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Comment by callalex | Hacker News Reader

No I can’t. Here’s an example: my security system app sends me push notifications when there is motion detected at times and places where there shouldn’t be motion. I need these critical (“time sensitive” in Apple-ese) notifications. It also helpfully sends me random “SUBSCRIBE TO SOME ADD-ON SERVICE, 50% OFF SALE THIS WEEK” at all hours of the day and night. Sure I could rip out my entire security system and replace it but that’s a lot of physical labor and wasted hardware.

Another example is my air filter. It’s nice to get a reminder when it’s time to change the filter since it’s so infrequent, but I can’t get that notification without also getting spammed with “news” about new machines I should buy. Apple actively enables this behavior while claiming that spam is against their terms of service.

They are clearly working for the spammers, not the user, because they profit off of their cut.

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This can always be turned off using in-app settings. It's an App Store requirement. Note: in-app settings, not general settings for the app. Check. It's there.

> Make sure people can manage their notification settings within your app. In addition to requesting permission to send informational or marketing notifications, you must also provide an in-app settings screen that lets people change their choice. For guidance, see Settings.

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

The options are “On” or “Off”. Please read the examples I provided for why that isn’t good enough.

I’ll even leave you with a third example: I can’t get shipping notifications about an online order I made without also opting into spam about sales and discounts. Apple could take a pro-user stance here and help us push back against scummy behavior, but they choose not to be helpful. They also happen to profit off of it, I’m sure that’s unrelated.

By “choose not to be helpful”, do you mean that they don’t use AI to detect spam notifications and distinguish them from useful notifications? That seems like quite a difficult engineering problem, though I’m sure their new AI could help.

There are many tools at their disposal, of which AI may be only a small one.

1) They could implement a “promotional” notification category the same way that they do “time sensitive” and let the user customize that the same way, or at least offer an opt-out.

2) Add a “report” button next to the disable notifications button.

3) Stop delivering notifications on behalf of apps that don’t correctly categorize promotional notifications.

4) Skip all this complexity and just ban developers that send spam. This is what their monopoly on app distribution is supposedly justified by: protecting users from malicious app developers.

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