Now that Linux is cool I’m bored with it. They should swap to either GNU/Hurd or NetBSD. _/s

Probably more likely to go for SUSE, since it’s European but still Enterprisey.

C’est l’année de l’ordinateur Linux!

To send you a push notification, an app requires a special token specific to that app and your device, kinda like an API key, which can only be generated for a device using Google Play Services. Without that token, a push notification cannot be sent. These tokens expire, so if you used Google Play Services and just turned it off, push notifications will still get sent into the ether - but never delivered - until the token expires, at which point notifications can’t be sent anymore. Badly developed apps might still try to send push notifications with expired tokens, I have no idea what Google servers would do with that, but I’d guess they would just discard it immediately.

Edit: Sorry, I think I misunderstood your question. If you don’t have Google Play Services enabled but your friend does and messages you, no, a push notification won’t be sent, but if you message them, one will be sent to them.

I thought you were asking if you just disabled notifications on your phone if that would prevent push notifications from being sent. I’ll leave my original answer in case someone else has that question.

It depends on what exactly you mean, but usually not. If you mean in your phone’s notifications management settings, that does not affect the push notifications being sent to Google/Apple servers, that’s just a local setting to decide how your phone handles it.

Some apps, though rarely, allow you to disable push notifications from being sent. If it exists, this is inside a settings screen in the app itself or on the app provider’s website somewhere. Generally, only privacy-conscious apps provide such settings.

As I wrote elsewhere:

It depends on the app. Some apps do (or can be configured to) indeed send “empty”/blank notifications which just notify you that you’ve received a new message from an app, but not from whom, or what the message contains.

However most apps by default will contain more data, such as who the message is from, and some/all of the sent message body.

If you get a push notification on your phone, everything you see in that notification must by definition pass through the push notification service.

I’d disagree with “most messengers” doing that, in my experience, most don’t do it by default. Signal is a pretty rare exception to do so by default.

Yes, I know! Sorry for the confusion, I just wanted to take the opportunity to raise awareness about a privacy issue that lots of people aren’t aware of

If you use GrapheneOS with push notifications, after enabling Google Play Services, those push notifications are relayed through Google servers. Most apps will include message sender and text in the push notification, meaning that data will pass through Google servers and they can read it.

If you are a GrapheneOS user and leave Google Play Services disabled - which they are by default - you have nothing to worry about, but notifications are generally delayed and use more battery as a downside.

So it’ll use TLS encryption, meaning that others on your network won’t be able to snoop it, but not end-to-end encryption, so Google/Apple servers will see the plaintext of the push notification content.

This is a limitation of the specific implementation of how push notifications work. End-to-end encrypted push notifications would be technically possible but it would require Apple/Google to make it possible. Developers can’t implement it without getting you to run some services yourself, either self-hosted or a long-running background process on your phone, which would be a battery drain.

The link you shared isn’t really relevant to push notifications specifically.

The best happy medium we can get is to send empty/blank push notifications, which some apps including Signal offer as an option, but you often need to set it that way in the settings. I think Signal does that by default, but very few apps do.

It depends on the app. Some apps do (or can be configured to) indeed send “empty”/blank notifications which just notify you that you’ve received a new message from an app, but not from whom, or what the message contains.

However most apps by default will contain more data, such as who the message is from, and some/all of the sent message body.

You might be getting pull notifications, that’s generally the workaround for push notifications being disabled - it generally increases battery usage because it forces the app to stay open in the background.

The message you send them would probably go through as a push notification to them, but the message they send you wouldn’t.

I’m actually talking about sensitive data on Google/Apple hosted servers, as well as on the phone itself!

If you don’t use Google Play Services, you don’t get push notifications, so yes. Libre reimplementations of Google Play Services such as Gapps etc. or alternative push notification providers do not circumvent this issue, except possibly self-hosted push notification providers. This approach is really rare though and limited generally to very few apps.

It always bears repeating, push notifications are not private, neither for Android, GrapheneOS, nor iOS, even if you use end-to-end encryption. If you are privacy conscious, you should either use settings to hide sensitive data from push notifications or turn them off altogether.

Is the powerful AI in the room with us right now?

No, I’m just talking about liberalism. You probably have some high-minded enlightenment-era ideals floating around in your head about what liberalism is, but I’m telling you, your ideas about how liberalism is about freedom, that’s the actual psyop to divide the proletariat you spoke of. Liberalism is functionally one big propaganda operation to replace monarchies with oligarchies.

I know a great deal about what I’m talking about, but if you feel that I’m wrong about something in particular, I’d be happy to discuss it. I am not American.

Of course you can, but when people identify themselves or others as “liberal”, they’re not referring to individual liberty, they’re usually referring to “liberalism”, which does contain some elements of individual liberties, but far more importance is given to free market economics and free flow of capital, than it is to individual freedoms. That’s why corporations can invest anywhere and borders don’t pose much issue for them, whereas it is very hard and expensive for individuals to move to another country.

Reddit is hostile towards left-leaning people, and it is also a cesspool of liberal propaganda. Liberals fucking hate leftists, even more than they hate fascists, because liberalism is fundamentally pro-capitalism. That’s why the mainstream media is currently crashing out about people like Hasan Piker, who actually represent a growing base of support for socialism, and they run every possible smear they can.