Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

kirkville.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 575 posts

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

#501

Post by projektfu »

SkipperCat wrote: post #495
projektfu wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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

#502

Post by philwelch »

darkhorse222 wrote: post #239
Analemma_ wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you would use SharePlay for that maybe

So you have to buy twice as many Apple products, brilliant marketing strategy

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

#503

Post by wishfish »

snailmailman wrote: post #406
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 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 wo…

On iOS, uBlock Lite works great on Youtube. Same for Firefox + uBlock on Android. You can skip the ads on mobile.

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

#504

Post by crazygringo »

ndriscoll wrote: post #433
crazygringo wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

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.

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

#505

Post by ufmace »

andrepd wrote: post #477
ruszki wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#506

Post by NookDavoos »

kyriakos wrote: post #347
ksec wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, A…

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.

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

#507

Post by trehalose »

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."

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

#508

Post by alsetmusic »

rootusrootus wrote: post #410
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#509

Post by alsetmusic »

MBCook wrote: post #387
manuelabeledo wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#510

Post by alsetmusic »

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.

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.

Post reply on HN