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Comment by blacktriangle | Hacker News Reader

You're not wrong, there's real upsides to push notifications. For example the thing I love about the iWatch is how it lets me never check my phone because anything relevent is pushed to the watch.

But I think you are really underselling the downsides of push notifications. They are easily the most heavily abused feature of the modern web anywhere they exist. If every single app responsibly used push notifications then sure, it would be great. Here in reality push notifications aren't some personal majordomo making sure only important issues are brought to our attention, push notifications feel more like walking down the Vegas strip having leaflets constantly shoved in your face.

I think its premature to say that we have the answer and just maybe Apple dragging their feet on this will help us find a solution that is better than the advertiser friendly free for all that Google is pushing.

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> push notifications feel more like walking down the Vegas strip having leaflets constantly shoved in your face.

Strong agreement here.

There's a significant (single digit %) of sites I run into that ask me to accept push notifications or ask for my email before any of the content loads. I usually close the tab when that happens.

I guess there’s a benefit of not having to take out your phone to check notifications but in the end they do compete for your attention and microdisrupt you anyway. And how many notifications on average are you willing to take in? I personally want as little as possible, the most important contacts and critical alerts are enough for me, the rest can wait till I check for them myself.

Yep and this is where it gets wierd. Maybe I should be allowed to assign priorities to different notifications and then have my phone automatically proritize what makes a "ding" based on the time of day or my geographic location. Maybe notifications should be throttled in some way so that every 30 minutes I receive a digest of notifications if there are any. Maybe they should be aggrigated till I have 5 accoumulated. Or maybe these are all terrible ideas because they require configuration and users aren't going to spend the time configuring their notifications.

This whole thing really goes to the different mindsets of Apple/iOS and Google/Android fans. The Apple camp is fine waiting for functionality to get something that is decently thought out, the Google camp wants everything now and will deal with the consequences later. We've seen this repeated with copy/paste and with background processes on both platforms. Android got there first, but the earliest Android implementations had serious limitations and issues.

I simply solve that problem by having most notifications be silent. Only urgent ones (calls, text messages from a select group of people) are effectively "push" notifications. The rest buffers until I get to looking at my phone.

This is where Apple's paternalistic view takes over. I think Apple's design view is that you the user shouldn't have to take action to protect yourself from sties abusing this feature, the Google view is that it's a free for all. There are merits to both approach and I wish users of both platforms would understand that.

> This is where Apple's paternalistic view takes over. … There are merits to both approach…

Isn’t it generally accepted by both small children and adults that having a Dad is better than not?

Sure, teenagers rebel for a while against anyone caring about them, but they tend to grow back out of that as soon as they have to parent too.

Notifications on all Android browsers I've tried are opt-in.

On the subject of notifications in general, Apple lets their users be spammed more by not adding granular notification categories like on Android.

Your comment doesn't reflect reality. If Apple took notification curation seriously like you imply, I would seriously consider switching to their smartphones, but they don't.

I think you need to take a look at iOS15 features. Not on par but a great start.

> “Maybe I should be allowed to assign priorities to different notifications and then have my phone automatically proritize what makes a "ding" based on the time of day or my geographic location. Maybe notifications should be throttled in some way so that every 30 minutes I receive a digest of notifications if there are any. Maybe they should be aggrigated till I have 5 accoumulated. Or maybe these are all terrible ideas because they require configuration and users aren't going to spend the time configuring their notifications.”

If you haven’t tried it already, you may be interested in iOS 15’s new “Focus” feature set. Even tackles that last point on set up.

I don't feel like that at all because on all of my devices, notifications are opt-in. I get notifications for services I want to receive notifications from (mostly IM).

The exception to this are services which trick you into accepting their notifications because they are beneficial to the experience while using them (ride hailing and delivery apps), and then use the same channels to spam you with marketing (Uber, ...). For those I simply chose to disable notifications altogether and instead let the drivers call me if I'm ever late.

E-mail fits that description better, because you almost always have to give out your address to register (even with Google SSO & co), which is then used for spam and you have to opt-out after the fact.

> I don't feel like that at all because on all of my devices, notifications are opt-in. I get notifications for services I use (mostly IM).

They aren't granular though, you either opt in to all or you get none. This is particularly annoying when you're using something like LetGo or OfferUp, because you basically need to opt in to receive messages from people interested in buying your second-hand stuff. But once you do, they take the opportunity to spam you with engagement boosting ads querying you if you have anything you want to list or telling you "we've selected these sales for you."

It's an extremely unpleasant design pattern for anyone who values their own time and attention.

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