18 ms·
I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams
- pards 9mo agoI assume all social media ads are also scams.
- mrweasel 9mo agoRight, unless we're talking ads for a brand I already know and trust, I just assume that all ads are scams. Even Googles ads, which was previous very good at finding me the products I wanted, from good sources, a now overrun by scams (or borderline scams). The online adverting industry is raking in billions on scamming people, while providing questionable value for actual good brands. Even if your company is honest and makes good products, you're competing with the scammers for ad space and that pushes up your cost. I've said this on multiple occasions, but I do not believe that the honest companies are able to fund the tech industry in it's current form. Meta, Google, Apple and everyone else, expects increasing revenue, year on year, most of which is suppose to be delivered by ads, bought by other companies. Those companies just aren't see the same level of growth, nor do they see enough value from ads to increase their advertising. So the big websites take in more and more questionable ads to pad their numbers. So what if consumers get scammed? They should have been more critical.
- ljm 9mo agoEvery now and then there's a post on Reddit like "I ordered this thing from UNARFI and it is nothing like the pictures" and I'm like, what do you expect when ordering from a site named after an incorrect guess on wordle?
- zvqcMMV6Zcr 9mo agoThis is a bit silly. Are there any ads that people do trust?
- nottorp 9mo agoExactly. Why did the article author think ads weren't scams before they were "AI" generated?
- wobfan 9mo agoWhere does the author claim or even remotely suggest that?
- nottorp 9mo agoThey only NOW assume all ads are scams. Suggests they didn't make that assumption before, doesn't it?
- wobfan 9mo agoAnd in your mind NOW always means "since GenAI is a thing"? Most of the time, when people realize something, it happens NOW. Also, AI isn't even mentioned in the headline at all, and not even in the first part of the article. It's just used as one hint that it might be scam, then followed up with further evidence.
- iso1631 9mo agoIn the headline - the word Now implies "Ads before weren't scams but they are now"
- bearjaws 9mo agoMark my words, Apple is going to go full enshittification in the next 5 years because they've squeezed every last drop out of hardware pricing. Especially with the failed Apple Intelligence that they will now have to pay their way out of.
- isoprophlex 9mo agoThen what do i move to? No linux laptop feels as good to touch as the aluminum macbooks, and in terms of phones it can't get any worse than the ads-and-trackers shitshow that is android...
- timpera 9mo agoI know that Windows 11 doesn't get a ton of love on HN, but I have successfully replaced my M1 MacBook Air with a Surface Laptop 7. The build quality is great, and I even think that the Surface's haptic trackpad is superior. However, I don't think anything on the market beats the Macbook's speaker quality.
- vee-kay 9mo agoJust put Linux on that Microsoft laptop, LOL. Problem solved and it will work great.
- black_puppydog 9mo agomy goodness we lived with plastic thinkpads for decades and many of us still happily do. this fetish for "premium" hardware to be replaced every two years by the newest hottest thing (if that's not you: great, the planet thanks you) is just plain weird from the outside.
- StilesCrisis 9mo ago"We" didn't do anything. Nobody is replacing their MacBooks every two years; those machines are tanks and are profoundly overspecced for most users' needs.
- wobfan 9mo agoI love how, on the "I am retiring page", the image of the old woman even has artifacts of the Gemini logo on the bottom right - someone very probably manually tried to blur them with a tool that was not meant for blurring. Somehow, he or she was still convinced and put it up.
- stavros 9mo agoBecause the sets of people who would give money to this and people who notice the Gemini logo are disjoint.
- matt89 9mo agoYeah it was always a trick scammers used. Scam emails (the more obvious ones - not sophisticated phising) always had typos or subtle grammar errors because authors don't want to invest time in people that are able to spot such mistakes. It's the people that do not read thoroughly that are much more likely to fall for a scam. I would imagine it might be the same with those ads.
- Aransentin 9mo ago> authors don't want to invest time in people that are able to spot such mistakes This "just-so" story gets repeated constantly in threads about scams, but I've never seen anyone put up any actual proof. The more likely explanation is that scammers are just bad at English since they're predominantly from poor third-world countries.
- adrianmsmith 9mo agoThis is research from Microsoft that goes into more detail: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/WhyFromNigeria.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
- Aransentin 9mo ago
- timpera 9mo agoWhy would Apple enshittify their News app in this way when there are so many legitimate advertisers out there? It seems obviously damaging to their brand, so it makes no sense to me.
- kotaKat 9mo agoI’m kind of (un)surprised to see it just be Taboola’s slop from the ages past. I forgot Taboola even still pushes that garbage.
- redserk 9mo agoI unsubscribed from the News app subscription over their decision to bake in ads. I own multiple personal Mac computers, an iPhone, an Apple Watch, iPad Pro, a few HomePods, and a few Apple TV devices. I’ve already proven that I’m willing to pay for a product even when there are cheaper alternatives. Why they decided to make News a paid subscription with ads — especially low-quality ads is beyond me. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve deleted the News, Stocks, and Weather apps, and will just remove any additional apps they decide to chuck in. It’s a real shame their aggressive pursuit of services revenue is destroying what is a great hardware ecosystem.
- Forgeties79 9mo agoWhat’s wrong with the weather and stocks apps? Maybe a silly question.
- spudlyo 9mo agoThe stocks app is essentially Apple Business News, with stock prices on one side. I'm not entirely sure how the weather app pushes News on you, but my guess is that it's there somewhere.
- Forgeties79 9mo agomy stock app has the Apple business news towards the bottom where it’s pretty easy to ignore and I find it’s at least somewhat relevant, even if I don’t look at it. Even so, totally get it. I don’t really want ads there one way or another. I don’t see ads on the weather app (at least on my phone)
- aquir 9mo agoIt’s a bit like that MSN page what MS is forcing on millions through Edge and W11 widgets
- larodi 9mo agoWhy does it even exist, this MSN page, which is ridden with nonsense...? I don't get it.
- timpera 9mo agoBecause it's probably extremely profitable, unfortunately. I have seen many of my coworkers click on the headlines and ads on the MSN homepage when bored at work.
- throw_m239339 9mo agoAt least one can quicly hide that filth. Unbearable, in every language...
- sumtechguy 9mo agoOn top of that, that thing takes a bunch of fiddling in their own GUI to disable. I want a search bar for my home page. Nothing else. Then every once and awhile it will 'forget' its settings and put it all back. Edge/Chrome makes no difference to me it is the same code. But that first tab experience with edge is garbage. Probably why I mostly use Firefox still.
- aquir 9mo agoThe "ever changing/enshittifying Edge" was the final nail in the coffin on Windows for me...that made me to change to MacOS for good.
- Bluecobra 9mo agoI just use “New Tab Redirect” in Chrome so I can make new tabs default to google.com. The home page only applies to the initial browser window/tab. It’s pretty silly.
- 9mo ago
- villgax 9mo agoThis is true of all news sites, some hearing aid, you wont believe, why your pet does X etc etc
- api 9mo agoThe best are the one trick doctors don’t tell you or the thing THEY don’t want you to know about. A lot of scams and cons are deliberately stupid looking and absurd to pre-select for gullible marks. It’s also why goofy conspiritainment shows are loaded with ads for quack medicines. Anyone who thinks we didn’t go to the moon will probably buy herbal dick pills.
- Sharlin 9mo agoI was always a bit confused by the "doctors don't want you to know about" line until I understood that it's in a rather US-centric cultural context where doctors are seen as just wanting your money. Though there's probably also the idea that practitioners of mainstream Western medicine are hostile to "alternative" remedies and don't want you to try the latter even assuming that they're actually effective. I suppose that, ironically, well-intentioned doctors would indeed prefer that people not know about these "tricks" and other medical scams.
- hn-acct 9mo agoI tried clicking one of those just to see and it didn’t even go to the alleged product but instead a landing page with even more of those ads! Shocking, I know :)
- api 9mo agoI wonder how many of them are basically click fraud to get money from ad networks.
- sumtechguy 9mo agoThere is a new trick a lot of them are using on YT. Basically it will be a person doing a 'vlog'. But it is mostly just kind of feel good stuff. But in the middle they will mention some product that made whatever they are blathering about feel better with the coinvent link in the description. Then they finish the video. I have seen a bunch of these. It is a wildly subtle way to get referral points. As the AI part is making it supper easy to mill these things out. The most wild one I have seen is the 'ai scott adams'. The tone is in the right ballpark. Still a little odd but looking better after their first few attempts. I expect soon it will drop random adverts here and there. With the long con being getting people to watch it, then farm them.
- deviation 9mo agoNice - Another post shaming Apple for a problem which the entire internet faces. I'll load up Facebook right now and get the same things. Google? The same. And to no surprise, ads like these break Apple's ad content guidelines[1]. OP should figuratively put down the video camera and go perform CPR. Report the Ad. Make the internet a better place. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/adguide/apd527d891a8/1.0/icloud/1.0 https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/adguide/apd527d891a8/1...
- FabHK 9mo agoStill a bit of a bummer that with Apple, you pay a premium to escape the ad-based ecosystem^W cesspool, both for the hardware and then here for Apple News itself, and then still not only get served ads, but tasteless scam ads.
- 7952 9mo agoThat could make sense as a criticism if Apple were some tiny struggling company. But they have the resources to do better. And a brand identity that definitely sets it apart from the rest of the internet.
- marxisttemp 9mo agoI’m an Apple cultist but it is somewhat comical that Apple has their own content blocking format built into their own browser but somehow thinks I’d ever want to pay for a subscription to read ad-encumbered news in a separate webview app
- wtetzner 9mo agoApple News is a paid subscription. Facebook and Google are not. Apple is supposedly the premium brand that provides a curated experience (isn't that their reasoning behind the closed nature of the App Store?).
- kirkmc 9mo ago[dead]
- makingstuffs 9mo agoI don’t know if it is just a symptom of growing up during the days of the net’s Wild West and navigating through sites like gamecopyworld or what, but I just seem to have some inbuilt filter which doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of ads. It’s hard to explain but it is like some subconscious filtering that occurs on a preRecognise hook or something. Weird.
- cheschire 9mo agoGamecopyworld… now there’s a name I have not heard in a long time. I feel the same though. My only complaint when Adblockers fail is that I have to scroll so much to read some articles on some sites. Sure, there may be some level of subconscious registration occurring in my brain for maybe the company logo, but it’s usually minimal.
- breppp 9mo agojust made me flashback to a url bar and typing that too long of a url
- alsetmusic 9mo agoThere was a site that kept breaking my Reader-mode last week. I would turn it on to filter ads, it would disable it by updating an element (I think that's how it got disabled). I curled the page and piped it to a markdown conversion tool because I really wanted whatever information I'd searched. It's the first time I ever didn't just close the tab and move on because whatever I'd searched was a pressing issue that I wanted to solve. What a fucking dick move by that site. Fuck them, whoever they were.
- jraph 9mo agoPossibly an instance of banner blindness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness
- hightrix 9mo agoThank you! I’ve been searching for a term to describe this type of “ad blindness”. I’ve also trained myself to recognize and not consume ads anywhere they are not blocked.
- insin 9mo agotitle.replace(/(i now assume that |on apple news )/ig, '')
- chrystalkey 9mo agoVery witty
- wazoox 9mo agoBut these are just the same ads as on Google and everywhere else. Almost all internet ads are scam nowadays.
- Y-bar 9mo agoDoesn't make it any better.
- roosgit 9mo agoI wasn't sure where I'd seen that "retiring" spiel before, but then I remembered someone was (still is) selling a handmade jewelry website claiming $4.3M revenue and $1.3M profit.
- speak_plainly 9mo agoApple News and News+ represent everything wrong with modern Apple: a ham-fisted approach to simplicity that ignores the end user. It is their most mediocre service, jarringly jamming cheap clickbait next to serious journalism in a layout that makes no sense. The technical execution is just as lazy. While some magazines are tailored, many are just flat, low-res PDFs that look terrible on the high-end Retina screens Apple sells. Worst of all, Apple had the leverage to revolutionize a struggling industry; instead, they settled for a half-baked aggregator. It’s a toxic mix of Apple tropes that simply weren't thought through. The ads are the cherry on the cake.
- robmccoll 9mo agoThey also bought and killed texture, a fantastic cross-platform magazine subscription service, to somehow further Apple News. I subscribed to Texture on Android. I wouldn't give a dollar to Apple News even if I was in the Apple ecosystem.
- JKCalhoun 9mo agoI ignore Apple News these days. I had high hopes when Apple bought the company that eventually became their News app. Alas… Of course I hate that I can't block ads, but at the same time, I wonder if the unblockable ads are not, in fact, a help for that "struggling industry".
- givinguflac 9mo agoYou can definitely block ads- try NextDNS.
- mikestew 9mo agoI’ve tried blocking the ads with a pi-hole, to no avail. I suspect the ads come from the same servers that the articles do. I can’t find obvious ad servers in the query logs. If anyone has a hint on blocking Apple News ads at DNS, I’d love to hear it.
- 9mo ago
- pupppet 9mo agoLike a cancer, a publicly traded company must grow at any cost.
- ninth_ant 9mo agoI can infer from the neglect that Apple News has been a failure for them and they are keeping it going to avoid consequences for shuttering it. Or if not a failure, it’s not enough of a success to give the product sufficient attention.
- 4ggr0 9mo agoI Assume That All Ads Are Scams
- globular-toast 9mo agoAll ads are scams. They are there to make you unhappy causing you to need to work/spend money to become happy again.
- Night_Thastus 9mo agoYour life will be perfect if you just buy [[PRODUCT]]. You will be happy. You will be envied by your neighbors. You will be rich and powerful. You will have a perfect loving relationship. If you don't buy it you will never have any of these things. Whether they say it explicitly or not, that's what they push through careful imagery and wording.
- elashri 9mo agoWe should assume that all ads in general are scams. The noise to signal ratio is too large to care. Word of mouth and maybe trusted communities like HN is the only way to reliably discover new things.
- rgblambda 9mo agoThat, unfortunately has pushed advertisers into guerrilla marketing tactics like posts and comments disguised as genuine user behaviour. It means we now need to parse whether what we're looking at is an ad or not. Maybe they would have done that anyway though.
- TimByte 9mo agoIn practice I mostly ignore ads too but it feels like an ecosystem-level tragedy
- pjc50 9mo agoThe only way out of this is to make ad platforms liable for scam ads. At the moment it's simply too profitable to print lies.
- giraffe_lady 9mo agoNo there is another way. We can ban advertising completely.
- lossyalgo 9mo agoHow else do you make your product known? In many markets, there are just too many competitors, and so the only way to make any money at all is to advertise. I also hate ads, but I also think there is a better way, and better regulation would go a long way to making ads more bearable.
- ben_w 9mo ago> there are just too many competitors This ought to be a signal that the market is already being served, that it is unlikely to be a big opportunity to make more money. Even with advertising, what you have in such a market is an all-pay auction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-pay_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-pay_auction The end point is nobody makes any profit on apps, because all the money that ought to be profit goes to paying for a bidding war on ad slots.
- micromacrofoot 9mo agoProbably simpler to assume all ads are scams and work back from there
- TimByte 9mo agoThe depressing part is that this is probably working just well enough financially
- bradley13 9mo agoWe use a PiHole, plus ad-blocking browsers, so we see very few ads. According to Claude, around 40% of users in the West use ad-blockers at least some of the time. You would think that advertisers would understand that they are killing the goose? They have made ads pervasive, annoying and untrustworthy. Hence, fewer and fewer people are willing to put up with them. Perhaps enshittification will eventually hit a wall. One can hope.
- lastofthemojito 9mo ago> around 40% of users in the West use ad-blockers at least some of the time And doubtless many of them use intentionally use TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc, where "influencers" subtly (or not-so subtly) advertise to them in the native format of the platform.
- askl 9mo agoThankfully at least for YouTube there's Sponsorblock to filter out that junk as well.
- d--b 9mo agoAt this stage pretty much all ads on the internet are scams
- dkobia 9mo agoSurely what they make from these ads is negligible enough to not warrant the terrible user experience for something users pay for. The ads in Apple News are infuriating.
- sammyoos 9mo agoI bought a remarkably similar mug (last advert shown) from an add from different site [1]. Everything about it was a fake. Almost every feature they advertised did not exist (including the fact that it did not come in a gift box.) That was from a site I visit a lot and I wanted to show support. BTW the AI generated animation is quite cool, too bad it is not real... Do not buy this!! [1] https://kenmiso.com/products/%E2%9A%A1%E2%9C%A8ultimate-v8-engine-gift-mug-a-gearhead%27s-dream https://kenmiso.com/products/%E2%9A%A1%E2%9C%A8ultimate-v8-e...
- sieep 9mo agoso you're saying this is a real product and the ad you saw(then purchased from) was a fake?
- brk 9mo agoI am surprised you could look at that page and expect to receive a quality product. The images all look like really low grade AI-generated renderings. The mug in the cupholder and the giftbox image in particular don't stand up to even casual scrutiny. Not trying to make your situation worse, I just find it interesting what these sites are able to get away with to get people to part with their money.
- userbinator 9mo agoI just find it interesting what these sites are able to get away with to get people to part with their money. That reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy%27s_Chocolate_Experience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy%27s_Chocolate_Experience ...which ironically has crossed the line into "so bad it's good" territory.
- WarmWash 9mo agoMaggie Mcguagh on Instagram's whole schtick is buying and reviewing these fake AI generated products. Its pretty hilarious [1]https://www.instagram.com/maggiemcgaugh https://www.instagram.com/maggiemcgaugh
- easywood 9mo ago
- oriettaxx 9mo agowhat about the #1 result in any research in Apple store 100% shit
- deafpolygon 9mo agoAll ads are scams.
- frizlab 9mo agoPersonally I assume ALL ads are scams. Never mind where they are from.
- mrcwinn 9mo agoI stopped using it about a year ago and I’m so much better for it. It was shocking that Apple would deliver a feed filled with so much tabloid trash and gross ads about plastic surgery and weight loss. It’s really a gross product.
- LightBug1 9mo agoWell, most ads are. It's the very rare advert that speaks to you, and informs you, and simply makes you aware of its existence without the ridiculous, oversized, plastic cherry on top.
- duxup 9mo agoInternet add networks really lowered the bar for advertising. Ads on social media, youtube, everywhere seem to be a high % of scams, or weirdly creepy type health products, or creepily manipulative (and ironic) content like "if you're not using my 5 strategies then you're being manipulated". What is most odd is that I wouldn't mind ads that were for things I want, but nobody seems interested in that angle, they want to just impose their stuff on me.
- kirkmc 9mo agoHi, I'm the person who wrote this article, and I thank whoever posted it here. One comment I'm seeing below is: all ads are scams. I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. Ads are capitalist tools to get you to buy things, but in most cases, you get the thing you buy. I'm into photography, books, and music, for example, and the ads I see for cameras aren't scams, nor are ads for books or records. Some of them may attempt to to manipulate you to part with your money, but this sort of scam is different. One problem with Apple News on the iPad or Mac is the size of the ads. Yes, I notice them and generally scroll past them, but they are huge and obtrusive. I've been noticing these obvious AI ads for a couple of months; especially the one with the mug or the totebags. But they have become endemic recently. Someone I know said that he assumes all ads on Instagram are scams. I don't use IG, but I do use Facebook to keep up with local groups. There was a period where there were tons of those "going out of business ads," and I reported many of them. But I'd say about half the ads I see now are brands I know. Presumably, since IG uses the same algorithm and personal data, my experience there would be the same. I think the problem with Apple News is that it's not widely used, and advertisers don't see it as a good place to spend their money. Since Apple started using Taboola, it's pure enshittification. It's worth noting that in Apple's earnings call last year, they said that their profit margin on services was 78%. While Apple News probably doesn't account for much in that number, it seems like much of the company, as far as services are concerned, is aiming for cash over quality.
- PaulHoule 9mo agoI'd agree that ads can be useful for some things. However many major online platforms are flooded with scams to the extent that ads for anything that aren't obvious scams are suspect. Also there is the converse proposition that: "all clicks are click fraud", that is, many web sites try to trick you into clicking on ads by making pop-ups that are hard to close, by making the layout shift so you click on an ad when you were trying to click a link, etc.
- dev_l1x_be 9mo agoThe financial optimum for any ad company is to accommodate scams.
- victor106 9mo agoDear Tim Apple: you don’t need the tiny amount you get these ads. You do need to fix this embarrassing thing that you released called “Liquid Glass”
- tonyedgecombe 9mo agoSadly we are going to get more ads (Apple Maps is next). If it goes much further people will start questioning whether Apple products are worth the premium price.
- AlexandrB 9mo agoI'm already questioning it. The software quality just keeps getting worse.
- al_borland 9mo agoI have used Apple products for over 20 years, because I felt like a customer instead of the product. Apple’s services strategy has changed this perception. I question Apple’s competitive advantage when they shift to a Google-like business model. They are actively throwing away the very thing that made them a unique and valuable player in the industry, and for what? A couple extra percent profit in the short term? Steve Jobs always said he wanted to make insanely great products for customers. Products they’d be proud to recommend to their family. It feels like Cook lost his way, spending too much time focusing on the stock, instead of letting great products drive adoption, and letting the stock follow. If the rumors are true that Apple is preparing for a change at the top, I how we see a dramatic change in the services strategy and Apple can get back to making great products that people actually want to use.
- storus 9mo agoI never use Apple News but they often pop up among the apps that are using significant energy. I am wondering what does it really do on the background.
- dexterdog 9mo agoWhich is why I never us a phone that requires me to have certain apps installed.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- flpm 9mo agoPlease condense all spread out comments "all ads are scam" into one single comment thread. ChatGPT: (sponsored) Buy this cute mug in the shape of a purse with AI created pictures of a dog! Just $19.99 (at 80% discount)
- npiauilino 9mo agoI do have a similar feeling, but about YouTube ads. Seems like the region where I live there's a problem with gambling apps and, even if I've never used any app of this kind or showed interest in gambling sites/platforms, I'm bombarded everyday by ads of gambling apps on YouTube. Since last year, I've been reporting every gambling ad as "Promoting illegal product/service" (they are, in fact, illegal here) to no avail, there's no end to these ads nor seems like YouTube is willing to do anything but implement dark patterns to discourage reporting, such as delayed pop-ups when reporting to interrupt typing. I noticed some time ago that others ads that seemed not related to gambling were also leading to gambling apps. They are categorized as anything, like Hotels, Banking, Cullinary and Education. Don't look like YouTube checks if the things being advertised are really what they claim to be. It's worse when you remember that kids also use YouTube a lot.
- jcelerier 9mo agoI'm amazed to discover that there are people on earth that believe that some ads aren't scam. It should be forbidden by law to advertise, it is a scourge on humanity.
- colesantiago 9mo agoI agree. I clicked on the daring fireball link and immediately saw an intrusive ad. They are just everywhere, the web was never like this in the beginning. A complete scourge.
- asystole 9mo ago> They are just everywhere, the web was never like this in the beginning. Maybe briefly. I've been on the web since the late 90s and horrible banner ads (and for a while, shudder, flash ads) have been a thing for as long as I can remember. At least now we have good content blockers!
- eitland 9mo agoPersonally I ignore most ads but I have also bought some really good products based on ads and there are companies I wish would advertise more, for example relvant conferences that I only find out about because someone posted about their experiences being there.
- Night_Thastus 9mo agoMost people consider that an extreme take, but I agree completely. They're an active drain on the environments they're placed in - both physical and digital. They're a drain on the mental energy of the people who are forced to see or hear them. They make the entire world feel artificial and fake - a place not made for humans.
- benterix 9mo agoI'd generalize it to "I assume all ads on major platforms are scam." This includes especially channels owned by Google and Meta. I remember back in 2010 I had to wait a week and correct my ad before it was approved and now they basically stream all kinds of scams without checking. They do have quite a few people, they could build a better scam detection system but it's against their interests.
- bombcar 9mo agoWhat's annoying is they do have tons of scam detection crap, which seems to only trigger on legitimate advertising (insofar as any advertising is legitimate) - the problem is there are millions of people willing to work on getting scams through for pennies a day, and it doesn't cost them anything.
- jandrese 9mo agoYes. Facebook is especially bad about letting outright scammers buy ad slots.
- Spivak 9mo agoMeanwhile in real life IG and TikTok ads are the only ones normal people seem to generally trust. I've only ever heard people talking about getting Instagram or TikTok ads for things and actually buying them in a way that would sound genuinely jarring if they said "an ad on Google." I think there's something to be said for how IG and TikTok ads are actually made that makes them more appealing which is that they actually try to be worthwhile content to watch in a way banner ads and TV commercials just aren't.
- direwolf20 9mo agoMy IG ads are so extremely personalized with every detail of my life it's both extremely creepy because I volunteered none of this data, and very useful because they are showing me things I might want to buy.
- 9mo ago
- meindnoch 9mo agoAll ads are scams. Some are worse than others.
- forinti 9mo agoIn the 1980's TV ads in Uruguay were really simple. Some were just a static bi-colour image of a shoe or a coat, some text, and a voice would say "buy shoes at such shop at such address". I guess that was at the same time the low point of marketing and also its most honest stage.
- Night_Thastus 9mo agouBlockOrigin and Pihole. I refuse to use the internet without them. Ads are a cancer. Not just on the internet, but in general.
- ataru 9mo agoI've noticed that the apple news ads target sensitive issues. The retirement one is a good example of that. I've seen ads that appear to already know my financial status and health conditions. I tried the option to reset my advertising identifier, it doesn't seem to make much impact.
- colesantiago 9mo agoYou should assume all ads are complete scams. Some of them are funded by scamming others, crypto, VC, etc. Even the first link in the article [0] has a VC backed startup advertising (they paid $11K!) that nobody asked for. There is no such thing as an ethical ad whatsoever. [0] https://daringfireball.net/2024/07/apple_taboola_sitting_in_a_tree https://daringfireball.net/2024/07/apple_taboola_sitting_in_...
- damnitbuilds 9mo agoAnyone who pays $1000 dollars for a phone has already been scammed once, so they make a good target for scammers.
- snicky 9mo agoA friend of mine owned a site once. At some point he couldn't figure out how to fix a frontend bug that appeared on IE only. In the end he was so pissed that instead of fixing the bug, he decided to stick a couple of additional Adsense banners <if IE>. His revenue went up drastically.
- olivia-banks 9mo agoI've an avid Apple News user, and while I haven't seen the sorts of ads in the article, I do gets lots of ads for tax filing software. Namely, Intuit TurboTax. They are the only ads I ever get. What's more, if you even touch them while scrolling, it triggers the "download app" screen, even if I don't explicitly tap. This is new as of a few weeks ago.
- scratchyone 9mo agoI'm genuinely haunted by these TurboTax ads, I see that download app popup at least 3 times a day when I use Apple News. Truly cannot believe someone at Apple though that was an acceptable user experience for ads.
- bombcar 9mo agoThe era of Tim Apple is definitely different from Jobs; had he seen an ad like that he'd have fired half the company. But management by metrics means line go up? All is good.
- olivia-banks 9mo agoI'm glad that I'm not the only one this is happening to! I don't believe I've ever even expressed interest in using anything Intuit, at least consciously. Perhaps its the accidental download-app dialog that's mimicking engagement?
- al_borland 9mo agoSerious question, how/why do you keep using an app that behaves like this? I subscribed to Apple One for a period of time and tried to use News+. Even when paying, it seems like most of the article were behind a paywall. That, plus the ads, I didn’t understand what I was paying for. I can have a much better user experience with RSS.
- olivia-banks 9mo agoI have the opposite experience, very few of the articles are behind a paywall, which is the main reason why I stick with it. That, and I'm a fan of Apple News Quartiles, and their crossword UI is nice :-) That's hardly a reason to stick with News+, but it's already in my bundle. Also, I probably split my non-tech news time between News+, the NYT App, and Reeder (I'm in the process of moving more to RSS).
- yalogin 9mo agoOof this is disappointing. Taboola for me represents the worst of the ad industry. Apple falling for it just shows how much of a flop their news app is.
- randusername 9mo agoWhat's the user appeal of Apple news or whatever the Google equivalent is? From the outside looking in the value is the feed, but that seems super creepy to me. It is an awful lot of power to give these companies to decide how we use their devices to interact with the world _and_ how we view the world. I don't want anyone curating the current events or long-form I read. I want to see the whole buffet and choose myself, even sampling the unsavory ones from time-to-time to keep myself in check.
- PaulHoule 9mo agoHuh? With millions of pieces of content to choose from a day some kind of curation is inevitable.
- PaulHoule 9mo agoThe more you pay for a subscription, the more valuable it is to advertise to you -- maybe the classic example is The New York Times which has highly annoying advertising if you're a subscriber because you've qualified yourself. Or rather, if you believe you are too poor to afford a $10 a month subscription you probably believe you're too poor to afford anything that is advertised. The model of "premium subscription with no ads" flies in the face of reality.
- bombcar 9mo agoI would be willing to consider paying for vetted ads - in other words, you pay for the NYT and you get a guarantee that you're only seeing ads that have been personally vetted by the NYT for correctness, appropriateness, etc. Advertising is speech and it used to be that if a magazine/newspaper printed a scam ad, it was horribly damaging to their business, both legally and morally.
- PaulHoule 9mo agoYou'd think so. I think YouTube has no idea that when I see 70% ads for things that are transparently scams, the other 30% of advertisers are being scammed too because I'm going to assume that they are all scams. Meta has been busted for putting it in writing that they could do something about scam ads but won't because it would cost them revenue in the short term.
- bombcar 9mo agoYouTube doesn't care as long as people are buying the ads. They need to be made to care, somehow.
- tcfhgj 9mo ago> I would be willing to consider paying for vetted ads why, though?
- direwolf20 9mo ago
- dominicrose 9mo agoA trusted company works with untrustworthy companies to scam clients. That's either incompetence or betrayal of trust. In both cases, the only solution is to be careful, boycott and press charges when something is illegal.
- nikanj 9mo agoJust assume all ads everywhere are scams, it’s an accurate enough heuristic
- otikik 9mo agoI just want to use this space to say that I hate the fake AI-generated ripped tai-chi guy from the Youtube ads SO MUCH.
- petr25102018 9mo agoI am glad I am not the only one. Why do I see it like 50 times a day?
- stronglikedan 9mo agoI prefer these types of ads. They're easy to identify at a glance and ignore.
- laweijfmvo 9mo agoThe weird thing about Apple News: as the article mentions, paying for “+” still shows ads, but not paying at all means you can’t see content that’s already free online. Try it: when it tells you a story isn’t available without a subscription, search the headline and often the story can be read on its original source, for free.
- afthonos 9mo agoDon’t make me tap the “ads are cancer” sign.
- alsetmusic 9mo ago> Shame on Apple for creating a honeypot for scam ads in what they consider to be a premium news service. This company cannot be trusted with ads in its products any more. As a longtime Mac nerd, this makes the ads story even worse than it already was. See this [0] (unrelated to me) article on the ways that Cook's focus on the stock has caused rot for a good summation of how software / services are tanking at Apple. All plugged-in Apple nerds have been aware of the decline. It's finally reached an apex where it's getting a lot of blog posts. I really hope they're noticing (I think they are - John Gruber wasn't granted a live interview after criticizing their AI efforts last year), but I don't expect them to act rationally in response). As a decades-long Apple nerd who feared the company would collapse in the 90s, it's fucking horrid. 0. The Fallen Apple - https://mattgemmell.scot/the-fallen-apple/ https://mattgemmell.scot/the-fallen-apple/
- tgtweak 9mo agoTiktok ads, Youtube Ads, Instagram/Meta ads - there's just a huge influx of scams and obviously fake sites on them. AI generated copy, AI generated landing pages... My honest take on it is that it's the payment companies that are complacent here - they're just allowing payment processing for anyone now up to a certain amount before doing proper diligence. The fact these chinese vendors can spin up a website, get payment processing, verify an ads account and buy advertising shows that many compliance functions are being skipped (or are complicit) in this. It works because everyone in the game has something to gain from it - Apple's contract likely puts verification on Taboola's plate, which is likely not being done per their own "controls" process, or is itself being automated (poorly). Taboola is getting paid because they're running these ads and charging for them, the vendors are being paid because they're drop shipping temu garbage that doesn't resemble their AI ads (since taboola isn't checking this at all) and getting away with it for a few months by long shipping times and delaying refunds/chargebacks long enough to get paid, and the payment processors (paypal, apple pay, google pay) are all making money on their obscene 1%+ processing markups, and have special "group" programs where a company can underwrite their own merchants provided they follow guidelines (compliance offloading). Visa/Mastercard are offloading their compliance duties to the payment processors until they get a formal complaint or chargeback/refund spike over a certain ratio (where they issue a fine and seize processing volume - which is also income for them). btw if you want to be 100% sure something is a scam - check the iframe url on the credit card input form on the checkout page - on mustylevo.com its https://cashiers.myshopline.com/pci-sdk/v3/iframe.html?merchantId=7318928791253029610 https://cashiers.myshopline.com/pci-sdk/v3/iframe.html?merch... which is hardly a name brand ecom platform - they have a "shopify-like" checkout but that isn't shopify (props to shopify/shop pay - they've been very quick to kill these kind of scams on their platform despite it losing them some fees). So yeah - everyone involved in this is making money and is complicit through their lack of process.
- tart-lemonade 9mo ago> It works because everyone in the game has something to gain from it It's reminiscent of triangulation fraud in that regard. The incentive is for everyone involved to keep their mouths shut because you buy something for below-market prices on sites like eBay, the "seller" places orders using stolen credit and debit cards with legitimate retailers, and the product ships directly to you. Everyone wins...as long as the account holder doesn't pay attention to their statements.
- flkiwi 9mo agoMy "favorite", and likely related, part of Apple News is that if I have blocked a source because it is unreliable, heavily biased, etc., and a story from that source appears in the main timeline, Apple News shows a greyed out version of the story--headline and image visible--with "You have blocked this publication" (or similar). You can still clearly see the story, so it's not blocked at all. I assume this comes down to some sort of distribution agreement, but, as bad as the ads are, this single behavior is the reason I stopped using Apple News and continue searching for a successor.
- qwerpy 9mo agoApple stocks app has a similar obnoxious pattern. It’s a genius UX. Why is this stock up/down today? Conveniently a bunch of articles are displayed that explain it. But there’s no way to block news sources that are paywalled. But there was a workaround in which you could individually block each news source. But then Apple gave themselves a way out. If “Apple editors” choose to highlight an article then you’ll be forced to see it regardless of your preferences. Coincidentally they do love to highlight paywalled articles. I attempted to find a stocks app replacement but nothing else has such a slick interface and wasn’t also crammed full of ads.
- flkiwi 9mo agoI actually tried Ground News for a while because, you know, why not? I appreciate what they're trying to do, but the signal to noise ratio was so, so unfavorable between the UI clutter, the curious lack of certain categories, and the oddly slow update rate.
- lossyalgo 9mo agoI also tried Ground News multiple times now, because I think it's a great idea but as you said, the UX is just so atrocious and completely unusable. I'm completely overwhelmed whenever I visit that the only choice I have is to close the tab and go read news somewhere else.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- masonwan 9mo agoApple News Ads just started in 2024. Maybe they are still learning how to battle the dark side of the Internet. Use other platforms. Don't use Apple News. You could use an AI chatbot to find news for you. It has no ads, much easier to read, totally free, and tailored to your instructions.
- mock-possum 9mo agoSo close to getting it. all ads are scams, in the sense that all cops are bastards - not so much that every individual cop is a bastard, more that the institution of advertising enshrines, encourages, and rewards scamming its audience. Do honest ads exist? Sure - but since you’ll never know which is which, you’re better off avoiding them as a rule, the risk is not worth the reward. Is it possible to change the institution of policing, such that the bastards will be punished and excluded and removed as a general consideration? It’s possible, yes, but there are so many dollars tied up in the advertising industry that it’s pretty hard to imagine.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- cindyllm 9mo ago[dead]
- Finnucane 9mo agoThis suggests that there are online ads that are not scams. Who knew?
- rectang 9mo agoOn the modern internet, there seems to be less money in selling advertising to legitimate businesses than in helping scammers connect with and take advantage of the vulnerable. > These fake “going out of business ads” have been around for a few years, and even the US Better Business Bureau warns about them, as they take peoples’ money then shut down. Shouldn’t facilitating such scams be illegal? Cracking down on media companies like Apple who serve scams might be a bridge too far, but why not go after a scam aggregator like Taboola?
- wordsunite 9mo agoThis is one of the reasons I’m so glad Anthropic (at least for now) is positioning itself away from ads in chats as a monetization strategy. It was so nice to see a company shifting AWAY from the enshitification of products. I’m disheartened to see the recent stumbles by Apple, this Taboola association just seems so sketchy. It’s quite a jarring juxtaposition when you see those types of ads next to important stories. Even on other news sites. I just don’t get it. I mean, I get it from they “hey more money for shareholders” angle, but not from a “this is worth cheapening our brand, making our products worse and not caring about what users/customers actually want” angle.
- orsenthil 9mo agoThe biggest problem is the "trust" that users have with the Apple News ecosystem. They pay for it too!
- lemonberry 9mo agoThe fact that I want to delete it infuriates me. The fact that you can't delete the app infuriates me more. I open it semi-regularly with some naive hope that it won't be garbage.
- kgwxd 9mo agoWhat's special about Apple news? That should be the default position on ads no matter where you see it.
- teekert 9mo agoMe in the App Store: Install this app that lets you fake wash cars and all sorts of things! (Instead of actually taking care of something). Install Temu, shop like a millionaire (who gives a F about the planet! Just buys clothes you don’t even have to wash, just throw them away!) Oh you’ve searched for Microsoft Authenticator? Here have some scam app that has been downloaded 541 times! Steve would turn around in his grave, and I? I have lost all respect for this once great company and hope I never succumb to such temptation if my company gets successful.
- intended 9mo agoCyber crime case closure rates, from what I can find online, were sub 5%.
- Swoerd 9mo ago[dead]
- seabass 9mo agoA thousand and one paper cuts. I feel like this shortsighted decision making will cost Apple so much trust in the long run.
- quadtree 9mo agoIs there a compelling alternative to the subscription part of Apple News (which gives access to a wide variety of publications' paywalled content for $13/month)? For people who dropped this, was there something better you switched to?
- anovikov 9mo agoAll ads are scams. That's life. Only children and the elderly click on them anyway, and they are optimised to be clicked on by those since otherwise it just doesn't work at all. More to that - many of the ads today aren't even scams. They merely exist as a deliberate source of annoyance to compel the person to pay for an ad-free premium version, like 90s era "nag screens" on shareware. Times when ads could give a legit business any positive conversion, are long gone.
- JBiserkov 9mo agoI assume all ads are scams. Cause they are :-)
- PeterStuer 9mo agoTo be fair, it is not just Apple. Scams are rampant regardless of the channel serving the ads.
- hu3 9mo agoThe point is that Apple marketing positions themselves as premium. So most people generally expect better than "the norm" from them. People use to say "I feel safe giving an iPhone to grandma because the wallet garden protects her". Well that argument falls short when Apple allows Taboola of all scam ad networks the be present in their news app. Or when app store search results is filled with misleading ads.
- deadbabe 9mo agoI see a future where people can earn a bit of money letting corporate AI Agents have access to their accounts to engage in conversation with followers or post comments and subtly push product recommendations. The more high value followers or friends you have, the more you could earn!
- whalesalad 9mo agothis is the enshittification of the world. players like taboola.com are responsible for this. have u ever been to truth social? it's the most user-hostile experience since the days of limewire and bonzai buddy - https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump
- anshumankmr 9mo agoHere's something that I live by:I ~now~ assume that all ads on ~Apple News~ are scams (Unless proven otherwise)
- benrazdev 9mo agowhy does an RSS feed aggregator even need ads in the first place?
- redundantly 9mo agoI use Apple News every day, but just for the puzzles. Otherwise it's a garbage app.
- walt_grata 9mo agoI assume all ads are scams. That's easier.
- bastardoperator 9mo agoLet me fix this, "I now assume that all ads are scams"
- charcircuit 9mo ago>as they take peoples’ money then shut down That's not what these sites do. They are dropshipping sites. Make up a random expensive price and then say it is on sale at a price where you still make profit. Some make the shipping more expensive so they advertised price of the item is even lower or even free.
- hu3 9mo agoNo, some of them DO take people's money and shutdown without delivering anything or do deliver some fake crap that buys them just enough time to function a little longer before shutting down again. Taboola is a scammers paradise and I'm surprised Apple touched them with a 10 foot pole even.
- kittikitti 9mo agoApple News itself is a scam. The journalism there is filled with clickbait headlines. Apple News accelerated the drop in quality from the transformation between print and digital news. They just need you to click on the headline, and most people don't even do that.
- antonyh 9mo agoApple News+ is so bad, it's literally unusable. Unfortunately I can't unsubscribe without paying MORE. I use all the other services on a family subscription except this one, but if I remove it the total cost goes up. I hate that I'm supporting something that is this bad, and the quantity of ads is the main factor - not only am I a paying customer, it's still filled with the worst kind of promoted 'content'.
- b00ty4breakfast 9mo agoMaybe I'm just scarred from the late 90s internet, but I have assumed that every ad on every website is a scam at all times for as long as I can remember. Which is why I block ads unconditionally everywhere that I can.
- cvoss 9mo agoI'm old enough to consider TV ads as scams too. "For only 6 payments of 19.99!" The "mute" button on my parents' remote control was worn off. I still mute ads that I get through low-tier streaming subscriptions. It's really jarring to go to a friend's house where they don't mute their ads. Heck, I've even seen scam ads in printed local newspapers. They typically target seniors with a thing for collecting rare coins and use misleading language about the U.S. Mint.
- sysworld 9mo agoIt was a wild day when I realised not everyone changed channels or muted when an ad played on live tv. Can't believe people watch them.
- altairprime 9mo agoI’m glad that I canceled when they signed with Taboola. Whatever that division is doing wrong, it’s clearly become worse under current News leadership, and I’ve seen no signs of pushback from Apple over that. They never should have invited random third-parties to sell ads at auction to their users.
- bastard_op 9mo agoI tried an iphone once about 6 years ago, but once I realized all browsers were essentially safari and there WAS NO ADBLOCKING, I was disgusted to emphatically go back to Android and Firefox with ublock plus. Apple is like the US government protecting pedophiles, but protecting adware and everything wrong with the internet, forcing people to be insecure and watch ads. I feel bad for apple users unable to use a clean ad-free internet.
- einr 9mo agoiOS has had support for ad blockers since 2015. I never ever see ads on iOS Safari and have not for many years.
- wnc3141 9mo agoWhile it's an affordable alternative to individual subscriptions, man are those ads testing my patience. Also the software doesn't need be this bad. It can't handle many tabs, and there's so real.prganozation to a reading list.
- bluebxrry 9mo agoI've missed the entire shittification cycle of Apple News which was added in iOS 10. Around that update, I always put any new default Apple apps (being added every iOS update), including Apple News into a folder I named "utilities" in case I ever needed them. Thanks for the heads up. I'll update the name to trash right now.
- FpUser 9mo agoI used to have access to Apple II. This was about the only Apple I liked. After that my every encounter turned me off or whatever reasons
- rrrx3 9mo agoAs a former adtech guy, as a general rule of thumb, I consider _all ads everywhere_ to be scams. Apple using Taboola is so hysterical because of their claim to focus on user experience. Taboola ads are a chumbox of the absolute worst bullshit ads on the market. The only thing worse is the zergnet stuff.
- nabbed 9mo agoThat explains the incredibly attention-stealing animated knee joint ad I sometimes see on Apple News+. On the other hand, the ads are usually static, the content on the page will stay put (unlike news sites on the regular web, where the paragraph I am reading will shift up or down and often will get completely jettisoned out of the viewport), there are no pop-ups, and the page has never scrolled back up to the top while I was already half-way down the article.
- hmokiguess 9mo agoserious question, how do these things operate at this scale as if it was normal? the amount of scams keep increasing almost exponentially at this point. can just anyone create an ad for anything anywhere? is there no sort of filter on being a legitimate business, protected classes, target demographics, etc?
- QuartzHarbor47 9mo ago[dead]
- Wobbles42 9mo agoI wonder if there is a point where signal to noise in advertising gets so low that the industry itself collapses. Many people actively ignore advertisement at this point, but there is still enough attention to make paying for them profitable. I don't see any reason that couldn't change in a sufficiently noisy environment. If demand for advertising drops too low as a whole, and ad supported content goes away as a result, is there enough of the internet left to maintain critical mass and keep existing? Maybe spam really does win in the end.
- recursive 9mo agoI think people are very bad at estimating how much advertising affects them. Everyone thinks that they themselves are immune to it, but it's the other people who are targeted. Except everyone thinks this, and advertising is bigger than ever. The truth is most people that say they're actively ignoring it are still getting affected.
- sanex 9mo agoThose old retiring leatherworker ads were really making the rounds on YouTube a few months ago. Got me to click but Spidey senses went off.
- shmeeed 9mo agoI'm surprised it's such a big thing. Is this a style of ad common in the US? To me the whole premise always seemed ridiculously fishy. Why would a retiring artisan commission a Youtube ad campaign, of all things?
- sanex 9mo agoNot at all, that's why it was so weird and noticeable.
- pndy 9mo agoThe first variants of this type of scam have appeared in Poland some 3-4 years ago on facebook. A poor private business owner had to close his/her/their business due to retiring, or place being devastated after the robbery or by fireworks explosion. And they're in a dire need of selling all their goods at a very attractive prices fast. There were leatherworkers, tailors, shoe makers, or as below jewellers/goldsmiths https://old.reddit.com/r/Polska/comments/1ltpt35 https://old.reddit.com/r/Polska/comments/1ltpt35 - from 7 months ago, this one also comes with a fake review from "Żuromin A." - which isn't even a male name but the name of a small village in northern Masovian voivodeship
- nbhgvufgk 9mo agoapple is quickly becoming the OS for scams and spam.
- ordu 9mo agoThe mug doesn't seem right for me. I looks like a geometry of it is badly broken.
- everdrive 9mo agoGreat to see research like this. It should go without saying that one should be blocking ads and really not using any news apps whatsoever. However, a nice analysis like this is invaluable to understand exactly why these sorts of ads and apps are a negative experience.
- conciliatory 9mo agoI am especially annoyed by the dark pattern whereby if I do a fast swipe up in an article, the page will scroll to a stop with the ad landing right under my finger, so the accidental click rate is higher. Very disappointed in Apple - as if the money from accidental clicks on spam ads is truly a meaningful revenue stream vs the cost of customer goodwill. Certainly optimizing in the wrong direction.
- jongjong 9mo agoI now assume everything is a scam. If I heard about it, it's a scam. Some things are not scams but I will never hear about them.
- trehalose 9mo agoIt's strange to me have different people have different eyes for spotting AI. Sometimes I see somebody say, "That's obviously AI, look at how wrong it looks!" and I can barely see it even after they point it out. Sometimes I see somebody say, "Hm, it looks almost indistinguishable from a real photo, I might not have realized if I didn't already know," but I found it immediately jarring. This article shows three photos of ads and says the first two are clearly AI-generated and the third one possibly so; to me, the third one was the only one where I thought, "That thing looks really fucked up in one of those ways only AI can do."
- kazinator 9mo agoThat engine mug is a kind of half-scam. The images look as if it might be cast metal (like pewter), but most of the body is just painted resin. It does have the 3D shape depicted It's not as egregious a deception buying what obviously looks like a knit sweater and receiving a cotton T with a digital print.
- lugu 9mo agoAds are essentially a biding system. Less biders means less profit. Removing scams means losing money.
- etherealG 9mo agoReplace apple with nothing. Replace now with always. Replace ads on with nothing. You now understand news. News is a scam. It’s called propaganda. We knew this for a long time.
- ted_bunny 9mo agoGet ready for literally everything to be a scam. The declining rate of profit is showing itself all around us.
- dlenski 9mo ago> These fake “going out of business ads” have been around for a few years, There was an extremely funny and interesting Canadaland podcast about these, wherein Canadaland's founder Jesse Brown bought an "elegant men's cardigan" from a fake Toronto clothing store that was "going out of business" due to its ersatz owners’ retirement. https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/1176-mens-elegant-cardigan-xl/ https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/1176-mens-elegant-cardiga...
- soummicha 9mo ago[dead]
- HackerThemAll 9mo agoAll ads are scams anyway, why limit them to Apple news? If anybody pushes anything down your throat, that's the thing you DON'T need. As simple as that. If you need something, you'll find it yourself.