In 2024, Apple signed a deal with Taboola to serve ads in its app, notably Apple News. John Gruber, writing in Daring Fireball said at the time:
If you told me that the ads in Apple News have been sold by Taboola for the last few years, I’d have said, “Oh, that makes sense.” Because the ads in Apple News — at least the ones I see1 — already look like chumbox Taboola ads. Even worse, they’re incredibly repetitious.
I use Apple News to keep up on topics that I don’t find in sources I pay for (The Guardian and The New York Times). But there’s no way I’m going to pay the exorbitant price Apple wants for Apple News+ – £13 – because, while you get more publications, you still get ads.
And those ads have gotten worse recently. Many if not most of them look like and probably are scams. Here are a few examples from Apple News today.
Here are three ads that are scammy; the first two were clearly generated by AI, and the third may have been created by AI.
Why are they scams? When I searched domain information for the domains, I found that they were registered very recently.
Domain Name: MUSTYLEVO.COM
Registry Domain ID: 3059688301_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.gname.com
Registrar URL: http://www.gname.com
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