

Airpush Wants to Destroy Android - VengefulCynic
http://joshuascholl.posterous.com/airpush-wants-to-destroy-android

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jsz0
Self policing is working fairly well so far. Any developer who uses AirPush is
taking a huge gamble. Personally I will uninstall the app, report it as
malicious malware, and write a scathing review of any app that uses AirPush. I
hope others are doing the same. The problem is going to be what happens when
the carriers pre-load applications using AirPush along with a locked boot
loader to prevent you from rooting your phone to remove it. That's the point
where you'll see an exodus from Android. I really don't think people will put
up with it. The carriers will almost certainly try it because what do they
have to lose? They will probably start up-selling ad/bloatware removal like
Best Buy does with PCs.

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MatthewPhillips
How will you know which app is using AirPush? There is no way to know where a
notification comes from in Android, and as the article explains, it's possible
for developers to delay the notification for days.

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Kylekramer
I don't get why people would say Airpush would never exist on iOS. It already
does. I have seen quite a few app that use push notifications for
advertisements. Not just scammy apps, but popular well recieved apps like
Boxcar that hide it by labelling it App Recommendations.

Push notifications' promise always included ads. It is just a matter of
presenting them well. It is like nagware. The annoying ones will be punished,
the effective ones will be rewarded.

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VengefulCynic
Except half of Boxcar's functionality is to provide advertising. That's a lot
like saying "I don't know why people complain about the Huffington Post and
all of their advertising when reputable sites like eBay are nothing but people
trying to sell me stuff."

And let's not get ahead of ourselves with the whole "push notifications have
always been ads" - push notifications have always been with providing the end
user with desired information. That may well come to include advertising, but
up until this point advertising in push notifications has been an outlier at
best.

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Kylekramer
Outlier now, but a pretty unavoidable future. Telemarketers and spammers were
outliers at one point.

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wccrawford
People went rabid went some apps started showing ads as notifications. They
will continue to do so for any app that implements it. This is going to police
itself initially, and I'm guessing Google will do something about eventually.

