Push Notifications From Popular Apps Are Becoming Increasingly Useless And Annoying (wired.com)

David Pierce, writing for Wired: Push notifications are ruining my life. Yours too, I bet. Download more than a few apps and the notifications become a non-stop, cacophonous waterfall of nonsense. Here's just part of an afternoon on my phone:
"Hi David! We found new Crown jewels and Bottle caps Pins for you!"
"Everyone's talking about Bill Nye's new book, Everything All at Once. Read a free sample."
"Alex just posted for the first time in a while."
I get notifications when an acquaintance comments on a stranger's Facebook posts, when shows I don't care about come to Netflix, and every single day at 6 PM when the crossword puzzle becomes available. Recently, I got a buzz from my close personal friends at Yelp. "We found a hot new business for you," it said. I opened the notification, on the off chance that Yelp had finally found the hot new business I've been waiting for. It did not. So I closed Yelp, stared into space for a second, and then opened Instagram. Productivity over. Over the last few years, there's been an increasingly loud call for a re-evaluation of the relationship between humans and smartphones. For all the good that phones do, their grip on our eyes, ears, and thoughts creates real and serious problems. "I know when I take [technology] away from my kids what happens," Tony Fadell, a former senior VP at Apple who helped invent both the iPod and the iPhone, said in a recent interview. "They literally feel like you're tearing a piece of their person away from them. They get emotional about it, very emotional. They go through withdrawal for two to three days." Smartphones aren't the problem. It's all the buzzing and dinging, endlessly calling for your attention.

Comments

Re:Just turn that stuff off.

[war4peace]

I believe the article, for what it's worth, was talking about default behavior for apps, and furthermore about the relevance of said push notifications.
Black or white approach works in some but not all cases. The gray range in between depends on the app itself.

Some apps have good granular control on which notifications they should push, others don't. You're left with the black or white approach which sucks.

My personal pet peeve are shopping-related apps and their notifications. For example, recently I've been looking for an air conditioning unit, and a certain online shop sent me targeted pushes of air conditioning units offers and news. All good, I was actually satisfied with that behavior, and at some point I decided to buy one. After buying one through that very same online shop, through their app, I still keep receiving push notifications on Air Conditioning units, although I definitely don't need another one. At the very least they should realize the deal was done or allow me to turn off that specific notification type.

Re:Just turn that stuff off.

[EndlessNameless]

The problem is an insecure by design phone ecosystem, which in turn is driven by greed.

Bullshit.

It's a question of survival rather than greed; if Apple or Google does not deliver functionality, they will be upstaged on features and replaced. Look at Windows, IE, Java, and Adobe as the prime examples---lots of dead tech companies in their wake, and most of their competitors were technically superior.

A notification API is essential for the platform, and the Apple/Play Store has no business dictating which developers can use it. This means all apps have access---subject to approval by the user.

It's fundamentally impossible to secure a device from an ignorant owner without greatly restricting his access to it. The author of the article pointed out how to control notifications, so right there is an OS-level mechanism that the user controls. That's the most you can ask for, really---the platform has a mechanism that lets the user decide.

Security always involves a trade-off with convenience and usability. E.g., the same mechanism that allows Dropbox to access local photos will allow nefarious apps to do nefarious things if the user installs them. You either run each app in a silo, or you accept the risk of data exfiltration by a bad app.

The market demands functionality over security---not for the first time, either. They cannot sell a secure product that doesn't do what people want. In the consumer space, the market has repeatedly chosen insecure solutions because regular users do not care or understand.

Notifications are more of an annoyance than a security issue, and there is a setting to eliminate them. If a user does not want to do that, then he needs to make a choice: look at the app's internal notification settings, contact the developer, or find a replacement app.