Skip to main content

Notifications, Not Ads

Notifications on our smartphones are pretty common these days. Notifications are designed to provide the user with helpful information and alerts. For example, a reminder notification, an email notification, a download-in-progress notification. According to Google,
Notifications provide short, timely, and relevant information about your app when it’s not in use.

It's a useful feature offered by modern mobile operating systems. An average smartphone user gets many, many notifications each day. Some of 'em are useful, some of 'em are less so. Many are intruding in nature. The issue is that developers have started to abuse the notification framework. They are using notifications to serve ads and promotions which gets pretty annoying pretty quickly. These notifications are neither timely nor helpful. And almost none of apps allow you to opt out from this crap. The only thing you can do is block all notifications from that app. That means you'll miss out on important alerts from that app.

Google advises developers not to use notifications as the primary communication channel with users. But the devs seem to do just that. The most annoying notifications come from the big names. This is a big surprise to me. Examples include, Flipkart, Myntra, Jabong, Hotstar, Zomato, Swiggy, Paytm etc.

Zomato has one of the most annoying notifications (read ads) ever. Every Saturday and Sunday the app sends a notification to buy food.

Notification from Zomato
Zomato
Flipkart, Myntra and Jabong supposedly have sales everyday and they keep reminding that every hour. Every day.

Notification from Flipkart
Flipkart

Notification from Myntra
Myntra

Notification from Jabong
Jabong
There are more examples like this. Take a look below.

Notification from Foodpanda
foodpanda

Notification from Hotstar
Hotstar

Notification from JioTV
JioTV

Notification from MyJio
MyJio

Notification from My Vodafone
MyVodafone

Notification from PhonePe
PhonePe

The notification system, at present, is broken. Hopefully Android Oreo's Notification Channels feature would solve this issue. But that too remains uncertain. Will the developers choose to implement the feature? What if they start to misuse the channels as well? No one can stop a developer from sending an advertisement in an "Order Updates" channel. And we don't even know how many Android phones will actually get that Oreo update. We all know Android has a fragmentation problem. But that's a story for another day. These ads are ruining the user experience. And the developers gotta stop. Now!



Comments

Popular Posts

Why I Started Blogging

It's been almost 5 years since I started blogging. This is the 30th post being published. That means over the course of 5 years, I've written 6 posts per year. Although 30 is much less than I would have liked, this is one of those pet projects I have continued even after the honeymoon phase. Today I want take some time and discuss why I started this blog in the first place. I was in my 3rd year of engineering studies when I started out. I had already developed a keen interest towards programming and tech in general by then. Having a blog seemed liked a cool idea. There were couple of more reasons to go ahead with this idea. That's what we are here to discuss today. Setting up a blog seemed like a technically challenging task. I wanted to know how to setup a blog with comments, advertisements and with a custom domain. It sounded like a great way to acquire new skills and learn new things along the way. Back then I didn't know anyone who shared my enthusiasm for tech

Dear edX!

Dear edX, I was in my 2nd year of college when you came to life. And I was ecstatic! No, not to be in college (LOL) but to have finally found my calling. Computer programming. I was browsing through all the resources I could find. Codecademy courses mainly. And right at that moment, you arrived. Your parents hail from the Harvard University and from the MIT. So of course you received my attention. Also, you had an unique selling point: free certificates. This was huge! No one else was doing it. It seemed you were actually trying to help students learn new skills and show off to the world. I was stoked to enroll into the course developed world's top professors. The free certificates were a big motivator to complete the courses. The first course I enrolled into was developed by The Linux Foundation. I have taken several courses since then. Some were on computer programming, some were about a country's history and some provided advice on career growth and personal finance. 2

The State of Video Streaming Services in India [Part 2: The Aftermath]

It's been a year since I published my post about the state of video streaming services in India (which can be found  here ). I wrote how media companies were trying to get a piece of that market. A lot has changed in a year. For starters, Hotstar has received a revamp and it works on my Kubuntu system now. Prime Video remains the best option for most people. Many more services have launched. Ozee has rebranded itself as Zee5. But a few things have stood the test of time. Netflix's pricing is as expensive as it was a year ago. Yes, that was sarcastic. Now there are lot of streaming services to choose from. Here's a list of some of the popular ones. Amazon Prime Video Hotstar Netflix YouTube Zee5 Eros Now Spuul Voot Hoichoi ALTBalaji Hooq JioCinema / JioTV Sony LIV YuppTV BIGFlix The list goes on and on. It is said that competition is good for the consumer. More the competition, more the aggressive pricing, more the benefit for the consumer. Just lo

How to Automate NPS Contributions - A Step by Step Guide with Screenshots

Introduction The National Pension System is a great financial product for creating your retirement kitty. With contribution of just ₹5000 per month, you can accumulate more than a crore! I am a NPS subscriber (through NSDL eNPS) myself. If you have read my previous post  regarding EPF you know I like NPS for the following reasons. 60 year lock-in period Additional tax exemption under section 80CCD (1B) Choice of various assets classes Choice of pension fund managers Option to change your asset allocation or pension fund manager Low cost of fund management Transparency & organization structure Good customer support Online account opening and management Multiple exit options at retirement Screenshot from  Pension Calculator | NPS Trust Some Not So Great Things NPS is far from