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Push notifications allow me to spend less time on my phone/PC. Without them, I would have to regularly check the app of interest for any important updates, los

by leppr 5y ago

Push notifications allow me to spend less time on my phone/PC. Without them, I would have to regularly check the app of interest for any important updates, losing both time and mental space with another thing to keep in the back of my mind. Thanks to push notifications, I can defer interacting with the app to when it's actually relevant. Also as I argued in another comment [1], web notifications are simply better than native app ones. Push notifications are here to stay, the choice is in the implementation, not whether they'll become culturally accepted or not (they already are, iOS users simple are nagged to install native apps to have them).

BoxOfRain 5y ago
What updates are actually important though? A good 80% of notifications I'd get before I started systematically disabling them by default weren't important at all, they were just pointless nagware trying to get me to engage with the software more frequently so some analytics manager can justify why they shouldn't be sacked that quarter. It doesn't matter to these people that most of the extra clicks and presses are people telling them to piss off so they can get on with actually important work, they only care that engagement is going up. Proper tail wagging the dog bullshit. Excessive notifications are a dark pattern which needs to be resisted, not encouraged. I'll continue blocking every single one of them and looking at apps on my own schedule, I will not allow random software to interrupt my flow because it thinks it has a right to my attention. Littering is culturally accepted too, but that doesn't mean either littering or its digital equivalent should be.
- tartoran 5y ago
  I agree and am of the same opinion, i’m glad Safari is playing by a slower tune and it definitely it isn’t google’s tune.
  - yourad_io 5y ago
    You don't want to be given the choice? Nobody is saying notifications should be silently accepted.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - onemoresoop 5y ago
      If google could move as fast as they could they'd serve their own interest at the expense of others and we know where that leads us. I'm glad that they can't move as fast and it takes a while for things to get accepted.
blacktriangle 5y ago
You're not wrong, there's real upsides to push notifications. For example the thing I love about the iWatch is how it lets me never check my phone because anything relevent is pushed to the watch. But I think you are really underselling the downsides of push notifications. They are easily the most heavily abused feature of the modern web anywhere they exist. If every single app responsibly used push notifications then sure, it would be great. Here in reality push notifications aren't some personal majordomo making sure only important issues are brought to our attention, push notifications feel more like walking down the Vegas strip having leaflets constantly shoved in your face. I think its premature to say that we have the answer and just maybe Apple dragging their feet on this will help us find a solution that is better than the advertiser friendly free for all that Google is pushing.
- The-Bus 5y ago
  > push notifications feel more like walking down the Vegas strip having leaflets constantly shoved in your face. Strong agreement here. There's a significant (single digit %) of sites I run into that ask me to accept push notifications or ask for my email before any of the content loads. I usually close the tab when that happens.
- tartoran 5y ago
  I guess there’s a benefit of not having to take out your phone to check notifications but in the end they do compete for your attention and microdisrupt you anyway. And how many notifications on average are you willing to take in? I personally want as little as possible, the most important contacts and critical alerts are enough for me, the rest can wait till I check for them myself.
  - blacktriangle 5y ago
    Yep and this is where it gets wierd. Maybe I should be allowed to assign priorities to different notifications and then have my phone automatically proritize what makes a "ding" based on the time of day or my geographic location. Maybe notifications should be throttled in some way so that every 30 minutes I receive a digest of notifications if there are any. Maybe they should be aggrigated till I have 5 accoumulated. Or maybe these are all terrible ideas because they require configuration and users aren't going to spend the time configuring their notifications. This whole thing really goes to the different mindsets of Apple/iOS and Google/Android fans. The Apple camp is fine waiting for functionality to get something that is decently thought out, the Google camp wants everything now and will deal with the consequences later. We've seen this repeated with copy/paste and with background processes on both platforms. Android got there first, but the earliest Android implementations had serious limitations and issues.

by leppr 5y ago

BoxOfRain 5y ago

What updates are actually important though? A good 80% of notifications I'd get before I started systematically disabling them by default weren't important at all, they were just pointless nagware trying to get me to engage with the software more frequently so some analytics manager can justify why they shouldn't be sacked that quarter. It doesn't matter to these people that most of the extra clicks and presses are people telling them to piss off so they can get on with actually important work, they only care that engagement is going up. Proper tail wagging the dog bullshit. Excessive notifications are a dark pattern which needs to be resisted, not encouraged. I'll continue blocking every single one of them and looking at apps on my own schedule, I will not allow random software to interrupt my flow because it thinks it has a right to my attention. Littering is culturally accepted too, but that doesn't mean either littering or its digital equivalent should be.

tartoran 5y ago
I agree and am of the same opinion, i’m glad Safari is playing by a slower tune and it definitely it isn’t google’s tune.
- yourad_io 5y ago
  You don't want to be given the choice? Nobody is saying notifications should be silently accepted.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - onemoresoop 5y ago
    If google could move as fast as they could they'd serve their own interest at the expense of others and we know where that leads us. I'm glad that they can't move as fast and it takes a while for things to get accepted.

blacktriangle 5y ago

You're not wrong, there's real upsides to push notifications. For example the thing I love about the iWatch is how it lets me never check my phone because anything relevent is pushed to the watch. But I think you are really underselling the downsides of push notifications. They are easily the most heavily abused feature of the modern web anywhere they exist. If every single app responsibly used push notifications then sure, it would be great. Here in reality push notifications aren't some personal majordomo making sure only important issues are brought to our attention, push notifications feel more like walking down the Vegas strip having leaflets constantly shoved in your face. I think its premature to say that we have the answer and just maybe Apple dragging their feet on this will help us find a solution that is better than the advertiser friendly free for all that Google is pushing.

The-Bus 5y ago
> push notifications feel more like walking down the Vegas strip having leaflets constantly shoved in your face. Strong agreement here. There's a significant (single digit %) of sites I run into that ask me to accept push notifications or ask for my email before any of the content loads. I usually close the tab when that happens.
tartoran 5y ago
I guess there’s a benefit of not having to take out your phone to check notifications but in the end they do compete for your attention and microdisrupt you anyway. And how many notifications on average are you willing to take in? I personally want as little as possible, the most important contacts and critical alerts are enough for me, the rest can wait till I check for them myself.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  Yep and this is where it gets wierd. Maybe I should be allowed to assign priorities to different notifications and then have my phone automatically proritize what makes a "ding" based on the time of day or my geographic location. Maybe notifications should be throttled in some way so that every 30 minutes I receive a digest of notifications if there are any. Maybe they should be aggrigated till I have 5 accoumulated. Or maybe these are all terrible ideas because they require configuration and users aren't going to spend the time configuring their notifications. This whole thing really goes to the different mindsets of Apple/iOS and Google/Android fans. The Apple camp is fine waiting for functionality to get something that is decently thought out, the Google camp wants everything now and will deal with the consequences later. We've seen this repeated with copy/paste and with background processes on both platforms. Android got there first, but the earliest Android implementations had serious limitations and issues.