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Posted by cdrnsf 11 hours ago

I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams(kirkville.com)
873 points | 379 commentspage 2
wobfan 11 hours 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.

stavros 11 hours ago||
Because the sets of people who would give money to this and people who notice the Gemini logo are disjoint.
matt89 11 hours ago||
Yeah it was always a trick scammers used. Scam emails (the more obvious ones - not sophisticated phising) always had typos or subtle grammar errors because authors don't want to invest time in people that are able to spot such mistakes. It's the people that do not read thoroughly that are much more likely to fall for a scam.

I would imagine it might be the same with those ads.

Aransentin 11 hours ago||
> 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.

pbhjpbhj 9 hours ago|||
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.

adrianmsmith 10 hours ago|||
This is research from Microsoft that goes into more detail: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
Aransentin 9 hours ago||
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.
reliabilityguy 11 hours ago|||
> Somehow, he or she was still convinced and put it up.

It is intentional. People who will not notice, are the least likely to complain later.

Do you know why all these “Nigerian prince” emails are of a very specific style?

PyWoody 9 hours ago|||
You're famous now. The author noticed your comment and updated the article pointing it out.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 9 hours ago||
It actually says "L am retiring". Maybe a 419 scam kinda thing, the intentional typos.
pupppet 11 hours ago||
Like a cancer, a publicly traded company must grow at any cost.
ninth_ant 2 hours ago|
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.
nabbed 3 hours ago||
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.

4ggr0 11 hours ago||
I Assume That All Ads Are Scams
PaulHoule 9 hours ago||
The more you pay for a subscription, the more valuable it is to advertise to you -- maybe the classic example is The New York Times which has highly annoying advertising if you're a subscriber because you've qualified yourself.

Or rather, if you believe you are too poor to afford a $10 a month subscription you probably believe you're too poor to afford anything that is advertised. The model of "premium subscription with no ads" flies in the face of reality.

bombcar 9 hours ago|
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.

tcfhgj 1 hour ago|||
> I would be willing to consider paying for vetted ads

why, though?

PaulHoule 8 hours ago|||
You'd think so.

I think YouTube has no idea that when I see 70% ads for things that are transparently scams, the other 30% of advertisers are being scammed too because I'm going to assume that they are all scams. Meta has been busted for putting it in writing that they could do something about scam ads but won't because it would cost them revenue in the short term.

bombcar 5 hours ago||
YouTube doesn't care as long as people are buying the ads.

They need to be made to care, somehow.

jcelerier 10 hours ago||
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.
Night_Thastus 7 hours ago||
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.
eitland 9 hours ago|||
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.
colesantiago 9 hours ago||
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.

altairprime 5 hours ago||
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.
aquir 11 hours ago||
It’s a bit like that MSN page what MS is forcing on millions through Edge and W11 widgets
sumtechguy 10 hours ago||
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.
Bluecobra 10 hours ago|||
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.
aquir 10 hours ago|||
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.
larodi 11 hours ago|||
Why does it even exist, this MSN page, which is ridden with nonsense...? I don't get it.
timpera 11 hours ago||
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.
k12sosse 9 hours ago|||
It's even on the base install of Windows Server. Fuck off Microsoft.
throw_m239339 11 hours ago||
At least one can quicly hide that filth. Unbearable, in every language...
charcircuit 5 hours ago||
>as they take peoples’ money then shut down

That's not what these sites do. They are dropshipping sites. Make up a random expensive price and then say it is on sale at a price where you still make profit. Some make the shipping more expensive so they advertised price of the item is even lower or even free.

hu3 5 hours ago|
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.

victor106 10 hours ago|
Dear Tim Apple: you don’t need the tiny amount you get these ads. You do need to fix this embarrassing thing that you released called “Liquid Glass”
tonyedgecombe 9 hours ago|
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.
al_borland 6 hours ago|||
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.

AlexandrB 8 hours ago|||
I'm already questioning it. The software quality just keeps getting worse.
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