While I have slight worries about what it means for users if Apple and Google notification services go down/censoring, I do appreciate the features that they provide to me as an end user.

So many apps use annoying and questionable marketing notifications that I'd say I have about 70% of app notifications disabled globally (because the app itself does not allow disabling notifications / has no granular control).

However, it seems that SOME self hosted services can directly notify you without APNS / FCM. As an example, see https://companion.home-assistant.io/docs/notifications/notif...