[HN Gopher] Push notifications - What to push, what not to push,...
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Push notifications - What to push, what not to push, and how often
Author : mts_
Score : 96 points
Date : 2024-01-02 06:58 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eugeneyan.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (eugeneyan.com)
| saagarjha wrote:
| If you send me a push and I can't explain why I'm seeing it (for
| example, if it's not time-sensitive or I haven't done anything to
| indicate I want it) then I consider it spam. This is doubly so if
| you're using it to send me an advertisement. That's the easiest
| way to ensure your app is going in the trash.
| justinl33 wrote:
| I think this was covered: > _Another challenge is that
| irrelevant or unwelcomed pushes risk having the user disable
| notifications, uninstall apps, or start ignoring them due to
| low usefulness_ > _most recommendation engines take a myopic
| view, over-optimizing on immediate user responses at the cost
| of long-term satisfaction._
| saagarjha wrote:
| It's "covered" in that they write this and then immediately
| dive into an example where I buy a phone and start receiving
| push notification advertisements for buying cases. Do you
| think an app is going to ask me if I express interest in
| "related offers" or just start sending them unsolicited?
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| I think it undersells how rage inducing pointless pushes are.
| Like you are barely, tangentially connected to this and I
| already personally despise you
| rochak wrote:
| Uber's Apps are so shit when it comes to that. I can rarely
| recall a time when I opened the app and closed it without
| finding anything useful and it didn't send me a notification
| within minutes.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Indeed. I still use Uber from time to time and don't want to
| have to wait around reinstalling it, so I took the time to go
| through the settings and disable this crap. The Uber eats app
| got the boot, though. I only ever used it like twice anyway.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I install it when necessary on trips and once I land at SFO I
| just delete it. During that time it generally sends me 2-3
| unwanted notifications but there's not much I can do about
| that except grumble.
| seszett wrote:
| I have the Uber Eats app installed and I don't receive
| unwanted notifications. I think I only enabled the channel
| for notifications on a current order, and I don't get
| anything else.
|
| Maybe they are more careful because I'm in the EU?
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| Possibly. I'm in the US and UberEats is easily the worst
| offender on my phone. I get multiple notifications a day
| nudging me to order things.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Snapchat too. They always send me engagement marketing though
| push notifications like friend suggestions & team snapchat
| messages.
|
| It's hard to avoid because I need to have those notifications
| enabled for when I chat with friends on the platform.
|
| Instagram does this too, albeit with less intensity.
| georgel wrote:
| Instacart was abusing push notifications with advertising. I
| disabled their notifications and forced them to use SMS. They
| haven't sent me any ads that way, because SMS would cost them
| a trivial but non-zero amount.
| justinl33 wrote:
| > _Thus, as we go from search to recommendations to pushes, it
| becomes harder to understand the customer's intent_
|
| > _Push notifications can be considered a form of recommender
| system_
|
| Recommender systems can also be viewed as a marketing
| optimization problem, which I guess would be the step beyond push
| notifications; recommending to future rather than current users.
| Interestingly, it has been shown that 'expert consumers' prefer
| user-based recommender systems
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09696....
| gdeglin wrote:
| One detail not covered as much in this article is that many
| options are now available to users and apps to control the push
| notifications they send and receive.
|
| For example, on iOS, when prompted for notification permission,
| users are now asked to choose if they want the notifications sent
| to a summary view. iOS will also invite users to disable
| notifications from apps they haven't interacted with recently.
|
| Here are a few of the options available for each operating
| system. Many of these were introduced within the last 1 to 3
| years.
|
| iOS & Android: * Apps can choose to send
| notifications without sound/vibration. These are less disruptive
| and less likely to result in an uninstall or disabling of push.
| * Apps can customize which sound is sent with the notification,
| if any. On Android, the vibration pattern can also be customized.
| * Apps can choose to replace an old notification with a new one.
| This helps prevent multiple updates from crowding a user's
| notification center (e.g. Order received, Order Arriving, Order
| Delivered) * Apps can send notifications at different
| priority levels. On iOS, apps can even send notifications that
| break through a user's focus mode settings (e.g. for emergency
| alerts), but this requires special permission. * Apps can
| group multiple notifications for easier readability (e.g. chat
| messages from different contacts) * Apps can set a visual
| badge on their application icon, indicating the presence of new
| content, with or without also sending a push notification.
|
| iOS * Apps can choose between sending a push
| notification or starting a Live Activity. Live Activities have
| more visual customization and can show real-time updates such as
| sports scores or the status of a food delivery order. Starting
| with iOS 17.2, released in Dec 2023, Live Activities can be
| started remotely, just like push notifications. Prior to 17.2,
| users had to open the app to start them.
|
| Android * Apps can implement Notification
| Channels, a way to categorize different types of notifications so
| that users can enable some but not others.
| david_allison wrote:
| * On Android, Notification Channels are immutable to developers
| once created (besides the name and description)
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Permissions don't matter much. Of course you need to be able to
| disable permissions for specific apps, but if you want to
| receive e.g. user messages but not promotional spam, there is
| nothing you can do.
| L3viathan wrote:
| Unless the developers used notification channels (on Android)
| correctly, then I can disable only the "spam" channel, and
| not the "messages" channel.
|
| Granted, an app sending spam notifications often doesn't want
| to make this distinction..
| ytch wrote:
| https://support.apple.com/en-ke/108302
|
| iOS has a "Time Sensitive notifications" type that will popup
| immediately, even when user assign the app to summary view.
| But the type is assigned by sender alone. It is still
| possible to spam it.
| kijin wrote:
| There's a problem with the current status quo, at least on
| Android.
|
| Apps can tell that you have disabled notifications, and nag you
| to re-enable them.
|
| Back when I used cyanogen, I could deny permissions to an app
| while tricking the app into believing that those permissions
| were granted. The app would just get an empty contact list, no
| GPS signal, etc. Even with recent improvements, stock Android
| still falls short in this regard.
| brazzy wrote:
| That just seems like the strongest possible encouragement to
| uninstall the app entirely.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Apps can tell that you have disabled notifications, and nag
| you to re-enable them.
|
| The first time an app does this, that app gets uninstalled.
| No exceptions.
| inquirerGeneral wrote:
| > * Apps can implement Notification Channels, a way to
| categorize different types of notifications so that users can
| enable some but not others.
|
| This is something that is underutilized by non power users on
| Android, and makes it FAR better than iOS on top of the already
| better notification delivery system
|
| recently got an iPhone 15 Pro and man, iOS sucks
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I default block notifs (no, I refuse to call them properly, they
| are not worthy of that respect) on any and all newly installed
| applications. I _might_ unblock later if it 's useful or worth my
| time, but don't count on it.
| forgingahead wrote:
| Banking apps are the worst. They make us switch on notifications,
| else we can't get any confirmation notices for us to confirm
| transactions, then they proceed to spam me with credit card
| offers and other rubbish I'm not interested in receiving.
| Ayesh wrote:
| This is especially annoying when they don't use different
| notification channels so I can't turn off individual types of
| notifications.
| lxgr wrote:
| If any app does this, I revoke its push permissions (sometimes
| after very briefly checking if it has a "no marketing pushes"
| option). If that makes the app unusable, it goes to the trash.
| There's more than one bank.
| new_user_final wrote:
| Fortunately, Android has notification groups. You can disable
| notification for certain groups such as promotional
| notification.
| janalsncm wrote:
| What bank does this? I'm not getting any marketing spam from
| Chase or C1.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Just turn on SMS notifications of any transactions on the
| account and disable any "app" notifications.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > But with pushes, we have to guess what the customer might be
| interested in given triggers such as events, promotional offers
|
| No, you don't have to guess. You can correctly know that the
| answer is "no". If you're going to blatantly send unwanted
| marketing to the user, at least be honest with yourself and your
| audience about it.
| pluto_modadic wrote:
| yeah, I was like "you check the user's notification settings,
| right? right?"
| detourdog wrote:
| The problem starts with low opt-in rates. The assumption
| becomes the low response was due to the user not
| understanding how to opt-in.
| bostik wrote:
| Or turn that around: the service was providing insufficient
| value for the user to bother looking at how to opt in for
| their notifications.
| cuu508 wrote:
| I think what they really meant there was
|
| > But with pushes, we have to guess what is the upper limit of
| unwanted marketing the customer will tolerate
| cwillu wrote:
| For me, that limit is "none", I have stopped paying money to
| several services I used regularly the first time the mobile
| app gave me an unsolicited notification.
| mikecoles wrote:
| The upper limit is still zero.
| brazzy wrote:
| No. Most customers will tolerate quote a lot of this form
| of advertising just like other forms. Enough to make it
| profitable to spend significant effort on it.
| anticorporate wrote:
| Whether customers will tolerate it has no bearing on
| whether it is acceptable to bake an antifeature into an
| application.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| In your opinion. In marketers' or app developers'
| opinions, it continues to make them more money so that's
| what they'll do, regardless of whether a small minority
| of consumers complain about it. Of the people I know,
| only technical people have turned off notifications, most
| average users simply have long lists of notifications on
| their phone, that they may or may not look at, ironically
| making the value of each notification from some random
| app a lot less.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Sometimes I feel like a space alien: I didn't watch an
| add since 2008 when I divorced and didn't need a TV any
| more.
|
| I'd rather not use a service than to get adds. The day
| YouTube stops me from using an adblocker I'm going to
| have a lot of free time on my hands!
| Irishsteve wrote:
| Depends. We had a system that someone would favourite a product
| they are interested in, and when it went on a meaningful
| discount (20% or more) we would send them a notification
| letting them know. This had pretty good engagement compared to
| just shooting notifications out.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| If a user specifically uses a feature that _asks_ for
| notifications about a product, then you 're just doing what
| the user asked you to do. The problem comes in when sending
| such notifications without them being requested by the user,
| which includes if the user "favorited" a product but that
| "favorite" operation had nothing to do with requesting
| promotions of that product. ("This is a thing I like" is not
| an invitation for spam about buying it; "Help me buy this" is
| an invitation for _desired_ messages about buying it.)
| Irishsteve wrote:
| I'd say its a grey area in our case. The user isn't using a
| "tell me when discounts happen" feature, but rather a
| favourites feature where some of our marketing said to
| favourite things to get a discount.
|
| Another instance but via notification was that someone
| would lose their product if they didn't complete the
| transaction (24 hours notice). This wasn't a lie - we
| reserved inventory for 24 hours for a buyer as it was a
| unique product. Versus something like booking which is
| eternally telling me someone else is about to reserve the
| room I'm considering renting.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The user isn't using a "tell me when discounts happen"
| feature
|
| Then that's a plain abuse of push notifications, in my
| view. If the user didn't ask for marketing messages, they
| shouldn't be pushed.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| And this is why pretty much none of my apps are allowed to send
| notifications. At _all._ Too many poisoned apples in the barrel
| and I just have lost my trust for the lot of them
| bgro wrote:
| But but our notification policy is just "Do you want
| notifications, including security alerts, new messages,
| emergency information about your account, and promotional
| messages and advertisements, and you agree that we can sell all
| your data"?
|
| There's literally no way we could break that down! How can we
| guess what the user wants when they REFUSE to tell us! I guess
| we better just leave it so they can opt out if they
| successfully navigate all 6 toggles, but if they do that we
| better just flag their account for suspicious activity because
| I don't know why anybody would ever opt out. Seems suspicious
| to me.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Funny that only Pinterest studied the rate of unsubscribe per
| (unsolicited) push. They even accounted for survivorship bias.
| kkarpkkarp wrote:
| Two years ago I learned from some Twitter post a new habit: every
| time you install an app on your phone, you must do one more step:
| block its notifications.
|
| You don't need any notifications from apps as long as this is not
| an instant messaging app. (You can make additional exception for
| your banking app, but that's it for 90% of users)
|
| My phone is now so silent.
| el_oni wrote:
| the only apps that i have with notifcations are, as you
| mentioned, instant messaging apps and apps that i'm using to
| build a habit (language learning, meditation that sort of
| thing). everything else is turned off
| grotorea wrote:
| I've had almost the same apps installed for years now, but is
| that really necessary? Just disable the notification channel
| after the app sends the first undesired notification.
| smoe wrote:
| Instant messaging apps don't _need_ notifications either. It
| upsets some people at first, but it is for the most part
| perfectly fine to just check and respond messages in your own
| preferred frequency.
| ytch wrote:
| It is worse on web push notification. I don't know why anyone
| expecting clients are happy to watch random ADs popup on their
| computer.
| rmholt wrote:
| Nothing. Everything. Never. /article
|
| In all seriousness, I recommend the app FilterBox, it allows you
| to set fine grained rules for notifications for each app
| mad182 wrote:
| TBH I don't need "fine grained rules for each app". There is
| only one rule I care about for most apps - block all
| notifications.
| sakjur wrote:
| Something I wish Apple and Google would support is notifications
| that are only delivered if you've opened the app during the last
| 2 hours. Taxi and food delivery services for example have a
| reasonable usecase for push notifications, but only around the
| time when I've opened the apps.
|
| I think adding such dials to the operating system could help
| align the user interest of not being spammed with the engagement
| metrics used to motivate the spamming a tiny bit.
| TylerE wrote:
| I just wish they added (and enforced!) a distinction between
| transactional notifications and everything else.
| cypressious wrote:
| Android forces app developers to categorize notifications
| (the API is called notification channels). Each channel can
| be muted individually in the system settings. Though it's up
| to the app makers to correctly categorize their
| notifications, in my experience most apps do this.
|
| Whenever I see a spam notification, I immediatelly go mute
| the channel and the problem never repeats itself.
| lozenge wrote:
| I have a Samsung and it doesn't show what channel a
| notification came from. Probably because of the amount of
| crapware Samsung bundles.
| cypressious wrote:
| It shows, though it's a bit obscure. Long press the
| notification, then press notification settings. It will
| scroll you down and highlight the notification channels
| item. Press on it. After a second, it will highlight the
| channel the original notification was belonging to.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That's not "a bit obscure". That's almost completely
| hidden.
| malfist wrote:
| The problem is still bad actors. Take for example audible.
| They deliberately put everything into a single category
| "Member notifications"
|
| If you want to know when your audiobook is downloaded or
| when you get a your next credit is available, you also have
| to put up with promotional "X book is 40% off" garbage
| spam.
| grishka wrote:
| > Android forces app developers to categorize notifications
| (the API is called notification channels).
|
| There's nothing to force you to be honest. It only forces
| you to specify _a channel_ when you post a notification.
| You can as well just create a single one for everything,
| which is exactly what some apps do.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Don't assume that a push notification is going to be shown to
| the user. It may be for consumption only by the app, to avoid
| the need for polling a remote server.
|
| I expected this article to discuss push-notification payloads
| and use cases, but no... it's about spamming the user about
| products. It's as if the author doesn't even understand what
| push notifications are.
| sakjur wrote:
| Good point, in my case when I say "delivered", I primarily
| mean the phone notifying the user.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Understood. Just wanted to bring this up because the
| article ignores most of the possibilities of push
| notifications.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > It may be for consumption only by the app, to avoid the
| need for polling a remote server.
|
| I don't want this to happen, either. Does disabling push
| notifications also disable this use of them?
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I delete DoorDash after every usage because they're excessive
| with the push notifications.
|
| I want notifications during order/delivery. I don't want the
| push notifications any time after that.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Don't text notifications suffice?
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I use the websites for GrubHub and DoorDash, on both laptops
| and mobile devices. Both have reasonable mobile sites, other
| than the regular exhortations to use the app instead.
| twism wrote:
| Android has notifications channels ... mute the spam/ad ones. I
| only have the payment and delivery status channels on alert,
| the others are not muted but "silent" (i.e. the show up in the
| notification tray but doesn't alert me). you do get some deals
| sometimes.
|
| Android gets a lot of shit for a lot of things but the
| notification is top-notch ... on iOS it seems like an
| afterthought (e.g. how long it took for iOS to get web push).
| ianburrell wrote:
| I have rule that audible notifications are urgent, mainly
| messages and alerts. Silent notifications for everything else
| and can be sorted in bulk later. I haven't had to mute any
| notification channels yet.
| grishka wrote:
| > mute the spam/ad ones
|
| Some apps think their stupid spam is important enough to have
| a single notification channel for both the spam and actually
| important stuff like order status.
| twism wrote:
| their fault i'm muting all the relevant notifications
| including the spam ones. leading to poor UX. leading to the
| uninstallation of said app
| jjcm wrote:
| I wish I could approve specific template strings for
| notifications. I want things like "%s replied to your comment".
| I don't want things like, "%s is %d% off this week!".
| londons_explore wrote:
| I'd much rather the OS have a "report spam" button on
| notifications, and if more than 5% of app users report spam then
| the whole app gets all notifications blocked by default.
|
| Both Apple and Google have strong controls on the apps identity,
| so it won't be like email spam where the sender can just send
| from a new email address to get around the filter.
| TylerE wrote:
| Seems like that would be a cheap way to destroy a competitor.
| Pay a bunch of people on some sketchy freelancer site to
| install the app, do whatever easily trigger notications.. and
| then report every single one.
|
| Sort of a spin in the concept that it's much easier to create
| bullshit than debunk it.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Why is this argument always used against any kind of
| improvement beneficial for the end user? Let's at least try
| to improve things before giving up.
| twism wrote:
| so many examples of this type of anti-competitive strategy
| already being used. why implement something with known
| deficiencies?
| joshmanders wrote:
| Because you're taking the solution to the absolute bare
| minimum implementation to achieve the desired result and
| then applying a ton of thoughts and considerations on how
| to get around THAT implementation and saying "Yeah this
| is gonna get abused" and throw your hands in the air.
|
| Or you could think just as hard about blocking it as you
| do about circumventing it, like in the case of this
| scenario, add weight to users. Obviously newly installed
| app users who are rating badly is a sign of something
| fishy, weigh their ratings a LOT lower than someone who
| has say many hours of usage in the app.
| twism wrote:
| i guess the solution in the comment i described as
| anticompetitive is solving a problem that really isn't a
| problem ... you have the ability to turn off
| notifications (or notification channels in the case of
| Android) if they seem spammy. why is the mothership
| turning off notifications for an app due to heuristics of
| a broad set of users.
|
| if i don't want the notification i'll
| disable/silence/mute/lower the priority of it either on
| installation of the app or when it starts to offend.
| joshmanders wrote:
| Because there needs to be some kind of penalty for being
| a shitty person to your users.
|
| Like I get it, marketing matters a lot, and being able to
| market to your existing users is something that makes
| sure companies survive and I accept that.
|
| But because I find your app worthy of being on my phone
| doesn't mean I find your desire to constantly control
| what I'm looking at on my device or take away from that.
| And I think personally as the device manufacture its your
| job to safeguard YOUR customers too with the ability for
| them to report nefarious apps.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| The penalty is they lose their privilege to notify you
| because you turn it off, thereby losing out on your
| future revenue through marketing to you via
| notifications. Again, the question is why must Apple or
| Google do something each person can decide to do
| themselves?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > why implement something with known deficiencies?
|
| That argument could equally be used to argue that push
| notifications shouldn't be implemented at all.
| twism wrote:
| push notifications and the ability to silence them is
| fine ... there's no issue to solve here other than the
| misconception that notifications can't be turned off per
| app basis unless the app store does it for you
| JohnFen wrote:
| The issue here is that the abuse of push notifications
| makes push notifications borderline worthless. That's why
| I don't allow them at all on my machines. The value they
| provide is swamped out by the abuse of them.
| pydry wrote:
| Cynicism.
|
| It amuses me to think that some people probably believed
| that email would never go anywhere as a technology because
| spam.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Email was solidly established on the internet before
| email spam existed.
|
| The existence of spam has greatly reduced how much people
| use email, though. It appears that spam is well on its
| way to effectively killing it.
|
| Marketers do seem to eventually kill anything they touch.
| lozenge wrote:
| The wording of the notification is enough to train a spam
| filter and determine the urgency of the message. Both companies
| should be in favour - Google because the feature makes push
| notifications less useful compared to their ads, Apple for user
| experience.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Both operating systems already require opt in (at the system
| level) for applications to be able to send notifications. I
| think Android enforces this even for apps targeting older API
| levels, except you just get prompted for the permission when
| you open the app.
| joshmanders wrote:
| The thing I have a problem with in this method is you're
| blanket opting in or out of notifications. I'd much rather
| have notifications bucketed into two systems. Transactional
| and marketing, just like email.
|
| I should be able to opt out of Amazon's marketing push
| notifications without ALSO opting out of getting delivery
| alerts.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| On Android, there are notification channels you can opt in
| to individually.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Lyft sends me junk notifications even when I have not
| launched the app in months. Yet when I do request a ride, I
| absolutely want to be notified of any status updates.
|
| The blanket allow permission is being abused.
| tyfon wrote:
| Doesn't most apps use different notification channels now a
| days?
|
| I'm not sure how it is on iphone, but on most apps on
| android I can mute some types of notifications while
| letting others through. The OS will also revoke all
| permissions after the app has not been used for a month or
| so.
| mixdup wrote:
| Neither platform owner is interested in solving this problem,
| they both abuse notifications for spam themselves
| IncandescentGas wrote:
| Apps using repetitive junk push notifications to drive
| product addition has a side effect of driving smartphone
| addiction. Good luck expecting apple or google to curb
| smartphone addiction.
| rideontime wrote:
| Too abusable. How about the platform owners actually pay people
| to enforce the existing guidelines?
| braiamp wrote:
| A better solution would be that the OS forces app developers to
| separate in categories their push notifications and have in the
| notifications options which of those notifications would be
| enabled or not, how often and how frequent before a
| notification is presented. This would then be gathered by the
| OS as how many notifications were silenced and how often were
| they acted upon, then force that as default to all
| notifications. More importantly, there must not be a
| "important" flag or something that hints hierarchy. If a
| notification is important, describe that in the category
| description.
| janalsncm wrote:
| The model for me is duolingo. They gamified a thing I wanted to
| learn so I mostly didn't mind the notifications. It's still
| important to have timely and relevant information though.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| I was just pondering what kind of push notifications I'll need
| for an app I'm writing, so I was pretty psyched to see this
| title.
|
| How disappointing to find that the title is BS, applied to an
| article that's focused entirely on spamming.
|
| Push notifications might never even be shown to the user. They
| may be for the application's consumption, to avoid polling a
| remote server.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Even _The Onion_ was not willing to go so far in their satire as
| to suggest that someone might be interested in pushes:
| https://www.theonion.com/man-creates-account-on-ghostbusterb...
| pitah1 wrote:
| Another side effect to take into consideration when offering
| notifications to customers is the impact on your services if
| customers action on those notifications.
|
| At a bank I worked at, we enabled salary transaction
| notifications. Soon we found that because the salary was
| deposited into everyone's account at the same time from the bank,
| a large amount of notifications was trying to be sent at the same
| time which caused a bunch of services to suddenly receive a lot
| more traffic than usual.
| winkelwagen wrote:
| It's not only push notifications, it's the combination of
| everything communication channel combined. I recently
| unsubscribed to a services that kept spamming me their "lifetime
| subscription" product, while I already was on their yearly
| premium plan. Over the course of 2 weeks, I received 4 push
| notifications, 4 emails and 2 times when I opened the app it had
| a full screen ad. I'll never use this product again. Ironically,
| this app focuses on sleep quality, focus and meditation.
|
| 4 years ago I was using a Fitbit, and for some reason they
| thought push notifications was a great channel to promote a new
| watch product. It blew my mind that someone at Fitbit thought
| that was a great idea.
|
| Anyone considering using push notifications for marketing
| purposes, I'm sure you'll make a couple of sales short term, but
| for me, you damage your brand
| JohnFen wrote:
| I agree. Push notifications could have been useful, but
| companies abuse them so heavily that they're the opposite of
| that, and I keep them disabled across the board.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Unless an App/Platform/Service is an "if you miss the info,
| you/someone dies or might die or almost die," then the
| notifications should be user-initiated. As a user, I should be
| the one who opted in to say, "Yes, I like this category of
| updates, and it is OK to send them to me." Many an app/company
| assumes by default when I sign up or even use my email/phone to
| contact/connect for anything that, "Baaaaam, there you go --
| fished another one -- send in the onslaught of our ads, hook,
| line, and sinker."
|
| I need to update for the new pattern of notifications, but my
| article[1] from 2014 remains valid -- stop the notifications --
| either as soon as you install an App or as part of your
| weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly digital cleanup chores. Many
| friends have thanked me countless times for this small suggestion
| I wrote down on my blog. These days, forget the idea of
| productivity; everyday/casual living can really benefit without
| the need for extra nosy/noisy push notifications.
|
| As an app developer, platform service provider, when you know you
| can but have a teeny-tiny bit of a doubt, do not push that
| notification.
|
| 1. https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-
| activi...
| chris-orgmenta wrote:
| This interested me, as it would be a nice concept to build a
| manual around.
|
| On the face of it, it could have suited me ("What to push: Being
| helpful and engaging")
|
| But looking into it, I feel the writer has a more cynical
| worldview than me, and I found this a bit distasteful.
|
| I think that this resource is not useful to me, because it is
| undermined by greed. The end goal with this article is, IMO,
| people's pockets - not fulfilling people's needs.
| IncandescentGas wrote:
| They must know this right? It seems the "Be helpful and
| engaging" is a bit of self delusion to pretend they aren't
| having such a wide negative impact on all of humanity with this
| kind of research.
|
| If the premise is to determine how many alerts the user will
| tolerate before taking action to silence them, it's known up
| front the alerts are unwanted and harm the user. The alerts are
| intended to drive product addiction. By definition, that's
| unhelpful to the user.
|
| The user is tricked by their phone, using the same noise and
| vibrations a direct message from friends or family that
| requires immediate attention causes, to force the offending
| product's brand into the forefront of their mind and make them
| decide to ignore the notification, investigate the
| notification, or silence the app's notifications.
|
| They want to maximize the number they can send, because they
| are studying the individual recipient to learn what they're
| more likely to respond to. Once they know that, they can
| barrage the person with those things they can't resist until
| product addiction is achieved, and yet another smartphone
| zombie is created. Yet another person who will not put down
| their phone to drive their car, have dinner with their families
| or tend to their own needs.
|
| The author must know the damage their work has done to people's
| lives, and this "be helpful and engaging" nonsense must be how
| they rationalize it.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| I might be in the minority group. But any app that sends me a
| push notification that I haven't specifically opted in for is
| going to have all notification privilege removed right away. A
| lot of the time it's actually a reminder for me to uninstall the
| app.
| joshmanders wrote:
| You're not alone. I do the same thing.
|
| Maybe not so overzealous though. I'll let a few through because
| I know it CAN be abused but some don't abuse it so badly. A
| marketing notification here and there is fine, but a few of
| them send me multiple DAILY. Those get muted and then the next
| time an app causes me to go to my notification settings, I
| notice the previously muted one and I determine "Have I used
| this meaningfully lately?" if not, after muting the current
| notifications app, I go an uninstall the previous ones.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > A marketing notification here and there is fine
|
| Not to me. Any use of push notifications for marketing
| purposes is an abuse of push notifications in my view.
| gruez wrote:
| >But any app that sends me a push notification that I haven't
| specifically opted in for is going to have all notification
| privilege removed right away.
|
| I thought both android and ios has opt-in notifications? In
| other words if you're receiving a notification, you already
| explicitly opted into them at some point.
| grishka wrote:
| Android does have opt-in notifications now, but it's a very
| recent change.
| dsign wrote:
| I'm trying to think of necessary push-notifications, and all I
| can come up with is "stuff from loved ones, but not spam of
| whatever mom finds in Facebook." This is an area where a user-
| focused app would let me use an AI to classify what bubbles up to
| push notifications. Alas, the incentives are wrong for that. App-
| makers will use the tiniest, tiniest excuse they can make up to
| solicit attention from a user.
| ProxCoques wrote:
| Fascinating the sort of elephant-in-room ignoring bubble that
| articles like this inhabit. What next? How best to drive cars
| down residential streets at full speed? How about how to slap
| people around the head without them doing the same to you?
|
| I agree it's a good intellectual challenge, as far as mental
| gymnastics go.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| When in doubt, don't push. When not in doubt, you should be.
| mercurialsolo wrote:
| While we think of push more in context of notifs - this same
| logic can be applied to any recommendations that come over a
| channel where intent is to be inferred based on past behaviour
| versus determined based on user input - be it on email, or any
| messaging channel or even on a subsequent visit to a page.
|
| While we can debate the merits/demerits of push - for practical
| commerce, a large part of the world still switches on push, and
| relevant push will deliver more concrete and better ROI.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Marketer here. I'll add how my company does it (10m+ list size)
|
| 1) we limit promotional notifications to one per user per day.
| All campaigns that target a given user are ranked based on
| expected monetization or engagement. This involves a large batch
| scoring job that runs overnight
|
| 2) we also limit promotional messages to one every x days, where
| x is personalized to the user. The more you open/click, the more
| you get and vice versa. employees sometimes complain about the
| amount of email they receive - it's because they are naturally
| power users, opening everything.
|
| On top of that, we've built levers to temporarily boost revenue
| by targeting a given opt out rate. Say our baseline is 1%, we may
| be ok with temporarily having a 1.2% rate to get $x more revenue.
| This involves an opt out prediction model as well.
| malfist wrote:
| > we limit promotional notifications to one per user per day
|
| That's insanity. Do you really change your prices so often that
| you have to get that information to users every day?
|
| Marketing push notifications are absolutely the worst part of
| spam because you HAVE to interact with them.
| KOTYAR wrote:
| Shows you've never used Poco phone. Old ladies at my job use
| weird no name phones, which are 120$ tops, and amount of ads
| they're getting is 10x times more than what Poco has. They
| all have ads on their lockscreen.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Using my mothers phone is terrifying.
|
| Her philosophy for using her phone seems to be "Just press
| OK until I get what I was looking for".
| malfist wrote:
| What does my comment have to do with poco phones at all?
| barryrandall wrote:
| Customer here. Here's how I handle notifications:
|
| 1) When I install an app, I give it all requested notification
| permissions.
|
| 2) When an app sends a poorly-timed notification, I add it to a
| notification profile that limits when notifications are shown.
| When an app sends me an annoying message (anything marketing-
| related, or anything that looks like it's intended to drive
| "engagement"), I disable all notifications for the app.
|
| 3) If the app is not usable with notifications disabled, I stop
| using the app. If the app is required by a service I use, then
| I cancel the service.
| JohnFen wrote:
| One per user per day is an insanely, unacceptably, high rate in
| my opinion.
|
| > employees sometimes complain about the amount of email they
| receive - it's because they are naturally power users, opening
| everything.
|
| Doesn't the fact that this happens indicate that this approach
| is a bad one?
| rideontime wrote:
| One promotional notification per day is one too many. The only
| people leaving notifications enabled on your app are those who
| don't know how to disable them.
| IncandescentGas wrote:
| These regularly spaced and frequent junk notifications are so
| important to tech companies because they drive product addiction.
| Interrupting your day 16 times forcing someone to decide to
| scroll their feed yet again today, until they're as helpless as
| Pavlov's dog.
|
| How is this kind of computer science any more ethical than the
| chemists who worked to modify tobacco to be more addictive?
|
| Apple and Google are complicit in this too. Product addiction
| drives smartphone addiction, so don't expect them to take any
| real steps to protect the average person from this sort of
| psychological abuse by their phones.
| stackskipton wrote:
| I'm shocked Apple hasn't tried to fix it and use it as selling
| point. Smartphone companies don't need to hook the user
| anymore, almost everyone is high on the smack at this point.
| jerlam wrote:
| Apple _used to_ not allow ads in push notifications when the
| iPhone was first released. Sadly, that restriction was
| removed in 2020:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/4/21165087/ios-apple-push-
| no...
| grishka wrote:
| > Push notifications can be considered a form of recommender
| system
|
| No. Push notifications are _notifications_. They have to _notify_
| you about something that has happened that concerns you,
| personally. Like if someone sent you a message, or commented on
| your post, or liked your content. A sale in a store, or an app
| update being available, or it being a certain time of day, does
| not, ever, under any circumstances, qualify as a reason to send a
| push notification. No matter how cringe-cutesy it is and how many
| emojis it contains.
|
| Bulk push notifications in any shape or form Just. Should. Not.
| Be. A. Thing. Period.
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