Apple 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.
We 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.
Generally if all the ads you see are scammy, it means you probably are using some form of tracking/privacy protection.
When an ad network has a strong profile on you, legitimate companies pay good money for those ad slots. When they don't really know who you are, only bottom feeders bid on the ad slots you see.
In a way, it almost acts as retribution for not submitting to the anti-privacy machine.
I think that the most fundamental issue with ads and more generally with provider-curated content is that they represent what the advertiser or the provider wants. Not what you want.
Even if the ads are heavily personalized, the advertiser is still the one who is trying to push an idea onto you. Similarly, even if your social media account has a lot of personal information on you, the provider is still the one who is selecting which content will appear in you "feed".
I believe that these practices make people less self-aware of what they actually want. Because they mostly respond to suggestions. They do much less research into what is possible. They just say yes or no to the things they see in their ads or in their "feed". While becoming more and more distant from the reality that is happening outside the provider-managed ads or "feeds".
I think that a safe way out of this is to ignore ads and "feeds" completely. And actively search for the things or content you want. Curate your interests in a way you like. Not in a way advertisers or providers want.
I have not had ads in my life in any form for two decades.
I don’t have a TV, don’t listen to the radio or read newspapers or magazines. I live in a small town with no metro, no billboards. I buy things I need like milk and vegetables, I don’t buy things that require ads for me to know about.
That, 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.
I can't say the AI scripted AI voiced "my wife bet my abs vs. a trip to Paris" and "I ordered this and was going to throw it away but then the heavens opened and angels descended and gave me this Alibaba tchotchke" are harbingers of the idiocracy. Because it's already here.
// Adblock at DNS used to kill these Apple News ads. They're no longer suppressed. Free with their Plus all the things and aggregated my content subs but I quit using it. Had loved Texture, this now sucks.
I'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.
What'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.
Tiktok 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?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.
I 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.
My "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.
I 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...
I 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.
Just as there's a cottage industry for "I made the game the scam ads show" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRDhiN50Vo0 I think there will soon be a cottage industry for "the scam ad was good, let's make it for real".
That mug is amusing but it should't be too hard for China to make something similar - but real (at least without the weird piston).
I 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.
I'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.
I'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.
Serious 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.
Those stupid effing TurboTax ads are the only time I’ve ever been motivated to actually write feedback to apple about a feature. So aggravating and user-hostile.
The first few times the App Store opened to TurboTax while scrolling past, I assumed it was my fault and I was somehow misclicking. Then I slowed down and confirmed, no, this is the intended behavior. It’s meant to pop up and disturb your reading.
What slimy behavior. And the fact that it’s TurboTax of all companies they’re doing it for is just salt on the wound.
The 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.
Maybe 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.
I'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.
I'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.
Most 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.
Personally 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.
The 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.
I 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.
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.
I 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.
[+] [-] speak_plainly|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] elashri|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] WarmWash|1 month ago|reply
When an ad network has a strong profile on you, legitimate companies pay good money for those ad slots. When they don't really know who you are, only bottom feeders bid on the ad slots you see.
In a way, it almost acts as retribution for not submitting to the anti-privacy machine.
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|1 month ago|reply
Completely agree.
> Word of mouth and maybe trusted communities like HN is the only way to reliably discover new things.
There is no evidence that HN is not being actively astroturfed though. Sadly community filtering cannot replace trust in individuals.
[+] [-] pjc50|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] pbasista|1 month ago|reply
Even if the ads are heavily personalized, the advertiser is still the one who is trying to push an idea onto you. Similarly, even if your social media account has a lot of personal information on you, the provider is still the one who is selecting which content will appear in you "feed".
I believe that these practices make people less self-aware of what they actually want. Because they mostly respond to suggestions. They do much less research into what is possible. They just say yes or no to the things they see in their ads or in their "feed". While becoming more and more distant from the reality that is happening outside the provider-managed ads or "feeds".
I think that a safe way out of this is to ignore ads and "feeds" completely. And actively search for the things or content you want. Curate your interests in a way you like. Not in a way advertisers or providers want.
[+] [-] testing22321|1 month ago|reply
I don’t have a TV, don’t listen to the radio or read newspapers or magazines. I live in a small town with no metro, no billboards. I buy things I need like milk and vegetables, I don’t buy things that require ads for me to know about.
I Adblock the web aggressively.
[+] [-] rgblambda|1 month ago|reply
Maybe they would have done that anyway though.
[+] [-] SoftTalker|1 month ago|reply
Emphasis on maybe. HN is large enough that scammers will try to slip in. The moderation mechanisms probably catch a lot of it but not all.
My trust in anything online or in an app is very low and must be earned.
[+] [-] dddddaviddddd|1 month ago|reply
Any sufficiently trusted (online) community will find many attempts to exploit its trust for profit.
[+] [-] Terretta|1 month ago|reply
// Adblock at DNS used to kill these Apple News ads. They're no longer suppressed. Free with their Plus all the things and aggregated my content subs but I quit using it. Had loved Texture, this now sucks.
[+] [-] unknown|1 month ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] benterix|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jandrese|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] bombcar|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] tgtweak|1 month ago|reply
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?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.
[+] [-] makingstuffs|1 month ago|reply
It’s hard to explain but it is like some subconscious filtering that occurs on a preRecognise hook or something. Weird.
[+] [-] flkiwi|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sammyoos|1 month ago|reply
Do not buy this!! [1] https://kenmiso.com/products/%E2%9A%A1%E2%9C%A8ultimate-v8-e...
[+] [-] brk|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gramie|1 month ago|reply
https://img-va.myshopline.com/image/store/1731468034215/1dd4...
[+] [-] WarmWash|1 month ago|reply
[1]https://www.instagram.com/maggiemcgaugh
[+] [-] easywood|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] bombcar|1 month ago|reply
That mug is amusing but it should't be too hard for China to make something similar - but real (at least without the weird piston).
[+] [-] meindnoch|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] sometimez|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] sieep|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] direwolf20|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] pvorb|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] wobfan|1 month ago|reply
Somehow, he or she was still convinced and put it up.
[+] [-] olivia-banks|1 month ago|reply
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|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] al_borland|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] michael_michael|1 month ago|reply
The first few times the App Store opened to TurboTax while scrolling past, I assumed it was my fault and I was somehow misclicking. Then I slowed down and confirmed, no, this is the intended behavior. It’s meant to pop up and disturb your reading.
What slimy behavior. And the fact that it’s TurboTax of all companies they’re doing it for is just salt on the wound.
[+] [-] laweijfmvo|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] b00ty4breakfast|1 month ago|reply
Which is why I block ads unconditionally everywhere that I can.
[+] [-] cvoss|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pupppet|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] 4ggr0|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] jcelerier|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] Night_Thastus|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] colesantiago|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] eitland|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] aquir|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulHoule|1 month ago|reply
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|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] colesantiago|1 month ago|reply
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_...
[+] [-] victor106|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] npiauilino|1 month ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] frizlab|1 month ago|reply