>technology is supposed to help its users

Now that's a huge misconception.

It isn't in technology's nature to take sides, and it's also not regulated to do that, and neither do technologists have a universal moral stance that would support that.

So in the end, technology serves whomever happens to control it, and circling back to notifications, currently service providers seem to have the biggest say in how many notifications go around.

It's in people's nature to take sides, and, as you pointed out, technology serves whomever happens to control it. So people who control technology should use it to try to help other people. I realize it doesn't often work out that way, but I see no reason to give up on the ideal. In the end, it's in the interest of those who control the technology to make the end-users happy. If everyone actually turned off all push notifications, companies that send push notifications would have a useless channel. It's not in their interest to spam people, and from personal experiences I can say that I think most of them know that. The tool set for sending smart notifications has just been incredibly limiting until recently.

>I see no reason to give up on the ideal.

I don't, either, but this really depends on how one treats this ideal. Everything can and will be abused, so, simply not caring about this angle is irresponsible. Technology _can_ however also help people a lot, and I appreciate that about it.

>In the end, it's in the interest of those who control the technology to make the end-users happy.

That's definitely, provably, empirically untrue. Making the end user happy is just one of the ways that service providers can make money, they can also, for example, make them miserable in a specific way, and then offer the cure. They can also, for example, try to reach for a monopoly position. They can identify the true end users, and those who make the decisions for them - their managers, or regulators, for example, and use them to shove their service down their throat. There's plenty of ways to prevail that don't seek to create happiness, and they are often more in reach than providing happiness - including situations where the end users themselves don't strive for their own happiness, thereby rejecting the happier service or product.

I kind of agree about it being a useless channel. So, why haven't everyone turned off their notifications? There are, for example, people so lonely that a device that competes for their attention doesn't seem like a bad idea. Others say that they don't mind, that they are so good at filtering out on the mental level that it doesn't affect them. And the list is endless - bottom line is, people often keep the defaults, and so, notifications reach a lot of people.

Also, about turning it off - sometimes you just can't. Even if some callers annoy me a lot, I don't turn off my phone because there are callers that I expect a call from. So, I put up with the annoyance. (This story is for illustration.) So I'm in the camp that haven't turned off the notifications.

TL;DR In my experience "tech = good" is naive. It's worthwhile to bother with technology, but it's far from an "inherently good" ideal.

True. Most of the issue comes from a "One size fits none" approach.

When companies just treat push notifications as a way to blast ads to users, it all goes awry.

If companies treat push notifications (and other messaging) as a feature of the product, the whole product experience improves.

Nobody complains when their alarm screen pops up or their timer goes off...because we want those things and it necessitates a "pop up" of sorts.

Similarly, people appreciate when a learning app pops up with a helpful tip relevant to what we're trying to learn or a meditation app pops up with a reminder to take a second to yourself and breathe correctly.

It's seldom the vehicle that's the issue. They're just methods.

It's all about how they're used.