
The tiny red dots taking over our lives - kawera
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/magazine/red-dots-badge-phones-notification.html?pagewanted=all
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drdrey
Here's a healthy habit: whenever an app abuses notifications, revoke its
permissions to grab your attention. At a minimum, disable notifications on the
lockscreen. Consider disabling banner alerts if they are too disruptive or
distracting. Hide the app in a folder in a faraway screen to avoid being
trapped by the little red dot badge.

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cma
It isn't notifications, but.. Google has now updated Chrome on Android to
constantly spam news stories at you every time you open a tab ("Stories for
you"). You can't turn it off through any UI accessible to normal users.

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jimmies
Then don't use Chrome. Disable it. Use Firefox focus.

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zargon
Firefox (not Focus) recently gave me an ad for Pocket as a notification.
Mozilla continues to disappoint me.

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zaarn
Firefox is IMO still a better choice than Chrome on Android at this point,
Firefox Sync also makes it very convenient to send pages to and from Desktop.
And of course the ability to install and use Addons like uMatrix to get even
basic ad- and scriptblocking

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itronitron
We need to get back to the time when it was possible to run software (apps)
without needing to create an account. It just blows my mind that companies
want to take on the liability of managing so much personal information.

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z0r
This is a great point, but recent large leaks (thinking of Equifax and Anthem,
but there are probably other comparable leaks) show that the liability
involved isn't meaningful.

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Silhouette
That problem is a big part of why the EU is bringing in the GDPR. The
potential fines for infringement will be much more severe once those rules
come into effect in a couple of months.

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eqmvii
Nothing is worse than websites and apps deciding to invent notifications
either on a regular basis, or because I haven't visited recently.

Twitter and LinkedIn are especially guilty. A "notification" about friends of
friends of followers having liked something trivial.

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apotheothesomai
What about Facebook notifying the user of a friend suggestion, as if it were a
notification of a connection posting something?

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misun78
Facebook is downright unethical in how it shows a notification on Messages
“from a given friend X” when the notification is instead by Facebook, on
behalf of friend X (birthday etc). How do we prevent companies from such
shoddy behavior?

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avn2109
>> "How do we prevent companies from such shoddy behavior?"

You uninstall their apps, pronto.

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sneak
* and delete your account, lest your friends continue to attempt to message you on a messenger you don’t have installed.

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dingo_bat
I want my phone to work more like my PC, where an app that is closed is
actually dead. None of this background bullshit. I need Facebook uber etc to
run only when I'm using them. The rest of the time they should be completely
off.

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zwily
On iOS at least, you can disable background activity. I’ve had Facebook’s
disabled for years. I assume Android has something similar.

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harlanji
I’ve revoked all badge permissions; literally all, even text and vm... I
usually just reply to notifs when I can and leave the ringer on if I am
expecting anything. Interestingly I get frequent notifs from Settings about
Apple Pay and more iCloud storage, enough to move it to its own page. They’re
ads in my book, which is tacky for a brand I perceived as luxury and
trustworthy until the iOS11 upgrade that included this spam.

Highly recommended. Now that we’ve reached peak mobile we can treat them as
tools rather than entertainment, Product Managers may follow soon.

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ilyanep
A while ago I went from default allowing new apps to do notifications and
badges to default not allowing them (with fewer apps being allowed to display
badges than notifications) and now looking at my home screen is a much less
stressful experience.

Actually, this is a great reminder to go audit my current settings again...

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dingaling
Perhaps I'm contrarian or just have well-behaved apps but I actually prefer
notification-driven interaction with my phone. I try to open it only if there
is a notification.

Otherwise I find myself aimlessly browsing without purpose.

See alert, respond to alert, lock phone again. That's the 'tool usage' that
helps me minimise time-loss. The same pattern as we used for dumbphones where
the only on-device distraction was a game of Snake.

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mcphage
> Perhaps I'm contrarian or just have well-behaved apps but I actually prefer
> notification-driven interaction with my phone. I try to open it only if
> there is a notification.

You must have well-behaved apps. Many apps are very aggressive about
notifications; instead of using them for "this is something important you'll
care about", many apps have started using them as "this is something you won't
care about but we want you to open up our app anyways".

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milkmiruku
If anyone can find a link on the project that appeared on /. or k5 roughly 20
years ago about a 1bit red dot communication program that sat in the systray
that had a report on emergent behaviours between 2 folk at either end, I'd be
ever so grateful.

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drgoodvibe
A long time ago blackberry had this is in spades with its red flashing LED.
Pavlov’s dogs response to it.. well before the red dot was invented.

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nathanaldensr
Someone watched the Onyxia wipe video one too many times.

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itronitron
no more dots

