What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications
Apple and Google’s growing control over mobile push notifications is drawing criticism from users who feel their attention is being relentlessly exploited by marketers, as well as from those uneasy about all alerts being funneled through APNS and FCM for technical and surveillance reasons. Commenters argue that most apps abuse notifications for advertising and engagement rather than genuine urgency, pushing many people to disable notifications entirely or aggressively filter them. While some welcome platform-level filtering as protection for users, others worry this centralization further entrenches Big Tech as an unaccountable gatekeeper between people and the services they use.
Overall sentiment on push notifications
- Many see current push usage as abusive: notifications are overwhelmingly spammy, promotional, or “engagement” hooks.
- Strong consensus that push should be rare and valuable; most apps are not important enough to deserve interrupting the user.
- Several say they silence or uninstall any app that sends a single unwanted notification.
Transactional vs promotional use
- Broad agreement: notifications should be transactional (security alerts, deliveries, ride arrivals, appointments), not marketing.
- Biggest pain point: apps that mix critical and promotional messages in the same channel (banks, ride‑sharing, delivery apps).
- Some think broadcast/marketing via push is inherently illegitimate; others note some users do explicitly opt in.
Platform control and intermediation
- Concern that Apple/Google increasingly sit between sender and recipient, editing, delaying, or suppressing notifications.
- Split views:
- Pro: platforms defending user attention from abusive senders; more filtering is “mission accomplished”.
- Contra: platforms gain opaque, unaccountable power and become toll collectors, similar to search and email.
User controls and UX (Android vs iOS)
- Android praised for notification channels and tools like Buzzkill, though many apps mislabel or abuse channels.
- iOS criticized for coarse controls and lack of OS‑level separation of transactional vs promotional notifications, despite some app‑level options and features like Notification Summary, Focus, Live Activities.
- Strong view that sane defaults matter; most users will never “tune their setup”.
Privacy, surveillance, and architecture
- Discussion notes all standard mobile push goes through APNS/FCM; developers can’t bypass it on stock iOS/Android.
- References to government access to push metadata/content and the lack of any way for app developers or users to prevent this.
- Some de‑Google or use WebSockets/self‑hosted approaches (GrapheneOS, UnifiedPush), trading battery for independence.
Coping strategies and desired features
- Common strategies: permanent Do Not Disturb, extreme whitelists (only calls/messages from select contacts, banks, calendar), disabling almost all app notifications.
- Desired features:
- OS‑enforced separation of marketing vs transactional channels.
- Ability to mark push as spam and penalize abusers.
- App‑level network firewalls and permission to revoke network access.
- Email‑like inbox, filters, or even LLM‑based classifiers for notifications.