Idk why more people don’t do what I do. I call it notification hygiene, or maybe attention hygiene. If an app has a legitimate reason for notifying me, like it’s a messaging app and a human being has messaged me, then the app gets to notify me, otherwise it does not. The first time an app shows me a notification that is useless to me it gets deleted from my phone if I’m not using it anymore. On the spot. Drop everything I’m doing and delete the app. If I am still using the app I disable notifications for it.
I get almost no notifications that aren’t people messaging me.
I was an Audible subscriber for like five years when they started spamming my notifications with ads. I unsubscribed on the spot and haven't looked back. I couldn't believe it, I had probably given them $1000 by that point but apparently that wasn't good enough. Even if you give a company a significant amount of money they'll still do everything they can to squeeze even more money out of you.
To be clear I wouldn’t delete my banking app if it showed me a marketing notification, I would go into the app and turn off that kind of notification. I have notifications turned on for my banking app because of 2FA and transaction notifications. In the past I was actually able to stop a fraudulent transaction within minutes because of a transaction notification so I value them.
you can't selectively turn off junk notifications from apps that you need notifications from..
i want to use the peets app to know when my coffees ready but it spams me with pumpkin spice latte deals..
I think this is something I genuinely differ on to most people. If an app doesn’t allow me to selectively choose the notifications then I don’t allow it to notify me. I put a really high value on my attention and I don’t consider that ok behaviour from an app. If I miss something because I don’t get notifications then that’s too bad, the value of not being interrupted is so much higher.
I feel similarly. I hunt for the Unsubscribe button to every email I don’t want and/or mark it spam in my mail app. It makes a real difference after a while.
Unfortunately, companies know most people aren’t like us so they keep pumping out the crap.
> you can't selectively turn off junk notifications from apps that you need notifications from
You can't if it's a junk app. Many reputable apps today have properly described notification channels and you can turn them off selectively (under android at least). That's what I did for my banking and several other apps. Every "marketing" channel was turned off.
