I only care about the helpful notifications, not the promotional ones | Hacker News Reader

I only care about the helpful notifications, not the promotional ones

alexanderell.is

462 pointsotras355 comments

My rule is: if I get a single notification that I find useless, I'll immediately disable that notification channel (I'm on Android; I'm not sure if iOS has a concept of channel-specific settings) for that app. Even if the channel can include useful notifications, as the article discusses.

If the app doesn't bother to categorize its notifications into channels at all, I turn off its notifications entirely, and I won't turn it back on.

If something is important enough, I can always manually check on it. My attention is too valuable to me to waste it on useless notifications.

I do want more control over my notifications in general. I use Google Apps Script to automatically process/triage my email, and I want to do something similar with notifications. I can probably do so using Tasker, but I haven't gotten around to it.

I follow the same rule. But I will also then go one star review it.

I will also one-star review any app that prompts me to review it by first asking me if I like it (sneaky sneaky!)

I'll go one step farther and uninstall it if I haven't used it recently or often.

I'll go that one step further and cast my phone into a shallow grave, having salted the earth it's buried in so that nothing may grow there again.

I'll go that one step further and build a time machine and go back in time and kill myself before I have a chance to even install the app.

"luxury" - sorry, wrong skit

I blew up a planet once.

I'll go one step further and try to bash it whenever I have a chance [0].

[0] Yes Free Now I'm talking about you.

Oh yeah I definitely do that with the "rate our app" if I've not so much as done more than open it up lol

For some reason I had never thought of doing that.

Thanks, I will do so from now on!

Lol I do this too. If I see an "are you enjoying our app" banner I will immediately click yes, follow the link to the store, and then immediately 1 star. Even if I enjoy the app and use it daily.

Companies that attempt to filter out negative feedback can pound sand.

Why? If you like it, why not give it a good rating and review if you’re going to take the time. For ratings apps can only present them officially like once or twice a year on apps. So once you rate it, then nothing should bug you again. What’s wrong with companies attempting to get positive feedback from those who like the app. The people who don’t like it, or when there’s one little thing wrong, go out of their way to one start it anyway (like if they have popups that ask you if you like the app even though it addresses the problem you have and that’s why you downloaded it). And if it is free, well, then going out of your way to one star it is a real bummer for that dev trying to make something of value for free and grow via star ratings and having you detract from that. (Unless they are free and collecting and selling all your data - at that point, and if they did this in a shady way although that’s hard to do because of disclosures - I could see giving a low rating review.) just seems overly critical in my opinion but maybe efforts like yours will change dev behavior overall.

I expect a company to roll over and show its neck if it wants me to give it a good review, none of this “we’ll have separate processes for positive and negative feedback” nonsense. I don’t want to put the developers who DON’T engage in such ploys to be put at a disadvantage, and intuitively I know that they are put at a disadvantage unless people act in the way that I act. That ends up rewarding cowardice instead of bravery and transparency.

That sounds harsh. I kindly ask if they want to leave a review to support me in my app. What's wrong with that? Haven't received any complaints and I got a lot of nice reviews I presume I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

What’s wrong with that? It’s fucking irritating. It’s not my job to do marketing for them, and frankly I resent constantly being asked for feedback on every interaction. I bought a lightbulb. Please rate it! I bought toilet paper. Please rate it! It’s like being around a really insecure person who’s constantly trying to win your favor. Just be a good person and it will happen, but try to do it and you make it way worse.

I provide a free game with no monetization and if they play more than an hour I ask if they would like to rate it. That's the only payment I get beyond donations. How is that unreasonable and worth giving me a 1 star for?

There are a few patterns here I didn’t dive into in my original comment above.

1. I don’t use a lot of apps. I prefer web for most things. It turns out the apps I do download are from bigger companies (YouTube, Netflix). It’s annoying to be nagged by these companies. I already pay them $x/mo and now they’re asking more from me? Please leave me alone.

2. Many apps are first asking if I like it THEN prompt me to review if I say yes. It is my understanding that this is against the rules for the Apple App Store. If it’s not it should be. That’s shady behavior. It’s so common that I’ve been conditioned to not even believe that the first prompt is even real. I feel like I’m literally being Phished for reviews here. I don’t like it.

So yes, I’m to the point where I assume all nag-ware is employing some manipulative dark pattern and I default to 1-star review. Yes I will one star review some apps that don’t deserve it. But at this point those developers are playing in the same sandbox as all the bullies and I can’t tell them apart anymore. I have to protect myself. I don’t have the mental energy to try and distinguish between the good guys and bad guys anymore.

It is my opinion that Indie developers need to find a better way to market themselves. The water has been poisoned on reviews.

Sorry if you disagree with me. But that’s where I’m at now.

Well, out of hundreds of reviews I haven't received a single 1-star yet. I think you're exaggerating that the whole ecosystem of reviews has been poisoned. Maybe it's my specific audience but most reviews are great and sincere.

Fwiw, I'm not asking if they like it first. I ask them to write an honest review if they want, and that it helps support the game.

I'm just surprised this small thing is controversial considering how hard I've worked on being transparent and avoid dark patterns.

> 1. I don’t use a lot of apps. I prefer web for most things. It turns out the apps I do download are from bigger companies (YouTube, Netflix).

I think you're just lucky. Or maybe my friends and I are just cursed. I get asked to rate everything. My doctor's office sends me an email to rate them on the web after every single visit. If I go in for a follow-up a week later, I get 2 emails asking for ratings - one for the initial visit and one for the follow-up. My dog's vet asks for a rating. I get a pizza delivered, they want a rating. It's too much. I definitely never rate an app that asks me to for the reasons you've said. It's all very scammy and I'm conditioned now. Sucks for the honest guys, but c'est la vie.

> I'm on Android; I'm not sure if iOS has a concept of channel-specific settings

Sadly iOS doesn't really have this in the same way :(

Some apps like uber/lyft have a setting for app critical notices vs what amounts to ads tho

iOS has “Time Sensitive Notifications” that can be enabled separately for Uber in settings while other notifications are turned off. I’ll see if it works.

I use a similar system for Slack notifications. Got an unwanted @here call? Mute channel entirely.

I have a similar rule, but sometimes it's really hard to figure out (1) whether the app distinguishes between different types of notifications, and (2) where the setting is to turn off the new nuisance notification type.

IME, Lyft and Uber are the worst. For Lyft, their notification preferences are buried under "Privacy: Choose what data you share with us". Not the first place anyone would look!

That's why Android has the system-wide pane for those. No space for (most of) dark patterns. And if someone goes out of their way to "accidentally" mess with that system (oops, this promotion went into the navigation category, silly me), they deserve to go all out silenced.

That’s entirely developer decided. Most are starting to recombine channels to get around the feature.

The parent clearly knows that, hence their second point: "And if someone goes out of their way to "accidentally" mess with that system (oops, this promotion went into the navigation category, silly me), they deserve to go all out silenced."

Accidentally or intentionally misclassifying notifications is not the same thing as getting rid of the categories entirely.

On Android, long-press a notification, then tap on a gear icon. You will see a list of notification categories for that app.

You’re assuming that the developer makes such a distinction when they send you a notification

From grandparent comment:

> If the app doesn't bother to categorize its notifications into channels at all, I turn off its notifications entirely, and I won't turn it back on.

Lots of apps make you opt out, but it really isn't that hard to find. Most apps on my phone don't even get the right to notify me. I prefer pull rather than push as far as notices go, unless they're critical like from my bank/CC/gf :)

Useless notifications is a super dangerous game to play, since one lame "McDonalds has 25% off" *cough: Uber Eats* results in notifications being turned off and poorer outcomes for all parties from that moment on.

Yes. Especially since the most useless ones seem to come when I’m driving.

They are relying on 90% of people not knowing how to get to the notification settings. It's not dangerous, it's A/B tested...

guess im in the 10% of customers they lost. i know how to change settings but still easier to uninstall.

My rule is: Disable notifications immediately regardless, if I find myself wishing I had gotten a ping instead of opening the app to check, I turn it on (which never happens, it's off for everything).

I've found that apps that properly set up channels on Android where your can easily block promotional notifications, don't abuse their notifications, and ones that don't put all their notifications through a couple different channels making it impossible to turn off only the ones you don't want. Amazon and Uber are examples of apps that abuse this.

I just turned them off altogether. It turned out I can do well without them. If Uber is telling me the driver will be there in 4 minutes, I check my phone in ca. 4 minutes, it's not a big deal. On the other hand, getting a notification I haven't asked for is unacceptable as it steals my time. App creators think it is innocuous, but I have dozens of apps on my phone, and won't tolerate any user-hostile choices.

I install Uber when I need to use it, then deinstall it after pickup. If I forget to deinstall it, Uber kindly send me a notification reminder (random text with with a percent symbol within it), to remind me to deinstall it.

Definitely stealing this idea, thanks

this is exactly what I do for most apps-install to use, remove after use. For Uber its easy since I only use Uber when I'm traveling in a country where I don't speak the language (Uber makes hailing rides in a foriegn country easy, though we used Yandex in Russia since Uber wasn't as common.) In some cases, I keep the app, but completely silence it.

at least on Android there's no need to completely uninstall it. you can disable the app with force stop; this should allow it to get updates, but shouldn't allow it to run again until you open it manually

Only if your phone manufacturer installs it as part of the base image. I'm on Android and, Uber doesn't come pre-installed, and when I remove it, it's completely gone.

force stop should prevent the app from running or receiving notifications/gcm messages until either you reboot or open it.

I think you're thinking of the _disable_ button on preinstalled apps. this button is only available on preinstalled apps (it switches to an uninstall button for others) however the functionality is still there if you turn on adb. The relevant command is `pm disable --user ## package.name`. You can check your user number with `pm list users`, `dumpsys user|fgrep 'UserInfo{'` or a couple other ways; the package name is in the play store URL.

This assumes they don't do anything mefarious on first install.

m.uber.com

> My rule is: if I get a single notification that I find useless, I'll immediately disable that notification channel (I'm on Android; I'm not sure if iOS has a concept of channel-specific settings) for that app. Even if the channel can include useful notifications, as the article discusses.

Well, the developers have started fighting against that by not splitting notifications into channels anymore. Now you just get "General" channel were basic functionality and spam can't be separated.

The modern world of user abuse is great.

I usually simply uninstall the app on the first clearly spammy notification. Why wouldn't I? It immediately sours the app image.

If it's borderline I will first try silencing the channel like the parent commenter.

Those rules only work until you're required to have such app installed to do, for example, credit card payments.

Where i live, GDPR and related laws make it illegal to mix advertising permissions with functional permissions. So that's never going to happen.

I've spent plenty of time working on GDPR compliance in EU and I can directly tell you there's nothing in GDPR that would say anything like that.

GDPR talks about data collection and says nothing about having your own business spam you with advertisement (as long as they don't collect data outside their GDPR restrictions).

> Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case [...]

https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/

That has absolutely nothing to do with notifications and pop ups.

You’re right, but only if the company wouldn’t track whether you’ve seen or even received that message. So yes, general or even contextual messages would be allowed, but “You haven’t seen X in 9 days” would imply processing personal data for marketing purposes.

With iOS, they send the message to Apple’s servers, Apple sends the message to the user’s device and the device decides whether to display the pop up based on the user’s settings. Neither the third party app nor Apple knows whether the message has been seen unless the user clicks on the message that causes it to open the app.

I don’t see what this says about notifications

Which can be solved by finding a competitor with less abusive practices.

Not in a monopoly or oligopoly, which is the common case in markets with high barriers to entry.

If this a hypothetical? I can't think of any monopolies that I need to do business with that only do business through an app.

My bank's android app has more control over my account than any other way of interacting with them, including going into branches and posting forms. That's not strictly a monopoly but I'm on my fifth bank and they've all been similarly rubbish.

As a UK customer, I use Monzo bank and have pretty consistently had good experiences. They are a new bank. Recieving international money transfers was the only bit that they didn't support.

Huh, interesting. I can't think of many notifications I would want from my bank. I've got an alarm for if my balance goes under a certain threshold, which I guess could be handled via a notification, but IMO it is easier to just make the threshold high enough that I can treat it as a "check-once-per-day" thing, and get the notifications via email.

> Which can be solved by finding a competitor with less abusive practices

For those with infinite time or for whom this is a single issue, yes. For the rest of us, disabling notifications isn’t too hard.

One strike and you're out rule works perfectly fine for me.

If they think they can abuse my attention with stuff like this, I immediately uninstall and go on with my life.

I've been struggling with the Uber app and Uber Eats who has been sending me ads which I found no way to disable.

My problem is that I do want notifications for when my driver has arrived.

Try switching to lyft maybe?

If Lyft doesn’t do the same thing they eventually will.

Hopefully by then more advanced notification controls will exist.

Maybe being less annoying can be part of their value proposition.

You could stop using Uber and Uber Eats.

You could also be a hermit and live in the woods. Thats not really the point though. For paid services, I think it’s entirely reasonable to say that you don’t want to see ads.

It is reasonable to say you don't want ads. Unfortunately Uber has decided to say "too bad, what are you going to do about it?"

As my friend says about salary, it's only a negotiation if you're prepared to walk away.

Or unionize. In this case it would be to petition apple or the FCC or whatever.

Sure, but a similar dynamic applies - a union can't negotiate if it's not prepared to strike.

I mean I went with "own a car and pick up food myself" instead of the whole hermitage thing, but to each their own

there have always been ads when I go to the movies, and in the magazines I pay good money for. nothing about paying for a product should give you an expectation of ad free, that's a very slim niche of a business model where they pummel you with ads until you subscribe a la spotify and youtube, but its not the norm at all

I would too. But the fees for trying to get my car in checked baggage when I fly for business or vacations are insane.

I mean I went with "renting a car at my destination" instead of trying to check my own car into baggage, but to each their own.

It would be a lot cheaper to buy a burner phone.

The difference here is that you see those ads when you go to the movies, or when you pick up the magazine. You're exposed to them on your own schedule. Phone notification ads, on the other hand, demand your attention with a sound or a vibration on their schedule.

I've never used Uber or Lyft and the last and only time I had pizza delivered was 20 years ago. There are more than enough food places and supermarkets within a 500m radius of my home, public transport here is pretty good or I can bike, rent a car or call a taxi for the few times I really need to go to the airport at 3 AM. YMMV.

Giving up on a product that only provides marginal value is hardly the same thing as becoming a hermit.

Uber eats isn’t integral to operating in modern society by a long stretch.

The hermit argument is trotted out far too often, it’s one thing if we are talking about something like a smart phone, but just because something is new or techy, doesn’t mean you are a Luddite for not using it.

Uber Eat does different channel for notification though. Mine is set exactly as you described.

It's an option on android but not ios.

Go to account -> settings -> privacy -> notifications and you can turn off all the marketing notifications on iOS too for Uber / Uber Eats.

That turns it off for the whole app, not only marketing stuff.

Settings -> notifications -> Uber.

Turn off Lock Screen, Notifications, Banners.

Leave on “Time Sensitive Notifications”

That setting doesn't do what you think it does. As per the tooltip[1], all that does is cause notifications from uber to be delivered regardless of focus settings (eg. if you have work focus on and uber sends you a notification it will show up immediately rather than being hidden/delayed). You'll still get other notifications if you don't have focus on.

[1] random image result: https://static1.makeuseofimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/upl...?

I remember at WWDC that Apple added a method for developers to classify types of notifications

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

I would think that if you disable the three notifications at the bottom and enable “time sensitive notifications”, if Uber is a well behaved app, it should only notify you for things that are time sensitive. I won’t know for sure for awhile.

https://www.plotprojects.com/blog/ios-15-push-notifications-...

> Apple has provided developers with the freedom to categorize the outgoing notifications from their apps, with guidance from a new notification classification scale. Developers can decide on the appropriate interruption level for their app notifications, however Apple has warned that users can completely turn off app notifications if they feel a high level of urgency is being used unnecessarily.

Right, but if you dig deeper into the article it's clear that the difference between the notification types is whether they override various settings. As per the chart[1], the main difference is whether it breaks through various delivery settings (eg. scheduled delivery, Focus, Ring/Silent switch). There isn't some sort of setting that the user can set that tells the os "I only want time sensitive notifications from this app" (I suppose there is, if you want to have focus on 24/7 or something, but that's more of a hack than an actual feature).

[1] https://www.plotprojects.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/inte...

That's exactly why I stopped using Uber. It was annoying to not get notification when drivers arrive, but there's no way I'm giving them free access to make my pocket vibrate all day long.

If you turn off notifications they will use text messages to contact you. I’ve never gotten a spam text message from them, which makes some sense as they’re more regulated than push notifications.

Texts are more expensive than push notifications. I don't actually think they're more expensive.

same rule, and also why uber eats got uninstalled

That's like the whole point of this article....

I wonder if you could write a Shortcut that, after an Uber ride is booked, notifications are enabled and once the ride ends, they are disabled again?

I just tried, unless I’m missing an update, Uber Eats doesn’t even show up under the Apps that I can select from to build a shortcut for.

Unblock notifications only when you need them

Too bad it’s so annoying to toggle. It should be in the long press option menu or something.

I deleted the Uber app and stopped using their service specifically because there was no way to turn off only their spammy marketing push notifications, and I didn't want to turn off all push and miss a ride, so there was no way for me to meaningfully use their service. It's ok, I have other options to get a ride.

I found a way to disable marketing notifications but it was buried in their menus. Settings > Privacy > Notifications. Definitely shouldn't be under privacy, that makes no sense.

It does make sense when privacy violating tactics are powering the notifications.

Come on uber your hidden agenda is showing!

Are you in iOS? I see a pretty detailed breakdown of notification categories that I can disable.

I had previously failed to find the Notification settings under Privacy that another commenter pointed me to--I think these solve my problem. If you found even more granular settings, please let me know where you're setting them.

A few months ago, I swear I went through every single setting in the app and failed to find anything like this, so maybe they've since updated their settings page?

> I do want notifications for when my driver has arrived.

They can ring my doorbell or phone me.

I found it helpful to force stop the app whenever I'm not actively using it.

And no way to report to apple.. it’s against policy/guidelines

They make billions off the apps and have yet to implement something like that

On android - go to settings > apps > uber > notifications

Disable 'all promotions and recommendations'

Have fun not knowing when or where your food is when you order it.

> I immediately uninstall and go on with my life

This is sort of like the customer at the gate yelling that they will never fly that airline again. If you’re lost, you’re a sunk cost. Companies should observe those signing off. But more to measure attachment than to make changes to accommodate. (I turn most notifications off.)

That's a good enough reason to nuke the app for me.

I doubt it is a decision a developer arrived at. More likely some arm twisting by a short sighted and kpi driven product manager.

If Apple or Google really cared about their users, this is the kind of thing they'd ban, not third-party payment processors.

This is a fight that OS makers need to be in on. Apple added the concept of time critical notifications. It is or should be a tos violation if an app falsely labels spam as time critical.

I've seen that in a few apps, but worse case scenario you just lose some useful notifications. If it's not a critical app (e.g. my bank), that's a fine trade-off for me.

My bank mixes ads and notifications. I get things like "Get 20% discount on this supermarket when shopping with your bank visa card this month"

You also get some apps with 20+ channels, adding lots of needless mental burden just to understand exactly what you are disabling.

Lately I've been disabling notifications for almost all apps including Uber and food delivery apps. I can always open up the app to check the status when I want to. The only spam I've left on my phone is now the needless SMS.

This is what my strategy is more or less, but for emails. If a startup sends me a "Welcome to X", I treat it as "Don't forget to unsubscribe from X".

This is a good idea. I almost always get caught by this. Last week I had to make Notion account for something, immediately started getting daily spam from them. It's the same everywhere, they think signing up is somehow a license to spam. It has the opposite effect, it destroys any good will towards the company.

Slack is another big offender. Every time you sign up to a new channel you're back on a spam list for some reason. I don't know who is coaching these people, but like notifications, it's a big reason why I often just don't bother signing up for stuff

I used to do it roughly like this, then I noticed how much more pleasant my wife's experience is. She just has them all turned off.

By default I never allow notification. If I start to notice that it would have been helpful to get a notification from an app, I will see if that's something that can be enabled.

I disable all notifications from an app at first strike.

This is also my policy - except:

Uber just sent me a notification to celebrate pride month with Uber (by booking a car??). I don’t see how to turn off these promotional notifications but I need my Uber notifications so I’m aware when my driver is outside. I’m still not sure if I should block all Uber notifications.

Wow that’s cool, did you celebrate? (Block unless you are actively waiting for a car.)

Spoiler - they probably know and don't want to destroy their reliable spam channel. I turn them off and either keep the app open when I've ordered a car, or temporarily turn them back on while ubering and turn them back off when I get a trash notification. This definitely strikes me as one of those comments you see on HN that is wildly impractical at scale, but it's what I do.

Which is why strict app store policy enforcement is the only way to really end this.

That won't happen. This is the most significant advantage the app stores have over PWAs.

> by booking a car??

by hooking a car, of course

*agressive eyebrow movements*

You can choose to get text messages instead for ride notifications. I do that and don't get any spam from them.

Still get the stupid "try 1 month free trial" popups whenever I book a ride though, can't see how to turn those off.

Gig Car Share used to do this. I patiently responded to each incident with a support request politely asking them to stop the abuse. After a few months of 1:1 mapping from spam incident to customer support issue it eventually stopped.

I do the same on the Nespresso site with the “Hey, I’m clippy, do you need help with your order?” covering the “Order” button. I systematically click on it and ask them to order by order. Then they explain how to close the chat, and I click on the next page, the chat opens, I ask them again to go away because I can’t focus while the icon is bouncing in my page.

They don’t answer me anymore.

As in: A corporate employee leaves a chat aside because it’s too annoying.

None of those chat agents connect to a real human until the AI has figured out that you have a need to talk to a human. You're not accomplishing much, if anything.

Maybe so for the above example, but I too make a point of replying to “Can I help you with anything?” popups with an active “No” and am often connected with what passes for a real human.

It’s under the “privacy” in account settings. I just disabled marketing notifications

What a place to hide them!

I just uninstall such apps until I need them. But I rarely use Uber/Lyft/etc, so it's no hassle to reinstall once or twice a year.

That's my rule as well. I disable all notifications that are not an actual human that is trying to get in touch with me.

Even from your bank and credit cards?

Notifications? Yes. That leaves USPS and email.

I do this too.

If it is a commercial company (e.g. Starbucks from the article) then I sometimes make a point to act innocent and contact their support people to ask why I am not getting order update notifications after "turning off the ads" or whatever. Hopefully the message will get through.

Same, I don’t have time to dork with notifications I don’t need.

Once I get a bad notification I have no faith in an apps willingness to do what I want.

You are more kind than I am. After one spam notification, a one star review is left and the app is removed.

I've noticed this in social networks as well. If you don't get enough transactional notifications for a while they start making up fake ones like Twitter's "in case you missed this Tweet", Facebook's "[someone] posted for the first time in a while", all the while lighting up the notifications badge. Leads to a "boy who cried wolf" scenario in which I stop trusting notifications entirely and just ignore them, possibly missing out on actual useful ones.

I really wish companies let us turn this kind of thing off, or better yet stopped trying to boost "engagement" numbers by violating your user's trust.

I don't know if Facebook still does this, as I've completely nuked it from my life, but when I had an account I asked it to turn off all email notifications. But if I didn't log on to Facebook after about two weeks I would get an email saying they were concerned I would miss out and so they helpfully turned email notifications back on for me.

I didn’t use Facebook for a few years and they sent me a completely fake account security notification. I was super mad about it.

Sometimes when they created a new feature (eg. Groups), they would email everyone about activity on it even if email notifications were off.

Apple kept a notification badge on my settings icon for Apple Pay until I finally went in and opted out of it. Under the guise of “Finish setting up your iPhone”.

It’s not a big deal I guess, but annoying and obviously promotional. Now I partially associate Apple with intentionally annoying.

There's also no way (that I've found) to turn off notifications if you have an Apple Card. It automatically sends you a notification the next day telling you how much you 'saved' via their cash back feature. This actually discourages me from using their card because I hate getting the notifications.

You can turn off those notifications, just probably not in the manner you would expect:

https://www.imore.com/how-to-enable-or-disable-apple-card-no...

Which reminds me, I need to get with Apple Card support to find a workaround for the bug where I get notifications for my spouse’s purchases (and vice versa) despite having toggled the switch enough times to have worn a dull spot on the screen. Thankfully we are a couple who don’t really care about the purchases, per se, it is just fucking annoying.

Ah very cool, thanks! But it looks like this turns off notifications for 'Transactions'. Does that disable the next-day notification to tell you that you saved 57¢ yesterday?

No, that is in the Apple Cash card settings, similar to where it is for Apple Card. Wallet/Apple Cash/three dots/Notifications.

Oh wow...amazing. Never would have thought to look in the Apple Cash card settings, since that's merely the place the Apple Card reward cash are deposited.

Apple’s big push into services has been slowly but surely chipping away at the generally pleasant experience of using their platforms. The price of entry was always high, but once you were through the door you were never really upsold.

Not so anymore. Numerous nags in settings to buy AppleCare or start a trial of some service or other. The App Store is particularly egregious: as well as search ads there are now occasional modal prompts to enable marketing notifications with my most hated dark pattern of all—only offering “yes” or “not now” as options.

The entire point of Apple, in my mind, has been their focus on user experience. It's weird seeing them lose their way every now and then. I wonder what's going on internally because no sane designer would sign off on some of these ideas.

The App Store on my iphone is only useful for installing apps I've searched for externally. Browsing categories is buried as a search suggestion?

It's actually possible to fine-tune it by category of notification (Settings > Notifications, either in app or on the web). I turned off Reminder, Friend Updates, and People You May Know, leaving only the notification on things I interact with or things friends brought to my attention.

Lots of companies dump all notifications into the same bucket, either out of laziness, or purposefully to make it less likely you turn off their spam notifications (looking at you Oculus).

Facebook only appeared to divide notification into categories when its data misuse unfolds. Several years ago (if I recall correctly), turning off one broad category will indeed nuke the "nagging" notification, but also turn off legitimate ones as well.

It doesn't matter what you set any of these things to, if you leave your account idle for a while you'll start getting made up notifications again to try to draw you back in. Both Facebook and Twitter do this, though ime Facebook's tend to work better just because I have marginally more reason to care about any given person on my FB feed than the much more eclectic set of people my Twitter is connected to.

Strange, I've never seen a Facebook or twitter notification. They both have notifications switched off and android respects that.

My twitter account goes weeks without being accessed.

This is one thing I actually like on android: you have fine gained control over not only which apps can send notifications but also which kinds of notifications a particular app can send.

So it's usually easy to just turn off all the annoying ones, while keeping the useful ones.

>I really wish companies let us turn this kind of thing off

Well, if you are not paying for the service with your money, you are paying with your attention. And this is the mechanism to extract additional attention from you, and it works very well.

Disagreed. This garbage happens even with paid services, in fact the service in the article is a restaurant chain.

This started happening enough on the Twitter app for me that I just ended up uninstalling the app. My account still exists, and maybe there are some real notifications there, but it's probably been close to a year since I actually checked.

Linkedin is just the worst company ever doing stuff like that, I try to disable all their notifications and almost never engage with anything there (and I check the platform maybe 3-4 times a year max), and they continue to try to tell me some people more or less in my network are doing things I never cared about. God I hate this company.

Yeah this has annoyed me for years. They have notifications for literally anything. I keep disabling notification types on LinkedIn and they just keep making new ones up

The linkedin website works fine on mobile unless you're a power user or something.

The weirdest one is the security notification I get in my email whenever I login. I get an email saying Please verify your device - click this link to continue signing in - but I'm already signed in. I've never clicked the link and sign in works correctly anyway.

My down folder is full of email from linked in that I gave tried to disable a handful of times and have now given up. How does any of their email still get accepted?

> How does any of their email still get accepted?

That’s also something I do not understand. I don’t get how their domain isn’t flagged everywhere with a very bad reputation given the amount of spam they produce.

In the case of Twitter this also permanently broke notifications for my account. It now shows exactly 2 notifications all the time. Both tell me that someone I follow posted a tweet, as if I was too stupid to scroll down the feed myself.

But in return I don't ever get any other notification. The only way to find out whether someone answered my tweet is to manually dig through my own profile.

Needless to say, I don't use Twitter anymore. Because of this, and because 80% of content I saw was just a stream of pure negativity.

That's because the social networks employ armies of industrial psychologists with PhDs who figured out that notifications generate a little squirt of dopamine, and are thus addictive, as opioids are just an approximation thereof. That's why they won't give you an option to turn off notifications, just as they won't let you take control of the ordering of your feed, or offer RSS feeds for it.

There is literally nothing on social networks worth notification. Disable them already.

I'll hack site CSS to disable any nags.

uBlock Origin's element remover is excellent for this, though I often go directly into CSS using Stylus, a CSS management extension for Firefox and other browsers.

I also don't use any mainstream social media apps.

Mastodon and Diaspora* limit notifications to other users' actions only.

Well, I have my browser (Vivaldi) set to automatically block desktop notification requests without even asking (the default is to ask) but as you point out many sites will also show an obnoxious banner and yes, uBlock is a good solution to that.

I'm surprised EasyList lets so many of these through, so I built my own (very few rules for now):

https://majid.info/adblock.txt

Right.

All desktop notifications are blocked.

Sites will still throw up their own notification icons --- for many that's a dark-patterns false icon (e.g., appears w/o any account). That and a whole host of other annoyances: chumboxes, overlays, interstitials, fixed headers /footers, social link-litter, "engagement" stats, newsletters & other registrations, nags, cookie banners, etc., etc.

The set of CSS hacks I'd created for Buzzfeed a few years back was pretty remarkable. Stripped of its cruft, the site was ... moderately tolerable. (It was, of course, still Buzzfeed...) I called it "unBuzzed".

Funny I mentally read "psychopaths" when you said "psychologists" ... my mind was already set while reading the other comments, and something made me go back and re-read your comment to realize the difference :)

Both apply to those who use their knowledge for manipulation and exploitation purposes.

I think this self awareness to disable notifications if they abuse it mostly only occurs for engineering types or other people with a lot of self control. It remains a powerful engagement trick because it hooks into the brains of people with less mental stability, like people with adhd etc (which for all the mental health awareness tech platforms tries to align themselves with would appear to have the opposite effect).

Since I couldn't turn off "in case you missed this Tweet," without turning off everything including reply and DM notifications, I no longer get any.

And use it a lot less now, so good job, Twitter!

I have a folder on my phone called "Notification Jail" where all the misbehaving apps get ignored.

In that case i will go above and beyond to get rid of their ads. uBlock, DNS Filtering, iOS Jailbreaking ...

Never used https://adnauseam.io/ ... but mhmmm maybe it’s the next step.

Install the extension, load Twitter end set up endless scroll or Puppeteer script. Adnauseam would click EVERY ad it sees.

None of that will prevent unwanted notifications.

based on my experiences dealing with this, facebook and instagram absolutely let you fine-tune your notifications, account-wide, with a surprising degree of control. Twitter didn't last time I checked. No other social media I use consistently has the problem

I think Tinder is one of the worst offenders. It spams you daily about why you should be swiping, but you kind of need to have notifications since its a chat app.

I have a pretty good idea on how to fix this (and many similar) problems: "hibernate app" option. Its a new app state where app icon icon has some mark (like being semi-grayed out) and all the background app services are disabled (tracking, promotional popups, periodic wakeups, etc...). The app is only un-hibernated if user explicitly clicks on it, it cannot do it by itself. The app can be hibernated by long-press menu on app icon or notification.

So the first time you get an ad notify, you click "hibernate" and you are good. And if it is time to make another order, app is woken up, so you cannot miss notifications by accident.

Sure, it is not as good as having separate "show ads" toggle, but it requires no cooperation from app whatsoever,

This is a great idea.

For Android I think the only thing needed for this is for disabled apps to show as grayed out in the launcher instead of hidden. I wonder if that's information available to launchers or only available in the system app menu.

On Android, paused apps turn gray on the home screen and in the app drawer. However there's sometimes a delay of ~10 seconds before it happens

Interesting, which launcher is that with? Trebuchet? Using Nova they just disappear for me which is... not exactly convenient for turning them back on lol.

Just the stock Pixel launcher (and just to clarify, that's for "Paused" apps, not disabled ones)

Ah, might be time for a new phone with newer Android it seems :). Thanks!

I have never looked into Shortcuts on iOS, but I wonder if something similar could be implemented there.

Lots of ways to do this on Android. Ice Box is an example of an app that all help do it for you.

Ice Box seems to require root fwiw.

On Android, Shelter (available on F-Droid [0]) is a close implementation of this. Apps installed in the "shelter" (read: Android work profile) can be automatically frozen when not in use, and launcher shortcuts can be created to temporarily unfreeze and use the app. This doesn't require root, and frozen apps cannot run services, send notifications, or anything really. As a bonus, for the most part they don't even show up as installed when frozen and are completely isolated from main profile apps. The filesystem is separate however, but you can use an app that allows file sending via share contexts such as Phone Saver [1] to send files between your main profile and your shelter profile.

[0]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/

[1]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/link.standen.michael.phonesa...

Every notification system eventually becomes email. What that means is that we probably need OS-level spam filters so that you can report things as spam. If the notification looks spammy based on the training, it simply won't show up. Marketers think they're reaching you, an army of software engineers remained employed to figure out how to refactor the API to send notifications with the V3 protocol or whatever unnecessary change the OS vendor made this week (driving up every other software engineer's salary; thank you!), but you don't have to be woken up by the latest not-actually-a-very-good-deal.

Whether or not the notification was delivered or blocked by the filter probably shouldn't be fed back to the application, to stave off the inevitable workarounds. But people will test stuff on their own devices and find workarounds. "Your order has arrived! Tap for details." But when you tap it's just an ad. On the other hand, it would be nice for things like Pagerduty to know that all of their notifications were blocked and that they should escalate to the next person on the rotation.

The "mark as spam" data should be fed back to the app stores, and if the app requested status notification privilege and not marketing notification privileges, their app is pulled until they fix it. (Cannot wait to read the whining about that. "I'm just trying to hustle like some blog post from 30 years ago said I should! <crying face emoji>")

In the meantime, I don't really ever turn on app notifications. They usually email me, and what's great about email is I have the Spam folder and the Promotions tab, so I never see most of their communications.

This is a great idea honestly, and definitely possible on android without root, causal search gives me a app that already tries to do this [1]. Though giving notification permission to a closed source app that may send notifications to a remote server for "AI magic" seems bad. If anyone knows of a good open source implementation, be my guest.

There is also this thing on Android Issue tracker [2]

1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.notificati...

2. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/226161368?pli=1

I'd like the ability to whitelist notifications for certain apps by keywords. That way, I might be able to block by default and only allow through those with delivery updates.

I wish iOS had some "allow notifications from this app for x minutes" option similar to "share location once".

Uber is a good example of an app I would like to see notifications from, when using their service, but disabled them completely.

Uber abuses this feature to show ad banners for scooters or food when I am not using their app and it's not even open (as in not present on the open applications list).

Uber is one of the worst. You can turn off all notifications unrelated to your existing rides. They hide this in the app under: Settings, Privacy, Notifications. Lyft has the same hidden structure.

Thanks! Will try it out.

Android let's you disable notifications by category. Since users disable notifications completely, Uber is pretty good at categorizing notifications so you can turn them off.

I still do like promotional offers so I have those redirected to email :)

I've used Uber in several cities, so I get repetitive notifications targeting their different markets. Like irrelevant lunch discounts in other cities.

They also have been sending me notifications for an Argentinan soccer-themed anti harassment campaign every couple of days.

I went through their videos completely and the notification keeps showing. Its done in such a vertical video letterboxed in a horizontal video format that's hard to watch.

I was saying this yesterday, LinkedIn, as an example, sends me the most inane notifications as do many apps trying to steal my time. I pay LinkedIn 100 dollars a month, those notifications should serve me, not the other way around. I really don't care about some low substance content written by someone who I'm neither connected with nor follow.

I was on the fence about a premium account, but thanks for this info.

What's the draw of premium? Cannot see anything there that would be more then marginal useful for me.

They claim all sorts of wondrous benefits, and have a free trial.

Figured I'd try it and see, but not if it is going to be an abusive relationship.

I believe if you do too many searches in a month they force you onto premium.

It's completely useless, don't waste your time. The UI is just as slow & terrible, all the dark patterns and ads are still there even if you pay.

You're able to directly message people that are not your friends and see who saw your profile (no matter their privacy configuration, I believe). For me that's about it. Useful if you are job hunting, but nothing to go crazy over.

Honestly, the only thing keeping me on LinkedIn is FOMO of that spectacular job that a recruiter might reach out about, but reality is that this doesn't happen at all for positions worth their salt.

> You're able to directly message people that are not your friends and see who saw your profile (no matter their privacy configuration, I believe)

Haha. Sorry, but if someone really wants to see your LinkedIn profile and wants to remain anonymous, then I doubt any "premium" subscription is going to help.

LinkedIn is surely one of the worst. They are constantly creating new categories of notifications, which you have to explicitly opt-out of. Guess what? If I didn't want any platform-initiated notifications (engagement hacks, not based on anyone trying to contact me or interacting with my content), then I probably don't want this new invented category of notification.

I deleted my LinkedIn account many years ago because of unwanted notifications and an inability to disable them.

I haven't missed it.

I haven't been on LinkedIn for 15 years and it hasn't affected my career at all. Most people don't realize that you actually don't need LinkedIn.

Counterpoint anecdata, I was unemployed for a year, and got my first job interview the first week I set up LinkedIn. Stayed there 6 years and has led to my subsequent career.

I dont believe you need LinkedIn premium at $60/month though

You pay $100 a month for LinkedIn? Unless you're a recruiter I'm really wondering what the value is?

I noticed the same thing recently, I got a notification "there are xxx awaiting your attention!" and as a joke dared my product focused co-founder to open it and count how much useless crap was there. We were not disappointed. LinkedIn - this is some seriously brand destroying shit but thanks for the laughs

Imho, Linkedin is one of the apps (for non-recruiters ofc) you can just remove. Once-a-month visit to bulk-delete copy-pasted offers is more than enough.

Do you really need notifications at all from linked in? Couldn't you just open the app a couple of times a day to check for messages.

I have a somewhat similar gripe about apps, which has some recent implications: there seems to be some school of thought for engagement, which suggests that something that's not used at least weekly is useless. For this reason Google started automatically removing permissions from apps I didn't use for some time and it's also suggested I could delete them "to save space" which is frankly quite stupid -- I have quite a lot of apps which I only intend to use when needed, but I need them installed and ready. A perfect example are emergency apps -- I do not intend for my car to break down every couple of weeks, but when it does, I need the emergency services app. I don't want to open the desaster warning app consciously, but I want it to warn me when something happens, be it today or in three years. Don't judge the app by its daily usage time please.

Sadly, features aren't added to Android because they're good for users, they're added because they'll look good in someone's promotion packet.

Well whoever came up with this crap needs to be demoted

I think that's indeed the default behavior, but when I go to a certain app permissions, I have an option "remove permissions and free up space", if I untick this I expect the permissions to stay in place, is that not the case?

In email land, the terms for helpful vs promotional are "transactional email" for the helpful stuff (e.g., https://mailchimp.com/help/about-transactional-email/) and "marketing email" for the promotional ones.

There are channels to report abuse if it's bad, not to mention just leaving reviews and mentioning why.

Had similar ideas - I share the author's frustration in India, the delivery apps and banking apps are the worst culprits.

I wonder if the regulators can be asked to extend the "Do Not Call" registry to include barring such app notifications? For example, the National Do Not Call Registry in my country has now been renamed to National Customer Preference Register (NCPR). This now gives indians more fine-grained options to choose what kind of marketing calls we want to bar or receive:

> “Transactional message” means a message triggered by a transaction performed by the subscriber, who is also the sender’s customer, provided such a message is sent within 30 minutes of the transaction being performed and is directly related to it. Provided that the transaction may be a banking transaction, delivery of OTP, purchase of goods or services, etc. ... “Unsolicited commercial communication or UCC” means any commercial communication that is neither as per the consent nor as per registered preference(s) of recipient, but shall not include: (i)Any transactional message or transactional voice call ...

Source: TRAI regulation - https://trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/DraftUCCRegulation29...

They can extend this to mobile OS notifications and ask Google, Apple, Samsung etc. (mobile OS makers) to ensure that all promotional messages through such notifications are blocked, and only "transactional messages" are allowed.

Expedia is really bad about calling all their promotions "transactional emails". You see, once upon a time in the distant past, I used Expedia, so based on that transaction surely I care deeply about how "A more rewarding travel experience is coming in February": http://jfloren.net/content/expedia.png

I'm not sure of the bindingness of this page [1], but the FTC says that transactional-vs-promotional is determined by what what a recipient "reasonably interpret[s]" it as, not what the sender says it is. Not that this prevents the kind of abuse that you mention, but I find if I send a email responding to the kind of email you mention and I politely explain how it is a violation of CAN-SPAM and if reported is a five-figure fine per email, then I magically get added to some sort of "do not send promotional emails that we call transactional" opt-out.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act...

Google is similar!

Google helpfully emailed me to let me know that my storage is 70% full.

...as it was when they emailed me two months ago, and four months ago, and six months ago...

Essentially, they get to pass off an email advertising Google Drive/Google One/who cares as an emergency transactional email, pretending that I'm close to running out of space. Can't block it or I'd be blocking everything from Google. I can try to filter it but they keep changing the wording. Evil and intentional.

I'm sad that phone notifications aren't in the same category of governance as email. The promotional vs transactional requirement could be used to good effect here with opt out and CAN-SPAM legislation.

Apple has lost the moral high ground because they decided to spam everyone with notifications for revenue-generating services like Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple TV+ etc in order to increase their services revenue.

This also means they can't effectively enforce App Store guideline 4.5.4, which says: ... Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI...

I agree.

One of the reasons why Apple says they need a walled garden approach is to ensure that we don't get spammed with promotional push notifications.

So if they aren't protecting users, and are themselves sending us promotions, then they have one less argument for a walled garden app store approach.

As someone who travels a bit I’ve got quite some food delivery and ride share apps on my phone. The marketing notifications are driving me crazy, I regularly miss relevant notifications because Grab, Uber, Uber Eats, Glovo, Bolt, and Cabify are all sending me almost daily notifications with some sort of cringe content trying to nudge me to take a cab/order food. Especially Uber Eats and Glovo are bad.

It's definitely annoying that users can't opt-in only to the types of notifications they want on installation, but Uber and Uber Eats are not guilty of what Starbucks is doing in the article (at least on Android); you can disable all notifications besides "Taking a Ride" and "Your Order" notifications.

Disable notifications for them. It's not a perfect solution but it will make your life calmer. Just re enable them when you need to use Über or on Android just disable the promotional notifications

If an app gives me spammy promotional notifications, it either A) gets uninstalled (if I don't particularly care about the app), B) gets a 1-star review with a clear comment about the notifications, or C) all of the above.

The app I use to pay for parking spots suddenly gave me a notification once, apparently to try and get me to park my car more often or something. I gave it a one-star review, never saw one of those notifications again :-) (Which reminds me, I should revise that review.)

The problem is with businesses that are in some other business than the app business. For example the coffee business. It doesn't matter how good/bad the app is, usually the app wasn't why you chose their business, it was location, quality of a product etc. And it's their app or no app.

Can't you just disable notifications for the app? If you're on android you might just be able to disable the promotional notifications.

Yes, disabling promotional notifications is an option - except if the app developer applies the dark pattern described in the article. But even when it works, the app developer just goes on their merry way, annoying other people too. I believe it's better to send a signal, and educate developers about what we as users want.

Heh. I was woken up by an Uber greenwashing marketing notification. All notifications off (and in any case if I am waiting for a Uber I have the app on waiting for the countdown and I don't need the notifications anyway). If there were a viable competitor to them where I live, I would have deleted the app altogether and given them a 1-star rating.

Apple's policies ban the use of push notifications for marketing purposes, but they don't enforce it nor do they provide a way for customers to report violation, so that policy is completely useless.

> Apple's policies ban the use of push notifications for marketing purposes

Not anymore, this was rolled back a year or two ago unfortunately. About the same time Apple themselves started using push notifications for marketing.

I hadn't noticed, thanks for letting us now. Very poor decision (both rolling back the policy and spamming us with push notifications).

I think the relevant rule is section 4.5.4 of the App Store Review Guidelines:

> 4.5.4 Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

So the language is weaker, but it should still be possible to disable marketing notifications.

(Edit to add: and I report apps that don't provide that option, citing the above. So far, doing so hasn't achieved anything though.)

My general mindset is that I survived just fine before apps and notifications were a thing. If they provide truly useful information, I'll use them. If they become spammy or start trying to prod me to drive more engagement I'll disable, or delete, whatever is enabling that. If that means I delete the app, and possibly stop using the service altogether, so be it, I'm doing just fine.

Many people here express that kind of sentiment and I find it either irrationally rebellious or just false. We all survived just fine before smartphones, internet, electricity and so on. Does it mean we can just delete and cancel big stuff over small annoyances? We'll end up deleting most of our lives. I don't find marketing notifications somehow more egregious than the million other anti-consumer behaviors companies show. It's a much better approach to fight those in a more targeted fashion, while still using the services and products we like or need.

Please keep in mind that need is almost never "I will not survive (I will die) without it", but rather "My life is so much better with it, that a substantial investment in time/money/energy/suffering of annoyances is worth it".

What notifications does Starbucks send that are so important? I've never used the app, but presumably you'd be in one of their coffee shops in order to get the coffee.

If it notifies you when you need to collect it from the counter, why not just collect it when they call your name? I can't think of any other reason Starbucks would need to notify me.

I highly recommend installing Buzzkill for those on Android.

In addition to built-in per-channel settings, Buzzkill allows you to create rules to auto-dismiss or do certain actions depending on the title or description of the notification, using basic matching or regex.

It also gives you a nicer view of notification history, with more days and scrubbing across time if you ever want to revisit past notifications.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston....

Buzzkill is a godsent and should be an OS feature. Setting rules on notifications, automated actions and a history has reduced the deluge of useless distractions for me.

The app is proprietary and closed source though; it also uses Accessibility access. This might be a turn off for some threat models.

I would love to help on building an open source alternative. Any clue on where to get started with documentation?

I've no idea. Although I've worked on Java for ages, Android programming never caught my interest. Maybe search for his to get started on Android and browse some open source projects to get a feel of this is your thing.

I like buzzkill, also check out FilterBox, Spren, and Notification Organizer. (Or tasker for raw power)

I find each of them have their own little quirks.

Can't recommend buzzkill enough. I didl't notice how notifications had turned into e-mail until I got this spam filter.

It's also wonderful for letting you bundle notifications (like family group texts) to be delivered every twelve hours.

Thank you. This is what I come to hacker news for.

I always relish in uninstalling apps when this happens but I hope they have stats somewhere that show: "oh, we sent this annoying marketing notification and an uninstall happens", and I hope some analyst is finding that pattern in their data and telling people about it. But I have to assume the answer is, 'probably not', given that nothing seems to change.

There's no uninstall event on iOS, and I believe the same is true of Android, so they won't see it directly. Disabling notifications is more likely to be noticed.

I believe some analytics frameworks used to send a silent push notification every day that made the app hit some endpoint, and becaues silent notifications can't be disabled that allowed them to measure uninstals. Apple may have fixed the security hole that allowed this, or told people to cut it out or they can't update their app anymore since I lasted looked into this though.

You could always leave a nice honest review on the app store; that lets you be explicit and provides a clear signal.

Apple's push notification API would actually return a status code to the app if the app was uninstalled (that required opt-in from the user, though). They no longer do it, I believe.

When this happens I also make a point of leaving an appropriate review, not only as a more reliable method of closing the feedback loop but to provide a warning to other potential victims.

Well, you can always leave a review of an app if it does pukes such marketing notification, after you uninstall

I tend to sort apps reviews by worst and look what people don't like about - that gives more information than mindless praising and chaffy purchased reviews.

This is literally what drove me away from Facebook, completely. Their constant “redesigning” of notification and privacy settings was a veiled effort to force whatever notifications in front of me. There are certain notifications I want from you Facebook, but you made a grave miscalculation when you thought I’d put up with everything else you threw at me. So here I am, a Facebook user since 2007(?) who pretty much walked away in 2019 and has barely been back.

User since 2006, ran away in 2006. Not been back. Dodged a bayraktar, there.

*though i am somewhat annoyed that i cant use whatsapp, as a result. WA seems like a great app, just owned by a company i can't support.

What notifications do you want from Facebook? Messenger notifications makes sense but anything else can wait until you look at Facebook.

Messenger is a separate app, so it can be managed separately

Canadians can report this https://fightspam.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/eng/home

CASL isn’t just for emails, it’s for all forms of spam you didn’t opt into

Off-topic, but I haven't seen a .NSF URL in the wild for a long time. Apparently, Canada is fighting spam with Lotus/Domino!

> Better yet, it would be great to have some sort of “disable marketing notifications” inside the app.

Given the current state of app distribution I’d rather have this _outside_ the app. Add an OS level toggle to enable or disable marketing notifications (system wide or app specific), force apps to categorize their notifications, and provide a mechanism to report bad actors. This problem creates a bad experience for all users so seems like it’s worth platform-level intervention.

This is one of the many aspect of why it is important to have control on your computing device. Fight for it!

(And yes, if I can't find an open source app for a service, I won't use it. I'm fine and very happy in my life, I don't miss any specific thing, and yes, no useless notification indeed. Try it!)

I don't wanna be opted-in by default into any notification generated by any automated process.

only when a fellow human clicks (i.e. directly triggers) one action (intended to call my attention) should I be interrupted with a full notification by default.

all notifications generated in bulk, by an automated script/bot, or as a side-effect of a human action need to be explicitly activated by me before they can interrupt me.

It once again comes down to the fact that we are the product, not the customer. In this article, Devin Booker is the customer.

Also, after reading many comments with suggestions and hacks to work around this (which I also do, btw), I think we may be missing the point, our time is valuable, and if we've all just spent half a day figuring out how to get the proper applications from a single app on our phone, we've already paid the price - and it's not right.

It doesn't take half a day to disable notifications!

There’s an iOS feature called time-sensitive notifications (which eg Uber uses). Unfortunately it’s a subset of notifications as a whole, so I can’t disable notifications and allow only time-sensitive ones :-/

Lyft does the same thing. I need the normal notifications ("Your driver will arrive in 2 minutes") but every few weeks they send me a promotional notification ("Rides are 20% off on Labor Day!") randomly.

Which means I leave the app Offloaded when I'm not using it and may not go through the friction to reinstall when I need a ride.

Another comment here pointed out you can change it under the obvious /s location: Settings > Privacy > Notification Preferences > Discounts and News.

While it is a quite a bit more work to get working correctly, I imagine you could cobble something together with iOs' focus modes [0] and shortcuts [1] automation (where shortcuts can change the focus mode). Just put everything you want all the time in allowed apps, and then disable the focus mode when the required notifications are needed.

You can also automate "when app X is opened, select focus mode" [2], so maybe the workflow would be:

When app with annoying notifications is opened (i.e. is needed), disable focus mode. Then reenable focus mode 1 hour later through automation.

Still more annoying than having some kind of built in thing, but shortcuts does really enable fixing a lot of annoying things (especially in iOS[3]).

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212608

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-nz/guide/shortcuts/welcome/ios

[2] https://www.howtogeek.com/676204/how-to-automatically-launch...

[3] why doesn't the quick action for bluetooth turn off bluetooth? so annoying. So I wrote an shortcuts button, that I click instead.

I only care about NO notifications. Disabling all notifications is the first step to more saner approaches to technology. I turned my digital life into a pull medium where I check SMS messages etc when I want to, and not having real-time notifications of every little event gives me more peace. It’s a form of digital veganism that I employ. Turn your digital life into pull mediums instead of push.

The subject of the article is about apps bundling time sensitive notifications that you can’t realistically disable with promotions.

You can turn off most notifications for a calmer life, but when you order an Uber you need to know if it’s arriving or if the driver sent you an important message.

Granted I don't live in an urban area and so don't use these apps all the much, but typically when I want an Uber or to order something with Doordash, or whatever, I'll install the app only long enough to use the service, and then uninstall it. And my rule for apps that stay on my phone (and there are not many) is that they get one chance. The first promotion notification I get, either all notifications get disabled or the app gets uninstalled.

Keeping the app in foreground or checking it every few minutes is usually not too big of a deal in my experience.

I think this only works when you are alone. Once you miss a few important notifications from your friends/spouse/kids/parents, like "the place A was closed, we went to B", you'll want to reconsider.

Same here, have turned off all app notifications. Email set to only notify for a short list of about 10-15 people who I regularly communicate with.

A more practical solution is to only let human-generated notifications through and disable everything else. Calls & texts (if you are lucky enough to not get spam, otherwise change your number or use your spam-free third-party messenger of choice) are OK, everything else is disabled.

I've been running with notifications disabled device-wide for at least a few years now (iOS's Do Not Disturb mode) and it's been great. No notifications, no texts, no phone calls. I use my device when I want to, not when a rando app developer or rando texter/caller wants me to use it. It's been all upside. My phone is back to being a tool I use and then put away, rather than me being its tool and doing its bidding.

Do apps report back how often notifications are turned off?

I'm wondering if the people who are spamming notification have any insight into the damage they're causing -- and if they did, if that would incentive better behavior.

I wish there was a fine grain control for Teams notifications.

The amount of messages I get that do not need my immediate attention and/or could have been an email is astounding.

I turned off notifications for Teams as a result and hope that people will call me if it is really urgent.

Whatever rule requires Hulu to display a little ad logo (I assume it’s a rule) when they’re on ad break, even the standard cable channel feeds, is great. It should apply to everything, including push notifications.

Isn’t the justification of Apple that they have a monopoly on the App Store so they can protect users from notification abuse? In reality this is not enforced at all and even Apple themselves will send you ads.

No? The walled garden is a safeguard against malicious apps, not against marketing shenanigans.

They explicitly state in their developer agreement not to use notifications for ads.

That rule (and plenty of other rules such as the privacy disclosures being incorrect) isn't enforced and I'm not even sure where to report such violations.

App Store rules are only enforced when it's convenient for Apple or their partners.

This changed a couple of years ago, apps can send you ads so long as you opt in, but what qualifies as opting in can be as simple as a bit of language during signup; it’s pretty easy to bypass this.

> 4.5.4 Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app's UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.

From: https://www.imore.com/apples-updated-developer-guidelines-no...

I stand somewhat corrected, but you have to admit that rule has never really been enforced.

I think we’ll need actual regulation before we see any enforcement, unfortunately. Because Apple takes a cut of app profits, they’re incentivized to allow for scummy engagement practices.

We need something like the CAN-SPAM (which as for emails) to classify transactional vs marketing/engagement notifications and a way to levy fines on violations.

Better yet, Apple sends me news notifications for apple news that you have to pay for.... Who the fuck thinks its a good idea to send you notifications blocked behind a paywall... cant even comprehend the logic in the microtransaction, pay to win, notifications, paywall bullshit we see in mobile, tech, gaming, etc. I have had enough. Literally just deleted all that stuff. All i need is VScode and youtube.

This is doubly bad when the notification is on my watch. Looking at you, Uber.

There's a fair number of apps I'd happily enable useful notifications on, but don't because they send marketing crap.

This is interesting to me. I'm extremely frustrated by meal delivery apps, where I need the notifications on to know when my food is here, but hate getting promotional ads at random

We're working on tools to help developers send notifications more easily at https://www.courier.com/, and working on tools like automations to hopefully make notifications a bit smarter and less spammy.

This is a fairly straight forward expectation. That app developers have to be explicitly made aware of this through a public blog post is kind of shameful. It clearly shows to what extent they are ready to abuse user attention and how little they care about end user.

This is just another example in a looong list of things which point to a steady erosion of end user control on things and how they are being reduced to agents optimizing metrics that matter for my app/product.

I faced this issue while writing my application for online spaces...

I noticed that I had written a feature called server notification, and was about to start using it to notify users of things which the server wanted them to know, but which they had not asked for.

I decided to rename the feature internally to "server response notification", which implies that all of the notifications are in response to a user query. This helped me focus on what the feature should be used for.

On Android, they tried to improve this by adding notification channels[1] (aka categories). Channels are mandatory, and users can turn each channel on/off in system settings.

The problem is few apps assign meaningful or useful channels. Instead:

(1) Some apps use the dark UI pattern of putting important notifications and junk/spam notifications together in one channel. They use the ones you do want as leverage to make you see the ones you don't want.

(2) With some apps, they just don't make an effort. For example, the JustWatch app has two channels: "Default" and "Miscellaneous". The KAYAK app has two channels; one is called "Offers & promotions", and the other is also called "Offers & promotions".

(3) Defining useful, meaningful channels is actually a bit of a UI challenge. Some apps try but don't divide things up in a useful way. The Meetup app has a ton of channels, including 12 at the top level and 3 for each Meetup group that you're a member of. They made an effort, and it helps some, but it's a bit overwhelming.

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[1] https://developer.android.com/training/notify-user/channels

Are there any Android utility apps that will route all notifications through a single proxy where I can apply my own app/category/keyword filters, and [ideally] inbox/archive of notifications?

People criticize email, but I still find it the most user-friendly notification/messaging system. I wish for the type of control that I have in email over any other messaging/notification system (app alerts, Instagram messages, Slack notifications, etc.)

Yep, there is an app called AutoNotification that can help filter notifications similar to how one would in a Gmail filter.

I ban an app from ever sending me any notification the moment it sends me an unwelcome one. But it sounds like this is not an option for some apps other people use.

It seems like every new communication channel follows the same basic pattern (phone, email, SMS, push notifications, ...). It starts with friend-to-friend communication, but quickly commercial entities realize there's an opportunity to connect with customers. They usually start with something small and helpful, but before long you're overrun with spam.

I'm counting the days until my flashlight app tells me I've won a free cruise.

There’s asshole companies and cool companies. Asshole companies send marketing notifications when people sign up for useful notifications. Companies on the edge default to on but at least let you turn off notifications.

Asshole companies can still be useful. I use UberEats but have their notifications turned off.

I’ll also add that I’m amazed that after using an iPhone for 15 years, I’ve never gotten a spam push from Apple. And their temptation must be great.

While Apple should be able to enforce this at an App Store level, it seems to me there’s a pretty simple heuristic that could be applied as a per-app notification setting:

“Mute notifications if I haven’t used this app in more than 24 hours”

That ought to catch the majority of notification abuse, and to tighten it even further, the inactivity periods could be configurable (24, 8, 2 hours, etc).

Revolut is doing this and it infuriates me. I want the payment notifications, not the promotional, gamification spam.

Apple rescinding the rule that banned promotional notifications is one of the worst UX decisions they’ve ever made.

I think a couple others have said this already, but I know when I was sending out push notifications at my previous job, you would add a "channel" for the notification for this exact reason. Then users could block that specific channel without blocking the really useful ones (at least on Android)

This is when you email the company's head of marketing and/or security expressing naive concern about hacking/phishing. "I received an email that looked like it's from your company, but I know it's not real because I didn't sign up for any of your lists."

When I receive unsolicited marketing email I will often intentionally not unsubscribe and instead set up a rule (now that I know the sender address or some way to reliably identify their spam) to redirect any future messages to someone high up at their company or their GDPR data protection officer.

"Notification Remover" Android app allows to automatically dismiss some notifications but not others, based on user-defined filters. I use it and it works really well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31636602

From app description:

"Notifications will be cleaned automatically based on your input. Select the package name of an app and enter the message text (regular expression) of the annoying notification and you'll never see it again."

It however lacks ability to export / import filters so they need to be created manually.

Also the app is not longer updated. I hope at some point somebody will create open-source clone of it with more features.

Apps should allow for low level notification management. This allows the personalisation for notifications. Eg https://imgur.com/a/RSNu0Km

Any way to subscribe to the notifications into Python or similar? So I can run my own custom filters before I decide what and when the notification should be delivered. Could also use the notifications to trigger automations.

This is an outstanding suggestion. Rife for abuse, but no more abuse than anything else.

I don't think there's any way to access iOS notifications outside the device. If the notifications you care about are also available via email you can disable the official app's notifications and use email rules to redirect specific email notifications to something like Pushover, essentially rolling your own push notifications where you can use rules to control what gets through.

Kaufda is guilty of this. When i complained a about their promotional push messages, they pretended not to know what i was talking about. I uninstalled the app which had been quite useful until that time.

My Bluetooth Blood-pressure cuff does this. Useful notification: Reminding me to measure my blood pressure twice per day, giving me a notification that I can tap to begin a measurement.

Not useful notifications: Telling me that I have a "new insight available", which when tapped takes me to a prompt to "upgrade to a new premium feature.

I guess if you need to upsell me on a service after I've spent >$200 for your device I can use a different reminders app and be slightly inconvenienced twice a day.

I have turned off all notifications, no sound on my phone either. If I happen to look at the phone while someone is calling, good - otherwise I'll call them back or write them.

That's a really interesting strategy. Thanks for the tip. What about emergency calls? But then I just realized, those are extremely uncommon.

https://support.google.com/android/answer/9069335?hl=en-GB#z...

> Under 'What can interrupt Do Not Disturb', tap People: Calls: Repeat callers. To let a call through if the same person calls twice in 15 minutes, turn on Allow repeat callers.

Hah, spammers take note: always call twice in 15 minutes! Easy for them to automate.

Nice, thanks! Maybe that could be a good addition, to catch the one exception in 10 years that really must get through.

Technically Apple says if you want to send promotional notifications you have to ask for that permission explicitly and offer the user a way to turn just those notification types on/off. Maybe complain FWIW https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

I'm a little surprised iOS doesn't have a way to report a notification as spam.

This is out of reach for most people, but what I would love is to be able to define a regex per app that will let me filter notifications. Give control back to the users.

I suspect some apps go too far in the other direction on purpose, having a large list of promotional notification types amidst useful ones so that people miss opting out of some or are too overwhelmed by the list that they decide not to bother, and whenever they add a "new" type of promotional notification, it's on by default until the user goes and disables it too.

iOS feature request: only allow notifications for apps I used in the last 24h.

Promotional notifications are required to be opt-in as per the App Store review terms. Please report apps if they are not following this.

These companies boast so much about their prowess in AI, but can't differentiate between a transactional and promotional message?

I made the mistake of buying Eufy camera and the app is basically an sales channel spamming you with ads on every occasion. If you contact support and complain about it they will disable popus for you but the app is still full of spam and animated icons inviting you to buy something. They clearly have zero respect for customers.

Everyone is focused on phones, but I've experienced this in Windows. There is a Korean office suite (Hancom Office) which updates 3-5 times per day, ringing the notification bell in Win10 each time regardless of current user focus. (User is in full screen movie? Ring the bell. Skype call? Ring the bell ...)

> like if there was an option when long-pressing the app on the home screen to quickly enable or disable notifications

Nice idea

First thing I do with all apps is disable all notifications for that app. The only exception is whatever app my workplace uses (Teams). For that I simply turn the ringer to silent so they can't vibrate the shit out of me. For those they just need to wait for me to look at my phone.

I think there's a possible solution. Something like "Hide all notifications 5 hours after you last used the app". 5 hours could be enough time to do anything that the app needs to notify you for, then the marketing notifications come out of the blue 2 weeks later.

Yes. LinkedIn and Facebook being the worst. Even if there is nothing relevant they’ll just make something BS up just to remind you that they still exist.

Yes LinkedIn I know I’ve got 11 notifications waiting but I also know they’ll all be more noise…and I know this without needing to check

This post really lost me at: "and I’m sure they’re getting that many more engagements because of it" clearly what spam notifications do is make me question having installed the app in the first place. For me this has led to many uninstalls.

It's not perfect but if they're using something like Braze you can block it by using a dns ad block like nextdns. Then you should only get notifications triggered by app logic and not by 3rd party marketing CMS whatever solutions.

I’ve started treating my phone like a firewall using do not disturb. Whitelist (aka favorite) the phone numbers I care about.

I will temporarily take off do not disturb when using Uber/Lyft. I don’t really have a need to be notified by any other app.

Your smart phone is a store and you're the product. It's that simple.

It's cool cuz on my Pixel 5 most of my notifications that I want I don't get in a timely fashion and the ones I don't want are just disabled anyway. I just want notifications to work at all.

Grubhub does this as well, so all of their notifications are disabled by me.

The only way to really deter this stuff is to make it cost the sender something per spam. Bonus points if the user can feed back into the system to discourage truly unpopular notifications.

One solution here is using an app like Daywise, that batches and delivers your notifications. Some are useful but doesn't need in the moment attention. Has massively reduced my screen time.

that's one of the reason i got rid of my samsung phone: it used to send random nonsense notifications, MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY.

it would keep asking me to let samsung use my phone's cpu for whatever stuff they're doing, send multiple weather notification during the day (i didn't ever ask for them and now it's my job to go hunt for the appropriate setting to change to disable them? go f@@k yourself, you just lost a customer) and many more that i'm now thankfully forgetting.

It is time for email spam filters to be applied to notifications.

It’s a shame there isn’t some kind of system wide filter for notifications using regular expressions or something. Probably a job for an Android ROM creator.

Android apps can classify notifications into different categories that you can individually toggle. I haven't personally noticed a lot of abuse of this.

I don't know when (or even if) it changed, but, using notifications for ads/promotion on iOS used to be a dev terms violation.

I really miss that era.

I have very few apps, and all notifications turned off for all of them. I will check on new messages or info on my own time, thanks.

It unfortunately seems like our best chance is to wait until Apple cracks down on this, as self interested companies won't.

Something that amazes me is that United’s app - freaking United FFS - is better behaved about this than most other apps.

It would be interesting to see the story from the other side, like how effective are these promotional notifications.

One of the downsides of living in a world where we don't pay for services but are instead ourselves the payment.

The problem is that this also happens to paid products. You'd think that if you already pay money they should leave you alone, and yet there's a product manager, marketing or "growth" specialist that needs to justify their salary so even paid products aren't immune to that.

WAG is so shitty about this. I absolutely need notifications but they constantly nag you.

Amazon notified me that they thought I might like to buy a new stove.

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