Apple News and News+ represent everything wrong with modern Apple: a ham-fisted approach to simplicity that ignores the end user. It is their most mediocre service, jarringly jamming cheap clickbait next to serious journalism in a layout that makes no sense.
The technical execution is just as lazy. While some magazines are tailored, many are just flat, low-res PDFs that look terrible on the high-end Retina screens Apple sells. Worst of all, Apple had the leverage to revolutionize a struggling industry; instead, they settled for a half-baked aggregator.
It’s a toxic mix of Apple tropes that simply weren't thought through. The ads are the cherry on the cake.
We should assume that all ads in general are scams. The noise to signal ratio is too large to care. Word of mouth and maybe trusted communities like HN is the only way to reliably discover new things.
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.
Tiktok ads, Youtube Ads, Instagram/Meta ads - there's just a huge influx of scams and obviously fake sites on them. AI generated copy, AI generated landing pages...
My honest take on it is that it's the payment companies that are complacent here - they're just allowing payment processing for anyone now up to a certain amount before doing proper diligence. The fact these chinese vendors can spin up a website, get payment processing, verify an ads account and buy advertising shows that many compliance functions are being skipped (or are complicit) in this.
It works because everyone in the game has something to gain from it - Apple's contract likely puts verification on Taboola's plate, which is likely not being done per their own "controls" process, or is itself being automated (poorly). Taboola is getting paid because they're running these ads and charging for them, the vendors are being paid because they're drop shipping temu garbage that doesn't resemble their AI ads (since taboola isn't checking this at all) and getting away with it for a few months by long shipping times and delaying refunds/chargebacks long enough to get paid, and the payment processors (paypal, apple pay, google pay) are all making money on their obscene 1%+ processing markups, and have special "group" programs where a company can underwrite their own merchants provided they follow guidelines (compliance offloading). Visa/Mastercard are offloading their compliance duties to the payment processors until they get a formal complaint or chargeback/refund spike over a certain ratio (where they issue a fine and seize processing volume - which is also income for them).
btw if you want to be 100% sure something is a scam - check the iframe url on the credit card input form on the checkout page - on mustylevo.com its https://cashiers.myshopline.com/pci-sdk/v3/iframe.html?merch... which is hardly a name brand ecom platform - they have a "shopify-like" checkout but that isn't shopify (props to shopify/shop pay - they've been very quick to kill these kind of scams on their platform despite it losing them some fees).
So yeah - everyone involved in this is making money and is complicit through their lack of process.
I don’t know if it is just a symptom of growing up during the days of the net’s Wild West and navigating through sites like gamecopyworld or what, but I just seem to have some inbuilt filter which doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of ads.
It’s hard to explain but it is like some subconscious filtering that occurs on a preRecognise hook or something. Weird.
My "favorite", and likely related, part of Apple News is that if I have blocked a source because it is unreliable, heavily biased, etc., and a story from that source appears in the main timeline, Apple News shows a greyed out version of the story--headline and image visible--with "You have blocked this publication" (or similar). You can still clearly see the story, so it's not blocked at all.
I assume this comes down to some sort of distribution agreement, but, as bad as the ads are, this single behavior is the reason I stopped using Apple News and continue searching for a successor.
I bought a remarkably similar mug (last advert shown) from an add from different site [1]. Everything about it was a fake. Almost every feature they advertised did not exist (including the fact that it did not come in a gift box.) That was from a site I visit a lot and I wanted to show support. BTW the AI generated animation is quite cool, too bad it is not real...
I'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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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?
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams
(kirkville.com)1033 points by cdrnsf 19 hours ago | 428 comments
Comments
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.
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.
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 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.
Do not buy this!! [1] https://kenmiso.com/products/%E2%9A%A1%E2%9C%A8ultimate-v8-e...
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.
Somehow, he or she was still convinced and put it up.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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_...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Especially with the failed Apple Intelligence that they will now have to pay their way out of.
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 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'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...