That's exactly what I do!

Google and Apple could instantly fix the problem (of co-mingling essential and marketing notifications) if they wanted to. The current situation is like getting opted in to "street signs and flashing billboards". It's stupid.

I have an iOS device, so can’t speak for Google, but I suspect that’s what Apple has been _trying_ to do.

The problem is that these apps are essentially adversarial in their notifications. If you have a mechanism for “only the most essential notifications”, then they simply mark all their notifications as “essential” (looking at you Uber). Try to limit their notifications using “only is summary” or disabling them and the app will gleefully deny you all notifications, rendering it basically useless. Uber is particular is guilty for this - the app is conspicuously free of meaningful notification controls.

Well, Apple is trying a 'do as I say, not as I do' approach, which isn't exactly working.

For example I got an Apple Music notification the other day telling me how awesome the new Classic Music App is, or how the new season of whatever show is available in Apple TV+ is just fresh out of the oven.

I like their products, and even their services, but in this particular case, they're as bad as Uber, just at a different degree (I used to get an Uber Eats notification everyday until I uninstalled the app)

Slightly off topic but another thing I noticed that’s infuriating me, is that podcast are now injected with local ads. I’m. It sure how they’re getting location data since iOS has extremely tight and secure authorizations for location access (even within their own internal processes). How can I be offered the ability to control whether Compass Calibration or Apple Pay Merchant verification get to use my location but not podcast advertisements??

I use Glasswire (Android) and block apps from accesing the internet, when not using them (e.g. Uber).

It's a bit of pain to turn it on before use, and off again afterwards, but I've realized it's much less stressful than having notifications popping up at all times.

YMMV

As someone who hasn’t used android in 10 years, what you are describing seems like a warzone

Depends what apps you use and notification settings, ie I don't have any uber app and my notifications are clean, just what I need.

Appears to be unmaintained. Not available for newer. Android versions. Any alternatives people tried and recommend?

That wouldn't stop iOS notifications; those are pushed from Uber's servers to the phone, not to the app.

> then they simply mark all their notifications as “essential"

That's like getting spam mail from your bank. In the physical world this would be illegal

Some banks (CapitalOne) literally show ads in their banking UI, and send literal spam.

Perfectly legal.

Not illegal, from what I've heard — someone read the small print of their mortgage agreement, modified it, signed it, the bank person signed the modified agreement, the bank sent junk mail, he pointed out this meant the bank was in breach of contract and given how he'd modified it that he was apparently theoretically entitled to write off the remaining debt.

Apparently that last bit would probably not have survived an actual legal fight, but they never sent him any more junk mail.

(This was pre-GDPR, so perhaps things have changed?)

Is it? Really?

In Android/Google land, notifications have self declared categories.

But at first, the app must ask you for notification permission to send any notification in the first place.

You can then turn on/off the self declared notification categories at the Android level but apps can be dicks and either not use the categories or misuse them.

> If you have a mechanism for “only the most essential notifications”, then they simply mark all their notifications as “essential” (looking at you Uber)

then perhaps Apple should say to them “either don’t mark these kinds of notifications as essential, or you get removed from the App Store”?

The solution is tried and true. Let the user mark notifications as spam and have a locally running spam filter.

I'm sure we'll get that soon. Enforcing notification categories is unfeasible for all apps.

Apple used to ban advertising push notifications. They began allowing them to avoid claims of anti-competitive behavior.

The funny thing was that even Apple violated that rule themselves: https://marco.org/2014/12/01/app-store-rule-5-6

This is not a problem from their perspective - it is a revenue centre.

They’re doing the psychological equivalent of slash-and-burn deforestation - there won’t be a next generation of engineers, just a legion of addicts with attention spans measured in microseconds, but it’s profitable this quarter, and that’s all that matters.

on android this is a solved problem via notification categories.

I recall some apps seemed to keep inventing new categories that I hadn't blocked yet.

These exist on ios too, but apps don't always respect them and will occasionally push 'important' marketing messages alongside the functional stuff.

In general this is a fast way off my handset.

It's a solved problem if the app developer wants it to be. Else it can just throw everything into the same category.

Google has this. You can make notification types as silent or normal or priority. Notifications from the same app have groupings of what type of notifications they will send. And you pick which ones you want to be notified about.

Doesn’t this rely on the app developer maintaining the correct labeling of each category? An unethical developer would just mix advertisements into all notification category, while an ethical developer wouldn’t be sending the spurious notifications in the first place.

That is true.

But careful the app developer that abuses this position, for they will more likely be the app I remove from my phone.

GDPR is the acronym you're looking for ^^ Seriously, it helps a lot gating abuses like that.

Starbucks is like this. They deliberately bundle together "Promotions & Order Status" to make sure you receive their junk.

Sounds like a good reason to give your business to someone else

This is the answer. Money talks, so give your money to businesses that earn it.

"But it's not as convenient!" I hear some yell. Then it's obviously not enough of a bother to you, so just suck it up and deal with their bad behavior.

Because until you take your money elsewhere, nothing will change. And why should it? They obviously haven't crossed a line for enough people. Which means it'll just get worse.

Yeah when I hear "it's not convenient" what I actually hear is "I'm too lazy for that"

Why do you even need a Starbucks app in the first place? Get a physical loyalty card.

Or, you know, have coffee at home

> Or, you know, have coffee at home

Nescafe Gold Instant coffee. Coffee is coffee, and this one tastes better than Starbucks'

Just use Apple Pay. It’s convenient and anonymous.

This path doesn’t seem to work very well.

Society’s stated preference is things like healthy food, paying as opposed to ads (not being the product), and no notifications.

Society’s revealed preference is McDonald’s, watching YouTube ads, and letting apps send whatever notifications they want to.

In general people care about the trade offs between cost and convenience, between cost and style, and not at all about anything so mundane as value, privacy, or peace of mind.

It's a common issue in America. The Game book basically already discussed this with dating. That stated preferences are total junk for significant portions of humanity. They say they want "idea" but really want, "pretend to believe in 'idea', while acting the horrible way you actually respond to."

Most of America is a "bait and switch" or a "rug pull." This article basically talks about those issues with workers. [1] America sayssss "work hard, be loyal, be honest, be virtuous" how America acts is "Reward lazy humans, reward dishonesty / backstabbing, reward vice (pride, lust, greed are pretty much America)."

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221... Stanley, Matthew L., Christopher B. Neck, and Christopher P. Neck. "Loyal workers are selectively and ironically targeted for exploitation." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 106 (2023): 104442.

> Society’s revealed preference is McDonald’s

Without government restrictions, is society's revealed preference also widespread use of hard drugs?

Ever since opium wars, unadressed drug use was a problem that required active internevtion.

Active interventions gave us war on drugs with hundreds of thousands of civilians dead (or rather millions if you count things like oxycontin -> fentanyl and other similar side effects), tens if not hundreds of millions of lives fucked up, and seeing a superpower losing a war with... some chemicals. No thank you

So the answer to the wrong intervention is no intervention at all?

Sure, or we could make a law which prevents this kind of mixing of notifications.

I, as a consumer would appreciate this.

Find me a business that doesn't do such shenanigans?

I bought some Camper shoes the other week and got zero spam so far

So does Uber (+ eats); I don’t want deals or vouchers, I don’t want to sign up to your subscription service, I only want to know when the car is arriving.

Instagram I had to disable from notifications entirely, so now I miss messages from friends frequently, because the app bombards you with so much unrelated junk.

I suspect these companies know this, they know we don’t want spurious notifications, but they abuse whatever notification policies the OS provides in order to deliver you them anyways.

For Uber and UberEats, turns out you actually can disable marketing notifications, under the communication settings, it's just hidden away.

Funny, I had turned off notifications for UberEats exactly due to this.

You can't actually manage these notifications until re-opening the door, re-enabling them.

There are currently six categories in here. Who wants to take bets until these shift, nullifying the point?

Yes, and websites know that we don't want video advertisements playing everywhere on the screen, but it doesn't matter because we're the product, not the customer.

I use Uber all the time and having notifications disabled is fine.

I use a screenshot of the payment barcode from the Starbucks app when I’m in the store to pay. I do not want it on my phone. It seems to be constantly bombarding my wife’s phone with trivial prompts and notifications.

Why order using the phone anyway? Why give them that sweet sweet data?

I use Apple Pay exclusively at Starbucks. They haven’t a clue who I am.

I have a zero strike policy: no social media, no games, no notifications.

My phone is a tool, not a boss.

This. It’s not even worth playing the one strike game anymore, waste of time.

Yep, I've mostly given up on the one strike rule and gone to a "don't install any phone app unless absolutely necessary" rule. Much of the time I can avoid the app by either using their web site, or just forgoing whatever functionality the app provides. Airline apps, which can be useful during a trip, get installed when the trip begins and uninstalled as soon as the trip is over.

I agree with that. I avoid most apps.

Airline apps haven’t been problematic though. I give location only while using the app. And I’ve never received advertising notifications.

It’s quite nice to pull down an eticket into Apple Wallet and have it on my watch.

I am even more of a luddite. I just use the kiosk at the airport and get a physical ticket printed.

What if your ticket runs out of battery?

Paper is not yet battery-bound, thankfully

Yes!! Same here. ONE annoying advertisement or waste of my time and the app's privileges get revoked.

The entire purpose of getting you to install a mobile phone app is to push marketing notifications at you in a way that forces you to interact with them, if only to individually dismiss them. Whatever it is /you/ want to do with the app is incidental to this, and only of any concern to the extent that it helps convince you to install the app.

Where it's possible to do the thing you want to do with a web browser (also with minimal permissions, natch), never install the app.

> The entire purpose of getting you to install a mobile phone app is to push marketing notifications at you

Come on, now. You're being unfair. It is also serves the purpose of being better able to collect data on you for sale to other entities which want to push marketing notifications at you.

> For this reason I have a one strike policy for apps. One marketing notification and permissions are revoked.

Yup, this is very easy to do on Android. Long-press any notification, and you can change the notification preferences for that app.

The first time I see a marketing notification, I gag that app permanently. Takes less than 3 seconds. If this also prevents that app from being useful, oh well, time to uninstall.

In theory, Android apps can also categorize their notifications, so I could selectively gag them. But this takes me at least 30 seconds to figure out, and it doesn't prevent that app developer from abusing their categories. So I almost never attempt fine-grained control, unless it's an essential app. Normally I just block all notifications permanently on the first offense.

I really wish Google would enforce proper categorization. Risking missing something on any (somewhat) important app because of the occasional marketing notification seems not worth it to me.

I think Shell, the gas station chain, has a notification category on android as "Pump updates" which gives silly pump statuses, but they started sending credit card offers under Pump updates. Jackasses.

I like to use the apps to activate pumps to avoid card skimming but lol I'll just use the other gas station chains not run by disrespectful corporate (even though I could just block the notifications in Android)

> One marketing notification and permissions are revoked.

That is more forgiving than my policy. Under the same condition, that app gets removed from my phone.

My policy is first one round of complaint to close the feedback loop and return the burden of hunting down the opt-out that should have been an -in.

Then, yes, the next step is just to remove the app and leave an appropriate review. A demonstrably adversarial app has no place in my life.

Uber

Uber is one egregious example of abuse of notifications + SMS spam

I have the habit of force stopping any questionable application (uber) as soon as I stop using it. That and limiting permissions to when the app is actually open.