There is a bit of noise just now about the (re)discovery that ads on Apple News are served by a company of a poor repute. What caught my attention in particular was a blog post with the title‘I Now Assume that All Ads on Apple News Are Scams ‘. There is some serious naiveté behind this, you should assume that all online ads everywhere are a scam.

This should not need saying. The industry is rotten from its very foundations up, and we have known that since targeted advertising first made its appearance. The targeting technology is built on data theft, and we have seen repeatedly that the industry will peddle anything for the sake of a click; it’s not a coincidence online adds are the primary delivery mechanism for malware, etc.

And if you are serving ads on your site, corporate or personal, or buying ads to be served on your behalf, you are part of the problem. There are no excuses.