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I love these crackdowns and increasingly granular permissions. They did a similar thing for photos a while back. I wish they’d crack down on advertisements in

I love these crackdowns and increasingly granular permissions. They did a similar thing for photos a while back. I wish they’d crack down on advertisements in notifications. Sleazy players like Uber will spam you with ads, so you’re forced to choose between receiving ads or missing out on actually important notifications. There’s nothing better than getting buzzed for an advertisement which you can conveniently view on your lock screen!

joshuaturner 2y ago
I think they used to have a rule about this but then their own apps started to violate it, so they loosened restrictions. What I'd really love to see is notification categories so you can choose which to accept.
- xnx 2y ago
  Android has notification categories, but I think those end up getting abused too.
  - joshuaturner 2y ago
    I'm sure enforcement around it would be difficult but I'd imagine most major apps would fall in line if only because the risk of losing their notification entitlement would be too great.
    - ffsm8 2y ago
      What do you mean with enforcement? Literally delisting the app if it doesn't correctly classify their notifications? Because as they said: android has multiple channels, but the app owners quickly realized that if they classified their notifications, the unwanted channels such as "news"/advertising get disabled. So they bundle it into the same channel you don't really want to disable again. For example a taxi service that gives you discounts etc on the same channel as the notification that the driver is almost there. I really don't see a solution to this problem, because the consumer almost always wants some notifications, so disabling all from apples side wouldn't really work either (as customers would be negatively impacted). It'd be great if Apple found a solution, but I can't think of one that has any chance of succeeding. Maybe their new Apple Intelligence feature... We don't know enough about it's capabilities yet, but it could potentially act as a filter, with the potential for false negatives/positives. But that should hopefully be okay for something like notifications
- buffet_overflow 2y ago
  I moved my primary phone from Android to iOS and this is hands down the thing I miss the most. I ended up silencing a lot of apps wholesale, mostly rideshares, as a result.
- solarkraft 2y ago
  I think they still have this rule, but simply reduced enforcement (classic authoritarian move).
drodgers 2y ago
I reckon Apple Intelligence will end up solving this problem - have it classify notifications and then give you control. That way, you're not reliant on ongoing good behaviour from developers.
- viraptor 2y ago
  I'm not sure AI can do that reasonably well. Notification "Foo is available for sale now" - is that an ad? From the Uber app, yes. From the app explicitly used for tracking bargains, no. From the supermarket app, maybe, depends if I subscribed to that thing. There's a lot of context that automation will not understand.
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure the SLM model can track which ones you interact with. The current iOS version already does this to a degree: if you use profiles. It notices if you often interact with an application during X profile and asks if you want to add it to that profile's allowed apps.
- noprocrasted 2y ago
  They already have (had?) a rule against spam notifications. They never enforced it (there's no way for a user to complain/flag notifications as spam) and their own apps breach it nowadays. There's no reason to believe they would want to offer this feature, even though it is indeed trivial for an LLM or even a basic regex filter.
Pesthuf 2y ago
This would probably be a good use case for “ai”, to filter out notifications that are clearly ads.
- TheJoeMan 2y ago
  Can’t wait for the “AIO” (Apple Intelligence Optimization) engineers at Uber to find how to make notification ads surface higher.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  You don't need AI to filter out adverts. Apple can literally just say no adverts in notifications or you app is getting delisted.
- Aerbil313 2y ago
  Actually Apple Intelligence will have such a feature, IIRC ML will be used to determine and surface only the important notifications to the top of your lockscreen.
adiabatty 2y ago
I'm one of those types who only uses Uber every two or three years, so I just disable notifications for it. If a ride is coming, I'll just check my phone loads.
- noprocrasted 2y ago
  To be fair, actual ads can be disabled in most of these apps. Uber has a setting for this, I had it disabled all this time and don't ever recall a single ad. The next problem however is the "feedback" plague. Every company nowadays spams you about it. It's not technically an ad, but wastes just as much of your time/attention and is completely pointless when they can instead just default all feedback to "good" unless the user explicitly says otherwise.
  - s1gsegv 2y ago
    Yeah, I don’t care if it’s an advertisement or not, my attention is a finite and scarce resource. I won’t allow it to be stolen by an app just because it suits them. Doordash is on my chopping block to replace completely at the moment, because it had spam notifications that were not categorized and no way to turn them off. That’s a “vote with your wallet” deal for me. Same with AdBlock, I got tired of seeing AdBlock tabs pop up all the time, and no clear way to disable them, so uBlock has been a recent switch for me. At least there I can’t be too bothered, because they were also admittedly not getting anything from me.
bravetraveler 2y ago
Cyclical. It'll slide the other direction for developers and we'll (as users) come right back around to lose even more utility Apple, Google, etc are in the middle of this Trojan horse dynamic. They want the notifications to be.. literally anything that gets your attention. You, presumably, want them to be actionable. This 'crack down' stuff that isn't complete control and proper categorization... is performative service, little more. This is managed so arbitrarily on either ecosystem that I live like it's 2001 and do everything on my desktop

joshuaturner 2y ago

I think they used to have a rule about this but then their own apps started to violate it, so they loosened restrictions. What I'd really love to see is notification categories so you can choose which to accept.

xnx 2y ago
Android has notification categories, but I think those end up getting abused too.
- joshuaturner 2y ago
  I'm sure enforcement around it would be difficult but I'd imagine most major apps would fall in line if only because the risk of losing their notification entitlement would be too great.
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    What do you mean with enforcement? Literally delisting the app if it doesn't correctly classify their notifications? Because as they said: android has multiple channels, but the app owners quickly realized that if they classified their notifications, the unwanted channels such as "news"/advertising get disabled. So they bundle it into the same channel you don't really want to disable again. For example a taxi service that gives you discounts etc on the same channel as the notification that the driver is almost there. I really don't see a solution to this problem, because the consumer almost always wants some notifications, so disabling all from apples side wouldn't really work either (as customers would be negatively impacted). It'd be great if Apple found a solution, but I can't think of one that has any chance of succeeding. Maybe their new Apple Intelligence feature... We don't know enough about it's capabilities yet, but it could potentially act as a filter, with the potential for false negatives/positives. But that should hopefully be okay for something like notifications
buffet_overflow 2y ago
I moved my primary phone from Android to iOS and this is hands down the thing I miss the most. I ended up silencing a lot of apps wholesale, mostly rideshares, as a result.
solarkraft 2y ago
I think they still have this rule, but simply reduced enforcement (classic authoritarian move).

drodgers 2y ago

I reckon Apple Intelligence will end up solving this problem - have it classify notifications and then give you control. That way, you're not reliant on ongoing good behaviour from developers.

viraptor 2y ago
I'm not sure AI can do that reasonably well. Notification "Foo is available for sale now" - is that an ad? From the Uber app, yes. From the app explicitly used for tracking bargains, no. From the supermarket app, maybe, depends if I subscribed to that thing. There's a lot of context that automation will not understand.
- theshrike79 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure the SLM model can track which ones you interact with. The current iOS version already does this to a degree: if you use profiles. It notices if you often interact with an application during X profile and asks if you want to add it to that profile's allowed apps.
noprocrasted 2y ago
They already have (had?) a rule against spam notifications. They never enforced it (there's no way for a user to complain/flag notifications as spam) and their own apps breach it nowadays. There's no reason to believe they would want to offer this feature, even though it is indeed trivial for an LLM or even a basic regex filter.

Pesthuf 2y ago

This would probably be a good use case for “ai”, to filter out notifications that are clearly ads.

TheJoeMan 2y ago
Can’t wait for the “AIO” (Apple Intelligence Optimization) engineers at Uber to find how to make notification ads surface higher.
Gigachad 2y ago
You don't need AI to filter out adverts. Apple can literally just say no adverts in notifications or you app is getting delisted.
Aerbil313 2y ago
Actually Apple Intelligence will have such a feature, IIRC ML will be used to determine and surface only the important notifications to the top of your lockscreen.

adiabatty 2y ago

I'm one of those types who only uses Uber every two or three years, so I just disable notifications for it. If a ride is coming, I'll just check my phone loads.

noprocrasted 2y ago
To be fair, actual ads can be disabled in most of these apps. Uber has a setting for this, I had it disabled all this time and don't ever recall a single ad. The next problem however is the "feedback" plague. Every company nowadays spams you about it. It's not technically an ad, but wastes just as much of your time/attention and is completely pointless when they can instead just default all feedback to "good" unless the user explicitly says otherwise.
- s1gsegv 2y ago
  Yeah, I don’t care if it’s an advertisement or not, my attention is a finite and scarce resource. I won’t allow it to be stolen by an app just because it suits them. Doordash is on my chopping block to replace completely at the moment, because it had spam notifications that were not categorized and no way to turn them off. That’s a “vote with your wallet” deal for me. Same with AdBlock, I got tired of seeing AdBlock tabs pop up all the time, and no clear way to disable them, so uBlock has been a recent switch for me. At least there I can’t be too bothered, because they were also admittedly not getting anything from me.

bravetraveler 2y ago

Cyclical. It'll slide the other direction for developers and we'll (as users) come right back around to lose even more utility Apple, Google, etc are in the middle of this Trojan horse dynamic. They want the notifications to be.. literally anything that gets your attention. You, presumably, want them to be actionable. This 'crack down' stuff that isn't complete control and proper categorization... is performative service, little more. This is managed so arbitrarily on either ecosystem that I live like it's 2001 and do everything on my desktop