What is Bait Notifications?
Notifications engineered to look like personal activity, like 'You appeared in 9 searches' or 'Someone just posted for the first time in a while', are really ads for the app itself, sent when you have been away too long.
Where it comes from
Growth-team re-engagement playbooks (2010s)
How it hooks you
Exploits social salience: anything that might be about you demands a check, and the app counts on that reflex.
What the research shows
Pielot's field study logged an average of 64 notifications per user per day, each one a potential re-entry point into an app.
Source: Pielot et al., 'An In-Situ Study of Mobile Phone Notifications', MobileHCI (2014)
How to resist it
Keep push notifications only for messages from real humans. If a push is about 'suggested' anything, kill that channel in settings.