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.<p>How is this kind of computer science any more ethical than the chemists who worked to modify tobacco to be more addictive?<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.
> Push notifications can be considered a form of recommender system<p>No. Push notifications are <i>notifications</i>. They have to <i>notify</i> 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.<p>Bulk push notifications in any shape or form Just. Should. Not. Be. A. Thing. Period.
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.”<p>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.<p>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.<p>1. <a href="https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activities-stop-notifications/" rel="nofollow">https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activi...</a>
Another side effect to take into consideration when offering notifications to customers is the impact on your services if customers action on those notifications.<p>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.
This interested me, as it would be a nice concept to build a manual around.<p>On the face of it, it could have suited me ("What to push: Being helpful and engaging")<p>But looking into it, I feel the writer has a more cynical worldview than me, and I found this a bit distasteful.<p>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.
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.<p>How disappointing to find that the title is BS, applied to an article that’s focused entirely on spamming.<p>Push notifications might never even be shown to the user. They may be for the application’s consumption, to avoid polling a remote server.
Marketer here. I’ll add how my company does it (10m+ list size)<p>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<p>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.<p>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.
> <i>Thus, as we go from search to recommendations to pushes, it becomes harder to understand the customer’s intent</i><p>> <i>Push notifications can be considered a form of recommender system</i><p>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 <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0969698921000941#:~:text=We%20define%20recommendation%20marketing%20as,personal%20interests%20or%20purchase%20history" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09696...</a>.
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.
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.<p>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.<p>Here are a few of the options available for each operating system. Many of these were introduced within the last 1 to 3 years.<p>iOS & Android:<p><pre><code> * 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.
</code></pre>
iOS<p><pre><code> * 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.
</code></pre>
Android<p><pre><code> * Apps can implement Notification Channels, a way to categorize different types of notifications so that users can enable some but not others.</code></pre>
If I was ruler of the world I'd outlaw all Marketers and Advertisers and subject them to a Ludovico Technique type of thing where they have to sit through inane, mind-numbing, mind-killing ads popping up on screens every 3 seconds. Let's see how they like this little world of brain rape they've built for themselves.<p>The only people who put up with these spammy bullshit notifications are people who aren't aware you can disable them in the first place. I wish the app stores would do something about this, like give us a spam report system a la email that lets you mark these parasitic marketers as the spam they are.
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.<p>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.
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.
> But with pushes, we have to guess what the customer might be interested in given triggers such as events, promotional offers<p>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.
I practice a "1 strike you're out" policy.<p>As soon as I get a single unwanted notification from an app, that's it, I kill all its notifications privileges. Any other annoyances, and the whole app gets uninstalled. My attention and focus are too valuable a resource.
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?<p>I agree it's a good intellectual challenge, as far as mental gymnastics go.
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 <i>might</i> unblock later if it's useful or worth my time, but don't count on it.
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.<p>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)<p>My phone is now so silent.
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.
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.
Even <i>The Onion</i> was not willing to go so far in their satire as to suggest that someone might be interested in pushes: <a href="https://www.theonion.com/man-creates-account-on-ghostbusterbobbleheads-com-for-f-1851103196" rel="nofollow">https://www.theonion.com/man-creates-account-on-ghostbusterb...</a>
Nothing. Everything. Never. /article<p>In all seriousness, I recommend the app FilterBox, it allows you to set fine grained rules for notifications for each app