Comment by plasticeagle
20 hours ago
Massively overlong article that really could have done with an editor. Although obviously editors cost money, and I'm reading it for free, so I can scarcely complain. Nevertheless, some concision would have been appreciated.
I'm very unclear to me what the thesis of the article actually is. Yes, push notifications run through the vendor's servers. Yes, Apple fucked up hard by modifying the text within them - and I contend that such modification is impossible to perform automatically without unreliability becoming the norm.
The author also appears to believe that "broadcast copy" - otherwise known as Spam by those who like to write slightly more honestly - is a legitimate use of push notifications. It is manifestly not, and any app that tries will at the very least be immediately silenced. I wish I could find the tweet that put this sentiment more entertainingly than I ever could.
If App developers continue to abuse the push notification system in this way, Apple and Google will be forced to take steps to solve what becomes an end-user's problem. Yet another tragedy of the commons.
It’s a through line from an article I posted last week about the similar situation in email, which has a lot more depth as inbox providers have substantially more published papers and patents showing their intermediation.
https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/writing/what-google-yahoo-...
The next post will be highlighting the difference between the actual state of the art techniques being deployed by large tech co’s (LinkedIn and Pinterest, for example) vs what’s available via commercial marketing providers and how most marketers don’t even make the most of the tools they pay for.
> The author also appears to believe that "broadcast copy" - otherwise known as Spam by those who like to write slightly more honestly - is a legitimate use of push notifications. It is manifestly not, and any app that tries will at the very least be immediately silenced.
Cool man, but it might surprise you to find out that people knowingly opt into receiving this stuff and actually consent to it.
> Cool man, but it might surprise you to find out that people knowingly opt into receiving this stuff and actually consent to it.
Consent is more than pressing 'Allow' on a notification pop-up. It's often not even informed consent, as those pop-ups are usually a part of some onboarding flow where users are just trying to get to the value the app promises and pressing 'ok' to everything.
Even if people do indeed want notifications at the time of the ask, one doesn't really know if the message provider will wind up spamming, that's a matter of trust. And once opted-in, even if the users no longer want notifications, a lot just don't know how to turn them off. People are often incredibly accepting of sub-par experiences like this because of the friction and capability demanded of them to opt-out. My parents get tons of spam notifications that would pass your test of 'knowingly opt into receiving' but that when asked they say they do not want.
Finally there's myriad dark patterns that tons of apps use, like changing and resetting notification preferences among others.
I'd hazard a guess that observed opt-in rates far exceed users actual desires, so I wouldn't put much stock in them. I do agree that there are some people that like them tho!
Fwiw I've worked on both the delivery side (OneSignal) and developer side (Margins) so I've lived these choices and trade-offs. My believe is in terms of power dynamics, senders generally don't deserve their power to interrupt and should not possess that power. At best, they offer opportunities, which ideally are verified somehow prior to being presented to users. I'm happy that devices and ecosystems are moving in the direction of triaging and filtering sender content, as power needs to lie in the user's holistic, most pre-frontal cortex driven expression of their desired experience, and not just one moment's opt-in button they pressed.
Thank you for writing the article, good discussion points.
Yeah, that's true about the allow, and for sure marketing and product teams are deploying misleading consent priming which doesn't fully explain to the user what they're actually allowing in the first place, or setting baselines that are too permissive vs what the user is expecting.
> I'm happy that devices and ecosystems are moving in the direction of triaging and filtering sender content, as power needs to lie in the user's holistic
I don't disagree necessarily, but I see it as them putting themselves in a position to act as a toll collector, which has already happened with email and web search and is only getting worse with the introduction of LLM's into both of those things.
It's a bummer this article ended up doing much better than my email one, as I think that might better position the problem in a lot of user's minds and highlight just how much surveillance is sitting on top of those free inboxes.