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Comment by izacus | Hacker News Reader

> My rule is: if I get a single notification that I find useless, I'll immediately disable that notification channel (I'm on Android; I'm not sure if iOS has a concept of channel-specific settings) for that app. Even if the channel can include useful notifications, as the article discusses.

Well, the developers have started fighting against that by not splitting notifications into channels anymore. Now you just get "General" channel were basic functionality and spam can't be separated.

The modern world of user abuse is great.

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One strike and you're out rule works perfectly fine for me.

If they think they can abuse my attention with stuff like this, I immediately uninstall and go on with my life.

I've been struggling with the Uber app and Uber Eats who has been sending me ads which I found no way to disable.

My problem is that I do want notifications for when my driver has arrived.

Try switching to lyft maybe?

If Lyft doesn’t do the same thing they eventually will.

Hopefully by then more advanced notification controls will exist.

Maybe being less annoying can be part of their value proposition.

You could stop using Uber and Uber Eats.

You could also be a hermit and live in the woods. Thats not really the point though. For paid services, I think it’s entirely reasonable to say that you don’t want to see ads.

It is reasonable to say you don't want ads. Unfortunately Uber has decided to say "too bad, what are you going to do about it?"

As my friend says about salary, it's only a negotiation if you're prepared to walk away.

Or unionize. In this case it would be to petition apple or the FCC or whatever.

Sure, but a similar dynamic applies - a union can't negotiate if it's not prepared to strike.

I mean I went with "own a car and pick up food myself" instead of the whole hermitage thing, but to each their own

there have always been ads when I go to the movies, and in the magazines I pay good money for. nothing about paying for a product should give you an expectation of ad free, that's a very slim niche of a business model where they pummel you with ads until you subscribe a la spotify and youtube, but its not the norm at all

I would too. But the fees for trying to get my car in checked baggage when I fly for business or vacations are insane.

I mean I went with "renting a car at my destination" instead of trying to check my own car into baggage, but to each their own.

It would be a lot cheaper to buy a burner phone.

The difference here is that you see those ads when you go to the movies, or when you pick up the magazine. You're exposed to them on your own schedule. Phone notification ads, on the other hand, demand your attention with a sound or a vibration on their schedule.

I've never used Uber or Lyft and the last and only time I had pizza delivered was 20 years ago. There are more than enough food places and supermarkets within a 500m radius of my home, public transport here is pretty good or I can bike, rent a car or call a taxi for the few times I really need to go to the airport at 3 AM. YMMV.

Giving up on a product that only provides marginal value is hardly the same thing as becoming a hermit.

Uber eats isn’t integral to operating in modern society by a long stretch.

The hermit argument is trotted out far too often, it’s one thing if we are talking about something like a smart phone, but just because something is new or techy, doesn’t mean you are a Luddite for not using it.

Uber Eat does different channel for notification though. Mine is set exactly as you described.

It's an option on android but not ios.

Go to account -> settings -> privacy -> notifications and you can turn off all the marketing notifications on iOS too for Uber / Uber Eats.

That turns it off for the whole app, not only marketing stuff.

Settings -> notifications -> Uber.

Turn off Lock Screen, Notifications, Banners.

Leave on “Time Sensitive Notifications”

That setting doesn't do what you think it does. As per the tooltip[1], all that does is cause notifications from uber to be delivered regardless of focus settings (eg. if you have work focus on and uber sends you a notification it will show up immediately rather than being hidden/delayed). You'll still get other notifications if you don't have focus on.

[1] random image result: https://static1.makeuseofimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/upl...?

I remember at WWDC that Apple added a method for developers to classify types of notifications

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

I would think that if you disable the three notifications at the bottom and enable “time sensitive notifications”, if Uber is a well behaved app, it should only notify you for things that are time sensitive. I won’t know for sure for awhile.

https://www.plotprojects.com/blog/ios-15-push-notifications-...

> Apple has provided developers with the freedom to categorize the outgoing notifications from their apps, with guidance from a new notification classification scale. Developers can decide on the appropriate interruption level for their app notifications, however Apple has warned that users can completely turn off app notifications if they feel a high level of urgency is being used unnecessarily.

Right, but if you dig deeper into the article it's clear that the difference between the notification types is whether they override various settings. As per the chart[1], the main difference is whether it breaks through various delivery settings (eg. scheduled delivery, Focus, Ring/Silent switch). There isn't some sort of setting that the user can set that tells the os "I only want time sensitive notifications from this app" (I suppose there is, if you want to have focus on 24/7 or something, but that's more of a hack than an actual feature).

[1] https://www.plotprojects.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/inte...

That's exactly why I stopped using Uber. It was annoying to not get notification when drivers arrive, but there's no way I'm giving them free access to make my pocket vibrate all day long.

If you turn off notifications they will use text messages to contact you. I’ve never gotten a spam text message from them, which makes some sense as they’re more regulated than push notifications.

Texts are more expensive than push notifications. I don't actually think they're more expensive.

same rule, and also why uber eats got uninstalled

That's like the whole point of this article....

I wonder if you could write a Shortcut that, after an Uber ride is booked, notifications are enabled and once the ride ends, they are disabled again?

I just tried, unless I’m missing an update, Uber Eats doesn’t even show up under the Apps that I can select from to build a shortcut for.

Unblock notifications only when you need them

Too bad it’s so annoying to toggle. It should be in the long press option menu or something.

I deleted the Uber app and stopped using their service specifically because there was no way to turn off only their spammy marketing push notifications, and I didn't want to turn off all push and miss a ride, so there was no way for me to meaningfully use their service. It's ok, I have other options to get a ride.

I found a way to disable marketing notifications but it was buried in their menus. Settings > Privacy > Notifications. Definitely shouldn't be under privacy, that makes no sense.

It does make sense when privacy violating tactics are powering the notifications.

Come on uber your hidden agenda is showing!

Are you in iOS? I see a pretty detailed breakdown of notification categories that I can disable.

I had previously failed to find the Notification settings under Privacy that another commenter pointed me to--I think these solve my problem. If you found even more granular settings, please let me know where you're setting them.

A few months ago, I swear I went through every single setting in the app and failed to find anything like this, so maybe they've since updated their settings page?

> I do want notifications for when my driver has arrived.

They can ring my doorbell or phone me.

I found it helpful to force stop the app whenever I'm not actively using it.

And no way to report to apple.. it’s against policy/guidelines

They make billions off the apps and have yet to implement something like that

On android - go to settings > apps > uber > notifications

Disable 'all promotions and recommendations'

Have fun not knowing when or where your food is when you order it.

> I immediately uninstall and go on with my life

This is sort of like the customer at the gate yelling that they will never fly that airline again. If you’re lost, you’re a sunk cost. Companies should observe those signing off. But more to measure attachment than to make changes to accommodate. (I turn most notifications off.)

I usually simply uninstall the app on the first clearly spammy notification. Why wouldn't I? It immediately sours the app image.

If it's borderline I will first try silencing the channel like the parent commenter.

Those rules only work until you're required to have such app installed to do, for example, credit card payments.

Where i live, GDPR and related laws make it illegal to mix advertising permissions with functional permissions. So that's never going to happen.

I've spent plenty of time working on GDPR compliance in EU and I can directly tell you there's nothing in GDPR that would say anything like that.

GDPR talks about data collection and says nothing about having your own business spam you with advertisement (as long as they don't collect data outside their GDPR restrictions).

> Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case [...]

https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/

That has absolutely nothing to do with notifications and pop ups.

You’re right, but only if the company wouldn’t track whether you’ve seen or even received that message. So yes, general or even contextual messages would be allowed, but “You haven’t seen X in 9 days” would imply processing personal data for marketing purposes.

With iOS, they send the message to Apple’s servers, Apple sends the message to the user’s device and the device decides whether to display the pop up based on the user’s settings. Neither the third party app nor Apple knows whether the message has been seen unless the user clicks on the message that causes it to open the app.

I don’t see what this says about notifications

Which can be solved by finding a competitor with less abusive practices.

Not in a monopoly or oligopoly, which is the common case in markets with high barriers to entry.

If this a hypothetical? I can't think of any monopolies that I need to do business with that only do business through an app.

My bank's android app has more control over my account than any other way of interacting with them, including going into branches and posting forms. That's not strictly a monopoly but I'm on my fifth bank and they've all been similarly rubbish.

As a UK customer, I use Monzo bank and have pretty consistently had good experiences. They are a new bank. Recieving international money transfers was the only bit that they didn't support.

Huh, interesting. I can't think of many notifications I would want from my bank. I've got an alarm for if my balance goes under a certain threshold, which I guess could be handled via a notification, but IMO it is easier to just make the threshold high enough that I can treat it as a "check-once-per-day" thing, and get the notifications via email.

> Which can be solved by finding a competitor with less abusive practices

For those with infinite time or for whom this is a single issue, yes. For the rest of us, disabling notifications isn’t too hard.

If Apple or Google really cared about their users, this is the kind of thing they'd ban, not third-party payment processors.

This is a fight that OS makers need to be in on. Apple added the concept of time critical notifications. It is or should be a tos violation if an app falsely labels spam as time critical.

I've seen that in a few apps, but worse case scenario you just lose some useful notifications. If it's not a critical app (e.g. my bank), that's a fine trade-off for me.

My bank mixes ads and notifications. I get things like "Get 20% discount on this supermarket when shopping with your bank visa card this month"

You also get some apps with 20+ channels, adding lots of needless mental burden just to understand exactly what you are disabling.

I doubt it is a decision a developer arrived at. More likely some arm twisting by a short sighted and kpi driven product manager.

That's a good enough reason to nuke the app for me.

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