You shouldn't have to opt out of spam.

For most people it's not spam.

They're using it as a way of increasing their ad revenue by getting free data from their users. How is that not spam? If I send you unsolicited emails asking you to give me photos of products you use which I'll then sell ads for and keep all the revenue, would that not be spam?

I did not sign up for any product promotion notifications, so if I receive any it's spam.

They pay the user for it with increased Google Drive space, a free subscription to the NYT, etc.

Only if you sign up for Local Guides.

I did out of curiosity after I answered a few questions, and sincerely regretted it. The notifications and junk e-mail were never-ending until I blocked them all. And my time is not worth that little.

You don't have to subscribe to the emails to get the benefits. The notifications are the same as when you're not a local guide. I also signed up to get the benefits.

I'm pretty sure you do have to subscribe to the e-mails.

You may not have to stay subscribed, but that's true in a sense for most junk mail.

More like robbing people of their time.

If the user doesn't like it, she can turn it off. If the user likes it, she gets paid with free services. All other users get the benefit of free information about the business, whether they have location tracking on or not. I don't see the problem here.

Some Google products are stupidly designed, but this one looks like it's doing the right thing.

They're on by default because only one person in this debate has said that he/she would turn it on. Most of these features have to be shoved down our throat, because there's on incentive to turn them on.

When doing any kind of user behavior funnel testing, regardless of what the product and feature actually are, and largely regardless of how prominent you make the on/off switch, you find that the same tiny percentage of users that would turn it off is equal or greater to the percent of users who would turn it on. So if you want lots of users to use a given feature the only reasonable thing to do is turn it on by default and make it opt-out.

I've taken to immediately disabling an app's notifications entirely the first time they present this useless stuff, and nearly every app does it now. Does anyone actually WANT notifications like this?

How? Everyone says there is an option under "Notifications" but I only see "People & places" and "Ride services".

I have Maps version 9.69.1 running on Android 8.1. I see the following options in Maps' "Notifications" menu: Traffic, Commute, Transit, Navigation, Your contributions, People & places, Ride services, Offline maps, New on Maps.

From these, the "Your contributions" seems to have the majority of toggles that people are discussing in this thread (e.g. "Adding your photos", "Contribution ideas", "Questions about places", etc.).

I'm also on 9.69.1 but I think my problem is that I'm running Android 5.0.1... Not sure why the options would differ between OS versions though.

Thanks! I've been looking for this.