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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.

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’s hard to explain but it is like some subconscious filtering that occurs on a preRecognise hook or something. Weird.

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.

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.

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.

Do not buy this!! [1] https://kenmiso.com/products/%E2%9A%A1%E2%9C%A8ultimate-v8-e...

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.

Which is why I block ads unconditionally everywhere that I can.

Somehow, he or she was still convinced and put it up.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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?

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.

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)

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.

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/

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.

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.

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?

    title.replace(/(i now assume that |on apple news )/ig, '')

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.

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_...

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.

For people who dropped this, was there something better you switched to?

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.

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.

I open it semi-regularly with some naive hope that it won't be garbage.

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.

Especially with the failed Apple Intelligence that they will now have to pay their way out of.

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.

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.

100% shit

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

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...