I have become almost numb to the flood of notifications that arrive on my phone every day. But when an app sends a simple and very human “Hello!” message, apparently that's enough to stop me in my tracks. And Starbucks just sent that exact push notification to God knows how many devices a few minutes ago. For what purpose? Who knows?
Only Hello. No other context. A random greeting on what (here in New York) is a dreary, rainy Tuesday. So I tapped. Doing so landed me in the Starbucks app without any special destination or obvious promotion attached to the message.
The edge has reached out to Starbucks for more details on this critical news story. I'm not one to be rude, so hello, whoever you are.
But now I will disable the app notifications. Because this is a perfect example of how freely privilege is used.
