[HN Gopher] I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams
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I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams
Author : cdrnsf
Score : 1140 points
Date : 2026-02-06 12:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (kirkville.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kirkville.com)
| zvqcMMV6Zcr wrote:
| This is a bit silly. Are there any ads that people do trust?
| nottorp wrote:
| Exactly. Why did the article author think ads weren't scams
| before they were "AI" generated?
| wobfan wrote:
| Where does the author claim or even remotely suggest that?
| iso1631 wrote:
| In the headline - the word _Now_ implies "Ads before
| weren't scams but they are now"
| wobfan wrote:
| And where in the headline is "AI"?
| iso1631 wrote:
| "Here are three ads that are scammy; the first two were
| clearly generated by AI, and the third may have been
| created by AI."
| nottorp wrote:
| The "AI" evangelists are trying to explain to us that all
| ads are to be trusted because they're "AI" generated
| now...
| nottorp wrote:
| They only NOW assume all ads are scams. Suggests they
| didn't make that assumption before, doesn't it?
| wobfan wrote:
| And 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.
| mcphage wrote:
| > Are there any ads that people do trust?
|
| What? Yes, of course. Are you so terminally online that you
| assume all advertising is the fake AI chum that we see on the
| web?
| lrem wrote:
| Even online I get a lot of ads for goods/services I do use,
| or could see myself using.
| latexr wrote:
| Yes, of course. These exist because they work. If no one fell
| for these scams, they wouldn't continue to exist.
| matsemann wrote:
| While I understand the sentiment, most ads for a long time were
| fairly reputable? Like in the news papers, most ads were to
| make you aware of a brand (next car I buy I'll feel safe buying
| X because I've seen it in the papers), or to notify you about a
| local store having a sale etc. And disabling my ad blocker and
| going to a page I see ads for house listings nearby, offers to
| buy sports gear in a store in my city, and ads for a well known
| telecom company. All things I would trust.
|
| What I don't understand is why high-value brands sell their
| screen estate to straight up scams or low quality ads.
| radpanda wrote:
| I dunno, I've been doing some genealogy research and looking
| at a lot of newspapers from the 1800's. It's striking to me
| how much they are essentially Facebook. Sure, on the front
| page there's the news of the day, but on the inside are
| jokes, riddles, local notes on who visited who and where. And
| the ads. Literal snake oil! As well as all sorts of other
| sketchy tonics for curing any sort of "ill constitution".
|
| I think those of us on this forum likely grew up in a golden
| age of ads being relatively harmless, but I'm not sure that's
| the normal state.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's not the "state of nature", but there's obviously been
| a lot of litigation and regulation in the meantime. Look up
| the charmingly named _Carbolic Smoke Ball_ case, for
| example.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| I mean I remember when Penny Arcade Ram ads for games and such
| and they only ran the ads if the approved of the game. The ads
| were worth clicking into. They sold a real product for a cost
| approximating its value.
|
| Now ads are just scams
| bilsbie wrote:
| HN users are mostly 1980s levels of institutional and media
| trust. Not sure why.
| Yossarrian22 wrote:
| I see an ad for a product I bought and it makes me worried I
| got scammed. The usual offender is Peak Design.
| efreak wrote:
| Ads for products I already use. Probably 90% of the stuff in
| your house has been advertised somewhere. A good number of the
| books on my shelves advertise other books by the same author in
| the back (some of these are order forms, many are not), and I
| certainly do use them to see what's the next book in a series
| of what reviewers have had to say about other books by the
| author. Heck, some of the objects I own and use daily
| (hopefully lower than average) is itself advertising, such as
| the branded Crayola desk lamp I'm using.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Mark 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 wrote:
| Then 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Just put Linux on that Microsoft laptop, LOL. Problem
| solved and it will work great.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| my 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 wrote:
| "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.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| My last MacBook lasted me from 2015-2025. It's still
| running actually, just getting slow.
| bdangubic wrote:
| you just gotta know when to stop updating OS and macbooks
| will last a loooong time
| timpera wrote:
| I love my plastic ThinkPad, but it's also nice to use good-
| feeling hardware with a good haptic trackpad. It doesn't
| need to be replaced every two years. To each their own!
| iso1631 wrote:
| I don't know about you but I really don't want my laptop to
| be the hottest thing, it sits on my lap.
|
| My thinkpad is from 2017, but I bought it in 2022, it's
| still working fine - I upgraded the memory to 32G (PS70)
| and I've replaced the battery twice (once when I bought it,
| once a couple of months ago). When I replace it it will
| likely be because of hardware failure (droppping it etc).
| stavros wrote:
| Vote with your wallet and buy an Android phone without ads
| and trackers? What is this FUD?
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Buy a phone from an ad supported company to get away from
| ads?
| Gracana wrote:
| A phone is a poor replacement for a laptop.
| stavros wrote:
| The GP said phones.
| vee-kay wrote:
| Get any gaming laptop or corporate grade laptop.
|
| They'll look good, work well (from hardware perspective), and
| you can replace their built-in Windows OS with the Linux
| flavor/edition of your choice.
|
| By the way, if ultraportable is your idea of laptop nirvana,
| you can try... Samsung made awesome AI-powered laptops (the
| Samsung Galaxy Book5 and Book6), I got the Book5 few months
| back for my friend's son. It is sleek, lightweight and
| powerful.
|
| Here is the TG review/verdict:
| https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/laptops/samsung-
| galaxy-b...
| einr wrote:
| _Get any gaming laptop_
|
| Don't get any gaming laptop. Some of them are truly bottom
| of the barrel slop and it really matters that you do your
| research. (See, for instance, NuclearNotebook reviews on
| YouTube)
| vee-kay wrote:
| Maybe in current era of skyrocketing prices of memory &
| storage components (due to mindboggling demand by AI-
| driven tech industry), I would agree that budget gaming
| laptops are not worth the value.
|
| But for decades, I have found that gaming laptops (decent
| brands and popular models) gave best bang for buck,
| especially with AMD hardware. My 12+ years old Lenovo
| gaming laptop is still going strong, and my 15+ years old
| Sony Viao netbook is also doing well (with SATA SSD and
| RAM upgrades few years ago).
|
| But yeah, read/check up on the reviews (from reputed
| reviewers) before splurging for an expensive laptop.
|
| One nifty trick to identify VFM(value for money) laptops
| is to check Amazon site/app for "Smartchoice" laptops. It
| is a special keyword that Amazon adds to listings of
| popular laptops that are VFM (best deals) and having good
| reviews.
| TheDong wrote:
| > you can replace their built-in Windows OS with the Linux
| flavor/edition of your choice.
|
| From the arch wiki:
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Samsung
|
| > Samsung Book5 - Internal Speakers not working on linux
|
| Also, it caps out at 32GiB of ram, I feel like these days
| that's pretty low for anyone who uses javascript heavy
| webpages. Like, my firefox on linux is currently using
| 42GiB of memory, and that's with under 200 tabs open, and
| then when I build my nixos config, that usually takes
| another 10-20GiB of memory
| 76SlashDolphin wrote:
| Not only that but it's also quite difficult to find a laptop
| with an ANSI keyboard in an ISO country. My choices are
| basically an overpriced new Macbook (MacOS is the main con
| here), an overpriced new Thinkpad (brand new ones are
| horrible value since it tanks just a year after purchase), a
| Clevo (much worse build quality and questionable Linux
| support), or a Framework (worse build quality and mediocre
| battery life). As much as I hate MacOS, my M1 Macbook is
| still better at just being a light machine I can take
| anywhere and be working with immediately, while still lasting
| over an entire workday regardless of what I do. I really wish
| that Lenovo would fix their X9 Gen1 Linux support as those
| laptops are basically what I'd run if I could have proper
| support.
| q3k wrote:
| I would recommend fighting the 'oh it needs to FEEL premium'
| feeling. It doesn't, you're just spoile by companies who know
| exactly how to sell you crap specially designed to just feel
| nice. You're being played like a fiddle by marketing
| departments.
| einr wrote:
| MacBooks are nice but: priorities. If the choice is between
| avoiding selling out your brain to adtech, tracking and AI
| slop baked into the OS or having something that _feels good
| to touch_ then bring me the e-waste bin and let me fish out
| some creaky plastic garbage with a 768p TN panel that I can
| slap Debian on. I care about nice hardware, but I don 't care
| _that_ much.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| It doesn't even feel good. My recollection (having used a
| Macbook for work for a few years) is that they have
| aluminium shells with sharp edges that would irritate my
| wrists. That never happens with a soft plastic shell like a
| Thinkpad.
| wobfan wrote:
| 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.
| stavros wrote:
| Because the sets of people who would give money to this and
| people who notice the Gemini logo are disjoint.
| matt89 wrote:
| Yeah 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| This is research from Microsoft that goes into more
| detail: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
| content/uploads/...
| Aransentin wrote:
| I skimmed the pdf; they show a model where having such an
| early "filter" is beneficial to the scammer, but doesn't
| provide any actual evidence that it applies in reality
| beyond restating the just-so story.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Spelling and grammar checkers are free; online
| translators have been better than that for many years
| now.
|
| It could be sloppiness, but I think scammers just
| organically copied efforts that worked, and those were
| the ones with poor presentations because they pre-filter
| and so target the scammers efforts more efficiently. The
| scammers need not be aware of why it works.
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| > Somehow, he or she was still convinced and put it up.
|
| It is intentional. People who will not notice, are the least
| likely to complain later.
|
| Do you know why all these "Nigerian prince" emails are of a
| very specific style?
| PyWoody wrote:
| You're famous now. The author noticed your comment and updated
| the article pointing it out.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| It actually says "L am retiring". Maybe a 419 scam kinda thing,
| the intentional typos.
| userbinator wrote:
| Clearly the one who did it doesn't know what the cropping tool
| is for either.
| pards wrote:
| I assume all social media ads are also scams.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Right, 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 wrote:
| Every 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?
| timpera wrote:
| Why 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| What's wrong with the weather and stocks apps? Maybe a silly
| question.
| spudlyo wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| my 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)
| aembleton wrote:
| I quite like the weather app on my laptop. Not seen any
| ads or news in it yet.
| askl wrote:
| > legitimate advertisers
|
| Those two words definitely don't belong together.
| mrweasel wrote:
| My local supermarket advertising on YouTube that they have a
| sale on coffee this week is pretty legitimate. It just
| doesn't buy the Alphabet shareholders a new yacht.
|
| I truly don't believe that there is enough legitimate
| advertisers willing to buy ad space in Apple News (or
| elsewhere) to generate to profit Apple expects.
| matwood wrote:
| A lot of that has moved to IG, where you can just follow
| the stores you're interested in directly. This shift is
| likely another move that hurt the 'traditional' advertiser
| pool.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| There are enough legitimate advertisers willing to buy ad
| space in Apple News to generate ~70% of the profit Apple
| expects.
|
| Scams, you see, make more profit per customer, and thus can
| afford to spend more on ads per customer. This creates an
| upward pressure on ad prices, on top of the extra ads sold.
|
| This is why abuse prevention at major ad platforms is so
| consistently lackluster. They want to stop some scams, the
| most obvious and and the most illegal kind, so that they
| can say they tried - including to regulators, and to major
| companies that also buy ads from them and don't want their
| ads next to penis enlargement pills. But actually stopping
| all fraud and scams could cut into their profits in a
| meaningful way. So there's no hurry to build better ad
| quality control systems, not at all. Actively staying on
| top of ad fraud is paying more money to make less money.
|
| Facebook is a major example of this kind of dynamic in
| action. They actually had internal estimates of how much it
| would cut their revenue to get rid of the majority of
| fraud, and were silly enough to put them in the writing.
| Y-bar wrote:
| "Services Revenue must go up! If one ad network pays us 2% more
| use it!"
|
| -- Tim "Apple" Cook (paraphrased)
|
| Actual quote from a few days ago:
|
| > "Services also achieved an all-time revenue record, up 14
| percent from a year ago [...] a testament to incredible
| customer satisfaction for the very best products and services
| in the world."
| aquir wrote:
| It's a bit like that MSN page what MS is forcing on millions
| through Edge and W11 widgets
| larodi wrote:
| Why does it even exist, this MSN page, which is ridden with
| nonsense...? I don't get it.
| timpera wrote:
| Because 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 wrote:
| At least one can quicly hide that filth. Unbearable, in every
| language...
| sumtechguy wrote:
| On 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 wrote:
| The "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 wrote:
| I 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.
| k12sosse wrote:
| It's even on the base install of Windows Server. Fuck off
| Microsoft.
| villgax wrote:
| This is true of all news sites, some hearing aid, you wont
| believe, why your pet does X etc etc
| api wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I wonder how many of them are basically click fraud to get
| money from ad networks.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| There 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 wrote:
| Nice - 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...
| FabHK wrote:
| Still 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 wrote:
| That 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| Apple 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?).
| makingstuffs wrote:
| 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.
| cheschire wrote:
| Gamecopyworld... 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 wrote:
| just made me flashback to a url bar and typing that too long
| of a url
| alsetmusic wrote:
| There 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 wrote:
| Possibly an instance of banner blindness
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness
| hightrix wrote:
| Thank 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.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| This is interesting. I intrinsically knew this was a thing
| without knowing it was formalized.
|
| Sorta the same as the emails that went out to employees of my
| org telling them that we would perform network upgrades that
| resulted in IP addresses changing. Not one person that I've
| assisted updating their devices read those emails because
| they were mentally filtered out as noise. We sent a lot of
| notices, fwiw.
| nicbou wrote:
| I do not have that filter, but I have been using ad blockers
| for so long that my tolerance for ads is near zero. Being
| interrupted by an ad is enough for me to close the tab or turn
| the device off.
|
| I can't imagine what it's like to access modern websites
| unfiltered.
| hn-acct wrote:
| It's horrible on mobile. Sites like macobserver are bad. Two
| videos overlapping, popping in and out, shifting content.
| nicbou wrote:
| There are really good ad blockers on mobile these days. I
| use AdGuard for Safari and it's as good as uBlock on
| desktop Firefox.
|
| I left my iPad deliberately unfiltered to discourage
| browsing - it's a bedroom device - and it's ridiculously
| effective. I see a cookie banner with the "legitimate
| interest" nonsense and I give up.
| vortext wrote:
| There is uBlock Origin Lite for Safari:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-
| lite/id674534269...
| pluralmonad wrote:
| Visiting friends/family sometimes I have to ask for the TV to
| be turned off so we can talk and visit. Not to make some sort
| of statement or signal my dislike for the content, but to
| stop having my attention grabbed over and over for useless
| dribble/ads. They do not understand how horribly distracting
| it is to someone who isn't numbed to its omnipresence.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I haven't had broadcast tv for decades. I already had to
| ask my friend to mute commercials to help me follow
| conversation after a couple of years (he just tuned them
| out). I concluded that I would hate the company I worked
| for because of their intrusive ads while visiting family
| during the holidays a year after that. My partner still
| objects to how angry I get when an ad is shoved into our
| on-demand content, but that meant that I figured out how to
| stop Plex from serving us ads after it happened ONE TIME
| (fuck you, Plex, I used to like you).
|
| I can't believe how normalized this stuff is. It's loud.
| It's incredibly stupid. It treats the viewer as
| unintelligent. It's really offensive if you aren't used to
| it.
| dizhn wrote:
| I also use adblock and what ends up happening as a
| consequence is the ads I do see are the shittiest of shitty
| ads that don't even come from a recognized network. :)
| regenschutz wrote:
| If you see any ads at all, then your adblocker isn't
| aggressive enough. I don't think I have seen a single ad
| since I installed uBlock Origin, but I also installed s
| bunch of extra filters first thing I did.
| dizhn wrote:
| Ehh.. depends on how questionable the sites you're
| visiting are. :)
| ben_w wrote:
| For me, it depends on how well-disguised the ad is. Ads quietly
| sitting there, informing? Those I blank out. The big flashy
| animations? Those make me switch to reader mode, or leave the
| domain entirely.
|
| I do sometimes find I'm accidentally clicking on the ads at the
| top of search engine results, though for this case it's extra
| ironic as the ad is for the real thing I'm searching for which
| is 2 results further down the list, and I only realise I
| clicked on an ad when the link goes via an ad-tracking domain
| that I block.
|
| I've recently been fooled by an ad in reddit that was
| pretending to be news, which took me to a fake BBC website.
| First hint, I also block the BBC domain (nothing wrong with
| them, it's just a habit I want to get out of given I don't live
| in the UK any more).
| TimByte wrote:
| I think a lot of people who grew up on the early web have that
| reflex
| dr_kretyn wrote:
| Same here. What's worse is that some pages "highlight" content
| in a similar fashion to an ad in the middle and I'm a bit
| unaware of that content. Only when something doesn't add up
| I'll scroll back and see the missing content.
| kneel25 wrote:
| Who doesn't think this about themselves. It's like when people
| say they're immune to propaganda. Isn't this thinking what
| makes people think their smart devices are listening to
| conversations rather than targeted ads you only notice after
| it's had the effect on you.
| regenschutz wrote:
| I don't think I am immune to propaganda, and definitely not
| ads. I can't stand ads at all. They immediately grab my
| attention, even if I make a conscious attempt at ignoring
| them. It truly feels terrible.
|
| Even for propaganda, I am constantly made aware of my
| propaganda immunity being subpar for all different kinds of
| propaganda. Often it's just subtle seeds of propaganda that
| impact the choice of words that I use to be something
| different than what I really believe in, and sometimes it is
| more serious and deeper cases of propagandisation. Very
| unfortunate, but each time it shows me why I should be
| critical of everything that I read online.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| "marketing works on you, even if you know how marketing works
| on you"
| markatkinson wrote:
| Yea I'm with you there. I honestly don't even see ads. Even
| YouTube ads that start playing, my brain switches off till I
| can skip. I also don't read the news at all anywhere, so that
| helps.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Whether you're _filtering_ it, or it 's subconsciously working
| is a bit hard to say. Plenty of people think they're 'immune'
| to advertising - but the goal is often very simple. Just
| putting the name of a brand in your head can pay off months or
| years later when going to buy something. That associating of X
| brand with Y product is already there, even if you've long
| forgotten the source.
| seb1204 wrote:
| Point taken for existing established brands. Surely this
| can't be said about "brands" that got spun up in last few
| weeks and will be gone soon.
| insin wrote:
| title.replace(/(i now assume that |on apple news )/ig, '')
| chrystalkey wrote:
| Very witty
| wazoox wrote:
| But these are just the same ads as on Google and everywhere else.
| Almost all internet ads are scam nowadays.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Doesn't make it any better.
| speak_plainly wrote:
| 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.
| robmccoll wrote:
| They 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| You can definitely block ads- try NextDNS.
| mikestew wrote:
| I'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.
| skygazer wrote:
| 1Blocker, with their in-app tracker blocking turned on,
| will block Apple News ads on iOS/iPadOS and will also
| block ads in Google News and free to play games. I guess
| you can't block tracking without also blocking the ads.
| It installs a local VPN profile that blocks connections
| to hosts typically blocked with dns based ad blockers.
| They've increasingly hidden the feature in the app, for
| some reason.
| maxkfranz wrote:
| How is it on battery life to run the VPN continuously?
| skygazer wrote:
| I haven't noticed it consume any additional battery. It
| doesn't actually connect to a vpn server, or reencrypt
| traffic. It's just a hack to deny select connections. I
| often do end up turning it off after a few days, though,
| because some times I need tracking redirects to work, and
| I'm too lazy to always whitelist.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 90% of the content in the News+ app is itself an ad.
| ksec wrote:
| Ever since Apple moved to Services Strategy in 2014 it has been
| like this. Services were not there so they could provide a
| better experience for its " _customers_ ". I use the word "
| _customer_ " here which is what Apple / Steve Jobs used to call
| their loyal fans, and not _user_. But to further growth their
| Revenue pie because they foresee iPhone one day will stagnant.
|
| You now have Apple Fitness+, Apple TV, News, Music, Arcade.
| None of these are of any quality of what Apple used to be. It
| is really sad.
|
| Oh and the most iconic thing? Apple was the one who tried to
| kill internet ads between 2017 - 2020.
| jangxx wrote:
| I actually like Fitness+, it got me working out for the first
| time in my life.
| addicted wrote:
| "customer" is a much better term IMO. It indicates this is
| ultimately a transactional relationship where both sides have
| certain responsibilities. The customer the responsibility to
| provide the money, and the provider receiving the money has a
| responsibility to provide the customer with something,
| products or services, of value that makes their lives better.
|
| "user" is a worse term. It suggests that the "user" is simply
| utilizing the provider's products/services, and therefore
| they can't really complain about whatever the provider
| chooses to do in return, because the "user" can simply stop
| using.
|
| It's also not a coincidence, IMO, that drug addicts are also
| called "users" since "user" implies a one way dependent
| relationship and that's what all the tech companies have been
| trying to create.
| swores wrote:
| > _" It's also not a coincidence, IMO, that drug addicts
| are also called "users" since "user" implies a one way
| dependent relationship and that's what all the tech
| companies have been trying to create."_
|
| You're drawing a connection that's not there. It's indeed
| not a coincidence, but just because both situations fit the
| definition of the word "user" (and "to use").
|
| People use drugs, whether they're addicted or whether
| they're taking a one-off dose given to them by a doctor.
| They are a customer in that situation if they're buying the
| drug from somebody (illegal dealer, pharmacy), but they're
| a user whether they paid or not.
|
| Likewise, someone is a customer if Apple's if they paid
| for, or are expected to pay in the future, a device or
| service. But they're a user regardless of whether they're
| using a phone they bought, or a service that's being
| provided for free.
|
| People can use services provided by charities, they can use
| skis on a mountain... there's absolutely no negative
| connotation to its general definition, it just happens that
| some things people use are bad and some are good.
| genewitch wrote:
| "And don't say 'do it' because i don't 'do it', i ingest
| it, on orders from my neurophysiologist."
| mbreese wrote:
| I agree that "customer" is a better term. I'm not sure I
| agree with the rest of the rationale.
|
| In my mind, "user" stated to take over when we started
| having web based services that were used by people, but
| they were the ones paying. For example, Google and
| Facebook. Both got paid through ads, so they advertisers
| were the customers. The "users" were just the eyeballs the
| advertisers wanted to reach. So, you had to make your
| service compelling enough for someone to use for long
| enough that they'd see enough ads to make it profitable to
| provide the service.
|
| It's more akin to talking about "viewers" or "viewership"
| when talking about more traditional media.
|
| For Apple, they are generally looking to get paid by the
| ultimate consumer of the product. So to them, we are the
| customers.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > In my mind, "user" stated to take over when we started
| having web based services that were used by people
|
| Maybe I'm just old, but we've called ... users ... 'user'
| since Unix or before. Perhaps it is just because Unix was
| integral to my early computing experience that I see it
| that way.
| tpmoney wrote:
| User is definitely a term that long predates the modern
| SaaS world. And it's an appropriate term in many cases
| because even today the customers of a computer hardware
| or software company are often not the same people using
| that hardware or software. I am the user of my work
| computer, but even as a software developer I am certainly
| not the "customer" of that purchase. My company has
| requirements as a customer that might be counter to my
| desires as a user. And likewise I have needs as a user
| that my company as a customer does not care about (except
| in so far as having those needs met allows me to do my
| job)
| ginko wrote:
| "user" feels quite descriptive and neutral to me. It's a
| person that uses the device they own or are given access
| to. That's it.
|
| I'm the (super-)user of my Linux PC. I have total ownership
| and control over it.
|
| Arguably "customer" makes the business relation to the
| provider of a service/device clearer.
|
| The term I hate with a burning passion is "consumer".
| Melonai wrote:
| Definitely agree on your last point, "consumer" is by far
| the most passive of the terms, and wholly represents the
| current idea that companies can simply shovel out
| anything, because "consumers" will simply consume either
| way. Of course this isn't magic, a single person won't
| change just because you call them a user or a consumer,
| but it reflects your view of them, and will inform your
| actions towards them.
|
| "customer" represents a two-sided relationship, and I do
| feel that "user" is kind of one-sided, but gives agency,
| a user will use a product for their own purposes,
| presumably to help them achieve some kind of goal. A
| "consumer" is completely passive, their main goal is to
| do what the company tells them to do. A customer can walk
| out of the relationship, a user might complain about
| problems they have with your product, but the consumer
| will simply continue consuming whatever you want them to
| consume.
|
| The worst part though, they seem to be mostly correct in
| their assessment.
| D13Fd wrote:
| Fitness+ is actually super high quality, really well
| integrated with Apple's products, and fun to use. I love it.
| I would happily pay the monthly Apple fee just for fitness+.
| I hope they don't change it.
|
| If there is anything that represents a "services strategy"
| like the Apple of the Jobs era, it's fitness+.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Fitness+ is okay-ish but it's not getting any attention and
| I don't think it deserves its $10/month price. Non-Apple
| fitness subscriptions at the same price are far better.
|
| Just for starters, what if you have two people in the house
| who want to do a Fitness+ workout together? Too bad: even
| if they both pay for it, one gets the nice tracking and HUD
| and the other gets squat. This is an obvious and trivial
| feature, and it's nowhere to be found. I could maybe see it
| getting cut for the launch checklist if people were behind
| schedule, but Fitness+ plus is more than five years old
| now, there is no excuse.
|
| It's total abandonware from a company trying to do the
| absolute minimum to get your recurring subscription.
| darkhorse222 wrote:
| I think you would use SharePlay for that maybe
| philwelch wrote:
| So you have to buy twice as many Apple products,
| brilliant marketing strategy
| kemayo wrote:
| I dunno, I think that multiple people doing a workout
| together in the same at-home room is a bit of an edge
| case for this app. I have a not-tiny house, and I don't
| have a space where I could do that without having to move
| heavy furniture around first. People who live in
| apartments are really out of luck.
|
| They do support syncing up the workouts of people who're
| each using their own device:
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/101979
| D13Fd wrote:
| > It's total abandonware from a company trying to do the
| absolute minimum to get your recurring subscription.
|
| What? Abandonware? They are constantly posting new
| workouts that are thought out and well produced. The
| Fitness+ app is very well maintained. It works great. It
| has cool features. Honestly I don't know what you are
| talking about, here.
|
| I've worked out together with one to three other people
| several times. No one cared that their heart rate wasn't
| shown on the screen. It's really not an important feature
| and a very niche use case.
| esskay wrote:
| Arcade is comically poor value. I can't tell if Apple doesn't
| care, or they're just so deluded due to their insular nature
| and crap attitude towards gaming that they genuinely think
| its a good service to offer mediocre mobile games for a
| premium.
| pbronez wrote:
| I thought the same until my kids started playing iPad
| games. Apple Arcade is way better than the baseline of
| aggressive ads and micro transactions.
| hed wrote:
| Exactly. It's a way to get games that aren't going to
| immediately ask for other games to be bought or make you
| watch ridiculous ads to keep playing.
| bigyabai wrote:
| The App Store really ought to just be a better platform
| in the first place. Apple is the one that let it
| accumulate slop, and now they're profiting off it's
| reputation for gambleslop apps.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Arcade is amazing for my kids, it's the one thing that
| pushes the value of Apple One bundle high enough for me to
| pay it. I assume all games not in Arcade have gambling
| mechanics.
| mbreese wrote:
| The lack of microtransaction/loot box/forced ads/etc
| driven gameplay is why I keep it. If I can get versions
| of newer games without all of that cruft, I'm happy. I'm
| also happy that the game developer gets paid for it.
| diegof79 wrote:
| I agree that Arcade is poor.
|
| However, I've been subscribed to it since its inception
| because it is the best way to have games that my kid can
| play without shady ads or engagement practices.
|
| I know that is not going to last, as my kid is now a pre-
| teen and likes other types of games (like Hollow Knight)
| that are not available on Apple Arcade.
|
| But the current state of the gaming industry is terrible,
| especially on mobile. Indy companies producing games like
| Dead Cells, Hollow Knight, and Stray are good, and there is
| the extremely rare case of Larian. But other than that, the
| market is full of dark-UX patterns to promote app
| purchases. Mobile apps are a minefield of gacha games that
| should be forbidden for kids.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| Have you thought of getting your kid a nintendo console
| of some kind? A jailbroken 3DS seems like it'd be great
| for avoiding that kind of slop since the 3DSs app store
| died a few years ago
| SSLy wrote:
| note to others: any 3DS can be very easily jailbroken,
| doesn't require any soldering or sth.
| https://3ds.hacks.guide/
| crummy wrote:
| Agreed. "Free mobile game" almost certainly means
| "malicious gambling app" at this point.
| eek2121 wrote:
| Taste is subjective. I get it. There are Triple A games
| on Arcade. Things like Civilization 7, for example. I
| don't know what the current standalone price is because
| we use Apple One Family, however, it used to cost $5/mo.
|
| Apple one is a steal IMO. Apple TV, Fitness+, 2TB,
| Arcade, and other smaller perks like News+ make it an
| easy sell. Compared to something like Netflix? Netflix is
| $25/mo for their top tier streaming alone. Apple TV
| consistently has higher quality content. So does Apple
| Arcade and Apple Fitness...then you get 2TB of storage to
| back your crap up to.
|
| Ask Google or Samsung what they are doing for the cost of
| an Apple One subscription.
|
| Not a fanboy or anything. I'm basically critical of all
| tech companies, however, Apple is doing something that is
| working well for them.
| latexr wrote:
| > I don't know what the current standalone price is
| because we use Apple One Family, however, it used to cost
| $5/mo.
|
| They raised it a while back to $7/month.
| chocochunks wrote:
| Just forget that mobile gaming exists? I think one of the
| cheapo Linux retro handhelds offer a better portable
| gaming experience than 99% of mobile games, ads or no.
| akdev1l wrote:
| I like Apple Arcade because it has non-shittified
| versions of classic games
|
| Like Angry Birds, the official version is fucked up to
| the gills with ads
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| TV is pretty good even for my English sensibilities.
| Severance is some of the best television I've seen in a long
| time.
| smt88 wrote:
| TV productions are a product, not a service. Apple TV is
| the service.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Apple has a tv service and Apple also has exclusive
| content, which they brand with "Apple TV"...so it's kind
| of both.
|
| Same for the other big streaming services. Some of them
| (Netflix, Prime Video) are more involved in content
| production, up to and including having production
| facilities and an in house staff. But a lot of the
| "exclusive" branded content is made by semi-independent
| production companies.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Apple has a tv service and Apple also has exclusive
| content, which they brand with "Apple TV"...
|
| And of course the device itself. I wish they would have
| distinct names.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Commercials in TV+ are as bad as ads in News+, e.g. it
| seems I cannot open the app without getting blasted at with
| a Peacock commercial.
| MBCook wrote:
| What? I've never seen a single commercial on an Apple TV+
| show.
| eek2121 wrote:
| Something like 70% of the comments I've seen on this
| thread show that either:
|
| 1) The user has never owned an Apple Device in their
| life. 2) They are trolling super hard.
|
| There are complaints to be had that I definitely agree
| with, however, I see a TON of fiction for every single
| legitimate complaint.
|
| No, not an Apple employee, shareholder, etc. (I am broke
| and dependent on my wife because I am disabled lol)
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I've been an Apple One subscriber for over three years
| now. For the past few months, as soon as you open the TV+
| app, a Peacock ad starts playing really loud.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I'm wondering what platform you are using TV+ on.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| An Apple TV.
| wookmaster wrote:
| So weird I don't have anything like that on mine
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| It's right when you open the TV+ app.
| lokar wrote:
| Weird, there are none when you use the appletv device
| fragmede wrote:
| the promos for other shows are commercials
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Which you can quickly skip past.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| What's your point, exactly? They are still commercials.
| lloeki wrote:
| To me there's a very distinct difference between
| unobtrusive same-service tasteful trailers and entirely
| unrelated third party ads.
|
| I genuinely discovered great series and films that I
| enjoyed _a lot_ but I would not have watched otherwise
| (e.g Shrinking).
|
| This is true for cinema as well.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| While I agree that third party advertising is not the
| same as playing trailers from other same platform shows,
| once you are in the app, these highly promoted shows are
| _really_ hard to miss, regardless of how many trailers
| are placed at the beginning of another show.
|
| For Shrinking, for instance, they placed an almost full
| screen, auto play trailer in the main carousel. It is
| also first in the top ten shows, and it appears in a
| number of other lists.
|
| Regardless of all this, they do play unrelated promotions
| for their add ons like some sports stuff or the Peacock
| deal.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I use an Apple TV.
|
| Maybe it's just me. I've been an Apple One subscriber for
| a long time now. The Peacock commercial I'm talking about
| plays right when I open the app, almost full screen and
| quite loud. It seems to be some sort of add-on offer for
| Apple One subscribers.
| lokar wrote:
| When you open which app? The appletv app on the device?
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're asking. I clearly stated that
| the Apple TV app has ads when I open it from my Apple TV
| device.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| You haven't seen Apple product placement in their shows?
|
| Servant was a walking ad for iPhones and Facetime lol
| alsetmusic wrote:
| They've had a commercial (trailer) before every show /
| movie we've watched in the past week. We can skip them,
| but they are there.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| Which makes it even more tragic that the few good streaming
| shows produced recently are all on a network no one
| watches.
|
| I am glad that they bought the rights to Brandon
| Sanderson's books, because I know Netflix wouldn't do them
| justice and Amazon prime would be far worse than that, but
| it also means that it will have a tenth of the available
| audience that a Netflix contract would have brought.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| If they were serving the mass market then they would be
| making trash like Netflix.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| I'm not sure how causality works on that one. Netflix
| made great stuff, back when streaming was still a small
| market, then they got big and started making trash.
|
| It's not like they weren't trying to attract everyone
| when they were releasing content worth watching. Maybe
| it's because they didn't have any feedback yet on what
| works, so they couldn't even try to make safe bets,
| instead creating a little of everything, with most of it
| being bland, but a surprising portion being top-tier.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Hmm, your comment resonates in principle [caring about
| quality production of worthwhile narratives], but your
| specific examples show how much YMMV when it comes to
| subjective preferences. I was so grateful that Amazon
| Prime somehow did justice to The Expanse [I highly
| recommend the novels, and feel the show was one of the
| best-ever translations of sci-fi to the screen] and could
| never get into the Wheel of Time book series [tho I guess
| that was Jordan, not Sanderson, shrug].
| majormajor wrote:
| Amazon didn't start The Expanse as a TV show, though.
| They bought it after Sci-Fi ran it then cancelled it.
| They didn't screw it up after that, but that's a very
| different sequence from creating it themselves.
|
| Compare to their much-ballyhooed exercise in lighting
| money on fire that was their LOTR series.
| acessoproibido wrote:
| I will never forgive them buying the rights to Utopia
| (UK) - probably the greatest show ever made - and
| remaking it into absolute shit. Just thinking about it
| makes my blood boil. Fuck Amazon (even if The Expanse was
| pretty good)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| And Slow Horses, which is perhaps my favorite show in
| years. I'm not a big TV watcher, and this show got me to
| subscribe (at least for a while) to Apple TV.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| Try Pluribus. We just finished S01. Also pretty good.
|
| Calling AppleTV low quality doesn't fit. The rest, yeah.
| Pretty useless.
| xwkd wrote:
| Over the past decade, there's been a lot of regulation
| forcing Apple to open up their "Apple only" integrated
| platforms.
|
| It used to be the case that if Apple wanted to build a walled
| garden / cathedral, then in order to compete in the hardware
| marketplace they had to provide software that didn't suck.
| You knew that if you bought an Apple product, there was
| reasonable assurance that everything was tightly integrated.
| If it wasn't, you'd go buy a market alternative (Android,
| PC). In my mind, this means that they spent a lot of time and
| dev resources (i.e. money) on their Frameworks. I think it
| showed. Time was spent on design. They focused on opening up
| capabilities "the right way."
|
| Now that's pointless. If the iPhone is just an Android phone
| with a different coat of paint, then dev resources are going
| to be shifted to a place where Apple can distinguish
| themselves in the market, where they have platforms that they
| can control: Services.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Can you support this unfalsifiable reasoning beyond blaming
| a convenient political scapegoat? Which paragraph of which
| article of which regulation requires them to deliver low-
| resolution PDFs in Apple News, for example? What about all
| the other issues?
|
| Your argument essentially boils down to: If Apple doesn't
| get to do whatever they want without compromise, their
| execs get too discouraged and depressed to innovate. The
| obvious conclusion is that the only way we can enjoy the
| unrivaled genius of Apple is to give them a blank check to
| do whatever they want.
|
| Every act of consumer protection and every form of pro-
| competitive regulation is twisted and exaggerated, no
| matter how insignificant it is to their bottom line or
| product functionality. The world is ending any time they
| don't get their way and when the world doesn't end, this
| decision becomes the scapegoat for all of their future
| faults, missteps, and bad performance. They can never do
| anything wrong and nothing is ever their fault, it's so so
| incredibly tiring to listen to this.
| kaashif wrote:
| Which regulation made Apple News have low res PDFs? Which
| regulation made the search boxes in Liquid Glass
| transparent and show text from the window behind?
|
| The company as a whole has changed across the board.
| wk_end wrote:
| The beginning of Apple's backslide far predates any (thus
| far fairly limp-wristed) attempts by regulators to pry open
| their iOS walled garden.
|
| At least in North America - their biggest market I think? -
| the iPhone is still utterly locked down. Far more locked
| down than, say, their Macs were when OS X was at its best.
| Meanwhile macOS continues to get _more_ locked down and yet
| still worse. Your theory just doesn't match reality.
| iwontberude wrote:
| Every mobile device sold in North America is unlocked for
| carriers. That wasn't the case back in the day. Also
| locking down macOS has been for security. It's way ahead
| of other operating systems for sound and app security.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Carrier locks have nothing to do with security or walled
| gardens. Two things using the word 'lock' is mostly
| coincidence.
|
| And getting rid of carrier apps was a positive but it was
| moving from one walled garden to another.
|
| And that happened a very long time ago. It provides zero
| defense against accusations of apple changing for the
| worse.
| dangus wrote:
| > You now have Apple Fitness+, Apple TV, News, Music, Arcade.
| None of these are of any quality of what Apple used to be. It
| is really sad.
|
| News+ is the only one of these that has poor quality.
|
| Apple Music is extremely good, and pays artists better than
| many other platforms like Spotify. Unlike Spotify it isn't
| enshittifying the product with AI music, video, and podcast
| distractions. The software is good quality, native code, not
| a web wrapper. Plus, there's a classical music focused
| version that's entirely separate.
|
| Fitness+ is a premier product in the space. Have you tried
| it? The workouts sync with your watch and it has top tier
| video production quality along with a ton of thought put into
| accessibility.
|
| Arcade probably does need to have more games added and more
| attention paid to it, but it's basically the only place to
| get mobile games that aren't stuffed full of gambling
| mechanics, pay to win, and advertisements.
|
| Apple TV+ is literally the new HBO. They produce some of the
| most critically acclaimed shows on the planet, and broke the
| record for number of Emmy nominations by a single studio last
| year. The software is actually good, which is only really
| true for TV+ and Netflix. The production values, bitrate, and
| technology integration (Dolby Atmos/Vision etc) is second to
| none. MLS coverage by Apple is also top tier, again, with
| other sports networks regularly broadcasting mediocre quality
| (bad colors, muddy details, poor on-screen graphics). They're
| also getting F1 for US viewers which is almost certainly
| going to be an improvement over the status quo.
| ravetcofx wrote:
| > aren't stuffed full of gambling mechanics and
| advertisements. Where can you get that from the Play Store?
|
| The Play Store Pass? Which not only has games but utilities
| https://play.google.com/store/pass/getstarted
| saithir wrote:
| > Available offers > Get offers for top games with Play
| Pass > 50% znizki na zakup w aplikacji > Do 37 zl znizki
| co tydzien > Candy Crush Soda Saga
|
| Yeah, I would say a big ad for a game that is literally
| THE textbook example of gambling mechanics and dark
| patterns, followed by 10 other ads for games of the
| similar genre, is exactly what the previous poster does
| NOT want from a service like that.
|
| Oh and also from that page there's no telling at all what
| actual _games_ are included. The only slider on this page
| that lists anything is for different gambling slop
| "offers".
|
| That's not even in the same category as Apple Arcade.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| Apple Arcade is pretty good, I imagine it's good for parents
| that want to make sure their kids are playing actually decent
| games instead of whatever slop you find on the app store or
| roblox
| abustamam wrote:
| "The only people who call customers 'users' are drug dealers
| and software companies."
| dingaling wrote:
| 'User' has been a term in computing for decades before the
| current Cloud Services fad ( hence uid ).
|
| One uses a hammer, one uses a microwave, one uses a
| computer, one uses a word processor. Nothing negative
| towards the user, they're being productive with the
| product.
|
| If anything it's derogatory in the other direction, towards
| the manufacturer, reducing the fruits of their labour to
| that of a simple tool.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Against Youtube Music and Spotify, Apple Music rates quite
| well, at least IMO.
| kasperset wrote:
| Apple Music is ok but it is not as good on MacOS as it is
| on iOS. It will skip some songs sometimes and the ui is not
| very consistent for the player bar.
| kyriakos wrote:
| As someone who owns zero apple hardware, I feel like Apple TV
| (the service) is probably the most consistent producer of
| high quality TV shows.
| NookDavoos wrote:
| I agree. It seems they don't produce as many titles as
| other streaming platforms, but what comes out is rather
| good.
| StilesCrisis wrote:
| They tried to kill _competitors'_ ads. Everyone else gets
| "Ask Not to Track" while Apple gets "Personalized Ads." It's
| so glaring once you see it.
| sinnsro wrote:
| Again, another great move sponsored by bean counter boy
| Tim.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| The ad industry can't destroy itself soon enough.
| goalieca wrote:
| The ad industry basically is the tech industry at this
| point.
| aaarrm wrote:
| I often imagine a world where ads are illegal.
| mavhc wrote:
| But how will I get free stuff and also not see ads with
| my adblocker if ads die?
| pfdietz wrote:
| I'm dreading the day Amazon puts ads in e-books.
| intothemild wrote:
| I hate ad companies and ads as much as the next person. But
| this was one of the moments where I felt like people didn't
| see what I saw with services era apple. I pointed out that
| all apple is doing is locking down their phones even
| further. That they're not eliminating all ads on your
| phone... Nope they're eliminating their competition.
|
| It's just nuts peoples hatred of ads clouds their vision of
| this.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Fitness, Music, Apple TV, Arcade, and even News are all fine
| at their price point.
|
| Apple News is the most affordable way to access paywalled
| mainstream news
|
| TV has decent shows
|
| Games has decent games without IAP
|
| Music is decent without ads
|
| Fitness has gotten me in shape at a fraction of the cost of
| Les Mills or Beach Body
| SkipperCat wrote:
| Agreed. I used to subscribe to the WSJ and WashPo and I
| cancelled both because I get both in Apple News. Plus I get
| the Atlantic, New Yorker, Wired and so many other
| magazines.
|
| The user interface sucks. Sometimes I go to the actual
| websites to find articles and then search for them on Apple
| News. But for $13 USD a month, its a huge bargain and worth
| the crappy interface.
|
| Another thing that kinda helped me was that Apple News
| doesn't give you access to the comments sections in these
| publications. Reading comments in the WSJ was just a huge
| rage-bait time suck and my life is probably better off not
| seeing that stuff.
| nntwozz wrote:
| At what point did the old Apple cross the threshold to "modern"
| Apple?
|
| I agree with your point I just find the distinction hard to
| pinpoint.
|
| It's like the (incorrect) analogy of the boiled frog, I know
| it's a cliche but I really feel things started downhill in
| overall quality and wow factor with the advent of Tim Cook.
|
| SJ had failures like Ping and MobileMe, but they seemed to pick
| up on the criticism back then and execute correctly quickly
| after.
|
| Now because of the penny-pinching and success of Apple nobody
| makes a big deal out of anything, the momentum is so strong
| that stuff like liquid glass can come through
| unpolished/unfinished/unrefined.
|
| It seems to me that Apple University failed its mission
| completely.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_University
| kranke155 wrote:
| Yes on the last count for Apple U.
|
| The culture of excellence is just not there. Big company but
| not sure if it's a live player atm. Lots of unrefined
| experiences.
|
| People say it's Tim Cook as if Apple had a bunch of CEOs. In
| its modern incarnation it was basically Jobs and Cook. But
| there were some major improvements under Cook and some major
| disappointments. Hardware seems to be doing well, software
| not so much.
| jorvi wrote:
| Steve Jobs was all about the customer experience, hence so
| many of his famous quotes. Two like the most are:
|
| - Him saying "Microsoft has no style", not because I care
| about ribbing on Microsoft but because it indicated that
| Apple was a company that really cared about the aesthetics of
| both their hardware and software products
|
| - His response to the question why there was no $600 MacBook
| to compete with Windows plastic craptops. He specifically
| said that to deliver a good UX to the users, he needed Macs
| at a certain price point to invest in the hardware and the
| OS. Shareholder value didn't even enter the equation.
|
| He also hated market segmentation and was adamant that all
| iPhones within a generation had the same features, aside from
| the storage size. When the 6 Plus models got image
| stabilization he felt awkward about it.
|
| As soon as Tim Cook took over, it became beancounter city.
| Market segmentation became massive. Year over year price
| hikes with minimal improvements. Services became the core
| strategy. And the last 5 years you are under a constant
| barrage of ads for iCloud, Apple Music, Apple News, Apple TV
| and even ads in your Wallet.
|
| Oh, and I'm just remember how Jobs said that form should
| follow function. Which you can also see a clear decline in
| from when Jobs became less involved, with iOS 7 being a
| disaster. And ever since then Apple has being violating their
| own Human Interface Guidelines. If you download their 1997
| version it's absurd how many of their own former guidelines
| they violate these days.
|
| To be honest, I'm not sure if you can entirely blame Cook.
| Ever since the 2010s, it's felt like capitalism has reached
| an endstage culture, where it is no longer about an
| equilibrium between best product for lowest price vs minimum
| product for highest price, but instead just maximizing
| shareholder value at the cost of the customer, the workers,
| the business itself, the environment and what have you.
| eigen wrote:
| > Year over year price hikes with minimal improvements
|
| did you have a specific example in mind? It seems that the
| price of the hardware generally stays the same from year to
| year.
|
| for example, from iphone 3g to iphone 6s was $199. and
| iphone 12 through today's iphone 17 is $799. I think the
| change in the middle was due dropping carrier subsidies and
| going to full-screen with face id.
| jorvi wrote:
| 2012-2018 was an insane run for MacBook Pro prices.
| Doubly so in Europe. Apple loves to adjust (read: gouge)
| prices when the Euro weakens against the dollar, but they
| never adjust down when the dollar weakens against the
| Euro.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| This is a common trajectory for companies. The first CEO
| (founder) paves a vision, the second CEO grows the firm
| profitably, the third CEO is usually a wall street hire on
| a mandate to massage the stock price.
| rchaud wrote:
| I'd say the inflexion point was in 2015. That's when Apple
| Music launched, sidelining the iTunes store where you could
| buy songs, in favor of a rental model like Spotify. That's
| also when they discontinued the Mac Server hardware and ceded
| the enterprise software market to Microsoft and Adobe.
|
| Since then it's been on a nonstop drive to jam as many
| subscriptions services into the iOS ecosystem as possible.
| naravara wrote:
| Old Apple had a productive tension between Jony Ive and Scott
| Forestall on which direction to go in with design, with Steve
| Jobs as a tie-breaker.
|
| After Jobs passed away Tim Cook failed to manage that tension
| productively and was put in a position where he had to choose
| between Ive and Forestall. He chose Ive, which in itself was
| probably the right choice, but there was nobody with
| Forestall's clout to temper Ive's more wanky tendencies.
|
| Much of the other stuff people complain about is kind of just
| the reality of being a company that sells to millions or tens
| of millions to being a company that sells to hundreds of
| millions or close to a billion customers. A lot of the charm
| and whimsy gets harder to sustain. I've long felt that Apple
| needs to just do a Toyota/Lexus sort of split and have a
| second nameplate for doing more avante garde, quirky, and
| lower volume hardware and software projects.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| To Ives credit he tried to do the brand split and focused
| on Apple Watch as the test bed first with "Edition" then
| "Hermes"
|
| There just wasn't the demand.
| naravara wrote:
| That seemed more like experimenting with interesting
| industrial design approaches and materials though. It's
| not as much like, a very distinct side-hustle to design
| stuff that's completely different.
|
| They sort of do this with Beats as a parallel business to
| their own Apple speakers with products that aim at a
| totally different market. They need to start doing that
| with computers too. The entire Mac lineup is designed to
| be, like, a Honda Accord or Camry. But the Mac Pro is
| crap, they need a business-line that makes a computing
| equivalent of a pickup truck but they don't want to
| commit.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| > At what point did the old Apple cross the threshold to
| "modern" Apple?
|
| This hardly an original sentiment, but when Steve Jobs died.
| Jobs was not perfect, but he believed they were there to make
| great products, had good taste with obsessive attention to
| detail, and was pretty much omnipotent in the company. I'm
| sure there are people with many of these traits in Apple, but
| not all of them together.
|
| Their first new hardware release was the Apple Watch, which
| is a confused product, with too many functions on launch, and
| a poorly thought out two button + scroll wheel + touch screen
| interface (I still don't really know which button does
| which). And don't get me started on that ridiculous solid
| gold version.
|
| You can still see the old Apple in there (look at their
| hardware!), but it's fragmented and not all pulling in the
| same direction.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| It's funny when people don't understand what they are
| saying like you.
|
| The watch was not only eventually a mega hit, it was an
| Ive/jobs idea.
|
| Literally everything you are saying is wrong.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| If you think literally everything I'm saying is wrong,
| you haven't done much of a job of explaining why.
|
| I realise that the watch was probably under development
| for years before Jobs died. It was, however, released in
| a half baked state - do you remember what the the
| original use of the lozenge shaped button was, for
| example? Things being "hits" is not what's under
| discussion here, Apple has sold a lot of stuff in the
| Cook era, no doubt about that. Microsoft has had a lot of
| hits too, doesn't make their products Old-Apple-like!
|
| I don't know how good Ive is without Jobs. His post-Jobs
| efforts have been pretty mixed. I'd argue Apple's
| hardware has improved since he left (although, admittedly
| through playing it safe, especially with the Mac).
|
| Do you think Apple is in decline when it comes to the
| quality of their products? Because if you don't we're
| just talking past each-other.
| UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote:
| The Apple Watch was launched as a confused product. Go
| watch the original Apple Watch launch announcement.
| Basically none of it landed with consumers. Apple
| significantly changed their focus within, what, a couple
| of years? Remember how you could buy a gold one for a
| truckload of money? Give me a break. Kudos to Apple for
| managing to change course in less than 5 years, for once,
| but let's not pretend the. Apple Watch was a perfect idea
| passed down from the almighty. It did terribly.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| To be fair, while Jobs was at the helm apple was a fraction
| of it's market cap and iPhone adoption was still rapidly
| rising around the globe.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Their first new hardware release was the Apple Watch,
| which is a confused product,
|
| I think you just shot your own argument with that.
|
| I remember when no one thought the Apple Watch would amount
| to much, and it's literally on everyone's wrist in the US.
| "Almost one in five US consumers -- 17% -- say they've used
| an Apple Watch in the past week." -- that's an insane
| amount of market penetration, when you consider it's all
| consumers. It's almost rare to see an "analog" watch
| anymore (I'm one of those). You still have
| Garmin/Suunto/etc and the luxury analog watches, but
| they're in a different categories. And Samsung/etc. are far
| behind.
|
| I've never owned an Apple Watch (I have iPhone/Mac). I
| prefer the elegance of classical analog watches over having
| notifications on my wrist (no thanks!). but it's an
| outstanding product that has driven the sale of
| iPhones/Macs, etc.
| ksec wrote:
| >At what point did the old Apple cross the threshold to
| "modern" Apple?
|
| The simple answer would be when SJ passed away. The long
| answer is there wasn't a turning point, but a long period of
| cultural shift, due to Tim Cook being CEO.
|
| Tim Cook not immediately taking a CEO stand and left a power
| vacuum was a mistake. He said himself he thought everything
| would continue as normal, which obviously did not happen.
| Firing Scott Forstall was a mistake. Ive taking over software
| design was a mistake. Not listening to the advice of Katie
| Cotton and manage a new PR direction was a mistake. Following
| Phill Schiller advice of firing long time Marketing Firm for
| Apple was a mistake. Tim Cook not understanding his weakness
| which is his judgement of character was a big big mistakes,
| as it leads to Dixon CEO and Burberry CEO taking helms of
| Apple Retail, ultimately stoping if not reversed the momentum
| of Apple Retails improvement and expansion by 10 years.
| Giving Ive the power to play around with Retail Design
| because Apple Retail Store is somehow a "social place" was a
| big mistake. Prioritising Operational and Supply Chain
| Decisions over Design was a mistake after around iPhone 8
| Plus. Too focused on sales metric and bottom line was a big
| mistake. Shifting to Services Revenue, which should have been
| AppleCare, iCloud or even iPhone Subscription model, instead
| they got Apple TV+, in my option is a mistake. They were too
| scared to hurt the relationship with Carriers. Eddy Cue
| taking over a lot of decisions? Apple going to Davos? Merging
| of different iOS and macOS team where it used to be teams per
| product but later became functions per team structure.
| Trusting China and didn't diversify their production when
| Trump was first time in Office. ( They said they will but
| they didn't. Literally every single media lied on behalf of
| Apple ). I mean the list goes on and on.
|
| I really like someone on HN said about Apple. Ever since
| Steve Jobs passed away Apple has been left on auto pilot mode
| for most of its time.
| munificent wrote:
| _> At what point did the old Apple cross the threshold to
| "modern" Apple?_
|
| Probably showing my age here, but for me it was the
| introduction of the iPhone.
|
| Yes, it was a wildly successful product. But it was a product
| primarily for _consuming_ media (and I will grant taking
| photos). The iPhone marked Apple 's transition from a
| computer company that focused on computers for creative
| people to a consumer electronics company.
|
| Certainly a wise choice from a business perspective since
| there are a whole lot more people consuming things than
| making them.
|
| But I do miss the old rainbow Apple days when I felt like
| they really _cared_ about making hardware and software to
| empower creative people. I still use Macs, and I think they
| 're still the best for creative work, but the company's not
| the same.
| vachina wrote:
| It's not a revenue generating service.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I looked a lot into the "universal paywall" business model
| where one subscription buys you access to articles from a wide
| range of news outlets. It's close to impossible to execute
| because the most prestigious outlets (ahem... _The New York
| Times_ ) won't give you the time of the day, even if you are
| startup royalty. That Apple has accomplished anything in this
| space is remarkable.
| mgh2 wrote:
| Why can't they build their own ad network for control instead
| of partnering with 3rd parties?
| vel0city wrote:
| Apple _does_ have their own ad network. _This is their ad
| network_.
|
| https://ads.apple.com/
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Contrast with Apple TV+ which has insanely high quality shows.
| I feel like they arent advertising it enough and investing in
| it enough. One of my favorite shows that my daughter watches is
| on Apple TV+ the other on Amazon (If You Give a Mouse a
| Cookie).
|
| Apple is really messing up in my eyes they have so much
| potential they are throwing away.
| afavour wrote:
| A clear difference here is that Apple creates the TV+ shows
| and they don't create the News+ content. And I really don't
| think they want to get into the news content creation
| business.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Agree I am just comparing Apples efforts
| basch wrote:
| For Apple to really win this space I believe they would need to
| release a cross platform Publisher tool and complete in the AMP
| space. Some kind of magazine design / web design software that
| publishes articles to a standard format and applies a layout
| over the top. Then the News app becomes a renderer/aggregator
| that does things better than the standard web browser.
| afavour wrote:
| In fairness Apple did come up with a custom JSON format for
| articles:
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applenewsformat
|
| The problem is that people don't use it. I imagine it's a
| chicken/egg thing, the audience on News isn't big so it isn't
| worth the publishers time catering to an entirely new format,
| the News experience is crappy so the audience doesn't grow.
|
| They could have insisted that everyone use their format but I
| suspect publishers would just refuse. It's not exactly in a
| publishers interest to help boost a middleman between their
| content and readers.
|
| I'd be really interested to see what Apple's approach would be
| if they used more web technologies (since that's what
| publishers are using today anyway). Even just a webview with
| disabled JavaScript would get a ton of the way there in terms
| of performance. They have WebKit engineers in house that could
| probably tweak it even further.
| kyralis wrote:
| It's definitely that publishers don't want it.
|
| This is actually the trajectory of both Apple News and iAd
| before it, which is what started out providing the ad service
| for Apple News. Apple would like to do a high quality
| solution, and then keeps relaxing their standards when
| there's not enough buy-in from the content providers. They
| were forced to allow the non-curated news formats to have
| sufficient content.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| I can't imagine it's a great deal for publishers. It's
| probably why NYT, Economist and other prestige publications
| aren't on it. (Save for Atlantic, New Yorker). I. Assuming
| they use the Spotify model ( paying commissions on articles
| per reader)?
| derefr wrote:
| I wonder why they don't just prioritize the ~500 most
| popular of those content providers that are feeding them
| sludge articles, and write (AI-generate, even) logic to
| manually parse and transform said sludge into their format?
|
| It'd be a big one-time lift; and of course there'd be
| annoying constant breakage to fix as sites update; but
| News.app could always fall back to rendering the original
| article URL if the News backend service's currently-
| deployed parser-transformer for a given site failed on the
| given article. It's make things no worse and often better
| than they are today.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| It's almost like Google AMP was a good idea and solving this
| problem this community had a melt down over it.
| afavour wrote:
| The 10000ft perspective on AMP was correct, the lived
| reality was awful. And the technical implementation used
| can't be divorced from everything that surrounded it:
| Google's place in the industry with regard to search
| engines, ads, etc.
|
| In this specific example there is a _very_ big difference
| between producing a format for use in a first-party app vs
| trying to replace standards for content used across the
| web.
| derefr wrote:
| > And the technical implementation used can't be divorced
| from everything that surrounded it: Google's place in the
| industry with regard to search engines, ads, etc.
|
| I mean... sure it could have? There could have been an
| independent "AMP Foundation" that forked the standard
| away from Google and owned the evolution of it from then
| on. Like how SPDY was forked away from Google ownership
| into HTTP2.
| Andrex wrote:
| AMP was a good technical solution for a short window of
| time, deliberately tanked by confusing/centralized
| stewardship.
|
| They kept opening it more and more but by then it was too
| late.
| the_other wrote:
| No it wasn't. It was a tool to attempt to keep people on
| Google's surface area rather than freeing them to browse
| the web as the web was intended.
| naravara wrote:
| Apple News unironically would have been better if they had just
| made an RSS reader with a way to subscription gate feeds and a
| rule that you have to do provide the full text of the article.
| They could have just put their energy into just polishing up a
| known and weathered and broadly adopted technology but nooooo,
| they needed something with platform lock-in so they could book
| more "services revenue."
|
| They didn't need to do like half the work they did, and a lot
| of what they did do in order to make the news feeds prettier
| are seldom adopted because Apple doesn't want to do the hard
| partnership work to drive and support it.
| icapybara wrote:
| FYI it would be "Icing on the cake" or "cherry on top"
| el_benhameen wrote:
| I like using it to listen to narrated versions of New Yorker
| articles.
|
| Except I can't tell it "I like narrated versions of New Yorker
| articles". I can search by publisher, or I can browse narrated
| stories that are selected "for you" (none of which are of
| interest to me), but I can't just search for "narrated stories
| AND New Yorker".
|
| And when I do finally find one, if I don't finish in one
| session, there is zero context from the previous session when I
| return to the app--it has forgotten that I ever started
| listening to the story. I then need to go through the process
| of finding it again and trying to remember where I left off.
|
| Yet another Apple app designed by idealists and tested and
| refined by nobody who actually uses the app.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Remembering state is a giant oversight on many apps for
| content consumption, Apple News included. I sometimes read
| long articles on Apple News. I could be interrupted by a call
| or some messages. When I return to Apple News, it displays my
| half-finished article for a split second and returns to the
| home screen.
|
| This is worse than using reading news on a browser. Browsers
| either don't kill your tabs on its own (desktop browsers) or
| at least try to remember your scroll position. Even if it
| fails at doing that, it at least has a history feature. Apple
| News just makes your half-read articles disappear into the
| void.
| m463 wrote:
| > a ham-fisted approach to simplicity that ignores the end
| user.
|
| I think I agree. They have a broad selection of apps... that
| all end up being shallow.
|
| Every once in a while there are decent things hidden though - I
| like apple translate. I also like adding "copy text from a
| graphical image" to the OS.
| no_wizard wrote:
| News is ham-fisted as much by news organizations themselves as
| much as it is Apple. They don't want to sell through the News+
| subscriptions, they want to tease a few articles and then
| upsell you to _their subscription_.
|
| News organizations have really become quite aggressive about
| negotiating these things now, I think in large part because
| Meta (aka Facebook at the time) screwed them badly when it
| stopped revenue sharing.
|
| This leads to a situation where a product that actually could
| at least be good and serviceable is a mess. They don't see
| News+ as being a positive to their businesses to bundle it into
| the subscription.
|
| edit: I'm open to hearing others on this. I am only pointing
| out both Apple and the publishers are at fault for varying
| aspects of why Apple News+ ends up being a mediocre product
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That seems really short-sighted. A fair share of more than
| $100/year is a lot of money for news.
| mavhc wrote:
| Every news organisation thinks they're the one you want to
| read, they want you to be a loyal customer to them and not
| read other newspapers. Google News used to have "see 349
| other articles on this story" which really showed how
| pointless news organisations were, constantly
| rewriting/licencing other people's content.
|
| Any news aggregator platform is only used by news
| organisations under duress.
| __natty__ wrote:
| At first minimalistic ui was because of UX. Today apple design
| managers went to the UI side forgetting about end user.
| projektfu wrote:
| Does Apple News still share Apple News links to articles
| instead of the canonical link? When I had an iPhone, I
| uninstalled/disabled Apple News because I don't like
| distractions but when people shared with me an Apple News link
| I couldn't open it, because it would go to the app store
| instead of a redirect for the article. Ironically, on Android,
| that wasn't a problem. I'd get the article.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| When I click on links in Apple News, it stays in the Apple
| News app. That's the same on my phone, iPad and MacBook.
| projektfu wrote:
| And if you share an article to your favorite messenger?
| SkipperCat wrote:
| I only share articles between my wife and myself. The
| shared articles show up in our respective Apple News
| apps. Never really shared an article outside of the
| ecosystem. Sorry that's not more helpful.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I use it daily and it's decent. It's easy enough to just filter
| out all of the low-quality news sources (either block those
| channels or "suggest less"). I use it for sources I want to
| occasionally read articles from but wouldn't subscribe to: WSJ,
| New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Scientific American, or
| sources I do subscribe to but it's convenient to have them in
| one place (Atlantic, Wired, my local paper) instead of 5
| different apps.
|
| I mostly ignore the "For You" and go straight to browsing the
| sources I like, "saving" articles to read later, etc.
|
| Never noticed there were lots of ads; I guess I'm used to just
| scrolling on by them automatically.
| roosgit wrote:
| I 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.
| pupppet wrote:
| Like a cancer, a publicly traded company must grow at any cost.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I Assume That All Ads Are Scams
| globular-toast wrote:
| All ads are scams. They are there to make you unhappy causing you
| to need to work/spend money to become happy again.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Your 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 wrote:
| 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.
| rgblambda wrote:
| 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.
|
| Maybe they would have done that anyway though.
| TimByte wrote:
| In practice I mostly ignore ads too but it feels like an
| ecosystem-level tragedy
| pjc50 wrote:
| The 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.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Yep, one of the big problems is the penalty for any corporate
| crime today is not enough. Often the crime is more profitable
| than the penalty hurts.
|
| If you want to fix ads, make a malicious ad cost the ad
| network triple the amount they got paid to display it.
| Corporations are psychopathic by design, if you want to fix
| them you need to make it an actual financial risk to do
| something bad.
|
| And then heck, if you want to make stopping the original bad
| actors more effective, make the platforms pay up those
| damages but empower them to recover that loss if they can get
| it from the malicious advertiser.
|
| You'll see platforms doing more vetting of content, doing
| more KYC, and focused on reducing their own risk.
| DudeOpotomus wrote:
| Kids today learning about the FTC and standards... we used to
| be a real country, with real laws that actually helped real
| people.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| Bernie Sanders on reversing America's decline
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/05/we-
| can...
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| No there is another way. We can ban advertising completely.
| lossyalgo wrote:
| How 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.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| One only needs to look at the Grok-generating-nudes fiasco to
| see that potential financial liabilities are a pittance to
| huge companies. We need to jail CEOs whose companies break
| the law.
|
| You can just get away with fraud:
|
| Former CEO of Volkswagen AG Charged with Conspiracy and Wire
| Fraud in Diesel Emissions Scandal
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-
| volkswage...
|
| > He remains a fugitive in the United States and is wanted by
| the Environmental Protection Agency on charges including
| conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit
| wire fraud, conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act, and
| multiple counts of wire fraud.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Winterkorn
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > We should assume that all ads in general are scams. The noise
| to signal ratio is too large to care.
|
| 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.
| threetonesun wrote:
| Pre LLMs I would have said the all-text format of HN probably
| kept the astroturfing low, but these days I'm less sure. It's
| still a much less engaging format than almost any other place
| on the web, although again, with LLMs you can even cheaply
| target the lowest value returns.
| rightbyte wrote:
| You could read obvious shilling here pretending to like or
| pay and use the boringest B2B SaaS products way back too.
|
| Trying to get a proper grasp of consensus on open forums is
| hopeless.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's entirely hopeless. Just gotta know
| who's behind the posts. Checking for conflicts of
| interest is essential. HN is valuable due the fact many
| notable hackers post here. Makes it easier to know who we
| are interacting with, what they stand for and who they
| work for. Invite only communities like lobsters are even
| better in that regard. Less random accounts adding noise.
| Some degree of elitism is a good thing.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Yeah I agree. The point I was trying to make is that you
| can't judge like the share of some actual collective
| agreeing to something from reading post on forums.
| Terr_ wrote:
| What freaks me out is that in the long run everybody on
| the internet gets account problems at some point, and
| then when you're starting fresh, proof-of-humanity will
| be more difficult than it used to be.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Reddit is an all text (or mostly all text) community, and
| it is heavily astroturfed in many subreddits. It doesn't
| stop the astroturfing.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| There are very obvious _flagging_ patterns around certain
| kinds of politics.
| chasebank wrote:
| HN has been overwhelmingly astroturfed since at least 2010.
| WarmWash wrote:
| 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.
| digiown wrote:
| That's why you block ALL ads. Starve the beast. If an app has
| ads, I do not use it, end of story.
| WarmWash wrote:
| Unfortunately the "beast" is the Internet content itself.
|
| Even HN itself is a massive ad. We are lured here with tech
| links so YC companies can fish in curated waters for
| workers. That is explicitly why this board is hosted.
|
| The real fix is paying money for everything, but as
| evidenced by the many attempts at this, no one actually
| wants to pay. People _overwhelmingly_ want to block ads and
| backdoor subscriptions.
|
| For example, your average techy YouTuber just doing cool
| geeky stuff, 50% of viewers block ads and <1% become
| patreon/other paying subs. This comes under some kind of
| misplaced guise that if everyone blocks ads, geeky YouTuber
| will work for free.
|
| The Internet needs a level headed reconciliation with "the
| beast".
| digiown wrote:
| > HN itself is a massive ad
|
| I don't think it is the same. There is no manipulation
| involved here and many people seem to be looking for jobs
| actively.
|
| > no one actually wants to pay
|
| Two things
|
| 1. Most content is actually pretty worthless. It's
| subsidized by the ad-surveillance industrial complex.
| Even in the pre-LLM times there is so much blogspam,
| content farm articles, and slop videos because of this.
|
| 2. Payment monopolies have made microtransactions
| uneconomical through fees, which contributes to the
| friction of paying. I imagine in an alternate world with
| a crypto or fiat based digital currency with low enough
| fees, there would be much more direct payments.
| Seriously, if you just pay one cent per Youtube video,
| it'd dwarf the ad income for most channels. Your
| attention is hilariously worthless.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| >> That's why you block ALL ads. Starve the beast. If an
| app has ads, I do not use it, end of story.
|
| > Unfortunately the "beast" is the Internet content
| itself.
|
| So be it.
|
| It's like someone realizing that their crack dealer is an
| untrustworthy scumbag who is destroying everything the
| care about and they need to totally cut ties with him,
| and a friend objecting "Unfortunately, the 'scumbag' is
| your crack supplier himself."
|
| Yeah, we know that. If starving the beast means we have
| to give up our unhealthy addictions, it's probably a side
| benefit rather than a counter argument.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| This is a better argument than a lot of others here. We
| have to be willing to accept some losses to achieve a
| better outcome. We'd rather have our crack, but getting
| healthy requires getting clean.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Unfortunately the "beast" is the Internet content
| itself.
|
| The idea that the internet couldn't exist without ads is
| a myth that needs to die. The internet existed, thrived,
| and was awesome long before it became infested with ads.
| An ad free internet would be different in some ways, but
| it'd still be great and filled with endless amounts of
| content. Your example of youtube kind of proves the
| point. It was so much more fun before youtube became all
| about profit and people just posted videos for fun, or
| out of genuine passion. Not having obnoxious youtube ads
| doesn't even stop creators from getting paid since they
| can still take donations or sell merch.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| Most people are cheap (or broke). As such they will take
| for free when they can. In markets like that, ads win
| out. You should take a look at what happens to human
| behavior when you change a price from free to tiny (like
| a penny or a dollar) but non-zero.
| rmunn wrote:
| You're quite right: that newfangled Patreon nonsense is a
| flash in the pan that will never catch on. There's no way
| anyone can be successful getting hundreds of people to
| pay them $5 (or even $1) per month. Ads are the only way
| to run the Internet.
|
| What? It's 2026, not 2016? And Patreon has been running
| very successfully for over a decade? Huh. Whaddayaknow?
| WarmWash wrote:
| Patreon is not the issue.
|
| 1% of people covering most the costs for the other 99% of
| people is. Which is what we find when looking at patreon
| conversions
| direwolf20 wrote:
| I'm happy when a news website gives me two buttons: watch
| ads, or pay 3.99/m for a subscription, even though I
| usually click on watch ads. Agency matters.
| bagacrap wrote:
| Think of your yt premium sub as a donation to the
| creators you enjoy.
|
| What, you don't have a sub?
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I started closing any web page that had an ad on it, even
| if I wanted the content, right when they appeared. I
| loath ads. Yet, I disagree with you.
|
| While I pay for software, music, movies, etc, I think the
| vast majority of people either can't or won't. The
| internet would be vastly different if there were no ads
| because the amount of content would be greatly reduced.
|
| I still want no ads. I just don't think it'd be as small
| of a change as you suggest.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > The real fix is paying money for everything, but as
| evidenced by the many attempts at this, no one actually
| wants to pay.
|
| I mean, want is a strong word, but I'm very much okay
| with paying creators I follow. I have a patreon account
| with about 22 subscriptions from 1-50 dollars, because
| what they create enhances my life.
|
| > For example, your average techy YouTuber just doing
| cool geeky stuff, 50% of viewers block ads and <1% become
| patreon/other paying subs. This comes under some kind of
| misplaced guise that if everyone blocks ads, geeky
| YouTuber will work for free.
|
| First sentence is correct, the second is patently
| ridiculous. I don't block ads because I think people
| should work for free: I block ads because every virus
| I've ever gotten has been delivered to me via an ad
| network that's not properly vetting what's being pushed
| to it, and to save incredible amounts of mobile data, and
| to prevent my phone from getting (as) hot in my hand.
|
| The creator who's page I'm looking at is not even a
| factor in this calculus. I don't care. If you put up your
| stuff and are monetizing via ads only and I bounce off
| that and you earn nothing, oh well. Put it behind a
| proper paywall then, just, not my problem boss.
|
| > The Internet needs a level headed reconciliation with
| "the beast".
|
| The Internet, collectively, has been in an abusive
| relationship with this beast since it's inception. And
| yeah we got a bunch of free-at-point-of-use services out
| of it. Okay? I didn't ask Facebook to exist. I didn't
| request Twitter, I wasn't simply dying of lack of Linked-
| In. In fact my life would be better if many of these
| things closed up shop tomorrow and fucked right off.
|
| In time immemorial, it was normal to host VBulletin
| forums, your own static website, run a BBS, an ICQ server
| or TeamSpeak server, or whatever for literally nobody. We
| had no idea if any damn one was reading what we wrote
| back then, but we wrote anyway because as most people do
| in one way or another, we felt the drive to create and to
| share, and then as the internet evolved and the tools
| became more successful, we built communities, we built
| forums, we built email lists, all kinds of decentralized,
| albiet limited, ways to remain in contact with likeminded
| people.
|
| It was the monoliths who came onto the scene, stuffed to
| the gills with VC money, who suddenly gave us Facebook,
| Reddit, Twitter, all the rest of the websites of which
| there are like 6 now that everything is on. They showed
| up, and provided free services in exchange for our data.
| We didn't ask for that, they gave it freely. And now a
| couple decades on-ish they're finding out that monetizing
| user data, which has been the go-to excuse for all that
| time, doesn't really pay the bills and most of them are
| either losing money or are selling their souls to anyone
| who will purchase ad space, which is why ads are
| basically all scams now.
|
| Ad companies have spent the better part of my life
| digging their own graves and I'm very excited to watch
| them lay down in them. Rest in piss. The Internet lived
| before the Platforms, and it will survive them.
| munk-a wrote:
| Things need to be paid for but not everything needs to be
| paid for by everyone and most things are far cheaper than
| you'd expect. I played a MUD (and met my partner there!)
| for several years in college and afterwards. Initially I
| offered no financial support (since I was a starving
| college student) but when I had a job I sent in 10 bucks
| a month. That was a quarter of the cost to run a server,
| website and forum for about 120 people, we were generally
| overfunded but that was the cost of a wow subscription at
| the time and this was worth more to me.
|
| Usually a few enthusiasts can just bear the lion's share
| of the cost to create the infrastructure for a community,
| excess can go to long term contingency funding and, in
| the unfortunate case that a community completely runs out
| of funds then it'll stop existing until people care
| enough to create a new one.
|
| Video hosting and the like are dramatically more
| expensive but they can be reasonably subscription based
| (see Nebula and Dropout[2] neither of which have the VC
| backing to light piles of money on fire just to sustain a
| user base) but not everything needs such a high level of
| technology.
|
| Heck, back in the day the majority of traffic that a
| website that was ad-driven needed to host was the ads -
| if you were half-decent at writing asset caching rules
| images became a non-issue that were usually handled by
| proxies/other intermediaries.
|
| Everything costs money - but it's important to remember
| that a lot of services charge a lot more money than they
| cost to run and that ad money is a lot less money than
| most people realize[1].
|
| 1. A big exception to this being things like newspapers
| which really are in a hard place. Their expense isn't in
| hosting or other technical doodads (e.g. the NYT
| Crossword puzzle) - the subscription you're paying is to
| afford the huge team of reporters and editors that are
| needed to produce the information gathering and
| presentation.
|
| 2. Edited to add - Dropout is probably a terrible example
| here since it's a lot more like a newspaper, only a
| sliver of the cost is technical, most of it goes to the
| production team and talent they're retaining. But I'll
| leave it in there unedited.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| News sites don't really have reporters or editors any
| more. The news is reposted from AP/Reuters and the editor
| is an LLM.
|
| You mentioned the NYT in particular -- they're paid a lot
| to shill political positions.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > You mentioned the NYT in particular -- they're paid a
| lot to shill political positions.
|
| No. As discussed in (Epstein friend, but the research is
| still sound) Noam Chomsky's work, the money comes from
| access. The positions taken are to gain access (they
| don't take positions that will cause them to lose
| access).
|
| Paid to report something? You sound like a conspiracist.
| The real conspiracy is how the system is aligned to
| generate the outcome. That's capitalism.
|
| Money and power serves money and power.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > Unfortunately the "beast" is the Internet content
| itself.
|
| Don't threaten me with a good time. Most of what's on the
| Internet should not exist and the world would be better
| without.
| jefftk wrote:
| Like (ad-funded) HN?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| YouTube lets you pay about $20 per month for no ads. The
| money is divided among the creators of the content you
| watch. These creators noticed you weren't being
| frustrated by ads, so they added ads back in to their
| videos. Now for no ads you need SponsorBlock as well.
| WarmWash wrote:
| Yt premium comes with its own sponsor block. Its also
| $14/mo.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| SponsorBlock does much more than premium "skip ahead"
| bean469 wrote:
| Yep, and it not only skips ads, but also intros / outros
| / unpaid promos, etc.
| Terretta wrote:
| This _sounds_ brilliant, makes too much sense, and suggests a
| new kind of ad blocker to escalate and reflect retribution
| back.
|
| Unrelated: Once upon a time it was believed ads should pair
| with content, not with users. It's been proven to still be
| more effective. Problem (for advertisers) is reach vs. cost
| of producing ads that content-align. In any case, Apple has
| enough reach they could _easily_ bring ad sales in-house.
| Plenty TV shows, the show owner retains rights to ad slots
| partly to ensure no brand damage to show and partly to _make
| more money per slot_.
| jerf wrote:
| The random-clickers have been around for a while, clicking
| through ads to try to break profiles on users and cost the
| ad networks more money than it is worth.
|
| They have not been very successful in their goals. I
| suspect, without sarcasm, that that is because compared to
| the absolutely routine click-fraud conducted up and down
| the entire ad space at every level, those plugin's effects
| literally didn't even register. It's an arms race and
| people trying to use ad blockers to not just block the ads
| but corrupt them are coming armed with a pea shooter to an
| artillery fight, not because they are not very clever
| themselves but just without a _lot_ of users they can 't
| even get the needle to twitch.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Why would a less legitimate company not pay _more_ money to
| give you a worse deal with better margins? The intuitive
| dynamics to me would be that any way to trick consumers will
| be applied, and the bulk of the resulting spread will be
| captured by the ad companies via their auction systems. So we
| all get worse products with worse deals, and the difference
| goes into spying on people and convincing them to become more
| consumptive, i.e. to turn them into worse versions of
| themselves.
|
| Never allow ads in your life. They're malicious in every way.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Why would a less legitimate company not pay more money
| to give you a worse deal with better margins?_
|
| Because what matters is the total spend per resulting
| purchase, not spend per impression.
|
| Because spam ad companies have a very tiny conversion rate,
| they can only pay a very small amount per impression before
| it becomes unprofitable.
|
| Legitimate companies aren't usually trying to completely
| trick their customers. They are selling an actual halfway
| decent or good quality product. Therefore, if they are
| targeting well, they have a much much higher conversion
| rate and can therefore pay much more per impression.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I think our world models are just completely different
| here: I would say that "legitimate" companies are usually
| trying to completely trick their customers. e.g. price
| discrimination, shrinkflation, planned obsolescence,
| subscription or financing models to obscure costs,
| surreptitiously collecting and selling their customers'
| information, abusing psychology to create demand for
| things that no thinking person should want (e.g. junk
| food ads, or cigarette ads before they were banned), the
| list goes on.
|
| Even with the most straightforward to compare products
| like bank accounts, the biggest household names
| absolutely screw their customers. e.g. Chase gives like
| 0.01% APY on their savings accounts, or 0.02% on their
| "premier savings accounts". Capital One just settled a
| lawsuit for having two almost completely identical "high
| yield" accounts where the only difference was the less
| informed set of customers got like 0.3% in their "high
| yield" account while everyone else including Capital
| One's other, otherwise identical account was giving over
| 4%. It's not quite fraud, but I'd call that a scam from a
| major company. Part of the lawsuit alleged that they
| excluded existing customers with the worse account from
| ad campaigns about the better one. You can't do that
| without profiles on everyone, and that's exactly the sort
| of thing where _even for products from the same company_
| , they will _absolutely_ use information about you to
| advertise to you the _worst_ deal they think you 'll
| take.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Surely you understand there's a massive difference
| between crypto scams and fake boner pills, vs. real
| genuine potato chips that now come in a slightly smaller
| size or phones that don't work for quite as many years as
| you'd like?
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Not really? The phone that breaks early or the bank
| scamming their customers on interest rates probably scams
| any individual mark for more than the fake boner pills.
| Gambling, which mainstream companies like "family
| friendly" Disney advertise and participate in, scams more
| people out of larger sums money than whatever crypto
| thing you're thinking of. Phone carriers or car
| manufacturers selling your location are at least as bad
| as whatever BonziBuddy was doing.
|
| Regardless, imagining there were a difference in the
| direction you believe, it would be one of degree, not
| kind. Scams by large companies backed by large
| advertising campaigns are still scams.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I don't know what to tell you. The type of ad (more
| scammy vs less) depending on the rate, which depends on
| targeting, is a verifiable fact of digital advertising.
| If you want to insist this is false, you're going to have
| about as much luck as trying to convince people 2+2=5.
|
| You seem to be trying to push some ideological idea that
| all ads/companies are equally scammy, but that's
| obviously not true.
| crote wrote:
| I consider even "legitimate" ads scams. My products are more
| expensive (the marketing budget doesn't fall out of the sky,
| after all), and I am rewarded by being forced to view
| extremely annoying content in my day-to-day life? As a
| consumer, that sounds like a _horrible_ deal to me!
|
| On top of that, most ads provide no value whatsoever. Take
| the classic Coca-Cola vs Pepsi: they are fishing from the
| same pool so ads are primarily going to steal customers away
| from the _other_ brand. Both sides spending billions on
| marketing would result in roughly the same outcome as both
| sides spending nothing on marketing, so the ads are a net
| negative for society.
|
| There is also of course advertising in order to inform your
| potential market that your product exists _at all_. But if
| your product is so great, why haven 't I heard about it via
| things like independent reviews or personal recommendations
| already? And if two products seem to have the same features
| for the same price, the one which _isn 't_ heavily advertised
| is probably the better choice: it is likely already more
| popular for a reason, and there's a decent possibility that
| the money they aren't spending on advertising is going
| towards useful things like quality and customer support.
|
| I completely understand why companies in a heavily capitalist
| society are spending money on ads, but you can't convince me
| that the world wouldn't be a more pleasant place without
| them.
| ghaff wrote:
| It might be more pleasant for the people who are able to
| pay for every website, every magazine, every news source
| etc. (Maybe. I do discover a lot of things through
| advertising.) Probably less so for everyone else.
| vel0city wrote:
| Note: I'm not really super pro-ads, and I've never worked
| in the advertising industry. I don't like the existing
| hyper-advertised world we live in.
|
| > Both sides spending billions on marketing would result in
| roughly the same outcome as both sides spending nothing on
| marketing
|
| This is an assumption not backed by data. But its pretty
| much impossible to truly test this hypothesis at any real
| scale. What data we do have is if many brands stop
| advertising when they used to do advertising, they tend to
| start to lose sales. But, as you point out, their
| competitors didn't necessarily reduce advertising as well,
| its not testing "what if everyone cut advertising".
|
| > But if your product is so great, why haven't I heard
| about it via things like independent reviews or personal
| recommendations already?
|
| Its an assumption these people would have even found the
| product in the first place, or were willing to give it a
| try, or even know the product category or type exists in
| the first place, and that this organic growth would have
| happened fast enough to keep the product alive. If everyone
| is basing their decisions off word of mouth, are there
| really going to be enough people in your network to buck
| the trend and give a scrappy new competitor a go and have
| their opinion make decent enough waves?
|
| A world without _any_ advertising at all seems to me to be
| a place where entrenched names in markets end up dominating
| based purely on people practically never finding the
| competitors. They become the default, the go to. This still
| largely happens in this over-marketed world today though, I
| do agree, but I think that 's more of over-consolidation of
| producers and distributors having an outsized say on what
| we see in a lot of physical stores.
|
| That world without _any_ advertising also leads to some
| things not being made that would have otherwise existed,
| things that people generally like. Lots of magazines and
| other publications practically live off some amount of
| marketing, and they largely exist as a format for people to
| go see what 's happening in a given industry. Lots of
| things like sports leagues/teams rely on sponsorships.
| Would there be Formula 1 racing if they didn't have those
| corporate sponsors?
|
| I do agree especially internet advertising is largely
| destroying the internet. I don't understand how anyone uses
| mobile web pages without an ad blocker these days. Its
| absolutely terrible looking at anyone else's phones that
| doesn't block the ads, every page is more ad than content.
| We've definitely gone too far.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| While I tend to agree with your general example, there are
| lots of products that people don't talk about because they
| are icky, personal, or embarrassing but also really useful.
| Period cups fall into this category. Ting or whatever needs
| to advertise because nobody talks with their friends about
| phone subs.
| eitland wrote:
| In my case I was kinda OK with Google ads until around 2010
| and IIRC only began blocking them actively after they had
| been feeding me trash ads for years.
|
| Maybe you are right in most cases and I was the victim of a
| fluke.
|
| But from what I have seen from Google after that I don't
| think so.
|
| Facebook however, a company I disliked then and dislike now
| are scary good with their ads and have often been even even
| when I actively tried to avoid them.
|
| All this to say that your theory sounds interesting but I am
| convinced it is far from the whole story.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > When an ad network has a strong profile on you, legitimate
| companies pay good money for those ad slots.
|
| I have looked what interests for example Google stores about
| me
|
| > http://google.com/ads/preferences
|
| I am very certain that these don't describe me well, or I am
| classified wrong in some categories (without using any
| tracking/privacy protection! But I won't _actively_ correct
| this misclassification).
|
| My experience is rather that some people have very niche
| interests (among hacker-minded people, the proportion of
| these people is in my experience much higher than in the
| general population), and are hard to target using ads, so
| advertising networks and companies don't make the effort to
| target these users.
|
| Also, when I google about prices for some product category, I
| often have other reasons than a buying wish. For example I
| recently googled about the prices of products in some
| category because some work colleague claimed that someone
| else bought a product of a specific vendor for a specific
| price, but I really felt that the claimed price was off; to
| substantiate my claims, I did some googling.
|
| Or I google about products in a specific category because I
| am exactly _not_ satisfied with what some established players
| that love to advertise have to offer.
| mafuy wrote:
| That link does not work for me. It closes itself
| immediately.
| abecode wrote:
| I think you need to change it to https://, ie,
| https://google.com/ads/preferences . It resolves to https
| ://myadcenter.google.com/home?hl=en&sasb=true&ref=ad-
| se...
| DudeOpotomus wrote:
| Such a terrible take...
| dooglius wrote:
| Alternative POV: the better they profile, you the better they
| can slip the scams past your defenses
| naravara wrote:
| In theory user behavior to serve you ads you want to see for
| stuff you might be interested in is a feature. The problem
| comes because the same technology to power that can also
| power the--much more lucrative--industry of serving ads that
| are optimally designed to fry your brain and scam you. And
| then on top of that, it creates a business incentive for you
| to use a lot of psychological tricks and dark patterns to
| foster increasingly addictive and anti-social behavior to
| keep people stuck in a feedback loop of doomscrolling.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Having a strong profile makes one vulnerable to more
| convincing scams, which is much more dangerous.
| al_borland wrote:
| Any ad provider that is going to serve up scams to anyone is
| an ad provider I don't trust. Giving more information to an
| untrustworthy company seems like a losing plan. Those more
| target ads also mean more effective manipulation to get
| people to buy things they likely don't need.
| H8crilA wrote:
| I think they don't mind that you don't trust them if you're
| considered bottom of the barrel anyways - as far as ad
| revenue goes. I don't mind being there myself.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the only ad that would work on me would be an
| ad for an indie game, but indie game developers don't buy
| ads, they buy blue checkmarks on twitter then they try to
| game the algorithm. Even if I did see an ad for an indie
| game, I would probably not click on it, but just google its
| name instead.
|
| What I mean to say is that there is a type of person that
| will never click on an ad, even if they want to buy the
| product. Worse yet, most of the time I do click on an ad,
| it's a misclick.
|
| But I don't see this as a failure of the ad industry. I just
| think I'm the edge case.
| slumberlust wrote:
| This mythical world where you are 'immune' to ads doesn't
| exist. You are just as susceptible to ads as the next
| human.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| But by what metrics?
| recursive wrote:
| Metric implies there is some way to objectively measure
| it. I'm not sure if that's true.
|
| But almost everyone thinks the same as you do, and yet
| ads are huge business. How are you affected? I don't
| know, but my first guess is brand perception, regardless
| of your self-diagnosis. If a company is advertising a
| certain time-limited sale, some of their value will come
| from conversions taking that offer. But some, maybe most,
| is the brand impression that people get over time. Think
| "I never heard of that" vs "Oh yeah, I've seen that
| somewhere".
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Does the average person really think the same way I do?
| I'd assume the average person does click on an ad for
| something they want sometimes, and they do convert. They
| do things that are measurable, so they have ad profiles
| that show the sort of ads that are effective on them.
|
| I'm not saying that I'm immune to ads. What I'm saying is
| that my "ad profile" probably only says what sort of
| content I consume, if anything at all. Ironically, since
| I barely consume gaming-related content these days, I
| assume there is no way for ad companies to figure out
| that's the one thing I would actually buy from an ad.
|
| Instead they show me ads for things I would never spend a
| cent on, like Decentraland, just because I've watched
| some tech videos.
| recursive wrote:
| I've heard many people say they've never clicked on an
| ad. I don't think I've ever heard someone say they
| intentionally clicked an ad.
|
| I don't know if your assumptions are right or not.
| rmunn wrote:
| Says who? What's the proof?
|
| Last time I asked someone that (over a decade ago), the
| answer I got was that ad companies wouldn't spend
| millions of dollars on their ad campaigns if they didn't
| have proof of effectiveness. Sure, okay, that's good
| evidence that the ad campaigns are effective at getting
| _some_ people to buy the product. But what 's the
| evidence that I, _personally_ , am influenced by ads?
| Rather than "many people are influenced by ads, don't
| think you're immune"?
|
| Especially because I, personally, _actively avoid_
| advertising. I block it on the Internet, I avoid watching
| live TV and instead buy (or check out from the library)
| DVDs of shows I 'm interested in... And the billboards on
| the highway are mostly for services I don't need (like
| injury lawyers) so I have almost never bought something
| because I saw it advertised on a billboard. The only
| exceptions are the ones where the billboard said "(name
| of restaurant) 10 miles ahead" and I thought "Oh good, I
| had been hoping to find exactly that restaurant, I'll
| pull over in 10 miles". But I was already _looking_ for
| that product, the billboard ad just helped me find it.
|
| Not to mention that if all ads were like that -- "Hey,
| our restaurant is at exit 183, we do really good fajitas"
| -- I would be far, FAR less annoyed by advertising. If
| that was the only kind of ads you saw on the Internet, I
| might not have sought out adblockers in the first place.
| bdangubic wrote:
| > I was already looking for that product, the billboard
| ad just helped me find it.
|
| that is what ad-infested society does to everyone...
| everything you end up spending money on you sure _think_
| you were going to already :) you sound here exactly like
| my wife does when she gets pulled in bu an ad - "oh we
| really needed new curtains and these just came across the
| billboard, the ones we have are like 7 weeks old..."
| rmunn wrote:
| Give me a little credit for knowing my own mind, please.
| I meant exactly what I wrote.
|
| _Edit:_ I mean, yes, some people do think they came up
| with the idea that was just suggested to them. Stage
| magicians have used suggestion tricks for years. But part
| of my point is that billboards that simply remind you
| that a product exist, and your own _preexisting_ desires
| then make you want to buy it, are the form of advertising
| I am least annoyed by. Even people susceptible to ads had
| some kind of preexisting desire for the product (I really
| don 't like those curtains, I know we only bought them
| two months ago but I'm having buyer's remorse, I want
| something else, oh look, curtains on sale!) or else the
| ad wouldn't work. I mean, if I know I don't have
| psoriasis then I won't care about psoriasis medication
| ads in the slightest. But if I suspect I have psoriasis
| (maybe I do have it, or maybe I'm a hypochondriac) then
| the ads will actually have a chance of influencing me.
|
| Thing is, as far as I myself am concerned, I'm a pretty
| content guy. What I want is more good books to read, more
| good open-source software to be created, and to be able
| to enjoy time with my wife and kids. Almost none of which
| are desires that will make me susceptible to most ads.
| (Though if the ad was "Hey, Lois Bujold has a new book
| series out!" then yes, I'd be susceptible to _that_ ad.
| But again, pre-existing desire: Bujold has only written
| two books out of her entire _oeuvre_ that I 've disliked.
| A much higher like-to-dislike ratio than most authors).
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > that is what ad-infested society does to everyone...
| you end up spending money on you sure think you were
| going to already
|
| Your followup example of this is an impulse buy that
| happened adjacent to ad exposure. For that particular
| confluence, your theory could bear out.
|
| But I'm not sure folks do that with any regularity. And
| for folks who rarely impulse buy or don't see/hear ads in
| spaces they control - I don't think they run into it.
| ruszki wrote:
| I don't think that it's possible to not have a strong profile
| on you. I'm using Librewolf with a ton of anti fingerprinting
| tools, separate sessions for everything, blocking any ads,
| social media SDKs, Google things, like Analytics, don't even
| use Google anywhere for search etc on a Debian. Yet, Google
| knew immediately when I started to play Minecraft. The only
| connection was embedded YouTube videos on Minecraft wiki, and
| my ip. On paper.
|
| Since then I gave up. I tried everything which was
| reasonable, even some unreasonable. Yet, I couldn't stop them
| not knowing. Maybe if I had blocked JavaScript completely,
| maybe, but I'm not sure at all anymore.
| sfRattan wrote:
| I take a number of steps to obscure my identity from
| advertising/surveillance networks and data brokers, and I
| know ultimately they'll still have profiles on me that are
| probably extensive.
|
| Don't give up! Even if failure to prevent some data
| collection is inevitable, we can all help reduce the
| aggregate value of shadow profiles assembled by
| advertisers:
|
| _Block all ads_. The bits that cross the threshold onto
| your networks and devices are yours to display or not.
| Anyone who tells you otherwise is a petty tyrant.
|
| _Help friends and family to block all ads_. React to ads
| in their homes and on their devices the way you would to
| nonconsensual, graphic, violent pornography.
|
| Keep blocking ads and tracking even though you know shadow
| profiles built about you continue to exist. It's only
| partially about confounding surveillance. It's also, and
| equally, about changing culture.
| andrepd wrote:
| A VPN helps. You can essentially mix your traffic with
| thousands of other people.
| ufmace wrote:
| I think a VPN likely hurts more than it helps. Maybe they
| can't tell your IP address anymore, but they have a ton
| of ways of tracking through it anyways. It probably hurts
| more by marking you as someone willing to shell out too
| much money for snake-oil security products.
| snailmailman wrote:
| I used to run YouTube with "ad targeting" turned off. The ads
| were 100% scams. Lots of AI slop. Deepfakes of celebrities
| pitching all sorts of scams. Lots of nsfw products and even
| occasionally illegal things like drugs or guns. Also lots of
| ads in languages I _do not_ speak.
|
| I recently learned that if you turn _on_ ad targeting you can
| _block_ certain ads and never see them again. So I've turned
| it on just to block the worst of the ads. But googles ad
| targeting _still_ can't target ads to me. It's maybe only 70%
| scams now. But their targeting still _sucks_ and I _still_
| get ads in foreign languages that I do not speak.
|
| On my desktop I just use Adblock. I really try to avoid
| YouTube on mobile at all costs because the ads make it
| completely unusable.
| WarmWash wrote:
| Most ad blockers, like ublock, also block trackers. Ublock
| definitely blocks Google's tracking
| wishfish wrote:
| On iOS, uBlock Lite works great on Youtube. Same for
| Firefox + uBlock on Android. You can skip the ads on
| mobile.
| port11 wrote:
| Non-personalised ads might indeed be more scammy, but it
| should be the ad network's responsibility to vet and monitor
| their advertisers. (Imagine Don Draper making ads for penis
| enlargement companies.)
|
| Let's also not pretend that personalised advertising is that
| great. Our Tizen runs the crappiest ads (can't opt out in
| some cases). And I just have to take a look at my partner's
| phone to see what personalised means, and which advertisers
| can _afford_ to get placement. (No, she doesn't need another
| of the last 10 things we've purchased.)
| nkrisc wrote:
| Lots of "legitimate" ads are what I would consider scams,
| even if legally they are not.
|
| All the fine print, exceptions, limited dates, etc. often
| hidden from you as best they can makes it scam-like.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Facebook knows I graduated with a degree in comp. science and
| when (since I told them). They could therefore infer that I
| am into nerdy things - but I get bottom of the barrel ads.
|
| Part of the problem as far as I can see is that there is no
| way to mark an add as insultingly matched.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| This is an interesting position that I hadn't encountered. It
| would shift my understanding of the ad business online, if
| true. I've had ad blockers since they became available and
| have a very low opinion of ad-content. This would change that
| by explaining why the few that get through are actually
| different from what someone without an ad-blocker would see.
|
| Is there a link that confirms what you said here? There were
| "click the monkey to win an ipod" scam ads before we had ad-
| blockers. I think scams have always been around. I do want to
| update my mental model if I'm out of touch from what people
| actually see.
| Terretta wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > maybe trusted communities like HN
|
| 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.
| an0malous wrote:
| There's plenty of scams on HN, people don't notice the
| successful ones
| direwolf20 wrote:
| And YC. Scams make successful companies. Evil as well. Flock
| was a YC startup, as well as some cryptocurrency scams I
| don't remember.
| askl wrote:
| > maybe trusted communities like HN
|
| Especially on this site I would be very careful with trusting
| any recommendations. Probably more often than not it's the
| product/service of the person talking about it, so basically an
| ad.
| testing22321 wrote:
| 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.
|
| I Adblock the web aggressively.
| dddddaviddddd wrote:
| > Word of mouth and maybe trusted communities like HN is the
| only way to reliably discover new things.
|
| Any sufficiently trusted (online) community will find many
| attempts to exploit its trust for profit.
| wasmainiac wrote:
| > trusted communities like HN
|
| Please don't. I've been here for a years under different
| usernames. I feel more and more bots or other actors are
| starting to infiltrate.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > I've been here for a years under different usernames
|
| The guidelines ask that you don't do this. From
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html :
|
| > _Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but
| please don 't create accounts routinely. HN is a community--
| users should have an identity that others can relate to._
| direwolf20 wrote:
| You don't have to do things that other companies would
| _like_ you to do, no matter how emphatically they are
| stated. Just the other day I replied to a comment
| complaining about how LinkedIn broke Google 's ToS. As if
| that's somehow a problem.
| wasmainiac wrote:
| I'm not hoarding a library of accounts to abuse the ToS. My
| last account is on a dead iPhone somewhere.
|
| Things break or transfer ownership. HN accounts are quick
| to make, and I'm not one to collect internet points.
| pbasista wrote:
| 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.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Probably simpler to assume all ads are scams and work back from
| there
| TimByte wrote:
| The depressing part is that this is probably working just well
| enough financially
| bradley13 wrote:
| We 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Thankfully at least for YouTube there's Sponsorblock to
| filter out that junk as well.
| d--b wrote:
| At this stage pretty much all ads on the internet are scams
| dkobia wrote:
| Surely 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 wrote:
| 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...
|
| Do not buy this!! [1]
| https://kenmiso.com/products/%E2%9A%A1%E2%9C%A8ultimate-v8-e...
| sieep wrote:
| so you're saying this is a real product and the ad you saw(then
| purchased from) was a fake?
| brk wrote:
| 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.
| userbinator wrote:
| _I 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
|
| ...which ironically has crossed the line into "so bad it's
| good" territory.
| WarmWash wrote:
| Maggie Mcguagh on Instagram's whole schtick is buying and
| reviewing these fake AI generated products. Its pretty
| hilarious
|
| [1]https://www.instagram.com/maggiemcgaugh
| easywood wrote:
| I am very curious what the product really looked like.
| sammyoos wrote:
| I gave it to a friend, but think the cup shown, with painted
| by an amateur model enthusiast. Not quite right colours, not
| quite right places...
|
| https://i0.wp.com/kirkville.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2026/02/I...
| gramie wrote:
| Are you saying that something about this product is suspect?
| But it has "Beautiful Craftsamnship"!
|
| https://img-va.myshopline.com/image/store/1731468034215/1dd4...
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| > interlocking ars
|
| OwO
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| I've always wanted a mug that has an "Ecgraronic| handle
| sin.]"!
|
| I mean how could you not want to own a piece of hand-painte
| perfectly restody that perfectly restores the V8 engine red?
| meindnoch wrote:
| Wtf. How could you fall for such an obvious scam? Are you under
| 5 years old? Or over 60?
| bombcar wrote:
| 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).
| sometimez wrote:
| Can you please share what the actual product looks like?
| pvorb wrote:
| At least you got a mug!
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Sue them for your $28 back?
| oriettaxx wrote:
| what about the #1 result in any research in Apple store
|
| 100% shit
| deafpolygon wrote:
| All ads are scams.
| frizlab wrote:
| Personally I assume ALL ads are scams. Never mind where they are
| from.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Well, 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 wrote:
| Internet 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 wrote:
| Hi, 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| The financial optimum for any ad company is to accommodate scams.
| victor106 wrote:
| Dear 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 wrote:
| Sadly 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 wrote:
| I'm already questioning it. The software quality just keeps
| getting worse.
| al_borland wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Which is why I never us a phone that requires me to have
| certain apps installed.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| You can uninstall almost all of Apple's apps now. Even things
| like the clock and the calendar. Not sure why the parent
| chose to leave News installed.
| storus wrote:
| It can't be uninstalled on Sonoma I am using.
| flpm wrote:
| Please 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jcelerier wrote:
| 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.
| colesantiago wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| 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_.
| benterix wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| jandrese wrote:
| Yes. Facebook is especially bad about letting outright scammers
| buy ad slots.
| Spivak wrote:
| Meanwhile 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 wrote:
| My 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.
| meindnoch wrote:
| All ads are scams. Some are worse than others.
| forinti wrote:
| In 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 wrote:
| uBlockOrigin and Pihole. I refuse to use the internet without
| them. Ads are a cancer. Not just on the internet, but in
| general.
| ataru wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| You 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_...
| damnitbuilds wrote:
| Anyone who pays $1000 dollars for a phone has already been
| scammed once, so they make a good target for scammers.
| snicky wrote:
| A 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 wrote:
| 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.
| scratchyone wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| 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.
| olivia-banks wrote:
| I 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).
| michael_michael wrote:
| 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.
| olivia-banks wrote:
| I agree, and did the same thing. It also makes me wonder what
| exactly is going on here from a technical perspective. Surely
| this shouldn't be possible? On the _very_ rare occasion I get
| other ads, no such thing happens. Is Intuit paying for this
| to happen?
| yalogin wrote:
| Oof 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 wrote:
| What'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 wrote:
| Huh? With millions of pieces of content to choose from a day
| some kind of curation is inevitable.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| You'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 wrote:
| YouTube doesn't care as long as people are buying the ads.
|
| They need to be made to care, somehow.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| > I would be willing to consider paying for vetted ads
|
| why, though?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Becoming aware of the existence of products and services
| you might like is not inherently bad.
|
| It's the state of the industry that is bad.
| dominicrose wrote:
| A 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 wrote:
| Just assume all ads everywhere are scams, it's an accurate enough
| heuristic
| otikik wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I am glad I am not the only one. Why do I see it like 50 times
| a day?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I prefer these types of ads. They're easy to identify at a glance
| and ignore.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| 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.
| afthonos wrote:
| Don't make me tap the "ads are cancer" sign.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > 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/
| tgtweak wrote:
| 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.
| tart-lemonade wrote:
| > 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.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Of all the ways to treat the cancer that is advertising, I
| think encouraging stricter moderation by the payment providers
| is the one with the scariest side effects.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| Glad you pointed this out because I actually considered the
| argument for a moment. However, Visa blocked donations to a
| porn actor who opened a donation page for a serious illness
| (can't remember what). We don't need these companies doing
| moral-policing.
|
| Hold the ad companies responsible. They are the most
| complicit.
| tristor wrote:
| > Apple's contract likely puts verification on Taboola's plate
|
| The biggest problem started when Apple accepted Taboola as an
| advertising partner. Taboola is the master of the
| chumbox/chumvertising, and it's unsurprising that ads are full
| of scams, that is Taboola's raison d'etre. See
| https://medium.com/the-awl/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-c...
| from 10 years ago. This isn't new.
| flkiwi wrote:
| 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.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Apple 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| I mean that is also how it kinda works here on HN.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| if you turned on the option in your settings to show blocked
| comments
| masonwan wrote:
| Apple 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 wrote:
| So 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.
| Finnucane wrote:
| This suggests that there are online ads that are not scams. Who
| knew?
| rectang wrote:
| On 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 wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| The biggest problem is the "trust" that users have with the Apple
| News ecosystem. They pay for it too!
| lemonberry wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| What's special about Apple news? That should be the default
| position on ads no matter where you see it.
| teekert wrote:
| Me 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 wrote:
| Cyber crime case closure rates, from what I can find online, were
| sub 5%.
| seabass wrote:
| A thousand and one paper cuts. I feel like this shortsighted
| decision making will cost Apple so much trust in the long run.
| quadtree wrote:
| Is 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 wrote:
| All 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 wrote:
| I assume all ads are scams. Cause they are :-)
| PeterStuer wrote:
| To be fair, it is not just Apple. Scams are rampant regardless of
| the channel serving the ads.
| hu3 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| this 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
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Here's something that I live by:I ~now~ assume that all ads on
| ~Apple News~ are scams (Unless proven otherwise)
| benrazdev wrote:
| why does an RSS feed aggregator even need ads in the first place?
| redundantly wrote:
| I use Apple News every day, but just for the puzzles. Otherwise
| it's a garbage app.
| walt_grata wrote:
| I assume all ads are scams. That's easier.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Let me fix this, "I now assume that all ads are scams"
| charcircuit wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| No, 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 wrote:
| Apple 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 wrote:
| Apple 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'.
| hu3 wrote:
| > but if I remove it the total cost goes up.
|
| That's because they know that in Apple News+ you are the
| product and their profit lowers if you block their ads by
| disabling the app.
| antonyh wrote:
| Then they are fools. I left a one-star review and uninstalled
| it.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| 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.
| cvoss wrote:
| 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.
| sysworld wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| iOS has had support for ad blockers since 2015. I never ever
| see ads on iOS Safari and have not for many years.
| hu3 wrote:
| What do you suggest I setup for my wife's iPhone?
|
| And does it block ads on Apple News?
| carleton wrote:
| uBlock Origin Lite for Safari
|
| To block ads on Apple News you need to block
| iadsdk.apple.com in DNS. E.g., NextDNS
| wnc3141 wrote:
| While 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| As 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 wrote:
| That 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 wrote:
| serious 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?
| Wobbles42 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Those 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 wrote:
| I'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?
| nbhgvufgk wrote:
| apple is quickly becoming the OS for scams and spam.
| ordu wrote:
| The mug doesn't seem right for me. I looks like a geometry of it
| is badly broken.
| everdrive wrote:
| Great 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| That 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 wrote:
| Ads are essentially a biding system. Less biders means less
| profit. Removing scams means losing money.
| etherealG wrote:
| Replace 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 wrote:
| Get ready for literally everything to be a scam. The declining
| rate of profit is showing itself all around us.
| dlenski wrote:
| > 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-cardiga...
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