Yes this truly is the weakest bullshit I’ve ever seen. Obviously, it’s just in-client blocking with zero support from the back end. Pathetic.
Google News does the right thing here. I presume it’s cross platform but haven’t tried on an iDevice.
Apps like Apple News don’t exist to help you curate news that you want to see. They exist to curate news that they want you to see.
They exist to push ads. Even the premium version of Apple News has ads.
Isn’t it the publications themselves that contain the ads rather than the app itself?
Some yes. Some no. And if I’m paying for news, there’d better not be any ads at all.
Fair enough. Although I would say that the magazine aspect (which I use it for primarily) couldn’t really adhere to that. The printed publications that you’d buy in a newsagent contain printed ads. I’m not saying it’s good, but it’s not different. Paper copy or digital, you’re getting ads with whichever one you pay for.
Not sure I’d agree, as the sources are configurable, but this sort of shit is far from a great user experience.
I blocked ESPN news articles just because I don’t want to see sports content. Does the same thing. They need to fix this stupid shit.
On the other hand, I’m willing to pay for aggregated news to gain access to articles from the likes of The Atlantic, etc. Anyone have alternatives to Apple News+ in this regard?
Apple News is one of the most poorly managed of all the Apple products. Whomever is in charge of it should be fired.
Can’t block YouTube channels on anything but browser…
Settings -> News -> Restrict Stories in Today
This will fix it so that only news services you follow will appear.
Cheers - this would work, but first requires whitelisting all the sources you’re happy to see news from, rather than simply not showing you news from sources you’ve blocked.
Use an rss feed!
Got any suggestions how to get started on that?
I have a really comprehensive list of RSS feeds for different topic. That I have been updating and pruning since 2010, I use Read You on Android and a GNOME Circle app on Linux (can’t recall the name tbh)
Download NetNewsWire. If you need it to sync with a windows machine and/or an android device, store your feeds in Feedly or a similar service. Learn to set your RSS reader to default to “reader mode” so you see the whole story and not just the first paragraph.
I’m hosting a dockerized image of freshrss on my server which I can access as a webapp on my phone.
I believe there are plenty of phone apps and websites that can do the same! :) I would search rss app in the App Store. If they’re FOSS I would consider that better.
Can add feeds for anything! I have news, YouTube, podcasts, Lenny, and some reddit
For mobile, I like Feedly.
Agreed, Feedly is excellent! Mobile and desktop
These seem to go away the next day don’t they?
My problem is I don’t live where it thinks I do for local news and it won’t let me change it.
Hey, looks, a reason to uninstall Apple News+
To be fair, the magazines available on News+ are great. I have Apple One because it covers all the household’s music/storage/fitness solutions for a reasonable price (considering how many people are on my subscription). News+ is included, and the list of magazine subscriptions bundled within it is surprisingly extensive. The app’s not perfect though, as this crappy design shows.
Tip: Your local public library offers the same electronic versions of magazines through an app called Hoopla. For free.
That is highly dependant on your country
Unequivocally my least used part of apple one.
Apple Arcade for me
That was my case as well, with the exceptions of Slay the Spire and now Balatro. If you haven’t played Balatro yet, do yourself a favor and never play, lest you get pulled past the event horizon of its addictivity like I have.
Well now I’m going to have to try it aren’t I.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Them’s the rules.
RSS should become popular again. There are great clients for all platforms, even iOS:
- NetNewsWire (iOS/macOS)
- Read You (Android)
- RSS Guard (Linux/Windows)
I also recommend using the Awesome RSS extension in Firefox/LibreWolf to quickly see if a website has an RSS feed. It also works in Firefox Mobile/Fennec/Mull.
Thanks for the heads-up, giving RSS Guard a try as we speak. Looks fun.
Yes! And I recommend Unread (iOS/macOS + Local/Cloud service)
Is is open source though?
No, it is not.
Thunderbird still supports RSS, however I’ve found many news sources don’t provide proper RSS feeds anymore
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oh no, linekar is leaving motd? first wrighty, now him?
i don’t think shearer and micah can pull it off themselves going forward. they’re both good but, let’s face it, neither has the gravitas needed to anchor the show.
My money’s on Chappers filling in.
If you wanna put the work into an rss feed, netnewswire is great.
At least google news actually stops showing you stories from the publications you remove. This is just bad.
I wish they’d let me block entire topics, though. I don’t ever want a horoscope but it puts that shit in front of me every single day.
Interesting. I mindlessly swipe over to the news feed on my Pixel more than I’d like to admit, and it only gives me horoscope type stuff very rarely… Definitely not frequently enough for me to bother trying to block it. I wonder why you’re seeing so much more of it?
I’m using the Google news webpage, without fail it shows me horoscopes and sports every day no matter how many times I tell it that I’m not interested.
Ahh, going to the Google news webpage on my phone does give me quite different results compared to when I swipe left from my phone’s home screen.
Ikr right? “fewer stories like this” bitch please, how about I get no more of this shit instead???
Why would they permit you to have such agency on their “free” platform?
Same for news taking up space in the Stocks app.
