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Comment by thealistra | Hacker News Reader

There is no defaults. You are always asked by the app if you want to get notifications.

Just say no to most of them

There are dark patterns in the way. I need to know when my Doordash arrives. But I can't opt in only to useful notifications and opt out of marketing offers. If I turn them on and off only when I need them, I'm gunnuh slip up. So currently I'm accepting a noisier feed. I'd like to do something about it programmatically but it's hasn't worked it's way high enough on my to-do list to actually get done.

Such a ux nightmare. It’s inexcusable that apple or google doesn’t extend their design guidelines to classify different types of notifications beyond “critical” and “non critical”.

I’m sure this is intentional. But if apple could get the “ask app not to track” button off the ground surely they could make some headway in differentiating “your package has arrived” from “this just in! 15% off stupid bullshit” and being able to opt out from the latter?

God what a stupid future we’ve created. “Oh we have to make the critical notification feed functionally useless because of pressure from marketing partners”

Don't bundle Google into this, Android does have arbitrary notification channels. You absolutely can make certain types of notifications silent or turned off completely while keeping other types of notifications turned on. It's been a thing for 5+ years now.

For example Glovo delivery app has an "order updates" category, which I keep turned on, and I turn off the rest of them.

But do you have to do within the app or on a per app basis? Not as familiar with android. That’s a step in the right direction but I mean something more like delineating them at the os level so I can go into settings and say “I don’t want to see marketing related notifications from any application ever”. If an app mislabels marketing notifications to circumvent this it gets pulled from the store or (ideally) doesn’t pass review. So I can just flick off a toggle for those intrusive notifications but keep my important ones. Then my feed is suddenly worthwhile again with stuff like package delivery, calendar, messaging apps, etc. fussing around inside each app is a pain in the butt (although better than not being able to do so at all).

But does this apply for all apps on android or is it up to the dev? Can you make the Amazon shopping app just give notifications about package delivery and make it shut the fuck up about sales and suggested items? Or doordash, instacart, etc? If the dev can just ignore it then it’s kind of pointless and why I mean it should be part of the design guidelines

Maybe if the ftc would get off it’s ass and force the issue. The USA is legally required to have unsubscribe links in commercial emails, I don’t see how this is all that different

I just delete the app if they abuse notifications permissions

Right and when you accidentally say no to the ones that actually matter?

The whole problem with a sea of notifications is that it’s hard to identify what’s important and what’s not. Your suggested solution does nothing to solve that problem other than to relocate when the problem arises.

Then you find it and fix the issue in notification settings

Counterpoint: I found out the other day that friends and family were messaging me on Instagram, and I had no idea Instagram even had direct messaging support.

For several years people were messaging me and I was completely oblivious.

"The whole problem with a sea of notifications is that it’s hard to identify what’s important and what’s not."

a) If there's far too many notifications, the bulk of them is not important. If only because you'd easily overlook them even if they were 'important'.

b) Is it difficult to decide between those few notifications that matter (like, those you act upon), and all the rest? (like, those you ignore).

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