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.
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.
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+.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Then I don’t know what to tell you. I just opened the app again, and right there in the home section I’m seeing an ad for the Super Bowl in Peacock. If you don’t get that, great, but I’m far from the only one complaining about it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
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)
"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.
> "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.
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.
> 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.
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)
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.
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.
Oh yes, indeed. On iOS I quite prefer it, but I also use it daily on Linux. But the linux web version is still much better than the terrible Windows client. That thing is plain terrible.
I think the Apple Music service is still good. There are little features that I rely on a lot, like the asterisk next to the prominent/popular songs on a given album.
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.
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.
Sure, but in another time you'd have paid ~$2.99 for the ad-free version one-time, and carried on using it. They intentionally deleted that version of the game, screwing over everyone who did so, then quietly launched the same game again, removing the ad-free one time purchase option.
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.
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.
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
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.
If you can figure out a good way for Apple to eliminate the revenue model used for the most profitable games on the platform without getting slapped by regulators, I'm sure they would love to hear it.
They don't have to eliminate it, that wasn't my complaint. They need a competitive ecosystem with real-world stakeholders (a-la Epic) and third-party community support like emulators.
iOS is so far behind in this regard that even uttering it in the same sentence as "gaming" almost exclusively implicates gachapon titles or microtransaction slop. Other platforms don't suffer as much.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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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.
'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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
However when one such is opened in the browser, it - like any other app link - asks if you want to open it in the news app. And if you close that popup and click on "tap here", you get the link to the original article.
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.
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.
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.
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 cliché 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
We should assume that all ads in general are scams. The noise to signal ratio is too large to care. Word of mouth and maybe trusted communities like HN is the only way to reliably discover new things.
Generally if all the ads you see are scammy, it means you probably are using some form of tracking/privacy protection.
When an ad network has a strong profile on you, legitimate companies pay good money for those ad slots. When they don't really know who you are, only bottom feeders bid on the ad slots you see.
In a way, it almost acts as retribution for not submitting to the anti-privacy machine.
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.
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.
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".
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> The internet would be vastly different if there were no ads because the amount of content would be greatly reduced.
In terms of quantity it wouldn't be noticeable to you at all. It'd still be more than you could ever consume in your lifetime. I saw the internet before ads and it was still filled with just about everything you see today. The content itself was actually better in many cases (technical limitations being what they were). It was certainly less harmful.
The only thing I really think we'd have to worry about losing is some of the youtube content made with extremely high production costs but even some of those channels started out producing the same content with lower production values and slowly improved the presentation as their channel grew which could still happen without ads through donations and other strategies.
The vast majority of the content we'd lose on the internet without ads is the stuff companies put out there for no reason other than because they want to make money, as it turns out, that stuff is mostly trash anyway. It's what brought us click bait, entire content farms of trash, the millions of AI generated websites filled with hallucinations that drown out the actual information you're looking for, etc.
Getting rid of ads on the internet wouldn't make all the bad stuff would go away though. Companies already often have other perverse incentives for putting stuff on the internet, but at least we wouldn't be getting the obnoxious ads and surveillance capitalism on top of that.
>> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lol. I use a vpn every day to access geofenced content abroad. It also provides extra layer of anonymity by giving you a different address which is the same for everyone going through that server. Which was what the question was about. Other types of tracking can be mitigated on your end.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
> 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…”
> 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.
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).
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
In fact, more than know, I assumed the only category under discussion were at a minimum nation-scale, what with local knowledge not requiring online advertising as a sign on a building is enough for local neighbourhoods.
You should never see an ad without seeking it out, so catalogs or something I guess. It's not my problem frankly. If having ads is so important they should have been more careful with them.
I miss catalogs! And I'm not sure that works for every kind of product. You forgot to mention door-to-door sales (not a thing outside of the US AFAIK) or cold-calling potential customers (only applicable for certain types of products), good old word-of-mouth (need to get lucky and reach "influencers"), or throw tupperware-type parties. There are surely other methods as well.
Re: being careful
Any system created by humans will be abused unless regulated. And even then, there will always be loopholes which will be abused until punished (and even punishment might not be a proper deterrent if it can be calculated as a cost of business. (Yes I'm arguing for and against you, just thinking out loud basically ;)
I think that the most fundamental issue with ads and more generally with provider-curated content is that they represent what the advertiser or the provider wants. Not what you want.
Even if the ads are heavily personalized, the advertiser is still the one who is trying to push an idea onto you. Similarly, even if your social media account has a lot of personal information on you, the provider is still the one who is selecting which content will appear in you "feed".
I believe that these practices make people less self-aware of what they actually want. Because they mostly respond to suggestions. They do much less research into what is possible. They just say yes or no to the things they see in their ads or in their "feed". While becoming more and more distant from the reality that is happening outside the provider-managed ads or "feeds".
I think that a safe way out of this is to ignore ads and "feeds" completely. And actively search for the things or content you want. Curate your interests in a way you like. Not in a way advertisers or providers want.
I have not had ads in my life in any form for two decades.
I don’t have a TV, don’t listen to the radio or read newspapers or magazines. I live in a small town with no metro, no billboards. I buy things I need like milk and vegetables, I don’t buy things that require ads for me to know about.
That, unfortunately has pushed advertisers into guerrilla marketing tactics like posts and comments disguised as genuine user behaviour. It means we now need to parse whether what we're looking at is an ad or not.
I can't say the AI scripted AI voiced "my wife bet my abs vs. a trip to Paris" and "I ordered this and was going to throw it away but then the heavens opened and angels descended and gave me this Alibaba tchotchke" are harbingers of the idiocracy. Because it's already here.
// Adblock at DNS used to kill these Apple News ads. They're no longer suppressed. Free with their Plus all the things and aggregated my content subs but I quit using it. Had loved Texture, this now sucks.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I genuinely wish they would flip it around and put me in the driver's seat. I would easily turn to a "Meta Product Search" over search engines or Amazon or whatever.
What's annoying is they do have tons of scam detection crap, which seems to only trigger on legitimate advertising (insofar as any advertising is legitimate) - the problem is there are millions of people willing to work on getting scams through for pennies a day, and it doesn't cost them anything.
Tiktok ads, Youtube Ads, Instagram/Meta ads - there's just a huge influx of scams and obviously fake sites on them. AI generated copy, AI generated landing pages...
My honest take on it is that it's the payment companies that are complacent here - they're just allowing payment processing for anyone now up to a certain amount before doing proper diligence. The fact these chinese vendors can spin up a website, get payment processing, verify an ads account and buy advertising shows that many compliance functions are being skipped (or are complicit) in this.
It works because everyone in the game has something to gain from it - Apple's contract likely puts verification on Taboola's plate, which is likely not being done per their own "controls" process, or is itself being automated (poorly). Taboola is getting paid because they're running these ads and charging for them, the vendors are being paid because they're drop shipping temu garbage that doesn't resemble their AI ads (since taboola isn't checking this at all) and getting away with it for a few months by long shipping times and delaying refunds/chargebacks long enough to get paid, and the payment processors (paypal, apple pay, google pay) are all making money on their obscene 1%+ processing markups, and have special "group" programs where a company can underwrite their own merchants provided they follow guidelines (compliance offloading). Visa/Mastercard are offloading their compliance duties to the payment processors until they get a formal complaint or chargeback/refund spike over a certain ratio (where they issue a fine and seize processing volume - which is also income for them).
btw if you want to be 100% sure something is a scam - check the iframe url on the credit card input form on the checkout page - on mustylevo.com its https://cashiers.myshopline.com/pci-sdk/v3/iframe.html?merch... which is hardly a name brand ecom platform - they have a "shopify-like" checkout but that isn't shopify (props to shopify/shop pay - they've been very quick to kill these kind of scams on their platform despite it losing them some fees).
So yeah - everyone involved in this is making money and is complicit through their lack of process.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Or that time PayPal shut down WikiLeaks donations.
The last thing we need right now is some political party declaring their opponents a scam and turning off their donations. Not that I'm a fan of political donations, its just that I'm even more troubled by policies that would give an edge to incumbents.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That has definitely stuck out to me. After years of not seeing ads, I am always shocked at how bad the ads are when I do see one. They essentially flaunt how dumb they think their target market is and I just don't get how they are not perceived as offensive and disrespectful.
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.
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I bought a remarkably similar mug (last advert shown) from an add from different site [1]. Everything about it was a fake. Almost every feature they advertised did not exist (including the fact that it did not come in a gift box.) That was from a site I visit a lot and I wanted to show support. BTW the AI generated animation is quite cool, too bad it is not real...
I am surprised you could look at that page and expect to receive a quality product. The images all look like really low grade AI-generated renderings. The mug in the cupholder and the giftbox image in particular don't stand up to even casual scrutiny.
Not trying to make your situation worse, I just find it interesting what these sites are able to get away with to get people to part with their money.
Just as there's a cottage industry for "I made the game the scam ads show" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRDhiN50Vo0 I think there will soon be a cottage industry for "the scam ad was good, let's make it for real".
That mug is amusing but it should't be too hard for China to make something similar - but real (at least without the weird piston).
I love how, on the "I am retiring page", the image of the old woman even has artifacts of the Gemini logo on the bottom right - someone very probably manually tried to blur them with a tool that was not meant for blurring.
Somehow, he or she was still convinced and put it up.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
I've an avid Apple News user, and while I haven't seen the sorts of ads in the article, I do gets lots of ads for tax filing software. Namely, Intuit TurboTax. They are the only ads I ever get.
What's more, if you even touch them while scrolling, it triggers the "download app" screen, even if I don't explicitly tap. This is new as of a few weeks ago.
I'm genuinely haunted by these TurboTax ads, I see that download app popup at least 3 times a day when I use Apple News. Truly cannot believe someone at Apple though that was an acceptable user experience for ads.
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?
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.
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).
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.
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?
The weird thing about Apple News: as the article mentions, paying for “+” still shows ads, but not paying at all means you can’t see content that’s already free online.
Try it: when it tells you a story isn’t available without a subscription, search the headline and often the story can be read on its original source, for free.
Maybe I'm just scarred from the late 90s internet, but I have assumed that every ad on every website is a scam at all times for as long as I can remember.
Which is why I block ads unconditionally everywhere that I can.
I'm old enough to consider TV ads as scams too. "For only 6 payments of 19.99!" The "mute" button on my parents' remote control was worn off. I still mute ads that I get through low-tier streaming subscriptions. It's really jarring to go to a friend's house where they don't mute their ads.
Heck, I've even seen scam ads in printed local newspapers. They typically target seniors with a thing for collecting rare coins and use misleading language about the U.S. Mint.
I 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.
I'm amazed to discover that there are people on earth that believe that some ads aren't scam. It should be forbidden by law to advertise, it is a scourge on humanity.
Most people consider that an extreme take, but I agree completely. They're an active drain on the environments they're placed in - both physical and digital. They're a drain on the mental energy of the people who are forced to see or hear them. They make the entire world feel artificial and fake - a place not made for humans.
> 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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
The more you pay for a subscription, the more valuable it is to advertise to you -- maybe the classic example is The New York Times which has highly annoying advertising if you're a subscriber because you've qualified yourself.
Or rather, if you believe you are too poor to afford a $10 a month subscription you probably believe you're too poor to afford anything that is advertised. The model of "premium subscription with no ads" flies in the face of reality.
I would be willing to consider paying for vetted ads - in other words, you pay for the NYT and you get a guarantee that you're only seeing ads that have been personally vetted by the NYT for correctness, appropriateness, etc.
Advertising is speech and it used to be that if a magazine/newspaper printed a scam ad, it was horribly damaging to their business, both legally and morally.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
"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.”
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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 (£70) 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).
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!
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.
> 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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?).
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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+.
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.
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
I think you would use SharePlay for that maybe
So you have to buy twice as many Apple products, brilliant marketing strategy
> 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.
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.
The ad industry can't destroy itself soon enough.
The ad industry basically is the tech industry at this point.
But how will I get free stuff and also not see ads with my adblocker if ads die?
I don't know. How will open source software exist without ads?
I'm dreading the day Amazon puts ads in e-books.
I often imagine a world where ads are illegal.
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.
Again, another great move sponsored by bean counter boy Tim.
TV is pretty good even for my English sensibilities. Severance is some of the best television I’ve seen in a long time.
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.
Try Pluribus. We just finished S01. Also pretty good.
Calling AppleTV low quality doesn't fit. The rest, yeah. Pretty useless.
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.
What? I’ve never seen a single commercial on an Apple TV+ show.
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)
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.
I’m wondering what platform you are using TV+ on.
An Apple TV.
So weird I don’t have anything like that on mine
Maybe you’re not an Apple TV+ subscriber, then.
I am
Then I don’t know what to tell you. I just opened the app again, and right there in the home section I’m seeing an ad for the Super Bowl in Peacock. If you don’t get that, great, but I’m far from the only one complaining about it.
All I see is shrinking I. Home and Apple TV page. May e you have peacock linked? I do t use peacock
You can control what apps are allowed to put trailers in the home screen.
It sounds like the OP is complaining about Apple when they should be complaining about Peacock.
Are you not able to think of a simple concept of "maybe the ads are regional" and you need to immediately jump to dumb conspiracy theories?
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.
You haven't seen Apple product placement in their shows?
Servant was a walking ad for iPhones and Facetime lol
It's right when you open the TV+ app.
Weird, there are none when you use the appletv device
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.
When you open which app? The appletv app on the device?
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.
the promos for other shows are commercials
Which you can quickly skip past.
What’s your point, exactly? They are still commercials.
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.
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.
TV productions are a product, not a service. Apple TV is the service.
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.
> 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.
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.
If they were serving the mass market then they would be making trash like Netflix.
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.
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].
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.
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)
"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.
> "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.
"And don't say 'do it' because i don't 'do it', i ingest it, on orders from my neurophysiologist."
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.
> 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.
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)
"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".
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.
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.
I agree. It seems they don't produce as many titles as other streaming platforms, but what comes out is rather good.
I actually like Fitness+, it got me working out for the first time in my life.
Against Youtube Music and Spotify, Apple Music rates quite well, at least IMO.
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.
Oh yes, indeed. On iOS I quite prefer it, but I also use it daily on Linux. But the linux web version is still much better than the terrible Windows client. That thing is plain terrible.
I think the Apple Music service is still good. There are little features that I rely on a lot, like the asterisk next to the prominent/popular songs on a given album.
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.
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.
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
Sure, but in another time you'd have paid ~$2.99 for the ad-free version one-time, and carried on using it. They intentionally deleted that version of the game, screwing over everyone who did so, then quietly launched the same game again, removing the ad-free one time purchase option.
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.
Any specific models you’ve used and can recommend?
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.
> 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.
Agreed. "Free mobile game" almost certainly means "malicious gambling app" at this point.
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
note to others: any 3DS can be very easily jailbroken, doesn't require any soldering or sth. https://3ds.hacks.guide/
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.
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.
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.
If you can figure out a good way for Apple to eliminate the revenue model used for the most profitable games on the platform without getting slapped by regulators, I'm sure they would love to hear it.
They don't have to eliminate it, that wasn't my complaint. They need a competitive ecosystem with real-world stakeholders (a-la Epic) and third-party community support like emulators.
iOS is so far behind in this regard that even uttering it in the same sentence as "gaming" almost exclusively implicates gachapon titles or microtransaction slop. Other platforms don't suffer as much.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
> 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
> Available offers > Get offers for top games with Play Pass > 50% zniżki na zakup w aplikacji > Do 37 zł zniżki co tydzień > 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.
"The only people who call customers 'users' are drug dealers and software companies."
'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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)?
It’s almost like Google AMP was a good idea and solving this problem this community had a melt down over it.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They don't create the Apple TV shows either; they buy those. Pluribus is a Sony production.
Agree I am just comparing Apples efforts
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
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.
That seems really short-sighted. A fair share of more than $100/year is a lot of money for news.
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.
Yes, it still wraps them into https://apple.news links.
However when one such is opened in the browser, it - like any other app link - asks if you want to open it in the news app. And if you close that popup and click on "tap here", you get the link to the original article.
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.
And if you share an article to your favorite messenger?
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.
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.
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.
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 cliché 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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Why can't they build their own ad network for control instead of partnering with 3rd parties?
Apple does have their own ad network. This is their ad network.
https://ads.apple.com/
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.
At first minimalistic ui was because of UX. Today apple design managers went to the UI side forgetting about end user.
FYI it would be "Icing on the cake" or "cherry on top"
It's not a revenue generating service.
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".
You can definitely block ads- try NextDNS.
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.
I'm using AdGuard running in Home Assistant and I don't see any ads in Apple News.
Looking at what gets blocked when I open the News apps, try going for these domains:
news.iadsdk.apple.com
news-app-events.apple.com
news-sports-events.apple.com
news-events.apple.com
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.
How is it on battery life to run the VPN continuously?
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.
90% of the content in the News+ app is itself an ad.
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We should assume that all ads in general are scams. The noise to signal ratio is too large to care. Word of mouth and maybe trusted communities like HN is the only way to reliably discover new things.
Generally if all the ads you see are scammy, it means you probably are using some form of tracking/privacy protection.
When an ad network has a strong profile on you, legitimate companies pay good money for those ad slots. When they don't really know who you are, only bottom feeders bid on the ad slots you see.
In a way, it almost acts as retribution for not submitting to the anti-privacy machine.
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.
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.
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.
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".
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
> The internet would be vastly different if there were no ads because the amount of content would be greatly reduced.
In terms of quantity it wouldn't be noticeable to you at all. It'd still be more than you could ever consume in your lifetime. I saw the internet before ads and it was still filled with just about everything you see today. The content itself was actually better in many cases (technical limitations being what they were). It was certainly less harmful.
The only thing I really think we'd have to worry about losing is some of the youtube content made with extremely high production costs but even some of those channels started out producing the same content with lower production values and slowly improved the presentation as their channel grew which could still happen without ads through donations and other strategies.
The vast majority of the content we'd lose on the internet without ads is the stuff companies put out there for no reason other than because they want to make money, as it turns out, that stuff is mostly trash anyway. It's what brought us click bait, entire content farms of trash, the millions of AI generated websites filled with hallucinations that drown out the actual information you're looking for, etc.
Getting rid of ads on the internet wouldn't make all the bad stuff would go away though. Companies already often have other perverse incentives for putting stuff on the internet, but at least we wouldn't be getting the obnoxious ads and surveillance capitalism on top of that.
Think of your yt premium sub as a donation to the creators you enjoy.
What, you don't have a sub?
>> 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.
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.
> 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.
Like (ad-funded) HN?
Sure.
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.
Yt premium comes with its own sponsor block. Its also $14/mo.
SponsorBlock does much more than premium "skip ahead"
Yep, and it not only skips ads, but also intros / outros / unpaid promos, etc.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
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> 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.
That link does not work for me. It closes itself immediately.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Alternative POV: the better they profile, you the better they can slip the scams past your defenses
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.
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.
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.
A VPN helps. You can essentially mix your traffic with thousands of other people.
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.
Lol. I use a vpn every day to access geofenced content abroad. It also provides extra layer of anonymity by giving you a different address which is the same for everyone going through that server. Which was what the question was about. Other types of tracking can be mitigated on your end.
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.
Try newpipe to use YouTube without ads.
Most ad blockers, like ublock, also block trackers. Ublock definitely blocks Google's tracking
On iOS, uBlock Lite works great on Youtube. Same for Firefox + uBlock on Android. You can skip the ads on mobile.
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.)
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.
This mythical world where you are 'immune' to ads doesn't exist. You are just as susceptible to ads as the next human.
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.
> 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…”
> 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.
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).
But by what metrics?
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
Having a strong profile makes one vulnerable to more convincing scams, which is much more dangerous.
Such a terrible take...
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Reddit is an all text (or mostly all text) community, and it is heavily astroturfed in many subreddits. It doesn't stop the astroturfing.
There are very obvious flagging patterns around certain kinds of politics.
HN has been overwhelmingly astroturfed since at least 2010.
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.
Kids today learning about the FTC and standards... we used to be a real country, with real laws that actually helped real people.
Bernie Sanders on reversing America's decline
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/05/we-can...
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.
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
No there is another way. We can ban advertising completely.
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.
> there are just too many competitors
This ought to be a signal that the market is already being served, that it is unlikely to be a big opportunity to make more money.
Even with advertising, what you have in such a market is an all-pay auction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-pay_auction
The end point is nobody makes any profit on apps, because all the money that ought to be profit goes to paying for a bidding war on ad slots.
"The market" is no longer your local neighborhood, it's often the entire globe.
I know that.
In fact, more than know, I assumed the only category under discussion were at a minimum nation-scale, what with local knowledge not requiring online advertising as a sign on a building is enough for local neighbourhoods.
You should never see an ad without seeking it out, so catalogs or something I guess. It's not my problem frankly. If having ads is so important they should have been more careful with them.
I miss catalogs! And I'm not sure that works for every kind of product. You forgot to mention door-to-door sales (not a thing outside of the US AFAIK) or cold-calling potential customers (only applicable for certain types of products), good old word-of-mouth (need to get lucky and reach "influencers"), or throw tupperware-type parties. There are surely other methods as well.
Re: being careful
Any system created by humans will be abused unless regulated. And even then, there will always be loopholes which will be abused until punished (and even punishment might not be a proper deterrent if it can be calculated as a cost of business. (Yes I'm arguing for and against you, just thinking out loud basically ;)
edit: grammar
I think that the most fundamental issue with ads and more generally with provider-curated content is that they represent what the advertiser or the provider wants. Not what you want.
Even if the ads are heavily personalized, the advertiser is still the one who is trying to push an idea onto you. Similarly, even if your social media account has a lot of personal information on you, the provider is still the one who is selecting which content will appear in you "feed".
I believe that these practices make people less self-aware of what they actually want. Because they mostly respond to suggestions. They do much less research into what is possible. They just say yes or no to the things they see in their ads or in their "feed". While becoming more and more distant from the reality that is happening outside the provider-managed ads or "feeds".
I think that a safe way out of this is to ignore ads and "feeds" completely. And actively search for the things or content you want. Curate your interests in a way you like. Not in a way advertisers or providers want.
I have not had ads in my life in any form for two decades.
I don’t have a TV, don’t listen to the radio or read newspapers or magazines. I live in a small town with no metro, no billboards. I buy things I need like milk and vegetables, I don’t buy things that require ads for me to know about.
I Adblock the web aggressively.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
In practice I mostly ignore ads too but it feels like an ecosystem-level tragedy
There’s plenty of scams on HN, people don’t notice the successful ones
And YC. Scams make successful companies. Evil as well. Flock was a YC startup, as well as some cryptocurrency scams I don't remember.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes. Facebook is especially bad about letting outright scammers buy ad slots.
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.
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.
I genuinely wish they would flip it around and put me in the driver's seat. I would easily turn to a "Meta Product Search" over search engines or Amazon or whatever.
What's annoying is they do have tons of scam detection crap, which seems to only trigger on legitimate advertising (insofar as any advertising is legitimate) - the problem is there are millions of people willing to work on getting scams through for pennies a day, and it doesn't cost them anything.
Tiktok ads, Youtube Ads, Instagram/Meta ads - there's just a huge influx of scams and obviously fake sites on them. AI generated copy, AI generated landing pages...
My honest take on it is that it's the payment companies that are complacent here - they're just allowing payment processing for anyone now up to a certain amount before doing proper diligence. The fact these chinese vendors can spin up a website, get payment processing, verify an ads account and buy advertising shows that many compliance functions are being skipped (or are complicit) in this.
It works because everyone in the game has something to gain from it - Apple's contract likely puts verification on Taboola's plate, which is likely not being done per their own "controls" process, or is itself being automated (poorly). Taboola is getting paid because they're running these ads and charging for them, the vendors are being paid because they're drop shipping temu garbage that doesn't resemble their AI ads (since taboola isn't checking this at all) and getting away with it for a few months by long shipping times and delaying refunds/chargebacks long enough to get paid, and the payment processors (paypal, apple pay, google pay) are all making money on their obscene 1%+ processing markups, and have special "group" programs where a company can underwrite their own merchants provided they follow guidelines (compliance offloading). Visa/Mastercard are offloading their compliance duties to the payment processors until they get a formal complaint or chargeback/refund spike over a certain ratio (where they issue a fine and seize processing volume - which is also income for them).
btw if you want to be 100% sure something is a scam - check the iframe url on the credit card input form on the checkout page - on mustylevo.com its https://cashiers.myshopline.com/pci-sdk/v3/iframe.html?merch... which is hardly a name brand ecom platform - they have a "shopify-like" checkout but that isn't shopify (props to shopify/shop pay - they've been very quick to kill these kind of scams on their platform despite it losing them some fees).
So yeah - everyone involved in this is making money and is complicit through their lack of process.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Or that time PayPal shut down WikiLeaks donations.
The last thing we need right now is some political party declaring their opponents a scam and turning off their donations. Not that I'm a fan of political donations, its just that I'm even more troubled by policies that would give an edge to incumbents.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That has definitely stuck out to me. After years of not seeing ads, I am always shocked at how bad the ads are when I do see one. They essentially flaunt how dumb they think their target market is and I just don't get how they are not perceived as offensive and disrespectful.
It’s horrible on mobile. Sites like macobserver are bad. Two videos overlapping, popping in and out, shifting content.
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.
There is uBlock Origin Lite for Safari: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...
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. :)
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.
Ehh.. depends on how questionable the sites you're visiting are. :)
Possibly an instance of banner blindness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness
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.
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.
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.
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.
"marketing works on you, even if you know how marketing works on you"
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.
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.
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.
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.
just made me flashback to a url bar and typing that too long of a url
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).
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.
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.
I think a lot of people who grew up on the early web have that reflex
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.
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.
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.
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.
I mean that is also how it kinda works here on HN.
if you turned on the option in your settings to show blocked comments
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...
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.
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.
Are you saying that something about this product is suspect? But it has "Beautiful Craftsamnship"!
https://img-va.myshopline.com/image/store/1731468034215/1dd4...
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?
> interlocking ars
OwO
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
I am very curious what the product really looked like.
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...
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).
Wtf. How could you fall for such an obvious scam? Are you under 5 years old? Or over 60?
Can you please share what the actual product looks like?
Sue them for your $28 back?
so you're saying this is a real product and the ad you saw(then purchased from) was a fake?
At least you got a mug!
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.
Because the sets of people who would give money to this and people who notice the Gemini logo are disjoint.
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.
> 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.
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.
This is research from Microsoft that goes into more detail: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
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.
It actually says "L am retiring". Maybe a 419 scam kinda thing, the intentional typos.
> 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?
Clearly the one who did it doesn't know what the cropping tool is for either.
You're famous now. The author noticed your comment and updated the article pointing it out.
I've an avid Apple News user, and while I haven't seen the sorts of ads in the article, I do gets lots of ads for tax filing software. Namely, Intuit TurboTax. They are the only ads I ever get.
What's more, if you even touch them while scrolling, it triggers the "download app" screen, even if I don't explicitly tap. This is new as of a few weeks ago.
I'm genuinely haunted by these TurboTax ads, I see that download app popup at least 3 times a day when I use Apple News. Truly cannot believe someone at Apple though that was an acceptable user experience for ads.
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.
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?
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.
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).
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.
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?
The weird thing about Apple News: as the article mentions, paying for “+” still shows ads, but not paying at all means you can’t see content that’s already free online.
Try it: when it tells you a story isn’t available without a subscription, search the headline and often the story can be read on its original source, for free.
Maybe I'm just scarred from the late 90s internet, but I have assumed that every ad on every website is a scam at all times for as long as I can remember.
Which is why I block ads unconditionally everywhere that I can.
I'm old enough to consider TV ads as scams too. "For only 6 payments of 19.99!" The "mute" button on my parents' remote control was worn off. I still mute ads that I get through low-tier streaming subscriptions. It's really jarring to go to a friend's house where they don't mute their ads.
Heck, I've even seen scam ads in printed local newspapers. They typically target seniors with a thing for collecting rare coins and use misleading language about the U.S. Mint.
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.
Like a cancer, a publicly traded company must grow at any cost.
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.
I Assume That All Ads Are Scams
I'm amazed to discover that there are people on earth that believe that some ads aren't scam. It should be forbidden by law to advertise, it is a scourge on humanity.
Most people consider that an extreme take, but I agree completely. They're an active drain on the environments they're placed in - both physical and digital. They're a drain on the mental energy of the people who are forced to see or hear them. They make the entire world feel artificial and fake - a place not made for humans.
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.
> 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!
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.
It’s a bit like that MSN page what MS is forcing on millions through Edge and W11 widgets
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.
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.
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.
It's even on the base install of Windows Server. Fuck off Microsoft.
Why does it even exist, this MSN page, which is ridden with nonsense...? I don't get it.
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.
At least one can quicly hide that filth. Unbearable, in every language...
The more you pay for a subscription, the more valuable it is to advertise to you -- maybe the classic example is The New York Times which has highly annoying advertising if you're a subscriber because you've qualified yourself.
Or rather, if you believe you are too poor to afford a $10 a month subscription you probably believe you're too poor to afford anything that is advertised. The model of "premium subscription with no ads" flies in the face of reality.
I would be willing to consider paying for vetted ads - in other words, you pay for the NYT and you get a guarantee that you're only seeing ads that have been personally vetted by the NYT for correctness, appropriateness, etc.
Advertising is speech and it used to be that if a magazine/newspaper printed a scam ad, it was horribly damaging to their business, both legally and morally.
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.
YouTube doesn't care as long as people are buying the ads.
They need to be made to care, somehow.
> I would be willing to consider paying for vetted ads
why, though?
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.
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_...
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”
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.
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.
I'm already questioning it. The software quality just keeps getting worse.
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.
Personally I assume ALL ads are scams. Never mind where they are from.
All ads are scams. Some are worse than others.
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.
uBlockOrigin and Pihole. I refuse to use the internet without them. Ads are a cancer. Not just on the internet, but in general.
All ads are scams. They are there to make you unhappy causing you to need to work/spend money to become happy again.
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.
I assume all social media ads are also scams.
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?
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.
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.
The financial optimum for any ad company is to accommodate scams.
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.
> 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...
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.
>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.
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.
Anyone who pays $1000 dollars for a phone has already been scammed once, so they make a good target for scammers.
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.
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.
This is true of all news sites, some hearing aid, you wont believe, why your pet does X etc etc
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
I wonder how many of them are basically click fraud to get money from ad networks.
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.
[dead]
I assume all ads are scams. Cause they are :-)
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.
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.
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.
The depressing part is that this is probably working just well enough financially
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)
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?
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.
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.
Huh? With millions of pieces of content to choose from a day some kind of curation is inevitable.
> 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/
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.
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.
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.
A thousand and one paper cuts. I feel like this shortsighted decision making will cost Apple so much trust in the long run.
Here's something that I live by:I ~now~ assume that all ads on ~Apple News~ are scams (Unless proven otherwise)
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?
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!
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.
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.
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.
I use Apple News every day, but just for the puzzles. Otherwise it's a garbage app.
Very witty
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.
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.
Get ready for literally everything to be a scam. The declining rate of profit is showing itself all around us.
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.
This suggests that there are online ads that are not scams. Who knew?
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.
Ads are essentially a biding system. Less biders means less profit. Removing scams means losing money.
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.
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?
Not at all, that's why it was so weird and noticeable.
At this stage pretty much all ads on the internet are scams
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.
Which is why I never us a phone that requires me to have certain apps installed.
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.
It can't be uninstalled on Sonoma I am using.
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
I assume all ads are scams. That's easier.
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.
The mug doesn't seem right for me. I looks like a geometry of it is badly broken.
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.
I am glad I am not the only one. Why do I see it like 50 times a day?
Don’t make me tap the “ads are cancer” sign.
The biggest problem is the "trust" that users have with the Apple News ecosystem. They pay for it too!
What's special about Apple news? That should be the default position on ads no matter where you see it.
But these are just the same ads as on Google and everywhere else. Almost all internet ads are scam nowadays.
Doesn't make it any better.
To be fair, it is not just Apple. Scams are rampant regardless of the channel serving the ads.
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.
I prefer these types of ads. They're easy to identify at a glance and ignore.
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.
Cyber crime case closure rates, from what I can find online, were sub 5%.
Probably simpler to assume all ads are scams and work back from there
Let me fix this, "I now assume that all ads are scams"
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."
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
What’s wrong with the weather and stocks apps? Maybe a silly question.
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.
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)
I quite like the weather app on my laptop. Not seen any ads or news in it yet.
"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.”
> legitimate advertisers
Those two words definitely don't belong together.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
> 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.
Then they are fools. I left a one-star review and uninstalled it.
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.
iOS has had support for ad blockers since 2015. I never ever see ads on iOS Safari and have not for many years.
What do you suggest I setup for my wife's iPhone?
And does it block ads on Apple News?
uBlock Origin Lite for Safari
To block ads on Apple News you need to block iadsdk.apple.com in DNS. E.g., NextDNS
All ads are scams anyway, why limit them to Apple news?
If anybody pushes anything down your throat, that's the thing you DON'T need. As simple as that. If you need something, you'll find it yourself.
apple is quickly becoming the OS for scams and spam.
why does an RSS feed aggregator even need ads in the first place?
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.
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.
> 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.
Thankfully at least for YouTube there's Sponsorblock to filter out that junk as well.
Just assume all ads everywhere are scams, it’s an accurate enough heuristic
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.
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.
All ads are scams.
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.
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...
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.
Just put Linux on that Microsoft laptop, LOL. Problem solved and it will work great.
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.
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.
"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.
My last MacBook lasted me from 2015-2025. It's still running actually, just getting slow.
you just gotta know when to stop updating OS and macbooks will last a loooong time
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 (£70) 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).
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!
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...
> 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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Vote with your wallet and buy an Android phone without ads and trackers? What is this FUD?
Buy a phone from an ad supported company to get away from ads?
A phone is a poor replacement for a laptop.
The GP said phones.
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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.
what about the #1 result in any research in Apple store
100% shit
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
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.
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.
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This is a bit silly. Are there any ads that people do trust?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, of course. These exist because they work. If no one fell for these scams, they wouldn’t continue to exist.
I see an ad for a product I bought and it makes me worried I got scammed. The usual offender is Peak Design.
Exactly. Why did the article author think ads weren't scams before they were "AI" generated?
Where does the author claim or even remotely suggest that?
They only NOW assume all ads are scams. Suggests they didn't make that assumption before, doesn't it?
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.
In the headline - the word Now implies "Ads before weren't scams but they are now"
And where in the headline is "AI"?
"Here are three ads that are scammy; the first two were clearly generated by AI, and the third may have been created by AI."
Headline - aka. 4th paragraph of the article.
The "AI" evangelists are trying to explain to us that all ads are to be trusted because they're "AI" generated now...
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
> 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?
Even online I get a lot of ads for goods/services I do use, or could see myself using.
HN users are mostly 1980s levels of institutional and media trust. Not sure why.
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...
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?).
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.
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.
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
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