They don’t prevent spam abuse through their app push notifications, and don’t even offer a way to report bad behavior. They are pro-spam.

i undersatnd i might come across as an apple shill/fanboi here but just pointing out that its fairly easy to punish any abusive app by killing their notifs and apple does sometimes make it easy to do that by letting u go straight to settings to kill the notif (i'm not conscious of when it does that but i think it does?)

No I can’t. Here’s an example: my security system app sends me push notifications when there is motion detected at times and places where there shouldn’t be motion. I need these critical (“time sensitive” in Apple-ese) notifications. It also helpfully sends me random “SUBSCRIBE TO SOME ADD-ON SERVICE, 50% OFF SALE THIS WEEK” at all hours of the day and night. Sure I could rip out my entire security system and replace it but that’s a lot of physical labor and wasted hardware.

Another example is my air filter. It’s nice to get a reminder when it’s time to change the filter since it’s so infrequent, but I can’t get that notification without also getting spammed with “news” about new machines I should buy. Apple actively enables this behavior while claiming that spam is against their terms of service.

They are clearly working for the spammers, not the user, because they profit off of their cut.

This can always be turned off using in-app settings. It's an App Store requirement. Note: in-app settings, not general settings for the app. Check. It's there.

> Make sure people can manage their notification settings within your app. In addition to requesting permission to send informational or marketing notifications, you must also provide an in-app settings screen that lets people change their choice. For guidance, see Settings.

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

The options are “On” or “Off”. Please read the examples I provided for why that isn’t good enough.

I’ll even leave you with a third example: I can’t get shipping notifications about an online order I made without also opting into spam about sales and discounts. Apple could take a pro-user stance here and help us push back against scummy behavior, but they choose not to be helpful. They also happen to profit off of it, I’m sure that’s unrelated.

By “choose not to be helpful”, do you mean that they don’t use AI to detect spam notifications and distinguish them from useful notifications? That seems like quite a difficult engineering problem, though I’m sure their new AI could help.

There are many tools at their disposal, of which AI may be only a small one.

1) They could implement a “promotional” notification category the same way that they do “time sensitive” and let the user customize that the same way, or at least offer an opt-out.

2) Add a “report” button next to the disable notifications button.

3) Stop delivering notifications on behalf of apps that don’t correctly categorize promotional notifications.

4) Skip all this complexity and just ban developers that send spam. This is what their monopoly on app distribution is supposedly justified by: protecting users from malicious app developers.

Did you say spam?? Boy have we got the thing for you!

Take a picture of a restaurant? Hey, did you know it's a place you can make a reservation at?

Your friend mentions a song offhand? Psst … wanna play it now?

Don't forget about how your cousin talked about that AppleTV+ series!

Joking aside, I'm very curious how (or if) this gets implemented in a way that doesn't isn't suffocating.

I quite like AppleTV's content choices, but I am not looking forward to getting shilled on it. Again. In between the other spam that they don't block. Ahhhhhg!

("Get an Android?" Yeah, I hear you, I switch ecosystems in anger with every phone, which is why I am so keenly aware of how badly Apple's anti-spam sucks -- but also why I am not over the moon at the prospect of my next switch: I know where the Android skeletons are buried, although hope springs eternal.)

now you will get spam that AI can understand.