.

[wazoox]

I've used FreeOTP+ to connect to my customers' Microsoft Teams for years without any trouble.

[ishtanbul]

Okta has push as an option. Maybe msft has that too.

[onion2k]

Key word there being 'option'. If you choose to use push as your mechanism then enabling it is obvious. If you choose not to the app should still work. You don't need push notifications enabled on an MFA app.

[WorldMaker]

I believe this is also a consequence of iOS gating background processing and scheduled timers allowed by an app based on whether or not notifications are enabled by the user. I believe Microsoft Authenticator also wants notifications enabled for the same reason most Banking apps on iOS want notifications enabled, so that it can register a ~10-minute background timer to run any backups, securely clear program memory, and safely "logout" from any active "session".

On the one hand it helps avoid "permissions fatigue" that the user just has the one permission to manage ("enable notifications"), but on the other hand it does lead to these questions about why an entire class of applications (banking apps and security apps) whose role should be mostly never to send notifications (because that can be a FUD/fear/fraud vector) need notifications enabled to work securely.

[_carbyau_]

> I should never be in a situation where there is an unexpected login I need to verify.

Isn't that kind of the point? If someone else is trying to login somewhere with your credentials, your two factor will ping up?

[0cf8612b2e1e]

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.

[_carbyau_]

> 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.

[hunter2_]

I recently got an unsolicited OTP email from Microsoft, which led me to fear that someone had entered my password, but no: I eventually was able to confirm that the arrival of an OTP does not, in fact, require that someone enter anything beyond my email address. This is rather insane (I should not be having a blood pressure event due to Microsoft) but on the other hand I do understand the passwordless concept which is just a password-reset flow sans password-change. Perhaps a nice middle ground would be if the OTP email explicitly stated that my password was not entered.

[Tagbert]

Our Okta is setup so that it usually does the two-factor before asking for password.

[dexterdog]

I would, but I don't need to know immediately. Plus you have the other vector of my phone sitting on a table and showing the notification to a person who can see it when they are trying to login as me.

[tardedmeme]

I saw a new marketing strategy recently: Someone tried to sign into something with my email. I didn't have an account, so they took the excuse to send me an email asking me to create an account.

[reaperducer]

I saw a new marketing strategy recently: Someone tried to sign into something with my email. I didn't have an account, so they took the excuse to send me an email asking me to create an account.

This has been going on since at least 2006.

Startups will "growth hack" by buying e-mail lists and feeding them into their password recovery tools.

A certain percentage of people will then follow the links and end up creating a new account on a service they had no interest in that now has their confirmed contact information, a new user, and a plausible reason to bombard them with marketing email.

[miki123211]

I recently started getting emails from a company warning me that "I only had x days left to verify your account."

The account was supposedly registered for an organization whose name was somewhat similar to mine, so I thought somebody fat-fingered their coworker's email (the initial email was an invitation to create an account and join the org), but it might have very well been the tactic you described.

[zem]

huh, is that why my google authenticator app pops up randomly? i always figured it was a bug in the app or in android.

[iamalizard]

> From my perspective, the more roadblocks the platforms put between unnecessary notifications and my phone, the better.

I know lots of apps behave badly when it comes to notifications but I'd still prefer if the apps controlled the level of notifications they sent. I could, of course, reduce that client-side, but I don't see why I'd want Google or Apple or any other intermediary see or control the notifications.

If an app behaves inappropriately, I could uninstall it. If a gatekeeper like Google or Apple prevent an app from sending me notifications, I'd have to change my OS, usually my hardware, too.

[Arainach]

This forces millions of users to individually monitor and fix dozens or hundreds of apps all the time - something most don't have time for and leads to an awful experience. Centralized controls are better for the user.

[iamalizard]

Centralized controls are better if we assume the user is either technologically dumb (or uneducated, or naive, if you prefer other terms) or strapped for time.

Current users might be just that. I agree. But those same users decided to download dozens of hundreds of apps. They use each app much more than it would take for them to go to the settings (if such good settings exist) and take care of what is allowed and what isn't. It's their responsibility.

We've let users be treated as infants far too long. That leads to centralized decisions on behalf of these users, for their own good. Which leads to users being more and more negligent in their duty to govern their own digital selves. It's a vicious cycle.

Can we break it just by changing the way users manage their notifications? Likely no, sadly. We need a complete overhaul of personal digital responsibility. We need to remove (almost?) all safeguards and nanny-state (nanny-corp?) treatments the users get. Let them get hacked, let them lose money, let their digital lives, money, identities completely go to shit. They will recover but they'll have learned a valuable lesson - the computer in their pockets is their own computer, the apps they install could be malicious, the consequences are not artificially removed. I think the users will learn after a a while.

We don't install guards to prevent someone from poking into the outlets with a fork. We do it for small children. We don't put guardrails everywhere. If you're not careful where you go, you might fall or get hit by a car. Why is the digital realm so different? We've had computers for a while now, it's time to take responsibility for ourselves.

Otherwise we'll always treat users as infants or sheep or retards or whatever you wanna call it. That means making our safety and security someone else's problem, but that also means letting go of any agency we have. Letting others control our lives. And our digital lives are becoming a bigger part of our lives as times goes on.

I upvoted your comment, btw. You are right that now centralized solutions are better, but later that might change and we'll have no recourse. "We" as a people, not individuals.

[Arainach]

> We don't install guards to prevent someone from poking into the outlets with a fork.

We absolutely do, and they've been mandatory for a while. https://www.electricallicenserenewal.com/Electrical-Continui...

[iamalizard]

Except for schools or where kids are likely to be like hotels it's a nanny state solution that forces unnecessary spending, unnecessary licenses and inspections and, most of all, people being told how to lead their lives.

Unrelated to that specific regulation, the US National Electric Code is made by a non-profit who, until 2016, didn't even make copies of the code freely available. That's crazy to me. What's also crazy is how the 2023 version I checked just now has 918 pages of dense regulations. Am I really supposed to believe all that is necessary?

[nickburns]

TFA discusses at-length how APNs and FCM are necessary intermediaries regardless, effectively creating a technical duopoly on 'push'. We all agree it would've been preferable for things not to have gotten this way, but here we are.

[iamalizard]

Here we are, but let's think of ways to change it. I hope that even if some people start thinking differently, in terms of changing the status quo, we could reach a better future.

[account42]

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.

[subscribed]

Usually you don't have any choice of the software if you need to use a particular product or service.

[miki123211]

Yeah, the worst kind of software is the kind that interacts with the real world, particularly when chosen by clueless people at non-tech, real-world companies.

Conferences are great examples. You do want to submit your paper and go to a conference. To do that, they need your email address(understandable). That email ends up on dozens of email lists run by people who are doing "outreach" or something of the sort.

[autoexec]

You can usually choose to "need" to use a particular product or service though. It's not always worth it, but there's a choice.

[spwa4]

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.

[AnthonyMouse]

It's a consequence of having platforms instead of protocols.

Suppose you want delivery notifications for your packages. The seller, by contrast, wants to spam you with marketing.

If getting the notifications requires you to install their app, they're going to shovel any spam into it that they can, and then they're writing the code that runs on your device. Whereas if the software on your device is controlled by you and the notifications are received using a standard protocol, you (or someone like uBlock) can create filters to only show the notifications you actually want and discard the spam.

But for that to actually work you need the software running on the client to be under the control of the user independent of which device or service they're using, and subject to competitive pressure. Otherwise the platform uses is as a means for lock-in and then filters your notifications in the ways that benefit them rather than you, or just does a lazy job because they know you've been deprived of having a lot of other alternatives.

[miki123211]

Unless the task is extremely well defined, protocols don't really work.

Imagine you're a shipping company and lock yourself into a parcel tracking protocol. You then decide to offer the innovative feature of parcel lockers, which need a code (or an action on your device) to open. How are you going to make the thousands of weird homebrew clients that people are using on their jailbroken Nintendo Switches or whatever to behave?

[AnthonyMouse]

That's easy. You publish the API documentation and supply a reference implementation. Anyone can use your reference implementation immediately and the person who wants to use their own code on a jailbroken Switch can do that as soon as they implement the API, or their own fork of the reference implementation.

The service doesn't have to maintain every implementation, they just have to document a stable API and not actively impede third party code.

[spwa4]

> But for that to actually work you need the software running on the client to be under the control of the user independent of which device or service ...

In other words, you need the user of the software to pay for it's development. Since that won't happen ...

[account42]

That isn't the only way.

[account42]

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.

[spwa4]

The vast majority of spammers aren't large corporations but really small ones. Scammy ones. At least judging by my spam folder.

[int0x29]

Worse it's from a marketing perspective if you read the guys bio.

[graemep]

> I do believe their incentives better align with mine than the marketing department of some app I was forced to download because I bought a ticket once or something like that.

Align better for now. It will get enshittified.

I try very hard to avoid installing apps specific to a particular business or organisation. So far I have only had to install a government app and some from banks. Even those are avoidable (but it would be very inconvenient to do so).

[pants2]

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.

[lanerobertlane]

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 so on.

In most cases, it is not. The useful information is either already obvious (you can see the car outside) or you have re-opened the app to check where they are.

Operational and marketing notifications should never share the same permission. Until that is enforced at the OS level, I will treat them all as unnecessary spam.

[ianburrell]

Android has different types of notifications for apps and can have them filtered separately. Unfortunately, some app makers like Uber are bad about labeling. Google would need to enforce labeling so transactional and advertising notifications are separate.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

“Bad about labeling” is pretending that might be an accident. Uber has repeatedly demonstrated they will do all the dark patterns.

[leshenka]

iOS has the thing they call “time-sensitive notifications” which is a flag you put when submitting notification that is supposed to be Really Important Right Now. Unfortunately it’s not easy to mute everything that is not time-sensitive

[bossyTeacher]

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?).

[Swizec]

> 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?).

My phone has been on DoNoDisturb since 2010 or so. Here's the reality: I don't check for any of those things. Delivery drivers can ring the door bell. If I'm very hungry I'll keep the app open and check where they are. I literally do not care to be notified about any of the things that apps want to notify me off.

Anyone who cares to reach me knows to ring the phone twice in case of emergency to get through DnD. Anyone else? The best time to call is text me. Or schedule a time.

As for Claude, the point of clankers is that they work in the background. The robot can wait, their infinite patience is a feature.

[bossyTeacher]

I guess you probably have no dependents and never been oncall then if you are on no disturb. For many people, having to poll the state of multiple ongoing tasks is time consuming itself or/and focus breaking enough that some apps are deserving of having notifications.

Manually polling multiple items as you go around your day is stealing valuable mental bandwidth that could be used in better things.

[dwedge]

> Manually polling multiple items as you go around your day is stealing valuable mental bandwidth that could be used in better things.

I both agree and disagree with you. I disabled notifications for everything and found myself refreshing email too often. But if I have the notifications, I can get disturbed too often which also takes mental bandwidth.

For me I found the best tactic was to selectively enable notifications (whatsapp for just one person), and delete (not silence) everything else - I don't have email on my phone now - the temptation to check it is more than the need to have it. As for things like PagerDuty, I have it send an SMS and phone me instead.

[Swizec]

Oh I’m on essentially permanent 2nd tier oncall and occasionally 1st tier. Pagerduty has an exception configured. If you message me on slack it shows up on my home screen and I will probably notice in the next 15 minutes or so.

I find polling less disruptive because my phone or watch are almost always nearby. Being in control of when to get interrupted feels better than having stuff constantly pop up while you’re doing something.

Just holding my partner’s phone spikes my cortizol. You try to type 2 sentences and get 5 notifications for random other apps and messages popping up on screen in the meantime. Literally one notification every 10 seconds on average. It’s horrible

[grahamburger]

Same here! If this phone made an unexpected sound I'd smash it with a brick.

[1718627440]

Your house already has a built-in notification system, which can be activated by the delivery guy, once he is physically at your location.

[bossyTeacher]

A built-in notification system that everyone from your local politician asking for your vote to your Jehovah Witness recruiter can and does abuse. Way to waste your time.

[1718627440]

You can silence it just as easy and in difference to the digital alternatives, the amount of time wasted is symmetric.

[OtomotO]

And the inconvenience to constantly having to check your phone

[drstewart]

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

Which makes me wonder why you have notifications for your bank and Whatsapp enabled.

If I have an account, I know what transactions are coming out of it. I was the person who owned the account.

If I have someone's number, I know if I want to see messages from them. I was the person who gave them my number.

Seems really sill that you have notifications enabled for those apps. If you care about missing something, you'd just check them anyway.

[lanerobertlane]

I have notifications enabled for my bank because it may alert me to transactions which were not made by me, and because it does not abuse that permission to send me marketing spam.

I have WhatsApp notifications enabled because it is the primary way people communicate where I live. If my elderly mother messages or calls me, it will most likely be through WhatsApp.

Both of those notifications contain genuinely important or time-sensitive information which may require action on my part.

That's the distinction between them. A person contacting me is fundamentally different from a brand attempting to engage me. Transaction alerts are fundamentally different from “your order is out for delivery”.

The criteria is not “did a thing happen”. It's whether the notification gives meaningful new information that is important or time-sensitive, and requires me to take action.

Most app notifications fail that test completely.

[high_na_euv]

>If I have an account, I know what transactions are coming out of it. I was the person who owned the account.

What if you receive notification about transaction that you didnt make? :)

[milch]

The difference is that taxis would either give you a call that they were here or they'd just wait for. They don't care either way if you show up or not because the meter is running. The Uber is gone if you don't show up in 5 minutes. That is if you are lucky and the driver didn't mark themselves as "here" when they were 2 blocks away, which seems to be the norm here now.

[zen928]

> This is how taxis worked for decades before smartphones existed.

Seems like a useless observation in a world that has had smartphones for decades then, huh? The notification use here is a two way ping, communicating from the driver that they're here and to not needlessly waste your time looking around or "remain[ing] vaguely aware [they would] arrive shortly" and being inattentive, thereby wasting the drivers time and chance of profit. We're all glad you personally have a cute little value system that let's you frame your cute little acts of defiance as a war against big bad change, but no one here needs to defend to you why receiving a notification on an app needs to be helpful in a life-changing way for the feature to be considered useful. It's now considered useful for millions of people who arent you, so let's have a discussion about making it less distracting or better suited for tasks, instead of geriatric pining about the nostalgia of simpler times.

[pcl]

For me, it's quite straightforward. If an app makes an unsolicited spammy push, it's notifications-off. No exceptions.

[dylan604]

Snapchat has to be the all time worst offender to me about abusive level of notifications. Luckily, you can turn them off, but holy cow batman, that's a lot of notification options to deal with.

[al_borland]

For me the worst is NextDoor. I don’t have the app installed, but they also have email notifications. There are seemingly 100 options and I turned them all off when I first made the account. Periodically they add new ones and auto-enable them for everyone. There is not universal way to shut them off, short of blocking them all together or deleting my account. The account was such a pain to setup that I’m hesitant to delete it, for the 1 time every couple years where it’s useful.

[slater]

Even worse with ND e-mails are how they've absolutely perfected the cut-off character limit for what's being posted in your area. So my inbox is just perma-barraged with click-bait-y "This place on Smith Street has the best...", "Health officials are investigating an outbreak of...", etc.

[brk]

That is why I just filter ND emails to spam. Those patterns just reaffirm I don’t want the kind of content they offer.

[grantith]

I flagged them as spam the other day.

[bpicolo]

Yep, I straight up deleted my Nextdoor. Nextdoor itself is spammy and ad ridden. And most of the content in the community is also just spam anyway.

My neighborhood has a WhatsApp. I engage with it if I feel like it. Works great

[iamacyborg]

Remember when Android used to let notification senders hijack turning your screen on, Snapchat used that one a lot.

[maest]

That's "growth hacking" for you

[Esophagus4]

Yes. I’d rather live with the temporary inconvenience of needing to open the Uber app to check the status of my ride once a month than wade through notification spam on an intermittent basis forever.

[tiew9Vii]

Agreed, there’s a level of trust and as soon as the app breaks that trust with spam, notifications get turned off for that app.

[conductr]

I just refuse to grant permission as my default. If I ever feel like I’m missing out, I can turn it on later. Usually I don’t and if I do I quickly regret it.

[Gigachad]

Has been like this on my phone for a while. It's crazy when you see someone who hasn't blocked everything and their phone dings multiple times a minute.

[unglaublich]

No one willingly says "yes" to advertisements, but people will say "yes" to important-updates(-and-advertisements).

[nathanmills]

Then why is it whenever I watch someone use their computer they always accept cookies?

[crote]

Because companies are trying really hard to hide the "no" button: it's a single click to say "yes to all", but a safari through dialogues to say "no to all"

Same with websites like Youtube who don't understand a plain "no" but offer a fake choice between "yes, harvest all my data" and "ask me again later". That isn't consent, it's coercion.

[matheusmoreira]

Because people don't actually read what they are clicking on or even understand what they're doing. They just want to make the annoying banner go away. Same reason why people mash the next button when installing software.

[cassianoleal]

1. accepting cookies is not the same as opting-in to advertisement

2. because most of the time, any other option is bloody inconvenient

[al_borland]

They are choosing the lowest friction option.

[iamacyborg]

Hundreds of thousands of people declaratively opt into receiving marketing with informed consent on a daily basis. Just because you don’t does not mean other people are like you.

[Esophagus4]

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.

[_carbyau_]

> Emails from every site she’s ever shopped at.

This too is frustrating. Spam is not allowed unless you have a "prior relationship".

But fuck me, that single toddler's bike I bought many years ago for my then toddler no longer qualifies as us having a relationship.

[array_key_first]

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.

[xboxnolifes]

It's definitely not insurmountable. It just takes a little bit of inbox maintenance. Pressing unsubscribe and report when I have spam in the inbox, 5 seconds here, 5 seconds there. I still get spam, but it's minuscule compared to not doing this.

[Gigachad]

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.

[antiframe]

It's not insurmountable. Spam filters have been around for decades. They're pretty good. If I didn't expect the email, I train my spam filter that it's a bad email. There are a few that get through, maybe 1-5 a week, which require flagging.

The checkboxes seem to be a placebo. Sometimes there isn't one. Sometimes it doesn't do anything. Sometimes they say "updates on your order", which apparently also means future products you might want to buy a week after you receive your order. (Marketers' English seems like a foreign language to me).

[iamacyborg]

I realise that CANSPAM as a law in the US is titled appropriately but I live in the UK where declarative opt-in is a must apart from a couple “soft” opt-in scenarios.

People. Opt. In.

Stop conflating your preferences with other people’s.

[account42]

"Report as spam and block sender"

Repeat until the emails stop.

[ninkendo]

Is “informed consent” that little checkbox that is checked by default? Or is it the one with the wording that says something about “discounts and offers”? Or is it the one that’s enabled because it’s a “new category” that didn’t exist when the user signed up so why not require them to opt out? Oh, I know, maybe you’re talking about the “enable notifications? Yes/Ask Me Later” dialog that is pushed on them every single time they open the app.

I’m sorry but if you honestly think the number of users who receive marketing spam have expressed “informed consent” you’re fucking high. There is a multi-trillion dollar industry devoted to tricking people into opting into spam. Stop pretending these people are expressing any consent at all.

[iamacyborg]

I live in the UK where we actually have sane regulations around this stuff, I realise laws are different and folks in the US in particular don’t have much protection from spam.

[nurumaik]

Apple should add "promotional notifications" section to iOS, then ban everyone who don't put their marketing bs into that category

[havaloc]

Yes! iOS 27 needs to categorize notifications using AI. Apps aren't supposed to advertise to you, but some don't allow for that distinction. I want notifications on for when my sandwich is arriving, but I don't want push notifications for a promotion. Some apps are good about this, others don't allow that granularity. I hate the all or nothing.

On the flipside, I have an app that sends notifications. We don't abuse it or use it for promotions, and APNS and Google's version works perfectly fine for us.

[closetohome]

There was actually an app store rule for the first couple of years after notifications became available, basically saying don't use it for promotions. A few apps actually got pulled for sending spammy notifications.

But then everyone started doing it and Apple stopped enforcing the rule. It may still be in there somewhere as a "guideline."

[LtWorf]

Apple isn't your friend though.

edit: downvote all you want. Fact remains that there is no way currently to block advertisement notifications and no disincentives for those who use them.

[sroussey]

Send everything to the iOS notification summary which you then don’t look at. Uber and others can send time sensitive notifications and those don’t go in the summary. It’s basically a junk notification folder.

Works well.

[ivanjermakov]

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...

[pjmlp]

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

[ASalazarMX]

Some banks also do this, and offer no way to segregate marketing from utilitarian push notifications. This is borderline abuse of trust IMO.

[rkagerer]

It's not borderline, it's absolutely crossed the line.

[dijksterhuis]

periodically open the app every few minutes or so. once the driver is 5 minutes away -- go outside and wait.

it's a tradeoff. eliminating notification spam means behaving more synchronously when booking a taxi. i don't mind waiting outside for five minutes. especially if i'm not getting a random ping when i'm definitely not booking a taxi :shrugs:

[volemo]

I prefer temporarily toggling notifications on because I really don’t trust my internal metronome.

[goykasi]

You could set a short timer on your phone. On an iphone, its two clicks away.

[pseudalopex]

Enabling notifications is not difficult. And the driver could arrive before or after the initial estimate.

[liotier]

The user legitimately considers the application as hostile - hence sandboxing... Notification spam filtering is now the obvious need at the sandbox's edge, with the whole customizable arsenal we have come to expect for our inbound mail. Of course, Google will not cooperate with anything likely to reduce sacro-sanct engagement !

[nixosbestos]

Except that they did. Android has notification channels. Now, I suppose we could argue that Google could be more ham-fisted about forcing apps to use them, but that's murky.

In fact, Uber on Android does use these notification channels. I just have "All Promotions & Recommendation notifications" disabled, and then "Taking a ride" channel enabled.

[MiddleEndian]

>Now, I suppose we could argue that Google could be more ham-fisted about forcing apps to use them, but that's murky.

I disagree. What the is the point of forcing everyone to use the Google Play Store (or whatever app store on iOS) if the store doesn't stop spammers?

People complain about Uber, but Lyft does the same shit. I got a promotional notification from Lyft and could not disable it without disabling the main notifications that tell me when drivers were arriving.

If app stores were useful instead of just rent-seeking, they would kick Lyft off until they stopped doing that.

[pants2]

I definitely run all my emails through an LLM filter and wish I could do the same for push notifications!

[Analemma_]

And the worst part is that Apple could fix this in a heartbeat. Uber is straightforwardly in violation of App Store policies about "no advertising in push notifications", but a) they're too big to fail and b) Apple advertises via push notifications all the fucking time, so they have no leg to stand on here.

It's infuriating that the one thing the App Store monopoly could be useful for isn't even actually used in practice (if you're big enough, ofc, you and me get to eat shit if we try to evade App Store policy).

[vhcr]

Instagram is the worst offender, I only want to receive message notifications, but I got notifications about inane random stuff I've tried to disable but it won't work. I ended up having to disable notifications altogether.

[aurmc]

Instagram drove me so insane with that that I spent a while searching through the app to figure out how to disable it. There's a way to do it, and for a while it worked; I only got notifications about things like direct messages and posts from a few people I specifically told it to send notifications for, but I never got the "recommended" posts.

Then I got a replacement iPhone and reinstalled Instagram.app, and it defaulted to "show you notifications for everything we think you might be interested in" again, and I was too lazy to spend all that time relearning how to disable those notifications. I disabled the notifications entirely and now I open the app once a week or so to check in.

I had to do the same thing with Facebook years ago. Now I open it once a month to see who from high school got married in the last month and click the little "heart" icon and scroll until I get bored (~2 minutes). Can't trust Zuck with notifications.

[coro_1]

> Now I open it once a month

So do I. Login on the web incognito.

[iamacyborg]

Instagram run their notifications via an auction mechanism (which I suppose makes sense for an advertising company that likely built a lot of RTB systems).

https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04835

[mmoskal]

I believe the App Store policy is you have to have a setting to disable ads. And Uber actually has it (though it has 8 different channels or so, apparently "Uber teen accounts" marketing was added recently).

I used the setting and am not getting Uber ads (only Uber ride notifications).

[lathiat]

Currently my biggest problem isn't ads, it's all the apps now will find ANY excuse to send you a notification in order to keep their "Daily Active User" count high.

You turn off more and more categories and they'll still find a reason.

[Gigachad]

Presumably enforcing this would trigger an immediate legal response where Uber claims Apple is using their monopolistic control over the App Store.

[pants2]

I would love if Apple enforced that rule, but they certainly don't

[showmypost]

Most people aren’t aware but there are laws that require granular notification consent. For example the GDPR has it. I’m currently fighting with a major bank and educating them about my rights. I want to receive security related notifications but not get spammed by “get a loan up to 50k without lifting a finger” type of bulls*. Send send this almost every week..

[array_key_first]

On Android with notification categories it is, but iOS doesn't have that. Also, I think it's mostly a trust system. But Uber in particular does actually do it right, and you can just turn off promotional notifications.

[ornornor]

I don’t know about uber specifically but most of the apps I use have a separate toggle for things like marketing. Maybe it’s an EU thing?

[swatcoder]

The modern pattern in anywhere that allows it is to have dozens of ambiguously labeled toggles for nominally different notification channels, described only by a minimally brief and maximally ambiguous label. All begin as active until the user, in frustration, goes in and exhausts themselves disabling individual options without being sure which one is going to turn off the one single thing they actually want to be notified about.

Then next month, you create a new notification channel for your new promotional messages because too many people opted out of the old channels. You default that new channel to opt in, to make sure the user gets their chance to experience it and share in the delight you mean to share with them.

Presumably, you continue this until you have hundreds of such toggles and presumably some kind of dedicated Toggle Engineering Department that oversees them all. Nextdoor, Meta apps, LinkedIn, and countless others all appear to be competing for the most such toggles.

[throwway120385]

After all we wouldn't want the user to miss out on our promotion of 10% off your next refrigerator. They bought a refrigerator from us just 6 months ago, after all!

[mjmas]

Though Android does help a little for existing toggles by giving you an 'About 129 notifications per day' blurb below the entry.

[hunter2_]

It also puts a throbbing highlight (for a few seconds) on whichever channel is associated with the notification whose gear icon you used as a shortcut into the channel list. At least for Pixel phones.

[unglaublich]

That's how the design is supposed to work. But marketing realizes that no one voluntarily receives ads, so they mix em.

[losvedir]

Tell me use iOS without telling me you do. Android has separate notification channel toggles, so I've turned off the marketing ones. I was shocked and aghast when I spent a year trying to use an iPhone that it didn't do this. Part of the reason I went back to my trusty Pixels.

[TingPing]

While iOS doesn’t do this at the OS level I’ve never seen an app that didn’t have these options. I assumed it’s required by Apple.

[greyface-]

Lots of iOS apps have the option, but ignore it and send you push ads anyway. Apple may require it to be present during app review, but they don't seem to enforce that it's used correctly.

[bigiain]

Does Google actively police app's use of channels? Is there any mechanism to stop apps abusing "time critical" channels and sending unwanted marketing?

[vhcr]

They technically allow you to, but make it really annoying to. Uber for example:

Account > Settings > Accessibility > Communication Settings

[crote]

Most apps are cross-platform. If you're already required to do it on Android, going out of your way to avoid it on iOS doesn't make a lot of sense.

[Arainach]

It absolutely makes sense (in a capitalist sense). Then you get more money/engagement/whatever on all of the other platforms.

It's the same reason Microsoft built functionality to let users in Europe have links open in their default browser instead of Edge but blocked that feature for the rest of the world.

[MiddleEndian]

I use Android. Lyft put marketing notifications in the default notification channel on my device. If the Play Store were useful, they'd have banned Lyft until they fixed it. (haven't gotten one in a bit so maybe they did (or maybe I set something so that the app could only message me while it's active))

[verelo]

Yep exactly this. The app developers are the problem, but Apple and Google are not helping here.

[apothegm]

This. So much this.

[edoceo]

WellsFargo does that. Important notification and advert-BS on the same channel. If you block their notifications you don't get the near-real-time Zelle alert. Enabled you get what you want and also YOU MIGHT BE PRE-APPROVED!

[bruce511]

"Marketing never met a communication system they didn't want to co-opt"

(I'm reminded of this every time a client want "WhatsApp support" in their (commercial) app, so they can "communicate with customers".)

But equally every user will have a different subset of apps they want notifications for.

For example shift workers need to know when they've been allocated a shift. Or when a shift has opened up (because someone scheduled failed to arrive etc.) One group of users consider this really important, another group of users treat it as spam.

But, per the rule above, unfortunately "useful notifications" can easily be subverted by marketing notifications. Yes I want to know my delivery driver is outside, no I don't want to know that you're running a special this week.

Unfortunately there's no way to solve this problem technically. Bad actors can (and definitely do) behave badly. But ultimately the system should work for "good citizens". In other words, the user should ultimately determine what they want to see of not. And if an app has "notifications on or off" as the only option then the user should ultimately determine that setting. Not Google. Not Apple.

Building society around the lowest-common-denominator just ends up sucking for everyone. We should actively promote good behavior, while allowing bad behavior to be punished. Not just banning everything "because it might be bad".

[derefr]

You're conflating "push notifications" with "being alerted about push notifications." I have many "important but not urgent" apps on my phone configured to just silently add their push notifications into iOS's notification center.

With an app configured to do notifications like this, no banner shows up at the time the app's notifications are delivered; and these notifications don't even show up visibly on the lock screen. You only see this type of notification if you choose to actively scroll down past the "timely" notifications that do get delivered onto your lock screen, to "catch up" on all your notifications.

Basically, these notifications are relegated to an "email inbox" that you can check or not check as you like. But unlike your email inbox, you can go "inbox zero" on your notification "inbox" whenever you like without worry, since notifications (unlike email) are inherently prohibited from being a critical path in an app workflow.

[MarleTangible]

Just curious, what do you do with the increasing number of companies that use push notifications as a form of advertising venue, and how do you differentiate the security warning notification from your camera app from their special weekly annual sale notification?

The marginal cost of each notification is so low that companies simply spam users nonstop, and their A/B tests shows that the revenue is increasing. What's being lost though is that we're getting more and more agitated with these brands and their uncapped malicious behaviors. This is also true with their UI and UX as well, they keep adding banners with incredibly small close buttons, because someone will continue with the shopping after accidently missing the tiny button, and that's an added sale, who cares about 99% of users who are fuming with dissatisfaction, what are they going to throw away their $200-300 smart home device because companies abuse them?

[aftbit]

On my Android, I aggressively mute or uninstall any apps that send push advertisements. I haven't seen one in more than 6 months now. If they think they need to advertise to me, I think I need to do without them.

[jillesvangurp]

Apple and Google failed to make push notifications usable for the past decade. Most important notifications drown in a sea of absolutely irrelevant nonsense. It's a very primitive mechanism where many apps compete for very little screen real estate. Beyond "something happened!" there isn't a whole lot of information in most push notifications. They are mostly not very actionable and very vague about what actually happened. And "something happened!" just isn't very useful information to me. This has de-valued the whole notion of having notifications. Whenever something interesting actually does flash by, I often miss it or can't find it back.

The push notification UX is just beyond terrible and it just got worse over time as app developers tried abusing their super power of being able to interrupt the user at will and Apple and Google tried to get on top of that. The net result is something that's very mediocre for the handful of valid uses I have left for notifications. My list is similar to yours. Things like bank approvals, 2FA stuff, etc. are useful mainly as deeplinks into apps. But other than that, it's just not worth dropping whatever I'm doing and staring at my phone.

The most used apps on my Android phone (older Google pixel model) are Firefox and gmail and just a handful of other things. As a notification channel, my email inbox is actually far more useful than mobile push notifications. They are more actionable and informative. And I can individually unsubscribe them or filter them out and easily find them back. Most apps can do both and that makes the push notifications inferior and redundant.

[iamacyborg]

> The most used apps on my Android phone (older Google pixel model) are Firefox and gmail and just a handful of other things. As a notification channel, my email inbox is actually far more useful than mobile push notifications. They are more actionable and informative. And I can individually unsubscribe them or filter them out and easily find them back.

There’s also substantially more filtering happening in the inbox which is mostly useful from a user perspective.

Yahoo literally wrote a paper more than a decade ago showing how they can model predictive causal chains for emails they expect you to receive, as an example.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2740908.2741694

[asdff]

Gee lets take a 5 inch screen phone and have every notification stack up in 1 inch worth of space. I really hate ios18. Too bad ios26 is even worse.

[e40]

Agreed.

And let's not forget focus modes... I have them that narrow greatly my default set of notifications, so I have a 3 tiers of notifications.

It's like the complaint I used to hear all the time: "Slack ruins work for me! OMG I can't work with constant interruptions!!" That is bewildering, because if that's how you feel, you haven't tuned your setup. Slack never interrupts me, yet I am response enough to slack messages. No one has ever complained about my response time. And I'm probably the most-messaged person on our Slack.

[elliottkember]

> if that's how you feel, you haven't tuned your setup

The withering cry of the software engineer "just tune your setup!" This is simply not a thing that people will do.

The defaults are so, so important. They are crucial. The vast majority of people rely on the defaults to be sane. The defaults should be sane.

[exmadscientist]

The other problem with Slack is that it just straight up... doesn't do what you tell it to. I have a set of notification settings that work for me. Slack goes ahead and just does something else, and you simply can't fix it to do what it's told. (Or couldn't, anyway; I've been off Slack for a while.)

[TheNewsIsHere]

Absolutely agreed.

How much time must everyone be asked to waste to “tune” a working set of applications to something reasonably sane for human beings.

Sure, what is sane for one human might not be for the next, but it’s not as if trends cannot be discerned.

How ridiculous would it be to be told “if you don’t want people constantly barging into your office, lock the door”?

[e40]

It wasn't much time at all. Honestly, the push back on this always baffles me.

And when I had an office, I closed (not locked) the door to signify I was in a focus mode. I don't get your point.

[e40]

The idea that software like Slack could be setup as "one size fits all" is just ludicrous to me. We have options because different people require different settings.

[hnlmorg]

For Slack, I find just changing the default notification sound to a simple and subtle ding works well.

When I’m focused, I don’t hear it because it’s too subtle. But when I’m not concentrating on anything, it’s more noticeable and I don’t mind the distraction.

This might not work for everyone (“YMMV” and all), but I’ve personally found it a very effective yet simple solution.

[fastasucan]

If you are very present on slack, ofcourse you dont feel that you are interruped.

[e40]

I don't know what that means.

I have no audible sounds from notifications. They don't go to my phone, with few exceptions. I get no popups. Yet, I am responsive. It was trivial to set up.

[pseudosavant]

Exactly. Senders have earned the questionable reputation that they have because they rabidly want your attention whether you want to give it or not.

I used the Southwest Airlines app recently and allowed notifications so that I could find out about things like delays and gate changes (both of which happened on my trip). Less than a week later I'm getting ads for travel "deals" pushed as notifications.

Unsurprisingly, it was difficult to find the notification setting, which was on their website, not even in the app.

[itopaloglu83]

I would say the same applies to background processing as well. A random app that I don’t interact with launching every minute and wasting everything from battery to network bandwidth is simply not acceptable, and most of the time they’re loading adds or doing some other stuff that serves me no good.

[donmcronald]

I wish I could set this as the user. Apple ties background app refresh to the frequency of use, but that sucks for self-hosted photo backups. I use Immich and I don't open it too often, so Apple breaks my chosen backup system for my photos.

[burnte]

I totally agree. Right now the apps that can notify me are phone, text, email, what's app, and a few bank apps. You are 100% right about turning it off on everything else.

I also stopped doing store loyalty cards about 7 years ago and it's been fantastic. I actually get a lot less junk mail and spam/"legit" marketing emails. I don't have a gob of cards to sort through.

Corporations should not speak unless spoken to.

[dylan604]

> Phone, Messages

At this point, I'm pretty much in some form of DND at all times. I have a very small list of people that I allow the device to notify me at any time for calls/messages. Everyone else gets silenced and I'll get back to them when I choose. All other apps have notifications disabled and I'm constantly nagged about it when using those apps

[mannanj]

"Notifications are like alarms other people set for you"

Naval Ravikant said this years ago and it stuck with me. Taking a page from your book, I have 0 notifications. I practice notification 0 and have done it for about a half decade now, and it's absolutely liberating and freeing. I found I needed to remove the apps from my phone Home Screen to feel this, as otherwise even their icon presence when opening my phone triggers dopamine loops.

When I need to be pinged, I use boundaries and expectations set with those who could interrupt what I'm doing with something important enough. Those people get to know where I'm at, how to reach me, etc and mostly what I do to help them is set them as contacts so my phone lets their calls through beyond voicemail, and I have physical locations accessible to them + times through the day where I'll check in.

[peterspath]

Same: Phone, Messages, Calendar, Apple Health... nothing else can send me notifications.

On my work I also disabled all notifications except for the calendar. Even slack message our main tool for communication is not allowed to send notifications. It is almost a productivity hack :P

[everdrive]

Maybe it's for the best. The best practice is to have as few apps as possible. The moment an app is abusive with notifications, you know it's time to drop the app anyhow. A lot of people need that one final push to drop the app, so this could help.

[amelius]

> Apps allowed to receive push notifications

> Phone, Messages, Whatsapp, Apple Health, [brand] bank.

Anyone else annoyed by the fact that you can set up do-no-disturb, with exceptions for certain phone numbers, but it doesn't work for apps like WhatsApp?

[scope2093]

I remember a while back I also had this issue on iOS (maybe around 2022 or so), though lately seems to be solved and works as one can hope so. When you're making the exceptions, do you explicitly input phone numbers or some other method? I selected contacts from my contacts list and it does the job. This is for iOS in my case. I'm not familiar with Android, so cannot give any input there..

[amelius]

On Android I can "star" certain contacts.

[8fingerlouie]

I classify them even further.

I have broadly the same list as you do, but stuff like WhatsApp, Messenger, and other "non primary" communications platforms have silent notifications in the sense that they're not allowed on the lock screen or Home Screen. They simply display a notification counter.

Stuff I care about that I can't do anything about "right now" are allowed on the lock screen but quietly. That includes messages from the kids schools. Most is not even that important, like field trips "next week", but once in a while there's an "important" message I need to deal with.

[kevstev]

I'm personally just at messages. And even then I make it clear I respond when I want to. Only phone rings/notifications I get are for those in my contact list.

Take your phones back. Life is immensely better these days.

[grvdrm]

I agree with your points.

That said, my view is now (not novel, or unique) that I am not the customer in so many cases. Any app or platform with the slightest hint of an advertising end-game restructures my usage as the product.

The customer is instead the sender (or advertiser). So, I can't expect ideal app behavior and usage based on my intentions because I'm sold (as the product) rather than the other way around.

Maybe a cynical view, and there are exceptions, but don't think I'm far off.

[nottorp]

Health? Why, are you worried you'll miss the notification that you have a heart attack?

As for Whatsapp, maybe you're not in enough group chats that you still allow notifications...

[jve]

You can mute group chats in whatsapp.

[Grimblewald]

Your position is that of any normal human. Google is committed to evil however, just look at how playstore notifications are tied to sales spam. Want payment notifivations? Gotta take the ads as well, not seperate toggles, one toggle. Drink liquid shit you tech peasant. Oh? this hostility drove you to f-droid? We'll unilaterally decide every device r belong to us, so we can disable competition we dont approve of. Welcome back to the liquid shit trough, peasant.

[rafterydj]

100% agree. The spam problem is, I fear, a symptom of the walled gardens of Google and Apple not being very judiciously maintained. They continue to push the bare minimum of notification controls out for the user, but double deal when they allow e.g. custom app-defined notification lists. Something like this would simply never fly if the Unix philosophy were an actual consideration in their product design.

[pndy]

I went even further and my small set of the most important applications runs in the background - rest doesn't have that privilege. I've treated my spare Samsung phone same way.

I also don't use Siri either beyond setting timers and lights in home and every application is also excluded from being "suggested". Apple for 14 years didn't bother to add support for Polish so it basically remains useless.

[grishka]

My notification setup is more elaborate (for one, I do keep social media notifications on, but silent) but yeah I agree in general. It frightens me seeing some other people's notification shades where they have 20+ spam notifications from all kinds of things that I wouldn't even consider installing an app for, and they're somehow fine with it.

[gus_massa]

My bank likes to show offers, like a 10% discount in tires, but I have no car. Perhaps tree or four irrelevant messages per day.

I have MouseTimer that is an alarm that is nice to show to kids when they must wait or do something for 10 or 20 minutes. It should be able to ring and sometimes show notifications.

[ivanjermakov]

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

[bambax]

Exactly. Same for me, except I don't have an iPhone and therefore no "Apple Health". I will take care of my own health, or not, on my own.

So I would say: only humans can send me notifications. That includes me in the case of 2FA. But no machine ever, for any reason.

[miki123211]

The worst are apps that bundle genuinely urgent notifications with maketing brain-manipulation promotional crap.

Uber is a notorious example. I do genuinely want Uber notifications for when I use Uber. I do not care about whatever promotion it pushes at me.

[OptionOfT]

I have it turned off for my bank. For some reason Bank of America doesn't allow me to sign in with Face ID. I always need to get a text. Only reason I keep them is because I like a brick and mortar bank nearby.

[hgoel]

Might as well use a dumb phone

I don't get what you guys are doing to be so bothered by notifications. I get them on my wirst and even then it isn't enough to take away mental bandwidth.

[latexr]

To your list, I would add a calendar and reminders app.

[quality_life]

There ought to be a flag to group all such notifications together and present them when the user wants to get to those notifications.

[pjmlp]

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

[DanielHB]

I disable all group chat notifications too, only direct messages trigger notifications for me.

[xnx]

Attention(/time) is our most valuable resource. Protect it ruthlessly.

[Helmut10001]

I have my phone always in Do Not Disturb. That's it.

[Gigachad]

It's absolutely disgusting how most tech companies use notifications as an advertising or addiction building channel.

On the rare times I use an app like uber eats, I uninstall it directly after because the app sends multiple adverts a day through the notifications. I want a notification purely to tell me the driver is almost here. And nothing else.

[intrasight]

Phone, Calendar, Health - that's it for me

[hedora]

I've noticed a priority inversion in recent iOS. Want to send me an SMS that matches a ban-list regex from a third party app, from a foreign phone number / obvious spam farm? No problem. The app to block you was auto-uninstalled, and the iOS notification filter will mark your message with the highest possible priority.

Want to continue a 300 message thread that I've been responding to? You're listed as my emergency contact, and called multiple times? Fuck right off. Straight to spam.

It's almost enough to get me to carry a second dumb phone or grapheneos device just so I can text and receive phone calls.

[svachalek]

For me I definitely need Calendar and sometimes Clock (alarm). iOS is constantly freaking me out by prompting me whether or not I want to continue receiving notifications from those apps. To me those apps exist entirely for the purpose of generating notifications and it terrifies me that by repeatedly popping stupid questions like that, I'm going to accidentally answer wrong and effectively delete my most important app accidentally. It boggles my mind that somewhere someone thought Clock and Peggle were basically on equal footing here.

[nicman23]

if a app messages me it is uninstalled. we have too many installed apps anyways.

[mikaeluman]

Spot on.