I'd much rather the OS have a "report spam" button on notifications, and if more than 5% of app users report spam then the whole app gets all notifications blocked by default.
Both Apple and Google have strong controls on the apps identity, so it won't be like email spam where the sender can just send from a new email address to get around the filter.
Seems like that would be a cheap way to destroy a competitor. Pay a bunch of people on some sketchy freelancer site to install the app, do whatever easily trigger notications.. and then report every single one.
Sort of a spin in the concept that it’s much easier to create bullshit than debunk it.
Because you're taking the solution to the absolute bare minimum implementation to achieve the desired result and then applying a ton of thoughts and considerations on how to get around THAT implementation and saying "Yeah this is gonna get abused" and throw your hands in the air.
Or you could think just as hard about blocking it as you do about circumventing it, like in the case of this scenario, add weight to users. Obviously newly installed app users who are rating badly is a sign of something fishy, weigh their ratings a LOT lower than someone who has say many hours of usage in the app.
i guess the solution in the comment i described as anticompetitive is solving a problem that really isn't a problem ... you have the ability to turn off notifications (or notification channels in the case of Android) if they seem spammy. why is the mothership turning off notifications for an app due to heuristics of a broad set of users.
if i don't want the notification i'll disable/silence/mute/lower the priority of it either on installation of the app or when it starts to offend.
Because there needs to be some kind of penalty for being a shitty person to your users.
Like I get it, marketing matters a lot, and being able to market to your existing users is something that makes sure companies survive and I accept that.
But because I find your app worthy of being on my phone doesn't mean I find your desire to constantly control what I'm looking at on my device or take away from that. And I think personally as the device manufacture its your job to safeguard YOUR customers too with the ability for them to report nefarious apps.
The penalty is they lose their privilege to notify you because you turn it off, thereby losing out on your future revenue through marketing to you via notifications. Again, the question is why must Apple or Google do something each person can decide to do themselves?
Because some apps unfortunately are a necessity and we can't vote by removing them from our devices, but that doesn't mean we also decide to accept getting promotional notifications every hour on the hour from them because they take advantage of the fact that they're a necessity on our devices.
And why must Apple or Google do something? Well because I can't make the iPhone or Android so I cannot change the underlining code to make sure that the notifications I need (delivery notifications) aren't drowned out or not received because I don't want the "We used a bunch of machine learning to determine this thing that you don't want is something you may want, you should add it to your cart!" notifications.
"Eh just wholesale disable notifications" isn't always the best solution and the device manufacturer should be aware of that.
Yes Android has channels, iOS doesn't, but Android having channels doesn't mean that they are being used correctly.
A way to tell the manufacturer that an app is abusing their customers with notifications and allow them to take that ability away and enforce channels being properly used is a net good for everyone (except those who abuse it)
push notifications and the ability to silence them is fine ... there's no issue to solve here other than the misconception that notifications can't be turned off per app basis unless the app store does it for you
The issue here is that the abuse of push notifications makes push notifications borderline worthless. That's why I don't allow them at all on my machines. The value they provide is swamped out by the abuse of them.
It's easier to just disable them all by default, really, then I don't have to bother with micromanaging on an app-by-app basis. This is particularly true given that the majority of push notifications are spam.
I wasn't talking about OS defaults. I was talking about my personal use of my machines. I don't allow any push notifications by default because the benefit of them is tiny compared to the hassle of dealing with them.
Email was solidly established on the internet before email spam existed.
The emergence and frowth of spam has greatly reduced how much people use email, though. It appears that spam is well on its way to effectively killing it.
Marketers do seem to eventually kill anything they touch.
The wording of the notification is enough to train a spam filter and determine the urgency of the message. Both companies should be in favour - Google because the feature makes push notifications less useful compared to their ads, Apple for user experience.
Both operating systems already require opt in (at the system level) for applications to be able to send notifications. I think Android enforces this even for apps targeting older API levels, except you just get prompted for the permission when you open the app.
The thing I have a problem with in this method is you're blanket opting in or out of notifications. I'd much rather have notifications bucketed into two systems. Transactional and marketing, just like email.
I should be able to opt out of Amazon's marketing push notifications without ALSO opting out of getting delivery alerts.
Sadly, my version of Android seems to lack these finer-grained controls. I got an OS update a couple of months ago, though. Perhaps these are newer than that?
Lyft sends me junk notifications even when I have not launched the app in months. Yet when I do request a ride, I absolutely want to be notified of any status updates.
Doesn't most apps use different notification channels now a days?
I'm not sure how it is on iphone, but on most apps on android I can mute some types of notifications while letting others through. The OS will also revoke all permissions after the app has not been used for a month or so.
A better solution would be that the OS forces app developers to separate in categories their push notifications and have in the notifications options which of those notifications would be enabled or not, how often and how frequent before a notification is presented. This would then be gathered by the OS as how many notifications were silenced and how often were they acted upon, then force that as default to all notifications. More importantly, there must not be a "important" flag or something that hints hierarchy. If a notification is important, describe that in the category description.
Apps using repetitive junk push notifications to drive product addition has a side effect of driving smartphone addiction. Good luck expecting apple or google to curb smartphone addiction.
Both Apple and Google have strong controls on the apps identity, so it won't be like email spam where the sender can just send from a new email address to get around the filter.