[mdasen]

This is what basically everyone else has done over the past decade. Google used to put a different background behind ads in its search (https://www.fsedigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Google...). It made it really easy to tell what was an ad and skip over it quickly. Now it's a lot harder to quickly notice what's an ad and what isn't.

Sites used to have banner ads. Now they show posts that look exactly like the organic posts in your feed, just with a small "sponsored", "promoted", or "ad" mark somewhere. Half the time the post is large enough that it takes up my entire screen and the "sponsored" mark is below and off-screen.

If you go on Amazon, the "sponsored" text is much smaller and light gray rgb(87,89,89) while the product text is near-black rgb(15,17,17). They want to make the sponsored text less visible. Sometimes it's even unclear if the sponsored tag applies to a single product or a group of products.

It's shocking that Apple hasn't done this trick yet when everyone else started doing it years ago.

[kace91]

>It's shocking that Apple hasn't done this trick yet when everyone else started doing it years ago.

They sell a walled garden. If shit gets inside the walls, we might as well come out.

I’m not willing to pay the apple tax any longer. Let the ad sellers pay if they’re the main costumers.

[jama211]

I’d like to revisit and see if in 6 months time you’ve actually left or if you just were angry.

[MonkeyClub]

> I’m not willing to pay the apple tax any longer.

Problem here is that when you decide you no longer wish to pay the tax and want to exit the walled garden, you discover that there's a heap of functionality and convenience you'll have to let go, and add complexity and cost to your setup.

I actively avoided relying on iCloud even when it was the sane option, but many people that will feel like the walled garden is no longer suiting them will have to figure out ways to move files, emails, and (crucially) communication channels out of the ecosystem.

I think a large number of them will decide that it's not worth the hassle, and remain walled in. Which is the idea to begin with.

Sure, this is HN, and many will say "screw it, I'll Nextcloud my way out", but the genpop will remain within the gilded cage.

[p1necone]

This feels inevitable for any 'unique' company that lives long enough for leadership to retire and starts hiring replacement c-levels externally.

Those external people are going to run Apple just like whatever other companies they were running before. You need to keep the vision alive and promote people internally who understand that vision to keep running the company.

Being publicly traded probably doesn't help either.

[dymk]

It’s still better than the alternatives

[bool3max]

What’s interesting to me is that no matter how “hidden” the AD indicator may be, my brain always seems to very quickly train itself to swiftly skip such posts when scrolling/browsing.

Or I could simply be another clueless victim of advertising. If only I could know the number of sponsored posts I never consciously acknowledge and am influenced by on the daily.

[tartoran]

If the vast majority of people recognized ads and skipped them as more technically minded people do, they'd either not do that or step up a notch and make them even harder to spot. The reality is that these dark patterns do work for a large part of the users. We're the lucky few who can stay away though it is taxing and tiring.

[snailmailman]

Yeah. Its going to be easy to skip the first result in an app store search, not because its highlighted, but additionally because it isn't ever what i was searching for. The app store search has been broken like this for years and any change they make short of adding or removing the ad won't change my habits.

in every search ive done on the app store in the last several years, I'm looking for a specific app. That app is never the ad result at the top, its always the second result down.

Right now i did a search for several different popular social media apps. TikTok was the top 'ad' result for all of them. Then i did a search for TikTok and got some random app i've never heard of as the 'ad' result. Its like it doesn't want the same app to fill both of the top two slots, but there is always an ad. So what you are looking for is always second on the list. Never first.

Because of this, why would i ever click the ad? If i search something less-specific like "flashcard app" the best result will fill the second slot. Something else goes in the ad slot.

[amelius]

Shouldn't be too difficult to train a DL network on it, as well. I'm waiting for a pi-hole like device that works on the HDMI level and simply replaces ads by blank space (or art, or whatever the user chooses).

[ocdtrekkie]

Normal users do not do this. We break Google Ads' links at the office (yours should too, malicious linkjacking in ads is prevalent) and I am told "Google doesn't work" all the time. People have to be taught not to click the ads and usually that's only effective if you ensure the ads don't work.

[dpkirchner]

Amazon has gotten "good" at it. If I search for, say, AirPods, I get ads from Apple followed by the regular listings that look identical sans gray "sponsored" text. It helps that in this rare case the ads are actually relevant.

[browningstreet]

The problem with this, I've found, is that you end up skipping a lot of things, and then find out later on that features were introduced years ago that you've wished, throughout the interim, existed. It's hard to keep up.

I wish there was regulation enforcing background colors for ads.

[terminalshort]

I do this automatically too. But then I wonder if that matters. Are the results that have the best SEO actually going to be any better than the sites that pay the most to be displayed for my search? I have no idea.

[bevr1337]

"I can always tell when someone is lying to me."

[KolibriFly]

Yet when Apple adopts the same patterns, it feels less like "catching up" and more like quietly abandoning a standard they once benefited from

[Hammershaft]

Amazon is particularly wild because you can use the site without realizing %70 of your results are ads.

[Traubenfuchs]

I‘d argue it‘s often 100% unless you are looking for things so extremely specific no one paid ad/placement money for it.

[average_r_user]

I can’t confirm that exact percentage, but yes—“prime” placements on Amazon are driven by Amazon Ads.

the Sponsored Brands banner at the top of the search results page, and the Top of Search Sponsored Products slots.

[1] https://advertising.amazon.com/lp/build-your-business-with-a...

[socalgal2]

I'm not trying to excuse Amazon but you do know what like, super markets, best buy etc, take ad money (promotional money?) from suppliers who pay for placement. That Samsung TV at the front being pushed at you, that's effectively ad money Samsung paid to have their TVs put at the front of the store. Those cans of Coke stacked at the end of the isle or piled up near the entrance at your super market? Coke paid to have them placed there.

I'm not saying it's good or that therefore Amazon or Apple should be excused. I'm just saying, the naieve me thought Coke was on the end of the isle because the store thought it's what customers wanted. No, it's what Coke wanted, and paid for. And it's the same with Amazon and now Apple.

[3eb7988a1663]

I am suddenly realizing how silly it is that I have put up with this for decades. Are GreaseMonkey or similar tools still around that would let me customize the CSS of sites? I am thinking I should be able to run my own styling to make the ads nearly invisible. Or do the big players do all sorts of tricks to make identifying the ad content so dynamic that it would require constant vigilance to maintain? I have heard that Facebook does insane rendering tricks to prevent people from scraping their sites, not impossible to imagine some companies obfuscate the ad selection.

Probably a few dozen lines of CSS could give me a much better browsing experience.

[tasuki]

Yes, Greasemonkey still exists. Also there are ad blockers, you know? Such as the oft recommended uBlock Origin[0].

[0]: https://ublockorigin.com/

[ebertucc]

I use the Stylus extension for site-specific CSS in Chrome. Usually end up with a big comma-separated list of selectors getting the { display: none !important; visibility: hidden !important } treatment.

[downrightmike]

ublock origin does wonders. I use it to give HN a dark mode

[wahnfrieden]

Use an adblocker, like the FBI recommends.

[veqq]

> GreaseMonkey or similar tools still around that would let me customize the CSS of sites

That's default firefox behavior.

[BLKNSLVR]

I like how, the way you've described it, it sounds as if, with the effort they go to to make ads as difficult to identify as possible, they're trying to hide their shame.

It's tacit admission that people need to be 'tricked' into thinking that the advertising is actually an organic result. It's manipulative. It's an admission of the fact that advertising actively gets in the way of the service they're (incidentally) providing that 'the people' actually find useful.

Unfortunately this is just a much longer way of saying 'you're the product'.

[spolitry]

There’s no shame. They want money, ad clicks make money, and users avoid things they know are ads, so content providers obscure the ads identification signal. Stop anthropomorphizing corporations. They hate that.

[beAbU]

On amazon.ie at least, the sponsored products are so hilariously out of place it's dead easy to spot them, and banner blindness kicks in.

E.g. I search for "nuk baby bottle warmer" and the first result is a window washing squeegee and the second is a bathroom grime scrubber.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

Works as intended. If you’re looking for a baby bottle it’s reasonable to assume that your house is in disarray from the whole new baby in the house thing, and it’s above average probability that you’ll buy completely unrelated products during your search.

[patrick451]

Apple not adopting these kinds of user hostile designs is why a lot of us were happy to a premium for their products. I guess Cook is just too stupid to understand that.

[troyvit]

What it must be like to be an Apple hardware engineer these days, designing the most beautiful physical devices in personal computing, then handing it over to the bosses where they load it up with this schlock.

[snarf21]

Yeah, we need a law that these are very much visually distinguished and in the same color so we can learn to ignore them. So much of the web is completely anti-consumer.

I used to look for stuff on Poshmark but now when you search it is almost impossible to find your search results as everything is "Promoted". So I just gave up and stop using their product.

[Terr_]

Found a series of Google screenshots over time, although some of the search terms are questionable. :p

https://blog.scaledon.com/p/the-evolution-of-google-ads

[encom]

Ironically, as I scrolled a few pages down that site, the content was blocked by a popup and I closed the tab.

The internet is over. Pack it up.

[heraldgeezer]

This is the end goal of having apps instead of browsers.

On an app I have to see the ad.

On a website I can use Firefox + ublock origin and I won't see an advert.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Apple's whole selling point is they aren't pulling the same crap that the everyone else is. It's not a defense of Apple to say they're just doing what everyone else has already been doing. Think different?

[rudedogg]

Yes, this is part of what is supposed to justify the premium prices, is that they can have a different business model.

But it seems Tim Cook can’t leave anything on the table. I’m really going to be irritated if we end up with a premium Siri. It’s going to undermine the privacy aspect, the hardware innovation, and everything else they have going for themselves despite missing the boat on AI

[pdpi]

> It's shocking that Apple hasn't done this trick yet when everyone else started doing it years ago.

It's not that shocking — them not doing that is part of why I keep buying their products. I believed their leadership understood that.

Looking at the article, the kind interpretation is that this is the same wrong-headed shift towards uniformity at all costs we've seen elsewhere in their products. The less kind interpretation is that they're deliberately blurring the lines with ads. Either way, it erodes away some of the trust that has been their lifeblood for the better part of maybe two decades.

[jaffa2]

Absolutely this. I can’t agree with this more. Having been using apple macs for 2 decades now I’m wondering whether my next machine will be apple. There’s even a setting for the adverts in the system settings. This is disguising.

[rickdeckard]

Wait for the spin, i.e. "It's not a simple Ad, we are recommending a service valuable to you based on the interests of your anonymized persona."

(aka a personalized Ad)

[pixl97]

>Either way, it erodes away some of the trust

Lets say you compete in a market with 3 players.

You have a 95% trust rating.

Your other competitors have a 55% and 35% trust rating.

Modern capitalism would tell you that you have a 40% trust margin you can burn to make more profit with.

[mihaaly]

What is shocking is that deception is the common. Accepted, argued for by some. Loosing trust of the site/app doing the deception is the result. Becoming common, accepted, trend, and then loosing trust in the whole industry is the result.

[sdwr]

Yeah, it's bad enough for capable users, but it's a nightmare for old people and the unaware. The online space is full of scams, and there's no real safe haven.

[aucisson_masque]

> It's shocking that Apple hasn't done this trick yet when everyone else started doing it years ago.

I pay Apple premium price for their phones. If they become as bad as the other, what’s the point to pay so much ?

[rahoulb]

That's the demand for GROWTH.

They've hit the limits of iPhone sales - and upgrade cycles are slowing. Hardware products in general are "streaky" - ie. demand and sales drop in the period after a new product is released, so how often can you produce a new version and what happens if that new version isn't a hit?

Whereas subscriptions provide recurring revenue. And services, in general, can bring in more money without an equivalent increase in costs.

I recently read "Apple in China" and one of the things I hadn't realised is how many people at Apple came from IBM under Tim Cook's reign. What he's done for Apple is turn them into a predictable, consistent, revenue machine.

[recursive]

Green bubbles. Or was it blue? Either way.

[mnsc]

Conspicuous consumption? Like always?

[andsoitis]

You don’t think the hardware and software ecosystem are superior to the competition?

[pixl97]

> If they become as bad as the other,

See, instead of leaving a lot of cash on the table to be way better than the other, they'll pocket that cash and become just a little bit better than the other

[faust201]

> I pay Apple premium price for their phones. If they become as bad as the other, what’s the point to pay so much ?

No choice. Most Apple users usually defend by telling... they are not as bad a Google or now it is impossible to escape ecosystem.

[spacecadet]

This is the eventual evolution of any platform that sells ads or sponsored content. Who is paying the bills? App developers and their desire to bring on customers...

[dormento]

> just with a small "sponsored", "promoted", or "ad" mark somewhere

And often, the only reason they do that is due to legal requirements.

[fooey]

Amazon is so bad it's getting difficult to find the actual search results

[echelon]

It ought to be illegal to host ads for registered trademarks (+/- some edit distance).

Especially if you have a marketplace monopoly.

Especially if you used overwhelming force to turn the "URL Bar" into a search product and then bought up 90% market share where you can tax every single brand on the planet.

Google is the most egregious with this with respect to Google Search. It ought to be illegal, frankly.

Google Android is a runner up. Half the time I try to install an app, I get bamboozled into installing an ad placement app (and immediately undo it). Seems like Apple is following in the same footsteps.

Amazon isn't blameless here, either.

So much of our economy is being taxed by gatekeepers that installed themselves into a place that is impossible to dislodge. And the systems they built were not how the web originally worked. They dismantled the user-friendly behavior brick by brick, decade by decade.

Google "Pokemon" -> Ad.

Google "AWS" -> Amazon competitively bidding for their own trademark

Google "Thinkpad" -> Lots of ads.

Google "Anthropic" or "ChatGPT" -> I bet Google is happy to bleed its direct competitors like this.

What the fuck is this, and why did we let it happen?

Companies own these trademarks. Google turned the URL bar into a 100% Google search shakedown.

I'm thinking about a grassroots movement to stop these shenanigans.

[delfinom]

Advertising alternatives to trademarked names is completely legal in every sense. It's known as comparative advertising and is established for more than a century.

You simply cannot pretend to be that trademark product/business and you cannot disparage that trademark.

[Marsymars]

> It ought to be illegal to host ads for registered trademarks (+/- some edit distance).

This makes me a bit uncomfortable because of how close it comes to infringing on freedom of speech, and how specific a rule it would for search engines (and chat bots) - i.e. there's no real analogy of "can't target trademarked terms" for any ad format other than search engines.

I think my preference would be to simply enforce laws around fraud. If you're a business and you intentionally mislead people, that's fraud, pure and simple. Bring the enforcement hammer down so that companies don't dare make an ad that granny might mistake for not being an ad. Make them err far on the side of making ads look unmistakably like ads for fear of ruinous fines.

[terminalshort]

If I search for a product or service I want to see their competitors too.

[gwd]

> It's shocking that Apple hasn't done this trick yet when everyone else started doing it years ago.

Is it a coincidence that they started exploring this once they've been forbidden from collecting the "Apple Tax"? This is exactly why I've been arguing against preventing Apple from collecting money from developers: the laws of capitalism will force them to collect money somewhere else, and putting ads in their app store is the obvious next step.

[BiteCode_dev]

It's not a trick; it's the closest they can get away with lying with plausible deniability.

To sell you ads that are mostly lies already.

[helsinkiandrew]

> Now it's a lot harder to quickly notice what's an ad and what isn't.

Everything in the app store is an ad - all the content is produced to get people to download Apps. It's just that some is 'promoted'.

I'd be interested in hearing from any HN readers that use the App store to actually discover apps - don't people do Web/Reddit searches to see what people are using and rate and then search by name? Even an LLM can provide an overview of what's available and summarise features, drawbacks, and reviews.