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I received a notification from Uber on the weekend. It said something to the effect of "it's a nice day today, why don't you take a ride?" I've never told my ph

I received a notification from Uber on the weekend. It said something to the effect of "it's a nice day today, why don't you take a ride?" I've never told my phone to fuck off faster. How many people out there were in the middle of an important task, only to have their phone ask them if they wanted to take a car somewhere for no reason? The collective man-hours of distraction being generated must be staggering; years of work and progress lost every day so that Uber can presumably see a small uptick in engagement.

mindwok 5y ago
Makes me wonder what these kind of notifications are really worth. All they do is make me immediately mute the app from ever notifying me again, and leave a bad taste in my mouth. How many people are really seeing this and impulse purchasing an Uber ride somewhere? I suspect close to zero.
- acituan 5y ago
  I would guess the number of people who have opted-out of the notifications are either not reported, or the aggregate opt-out ratio doesn't make a ding on overall notification conversion rates. In other words, people don't have a uniform frustration tolerance to irrelevant push notifications, and losing the most irritable segment might be 'worth' it if the majority of the population is still getting them. An alternative explanation is opt-out burn-out; people might just give up on the possibility of a high signal/noise ratio notification space.
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    Yeah, I know this is an anecdote but most people in my life just put up with a constant stream of buzzing and pinging. I’m very much in the habit of not allowing any notifications to begin with, especially in my browser, but I’m in a minority I think. Emails are even worse, I unsubscribe from the vast majority and block the ones I can’t (Hermes are utterly revolting for this noise generation, three non-unsubscribable emails and three texts per delivery!). The pathetic signal to noise ratio of email makes it utterly worthless as a means of communication for me, if it were up to me I’d do away with it altogether!
    - ryandrake 5y ago
      I remember sitting at a restaurant some time pre-covid, and watching this young couple a few tables over with their phones on the table. Every 1-2 seconds or so, something dinged or buzzed, or the screen lit up. It was like Las Vegas on their phone. Beep beep beep ding ding flash. And like Pavlov's dogs, every time the phones lit up, they interrupted whatever they were doing (talking, eating, whatever), picked up their phones and started playing around with them. I would be an insane basket case after 30 minutes of this, but they somehow managed to get through an entire meal with essentially a casino light and sound show erupting on their phones. How do people's brains manage this without melting down? For me? Mute + Do Not Disturb mode 24/7. No notifications, no texts, no phone calls, no sounds, period. I use my phone on my own terms, not when some app summons me. I can't imagine my brain surviving any other way.
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  They're not impulse purchasing a ride, but you can bet they will be thinking of Uber when the time comes that they do need a ride.
caturopath 5y ago
It's galling that using notifications for ads is allowed by the marketplaces.
- greyface- 5y ago
  https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#4.5.4 https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#4.5... 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. In practice it's not enforced, though.
  - eloisius 5y ago
    Dear god I wish they would, or segregate notifications into channels that can be subscribed to, or require developers to submit a template for each notification[0], or let me match with a regex. Anything. Notifications should strictly be for notifying me about things I asked to be notified about. Not spam. It seems sort sighted for Apple to let their notification system become a spam tube, it just devalues their platform. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27459256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27459256

mindwok 5y ago

Makes me wonder what these kind of notifications are really worth. All they do is make me immediately mute the app from ever notifying me again, and leave a bad taste in my mouth. How many people are really seeing this and impulse purchasing an Uber ride somewhere? I suspect close to zero.

acituan 5y ago
I would guess the number of people who have opted-out of the notifications are either not reported, or the aggregate opt-out ratio doesn't make a ding on overall notification conversion rates. In other words, people don't have a uniform frustration tolerance to irrelevant push notifications, and losing the most irritable segment might be 'worth' it if the majority of the population is still getting them. An alternative explanation is opt-out burn-out; people might just give up on the possibility of a high signal/noise ratio notification space.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  Yeah, I know this is an anecdote but most people in my life just put up with a constant stream of buzzing and pinging. I’m very much in the habit of not allowing any notifications to begin with, especially in my browser, but I’m in a minority I think. Emails are even worse, I unsubscribe from the vast majority and block the ones I can’t (Hermes are utterly revolting for this noise generation, three non-unsubscribable emails and three texts per delivery!). The pathetic signal to noise ratio of email makes it utterly worthless as a means of communication for me, if it were up to me I’d do away with it altogether!
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    I remember sitting at a restaurant some time pre-covid, and watching this young couple a few tables over with their phones on the table. Every 1-2 seconds or so, something dinged or buzzed, or the screen lit up. It was like Las Vegas on their phone. Beep beep beep ding ding flash. And like Pavlov's dogs, every time the phones lit up, they interrupted whatever they were doing (talking, eating, whatever), picked up their phones and started playing around with them. I would be an insane basket case after 30 minutes of this, but they somehow managed to get through an entire meal with essentially a casino light and sound show erupting on their phones. How do people's brains manage this without melting down? For me? Mute + Do Not Disturb mode 24/7. No notifications, no texts, no phone calls, no sounds, period. I use my phone on my own terms, not when some app summons me. I can't imagine my brain surviving any other way.
SantalBlush 5y ago
They're not impulse purchasing a ride, but you can bet they will be thinking of Uber when the time comes that they do need a ride.

caturopath 5y ago

It's galling that using notifications for ads is allowed by the marketplaces.

greyface- 5y ago
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#4.5.4 https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#4.5... 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. In practice it's not enforced, though.
- eloisius 5y ago
  Dear god I wish they would, or segregate notifications into channels that can be subscribed to, or require developers to submit a template for each notification[0], or let me match with a regex. Anything. Notifications should strictly be for notifying me about things I asked to be notified about. Not spam. It seems sort sighted for Apple to let their notification system become a spam tube, it just devalues their platform. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27459256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27459256