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I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

kirkville.com

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Re: I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

#191

Post by bombcar »

scratchyone wrote: post #170
olivia-banks wrote: post #156

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.

Re: I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

#193

Post by basch »

speak_plainly wrote: post #54

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 Ap…

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.

Re: I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

#195

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Aransentin wrote: post #56
matt89 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

#196

Post by mbreese »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #168
esskay wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

#197

Post by ghaff »

crote wrote: post #165
WarmWash wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 p…

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.

Re: I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

#198

Post by chasebank »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #94
elashri wrote: post #68

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.

> 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.

HN has been overwhelmingly astroturfed since at least 2010.

Re: I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

#199

Post by PaulHoule »

kirkmc wrote: post #118

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 att…

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.

Re: I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

#200

Post by DudeOpotomus »

WarmWash wrote: post #113
elashri wrote: post #68

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.

Such a terrible take...
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