Correspondence Regarding Notification Opt In Regret

Observational Essay: Notification Opt-In Regret Submitted to the Record

The Original Decision

At some point in 2019 a dialog box appeared. It asked whether the application could send notifications. The subject tapped Allow.

The reasoning at the time: the application was new, the subject was curious, the dialog had appeared during a moment of mild optimism about the application's utility.

The application's utility proved to be moderate. The notifications have been consistent.

The Notification Record

The application has sent notifications daily since 2019. Most notifications contain information the subject already has. Some contain information the subject does not have but does not need. A small number contain information the subject needs, delivered at a time when the subject cannot act on it.

The subject has not gone back to revise the original Allow.

The Revision Problem

Revising the Allow requires navigating to Settings, then the application, then Notifications, then toggling the relevant switch. This takes approximately forty-five seconds. The subject knows this because it has been considered and not acted upon several times.

The notifications take approximately three seconds each to dismiss. The math appears to favor revision.

The subject has not revised the setting.

On Permanence

There is a class of decision that becomes permanent not through active renewal but through the inertia of the reversal cost. The reversal cost does not have to be high. It has to be higher than the cost of continuing.

Three seconds per notification is lower than forty-five seconds once.

Until it is not.

Current Status

The notifications continue. The subject continues to dismiss them. The application has been updated three times since 2019, each update retaining the original notification permissions without asking again.

The burden is self-renewing. The source is a single tap made on a Tuesday afternoon that the subject cannot accurately remember making.