One of the features of the popular MLB At-Bat app is push notifications, which can be customized to alert you to a wide variety of league news, team-specific news, games starting and ending, score changes, lead changes and more. What’s considered “league news” took an interesting turn this week, though, as to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak (which started Sunday), MLB At-Bat is now sending out push notifications (apparently to users who have “League News” enabled) for the anniversary of each of DiMaggio’s hits in the streak. As these are written in present tense and phrased exactly like current hit notifications, many have been confused by them, and many more are upset.
Wtf? pic.twitter.com/1KKyk4XyxJ
— Dieter Kurtenbach (@dkurtenbach) May 15, 2016
Oh God I figured it out, they're making us relive DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak one random update at a time. This is going to suck.
— Josh Koebert (@JKoebert) May 16, 2016
Straight up, I do not care about the 1941 Yankees, please do not send me updates on long-dead baseball players.
— Josh Koebert (@JKoebert) May 16, 2016
I once hit in 73 straight games in career mode on MLB The Show, but you don't see me sending folks push notifications about it
— Josh Koebert (@JKoebert) May 16, 2016
Can't think of a better way to celebrate DiMaggio's amazing feat than sending 56 unwanted phone notifications to all your biggest fans
— Bill P (@Bill_TPA) May 16, 2016
Joe DiMaggio is 101 years old and still in the MLB ? pic.twitter.com/1LER6SyrgO
— Evan (@EvansPosts) May 16, 2016
Joe DiMaggio out here driving in runs from his grave, and I can't even get a text back.
— Connor (@McCartyConnor) May 16, 2016
breaking: Joe DiMaggio has risen, is unstoppable. https://t.co/NR1GLPrdMf
— Marla Rosenthal (@half_shiksa) May 16, 2016
MLB At Bat could at the very least add an opt out of the DiMaggio "tribute", but nah.
— Travis Fox (@tfox0004) May 16, 2016
The Yankees are so desperate for offense they brought Joe DiMaggio back from the dead pic.twitter.com/bzbRiwtOrr
— Jeff (@jamfan40) May 16, 2016
Discussing the anniversary of DiMaggio’s streak is one thing, and even trying to present it in real time may have some fans (surprisingly-large numbers of people have embraced other history-in-real-time accounts like @RealTimeWWII,) but doing that in an opt-in format (an account people choose to seek out) is one thing, while doing it in an opt-out format (people receive it until they change their settings) is another. MLB created a @TheStreak Twitter account to “live”-tweet DiMaggio’s at-bats, and that’s fine, but it only has 817 followers; that may more accurately represent who’s interested in this than “every baseball fan subscribed to At-Bat notifications of league news.” Setting opt-in as default is problematic and can create a huge backlash even for something of value, as U2 and Apple found out a couple of years back; setting opt-in as default for confusing, “live” updates of something that happened 75 years ago and that most users probably don’t care about is a very questionable decision. At the very least, MLB should offer an unsubscribe option beyond just turning off “MLB News”. At best, they should make this opt-in rather than opt-out.