[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.