i don't mean a visual one that you have to go look at, i mean a desktop notification or such

these are useful for things like calendars and inbound voice calls but for anything else just wind up being a total time waster 

 Tell me about it. It is a nice feeling when someone likes my notes. It is a dark path. I don't know how to mitigate this. On one hand likes help with the algorithm.  

 i agree with the idea to make likes a scarce resource, otherwise it's a very cheap signal 

 Yeah. I have not thought too much about this.