alt Hacker NewsI feel like this article reads like the author is upset that Apple + Google prevent / control certain types of notifications (read: spam)
> Cross-sell, upsell, education and discovery can work on push
Push notifications should only be for transactional notifications. I don't want another inbox for junk.
Replies
Not upset, but increasingly concerned that all channels are being intermediated by big tech.
That's not entirely fair to the author as the article also states that the consumer being in control is a must:
> Every step subtracts a degree of sender control. Some of it passes to the user, and that is a good thing: a person deciding what is allowed to interrupt them is the channel working as it should. The rest passes to the platform, and that is the part that should concern a sender, because the platform's judgment is opaque, unappealable, and increasingly made by a model rather than by a setting the user chose.
A platform has essentially two "clients" - the user and the developer. Without both, it wouldn't exist. And it is in the interest of both that the platform should have very limited arbitrary authority over them. Nobody can deny today that the platform owners today have too much power over their users and their developers, which makes it easy for them to commercially exploit them while undermining their rights. We need regulations and standards (for interoperability, which is one of the arguments being made) to counter this.
Yeah these channels used to be respected in that way.
And then app developers discovered that hooks like "look what you missed" work on users and so now we all have to get them in the same category.
>discovery
I can’t think of a single app I want a “Discover” tab on anymore. The moment you include one is the moment there is someone trying to game it. I definitely don’t want push notifications trying to show me something new. I’m hardly lacking in distractions
(Yes I am sure somebody can give me an example of a good use of Discover but you get my point)
> (read: spam)
is it unironically incomprehensible to you that the owner of the device should in the one who gets to decide what is and isn't spam? it's not email where you can get bombarded with shit from any random server - you can mute or uninstall an app.
Agreed. I have a doc appointment app, where I like the notifications to be on for reminders etc.
Lately they started sending marketing messages through that channel. Now I’m sure it’s possible to turn off the marketing messages. But I bet most people don’t know and won’t change that. It’s super annoying.