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Maybe Apple should add a similar distinction between transactional and marketing notifications as we have with email.
by jacobsimon 3y ago
Maybe Apple should add a similar distinction between transactional and marketing notifications as we have with email.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoThey do. They call them "time sensitive" notifications. You can use the "Focus" feature to delay less important types of notifications into a big batch at a specified time. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212608 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212608
- wodenokoto 3y agoIt's been asking me about these and from what it tells me on my phone I don't understand what they are getting at. But more importantly, how does it differentiate between "Your delivery has arrived" and "this weekend, 10% off all deliveries paid with mastercard from chase banks"
- mr_mitm 3y agoOn android, each app's notifications are categorized. For, say, Uber, I can enable the obvious useful notifications and can disable promotional notifications. Presumably Google penalizes ignoring or abusing this system.
- gambiting 3y agoHahahahaha - sorry, the mere suggestion that Google cares enough about this to "penalize" anyone who ignores this system is actually really funny to me. No, of course they don't do any such thing. The system is entirely and completely optional, and developers have long ago realized that actually using it is to their own detriment, because users will just block the marketing notifications but leave the important ones, so they just bundle everything together. I have actually messaged several developers of some of the apps I use if they can fix this exact thing and the response has always been "sorry we don't have the technical ability to do this" which is obviously complete nonsense. But no, there isn't any penalty for not doing this from google.
- mr_mitm 3y agoHuh. It really worked well for me so far. Interesting.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoYou're lucky. I found that even Google doesn't respect their own categories, and happily bucket useful information together with spam.
- fooker 3y agoIs it really that surprising to you that something Google has created works better than something Apple has created for a specific narrow problem? These are all trillion dollar companies, your allegiance is wasted.
- gambiting 3y ago....my "allegiance" if you want to call it that is entirely to Google, so I don't understand your point? Did you somehow get from my point that I'm an iOS user??? >>that something Google has created works better Does it? The system for categorizing notification does exist on android, but it's not enforced in any way by Google on the Play Store so most devs ignore it - do you take an issue with anything I said?
- marcosdumay 3y agoThe only android app I've ever seen with real categories is MS Teams. Of course changing any setting on Teams has catastrophic unpredictable effects on it... But at least they tried.
- ClassyJacket 3y agoYou can't, tho, because no major apps actually separate the promotional notifications.
- pjamar 3y agoAnd for the bad applications you can use FilterBox (paid app), that allows you to regex them and automate them in different ways. I tend to use "Focus Mode" turned on always in Android. Most apps are short lived (5 min after being opened manually), this reduces a lot of the spam. I automate extending this time using the same FilterBox to auto click the notification that the app will close in a minute, but only if the screen is turned on. So the app gets automatically disabled when I stop using the phone.
- tazjin 3y ago> how does it differentiate Probably through a pinky promise from the developers to call the right APIs.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoProbably. And then I would expect the app store review process to check.
- wlesieutre 3y agoAnother piece is that all “time sensitive” notifications come with a button underneath to not let that app send time sensitive notifications anymore
- gyrovagueGeist 3y ago> But more importantly, how does it differentiate between "Your delivery has arrived" and "this weekend, 10% off all deliveries paid with mastercard from chase banks" IIUC it is up to the app developer to tag the notifications they generate as time sensitive (or not) for iOS
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jbverschoor 3y agoThere's no way to flag spam / marketing. Uber for example occasionally sends marketing. But you can't really disable notifications. Instead, they (large companies) should just pay x cent per notification to Apple (not the user, because that would be seen as credit, eliminating the purpose)
- lostlogin 3y agoThat might work but what if the value of the spam notification is greater than Apples fee? Then it will carry on.
- jbverschoor 3y agoFlag more notifications as spam, which would increase the fee for that app. As long as they get flagged, they’d need to pay more and more.
- robocat 3y agoI only install Uber when I want to catch an Uber. Helps with notifications, tracking, and avoids impulse usage.
- baz00 3y agoYeah this. I uninstall it when I'm done or it starts bugging the fuck out of me. Sometimes I think "should I install it" before getting one and get public transport or get on my bike instead.
- AdrianEGraphene 3y agoCan you please explain why it would be preferable to have large companies paying x cents per notification to Apple, and not to users? I don't understand the credit part? Wouldn't some kind of "set your rate" option for the user, allow more individual flexibility? As opposed to a flat fee per notif, sent to Apple?
- chrismorgan 3y agoSo long as spam legislation applies to these notifications¹, you don’t need to: in theory you just report it to the relevant enforcement body, and they get fined heavily until they do something about it (which, under most sets of spam legislation, will start by requiring that these sorts of messages be opt-in only). —⁂— ¹ I vaguely recall hearing that EU spam legislation would apply to notifications, but I may be wrong or misremembering. For my home jurisdiction of Australia, the Spam Act 2003 may or may not cover them; it depends on whether these things count as “electronic messages”, a term which is defined in the Act as “a message sent: (a) using: (i) an internet carriage service; or (ii) any other listed carriage service; and (b) to an electronic address in connection with: (i) an email account; or (ii) an instant messaging account; or (iii) a telephone account; or (iv) a similar account.” As a technologist, I would expect push notifications—that is, notifications sent by the app provider’s server via Apple/whoever servers to your device—to meet this classification; but that it would be less clear-cut with notifications generated directly by the app, as there’s not so obviously an electronic address involved.
- bertil 3y agoApple would be gaining so much goodwill and transforming the industry if they asked for feedback on notifications, and trained an ML system to decide which one to show.
- corobo 3y agoIt used to be against App Store TOS to send marketing notifications full stop. Apple isn't interested in fixing this, they allowed it to happen in the first place.
- astrange 3y agoThey can't fix it because governments would consider it anti-competitive. Same reason the browser can't come with an adblocker. Similarly, a cookie blocker can't be a domain blacklist because the people on the list could sue, but it can be an obfusticated ML model.
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoApple has a great feature called "Notification Summaries". More urgent notifications are shown immediately, but notifications from apps of your choosing are all bundled together into two daily summaries.