TECH NEWS – Apple News has essentially been infected, as the agreement between the two companies has resulted in some truly unpleasant ads.
By partnering with Taboola, a source of fraudulent and unreliable ads, Apple abandoned its principles, and now Apple consumers are dealing with the consequences: the Apple News interface is flooded with low-quality advertisements. Veteran tech journalist Kirk McElhearn recently wrote an interesting post titled “I Now Assume that All Ads on Apple News Are Scams.” In 2024, Apple signed a deal with Taboola, one of the world’s largest ad tech companies. Under the terms of the agreement, Taboola can place native ads within the Apple News and Apple Stocks apps.
According to McElhearn, however, the ads appearing on Apple News have only gotten worse since then. Unlike most subscription models, Apple does not remove ads when users subscribe to Apple News+. Nevertheless, the subscription does remove paywalls from many publications. McElhearn says some ads are not only poorly AI-generated but outright fraudulent. For example, one Tidenox ad shows an AI-generated image of an elderly woman, with the Google Gemini logo at the bottom. The ad follows the now overused scheme of a business supposedly closing and offering large discounts to clear inventory. Those unfortunate enough to order the product usually never receive it.
Many of the domains behind the ads identified by McElhearn were registered only recently, some as recently as last month. That is another warning sign. Ultimately, the debate boils down to a simple question: does Apple have a moral obligation to at least appear to review the ads shown on its platforms? Legally, it does not…
Still, it is worth considering: if a user within the Apple ecosystem subscribes to a more expensive app tier, it would generally be reasonable to expect no ads at all, even if paywalls remained in place. Offering such a subscription level might be appropriate.
