upvote
Agreed. I have a doc appointment app, where I like the notifications to be on for reminders etc.

Lately they started sending marketing messages through that channel. Now I’m sure it’s possible to turn off the marketing messages. But I bet most people don’t know and won’t change that. It’s super annoying.

reply
Same for things like Uber.

I do want to know when a car is arriving.

I don't want messages asking if I'm hungry.

reply
Hi whstl,

Are you hungry? Open your Uber Eats app now for 10% off.

/this message sent through PalantirFinder -- from marketing and coupons to ordnance, we deliver everything!

reply
And soon, those appointment reminders might quietly be dismissed by your phone without you being any the wiser.
reply
I absolutely hate medical marketing. I recently decided to switch dermatology practices over a combination of bad data management, unwelcome marketing for cosmetic dermatology products, and unsolicited SMSs. I never consented to receive marketing or texts (or to lose my data in a data breach, or to be billed for the in person services by practices other than the one from which I received services and ignored unopened as spam because I didn’t recognize the sender, etc…)

But I digress.

reply
Not upset, but increasingly concerned that all channels are being intermediated by big tech.
reply
Yeah these channels used to be respected in that way.

And then app developers discovered that hooks like "look what you missed" work on users and so now we all have to get them in the same category.

reply
>discovery

I can’t think of a single app I want a “Discover” tab on anymore. The moment you include one is the moment there is someone trying to game it. I definitely don’t want push notifications trying to show me something new. I’m hardly lacking in distractions

(Yes I am sure somebody can give me an example of a good use of Discover but you get my point)

reply
> (read: spam)

is it unironically incomprehensible to you that the owner of the device should in the one who gets to decide what is and isn't spam? it's not email where you can get bombarded with shit from any random server - you can mute or uninstall an app.

reply
It should but apps don't let us decide.

An intermediate seems to be trying to fix it.

Is it ideal? No. But it's the spammers who are to blame.

reply
You know, I would love a feature that lets me mark push notifications as spam, and optionally send them to Apple. The last part is important for a variety of reasons, one of which is that notifications can be end to end encrypted.

Spam filter push notifications.

Ideally enough spam reports for Uber Eat’s constant marketing abuse and they lose APNs access for the Bundle ID associated with the spam reports. For example.

reply
You’re right of course, but Apple won’t do it - they’re happily running a two-tier system where Uber, eBay, Doordash can force spam notifications on you with impunity. All my settings for marketing are off - eBay still sends me notifications about coupons (and additionally there’s no way to actually contact them to complain, of course). Doordash won’t let me get delivery notifications without marketing notifications.

Apple could fully enforce their policies and fix this in a heartbeat, but they won’t.

reply
like I said, you decide by muting or removing the offending app.
reply
That's not entirely fair to the author as the article also states that the consumer being in control is a must:

> Every step subtracts a degree of sender control. Some of it passes to the user, and that is a good thing: a person deciding what is allowed to interrupt them is the channel working as it should. The rest passes to the platform, and that is the part that should concern a sender, because the platform's judgment is opaque, unappealable, and increasingly made by a model rather than by a setting the user chose.

A platform has essentially two "clients" - the user and the developer. Without both, it wouldn't exist. And it is in the interest of both that the platform should have very limited arbitrary authority over them. Nobody can deny today that the platform owners today have too much power over their users and their developers, which makes it easy for them to commercially exploit them while undermining their rights. We need regulations and standards (for interoperability, which is one of the arguments being made) to counter this.

reply
Been an app developer since 2009, worked on Android for 6 years at Google. Push notifications suck, users hate them.

Simultaneously, I cannot match the pull quote, an argument summary, to their argumentation. IIUC if the reword patent / Apple’s summarizing disappear there’s 0 reason to say it wasn’t control passing purely to the consumer.

So I’m left a bit empty as the high-minded purpose has little backing, and thus comes across as bloviating.

reply