Apple has spent decades building a reputation as a digital fortress of privacy and premium design. However, that carefully curated image is currently taking a beating from its own most loyal customers. Users of Apple News are reporting a sudden influx of low-quality, bizarre, and potentially fraudulent advertisements flooding their feeds.
What makes this backlash particularly intense is that these ads are appearing for subscribers who pay for the premium Apple News+ service. Instead of the high-end experience they paid for, readers are seeing what the internet calls “chumbox” ads. These are the sensationalized, often grotesque links usually relegated to the bottom of clickbait websites. The arrival of these ads signals a worrying shift in how Apple balances profit with user experience.
The Taboola Partnership Changes Everything
The root of this visual pollution lies in a strategic business move Apple made recently. In 2024, the tech giant signed a deal with Taboola. Taboola is an advertising company famous for powering those “You won’t believe what this celebrity looks like now” grids found on many websites. The goal was to sell native advertising slots within the Apple News and Apple Stocks apps.
While the partnership makes financial sense for Apple’s growing services division, the execution has horrified users. Critics argue that the aesthetic clash between Apple’s clean interface and Taboola’s chaotic ad style is jarring.
The deal authorized Taboola to place ads in the “For You” feed and heavily within the articles themselves. Apple likely hoped to boost ad revenue without sacrificing quality. However, the current wave of complaints suggests their vetting filters are failing to catch the worst offenders. This situation highlights a growing problem where automated ad networks prioritize filling slots over checking who is actually buying them.
low quality taboola ads on iphone screen apple news
AI Images and Fake Closing Sales Flood Screens
Veteran tech journalists and eagle-eyed users have started cataloging the types of ads appearing on the platform. The findings are troubling. A significant portion of these advertisements utilize obvious AI-generated imagery. Some of these images are so poorly made that they still feature visible glitches or watermarks from the AI generation tools.
Common Ad Types Spotted on Apple News:
- The Fake Closeout: Ads claiming a random company is “shutting down” and selling products for pennies.
- The AI Miracle: Health supplements or gadgets promoted with impossible, computer-generated photos.
- The Celebrity Fake: Using a famous person’s likeness without permission to endorse a financial scheme.
- The nonsensical Clickbait: Headlines that are grammatically broken or make zero logical sense just to get a click.
Kirk McElhearn, a respected writer in the Apple community, recently documented this degradation. He noted that these aren’t just ugly ads. They are deceptive. Many of these advertisements direct users to websites that look hastily thrown together.
The fear is not just about aesthetics. It is about safety. When a user clicks a link inside an Apple app, there is an implicit assumption of trust. Users believe Apple has vetted the link. By allowing low-tier algorithmic ads into this space, that trust is being exploited.
Paying Subscribers Are Not Safe From Junk
Perhaps the loudest complaints are coming from Apple News+ subscribers. These users pay a monthly fee, currently $12.99 in the US, to access hundreds of magazines and newspapers. In most digital ecosystems, paying a subscription fee removes advertising. That is the standard trade-off in streaming video and music.
Apple News+ works differently. The subscription covers the cost of the content from publishers like The Wall Street Journal or National Geographic. It does not promise an ad-free interface. However, users feel there is a difference between seeing a high-quality ad for a luxury car and seeing a scammy ad for a fake closing sale.
“It feels like buying a ticket to a premium gala and finding out the catering is being done by a suspicious food truck parked in the back,” one frustrated user noted on social media.
This disconnect is causing retention issues. If the “premium” experience looks exactly like the free web, users have less incentive to stay within Apple’s walled garden. The presence of these ads devalues the subscription. It makes the paid product feel cheap. Apple has always justified its high prices by offering a superior user experience. This current ad situation directly contradicts that core brand value.
Why These Ads Are A Major Security Red Flag
Beyond the annoyance, there is a technical safety issue at play here. Security analysts warn that the types of ads currently flooding Apple News often display classic signs of “pop-up” fraud.
When researchers look at the domain names behind these ads, they often find websites that were registered only a few weeks or days ago. In the world of cybersecurity, a brand new domain selling deeply discounted products is a massive warning sign.
Legitimate businesses usually have domains that have existed for years. Scammers create new sites, run ads to catch victims, collect credit card numbers, and then vanish before the chargebacks start rolling in.
The Risks for Users:
- Financial Loss: Paying for goods that never arrive.
- Data Harvesting: Giving personal emails and addresses to spammers.
- Malware: Some low-quality ad networks have a history of inadvertently serving malicious code.
It remains unclear how these advertisers are bypassing Apple’s review guidelines. Apple strictly prohibits deceptive advertising. Yet, the sheer volume of these ads suggests that the approval process is largely automated. Taboola’s algorithms are likely pushing these ads through faster than Apple’s human moderators can catch them.
This leaves users in a precarious position. They are using a device and an app designed for security, but the content being piped in poses a risk. Until Apple tightens the leash on its ad partners, the “For You” feed will remain a minefield of digital junk.
The backlash against Apple News is a reminder that trust is hard to build and easy to break. By allowing the “chumbox” economy into its premium app, Apple has prioritized short-term ad revenue over long-term brand integrity. For a company that markets itself as the champion of user privacy and design excellence, this is a baffling misstep. Users are hoping fo
