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>technology is supposed to help its users

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.

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It's in people's nature to take sides, and, as you pointed out, technology serves whomever happens to control it. So people who control technology should use it to try to help other people. I realize it doesn't often work out that way, but I see no reason to give up on the ideal. In the end, it's in the interest of those who control the technology to make the end-users happy. If everyone actually turned off all push notifications, companies that send push notifications would have a useless channel. It's not in their interest to spam people, and from personal experiences I can say that I think most of them know that. The tool set for sending smart notifications has just been incredibly limiting until recently.

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