It’s a fair bet that close to 100% of the rubbish you receive on your phone every day is totally unnecessary to your everyday existence and contributes nothing to your life.
So you might be glad to hear Facebook is reportedly planning to make a small change which will help to shield you from the gentle jag of unwanted notifications.
A respected tech analyst has claimed the social network will soon let you switch off notification ‘dots’ for some of the apps running inside the app.
These splurges of doom are designed to alert you that something has happened within an app.
But although you might think this alert requires an action, your life will probably be no less rich if you ignore it – which is just what Facebook is planning to let you do.
‘Facebook is testing the ability to toggle Notification Dots of the specific tab in the app,’ tweeted Jane Manchun-Wong, who is world famous for digging through the source code of apps to expose hidden or upcoming features.
‘This should address the long annoyance of tabs showing notification dots that don’t spark joy for the user.’
One of her Twitter followers reacted well to the news.
He wrote: ‘Facebook is one of the main reasons I don’t turn on notification dots, so this will be great.’
Another seemed so troubled by the dots that he couldn’t welcome the development wholeheartedly.
‘A specific feature to tame a dark pattern,’ he opined.
‘Tragic.’
Mark Zuckerberg himself recently announced a privacy-focused vision for the future of Facebook.
Earlier this year, the billionaire data baron said Facebook has become the ‘digital equivalent of a town square’ but it was changing.
‘People increasingly also want to connect privately in the digital equivalent of the living room,’ he said.
‘As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms.
‘Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks.’
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