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I don't think regular updates are abused to remind you because it's pretty trivial for the application to pester you with notifications itself. I think the updates are a combination of wanting to keep the app fresh and "normal" bug fixes/features that, especially since "nobody" cares about details, developers never bother writing details for.

If you're on Android, you can disable update notifications from the app store settings.

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> I don't think regular updates are abused to remind you because it's pretty trivial for the application to pester you with notifications itself.

If you get gratuitous notifications from an app to remind you of its existence, you'll blame the app for being annoying.

The same stigma doesn't get attached to app updates.

I can't swear that developers are setting updates to reengage users. My first suspicion would instead be that very frequent updates without obvious impact are either bugfixes, or somebody running/settling A/B tests via pushed updates.

That said, I have seen mobile game devs show daily user charts that rise (relative to installs) after updates. It wouldn't shock me if people had decided to capitalize on that.

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