Google and Apple could instantly fix the problem (of co-mingling essential and marketing notifications) if they wanted to. The current situation is like getting opted in to "street signs and flashing billboards". It's stupid.
The problem is that these apps are essentially adversarial in their notifications. If you have a mechanism for “only the most essential notifications”, then they simply mark all their notifications as “essential” (looking at you Uber). Try to limit their notifications using “only is summary” or disabling them and the app will gleefully deny you all notifications, rendering it basically useless. Uber is particular is guilty for this - the app is conspicuously free of meaningful notification controls.
It's a bit of pain to turn it on before use, and off again afterwards, but I've realized it's much less stressful than having notifications popping up at all times.
YMMV
That's like getting spam mail from your bank. In the physical world this would be illegal
Apparently that last bit would probably not have survived an actual legal fight, but they never sent him any more junk mail.
(This was pre-GDPR, so perhaps things have changed?)
Perfectly legal.
For example I got an Apple Music notification the other day telling me how awesome the new Classic Music App is, or how the new season of whatever show is available in Apple TV+ is just fresh out of the oven.
I like their products, and even their services, but in this particular case, they're as bad as Uber, just at a different degree (I used to get an Uber Eats notification everyday until I uninstalled the app)
But at first, the app must ask you for notification permission to send any notification in the first place.
You can then turn on/off the self declared notification categories at the Android level but apps can be dicks and either not use the categories or misuse them.
then perhaps Apple should say to them “either don’t mark these kinds of notifications as essential, or you get removed from the App Store”?
I'm sure we'll get that soon. Enforcing notification categories is unfeasible for all apps.
They’re doing the psychological equivalent of slash-and-burn deforestation - there won’t be a next generation of engineers, just a legion of addicts with attention spans measured in microseconds, but it’s profitable this quarter, and that’s all that matters.
In general this is a fast way off my handset.
But careful the app developer that abuses this position, for they will more likely be the app I remove from my phone.