When companies just treat push notifications as a way to blast ads to users, it all goes awry.

If companies treat push notifications (and other messaging) as a feature of the product, the whole product experience improves.

Nobody complains when their alarm screen pops up or their timer goes off...because we want those things and it necessitates a "pop up" of sorts.

Similarly, people appreciate when a learning app pops up with a helpful tip relevant to what we're trying to learn or a meditation app pops up with a reminder to take a second to yourself and breathe correctly.

It's seldom the vehicle that's the issue. They're just methods.

It's all about how they're used.

Now that's a huge misconception.

It isn't in technology's nature to take sides, and it's also not regulated to do that, and neither do technologists have a universal moral stance that would support that.

So in the end, technology serves whomever happens to control it, and circling back to notifications, currently service providers seem to have the biggest say in how many notifications go around.