Comment by bruce511

"Marketing never met a communication system they didn't want to co-opt"

(I'm reminded of this every time a client want "WhatsApp support" in their (commercial) app, so they can "communicate with customers".)

But equally every user will have a different subset of apps they want notifications for.

For example shift workers need to know when they've been allocated a shift. Or when a shift has opened up (because someone scheduled failed to arrive etc.) One group of users consider this really important, another group of users treat it as spam.

But, per the rule above, unfortunately "useful notifications" can easily be subverted by marketing notifications. Yes I want to know my delivery driver is outside, no I don't want to know that you're running a special this week.

Unfortunately there's no way to solve this problem technically. Bad actors can (and definitely do) behave badly. But ultimately the system should work for "good citizens". In other words, the user should ultimately determine what they want to see of not. And if an app has "notifications on or off" as the only option then the user should ultimately determine that setting. Not Google. Not Apple.

Building society around the lowest-common-denominator just ends up sucking for everyone. We should actively promote good behavior, while allowing bad behavior to be punished. Not just banning everything "because it might be bad".