As someone who has never heard about your product before I agree with the op. I read your text about how you wanted to raise money and “reboot the internet” but it’s meaningless to me because I don’t know what Polar is.
I know there’s a video but I’m not gonna watch it just to learn what the product is.
Ideally I’d like to subscribe to a curated actually “breaking news” feed that doesn’t spam me. Terrorist attack? Yes please. Plane crashed? Yes please. Rumors of Megan/Harry moving to Africa? Who the fuck cares?
Sadly, probably more people than care about the other stuff. At least if my News feed says anything about society. I have to actively block/dislike anything celebrity related or it clogs my feed.
As for notifications, with easy access to news through HN, Apple News, online newspapers, and social media feeds, I don't feel like I need notifications for much.
Right now, my phone is limited to texts, calls, meeting reminders, and the security system at my house. None from social media, none from news, email is off, etc.
> Rumors of Megan/Harry moving to Africa? Who the fuck cares?
"Top videos" and "Trending Stories" in my view suggest I'm definitely an outlier (as are you, by the sounds of things), as it's always full of items like that which you've mentioned you have no interest in.
You probably either need to suck it up, or pay for a service that caters to your (our?) needs. I've opted to suck it up.
Welp, for some people it's "Who the fuck cares?" about the former 2 categories as well. It'd be great to have notification settings separated by categories, but I imagine it being dificult, having so many different news vendors (then again, if anyone can do it it's Apple).
When Apple News came out I really liked the idea of having a single place to get pushed real breaking news as they happened. But sadly Apple News (and News+) is not that. Some of it is on the publishers and media (ie everything is considered "breaking" these days) but I think Apple is also part of the problem by pushing out stories on their official[1] breaking news channels that are not in fact really breaking news or news at all. I'm not talking about the biases either, but it has pushed me notifications about active shootings (good) and sports (bad) using the same breaking news headlines.
[1] one of the confusion is probably what is and isn't an official channel. If i can't figure out if the channel is a hand curated one vs one generated by a faulty AI then that's a problem.
I know there’s a video but I’m not gonna watch it just to learn what the product is.