[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.

[bossyTeacher]

> the best tactic was to selectively enable notifications (whatsapp for just one person), and delete (not silence) everything else

Hundred percent agree. I wouldn't support having notifications for everything enabled.

[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

[bossyTeacher]

You know it is not a binary option, right? You can select what apps you want notifications from and most apps have at least two types of notifications you can toggle.

[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.