Comment by WhyNotHugo
2 months ago
A year or two ago my iPhone started showing ads for Kentucky Friend Chicken on the home screen. I've never been to this store, installed anything related to it, or even visited their website.
Apparently this is triggered by walking near a venue of theirs. Apple doesn't classify this as an app, it's a "suggestion". The huge sign at the mall that says "drink coca cola" is also a suggestion, that doesn't make it any less of an ad.
The App Store has had third party ad for years too. And the settings app has first party ads too. iOS is full of ads, it's the exact crap that users expected to avoid with Apple.
> A year or two ago my iPhone started showing ads for Kentucky Friend Chicken on the home screen.
Please, elaborate. Because this sounds like a very thin slice of the whole story. Where in the Home Screen? How did it show up? Notification? Live activity? Automatically installed app? SMS?
iOS, regrettably, features ads in some places, but I have never seen (or heard about) any of it showing up on the Home Screen by itself and I cannot even fathom HOW that would play out since the only for information to show up in the Home Screen is through widgets, and those have to be put there, or they are shown “intelligently” (notice the quotes there) on smart stacks IF you have the “suggest widgets” thingie enabled—but then again this would mean you have the KFC app installed on your phone and you use it rather frequently so I don’t think it would classify as an ad in any valid way.
Sounds like either App Clips or Siri Suggestions based on location.
Yeah, but app clips don’t show up out of the blue unannounced and Siri suggestions show up on Siri widgets or the spotlight/siri AI, which have to be purposefully invoked/put there.
It's sad such a great product gets wrecked like this, literally against its creator's wishes, then gaslights us too.