Ted SpenceLet’s talk about a problem - software cannot be trusted anymore. In the past, if I allowed an app to send me notifications, I’d get alerted for things I wanted to hear about. Now every app uses spurious notifications as a way to artificially boost their daily active user count. I am one by one having to shut off notifications on apps that used to be reliable products. I’ve disabled notifications on linkedin because it keeps sending me ads and random unnecessary alerts.
Even worse, companies are subject to neverending pressure to drive up usage and revenue. First they sell ads. When ad blockers become common, they move to subscriptions. When subscription revenue isn't enough, they bring back ads for subscribers - but now the subscribers can't avoid them. This is why I canceled @TheAtlantic - my paid membership now includes unskippable advertising.
Marcus Müller@Tedspence @TheAtlantic revenue – I can see that, from a commercial perspective; actually, you'd aim at profit, not revenue, and yes, having ads costs you (if just through disgruntling customers, but also in administration, development and IT ops).
But there's no reason that *usage* is but a very weak proxy. Yet, I've uninstalled apps just because they kept adding new notification categories each update.
Who will happily follow a *new* notification after suppressing the last five categories?
@Tedspence
And you're probably on point with the daily usage observations – this is external, artificial pressure that you yield to in order to be allowed to play the game – to be a top-listed app, instead of one that appears in the fifth position in a search on the respective app store. Such a stupid way of Google & Co to poison their own pond.
And you're probably on point with the daily usage observations – this is external, artificial pressure that you yield to in order to be allowed to play the game – to be a top-listed app, instead of one that appears in the fifth position in a search on the respective app store. Such a stupid way of Google & Co to poison their own pond.
@funkylab The intense pressure for continual exponential growth drives every app to start abusing whatever privileges a user gives it.
@funkylab In many ways it's the same sinister dynamic as the one that drives companies to constantly ratchet up the requests for tips. Incentives drive companies to advertise low prices while driving down employment costs, in the expectation that someone else will cover the gap if they just make the default tip percentage on the credit card terminal higher every year.
Michael Kohne@funkylab @Tedspence I swear, my biggest ask for the Play Store (Google's store for android) is a filter that hides apps with advertising.
@funkylab @TheAtlantic A real opportunity for #Apple would be to allow users to report inappropriate or unwanted notifications in apps. That would rapidly highlight the problem that some apps have major issues with spamming users!