Apple News (Safari Content Blocker and Feedly Feed Comparisons)

[Danconia]

Long-time reader who just registered for an account because I cannot find an answer to my question through any search methods. It is an exercise in frustration to perform searches for "Apple News" to get results relevant to the app and not Apple news.

1. Are the Safari content blockers supposed to work when viewing a story in the Apple News app? Meaning, when click through a link in Apple News and are presented with the say for example Washington Post webpage, are we supposed to see ads? I would think that Apple News would employ the same content blocker within its safari web view right? I still see adds even when trying different blocker apps.

2. Is Apple News supposed to function as an RSS reader where it display all of the posts in the For You section or does it filter things out. I am an avid RSS reader user from Google Reader days who would love to switch fully over to Apple New but it doesn't seem to function as an RSS reader when following sites like this and other blogs. I can open Feedly and see what is missing from my Apple News For You feed.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide. These items have been bugging me.

 

[LeoNatan]

For 1, no, when viewing a web article, you will see advertisements and will be tracked. That's why you see one sentence news "articles" with an arrow to read the "full" article. I just mute these channels. If they won't respect me, **** them, I will not respect their garbage.

 

[Danconia]

For 1, no, when viewing a web article, you will see advertisements and will be tracked. That's why you see one sentence news "articles" with an arrow to read the "full" article. I just mute these channels. If they won't respect me, **** them, I will not respect their garbage.

I thought that Apple extended the functionality of the content blockers to their Safari Web View controller or whatever that is for other apps. I would hope they would include this in their own app. Perhaps I am just mixing up concepts here. Thanks for the super quick response and I agree!

 

[gwang73]

To answer your question #2, Apple News is more of a curated news app in the main feed that is suppose to learn what you like to read over time.

You can also set your preferences based on news categories as well as selecting specific blog sites like macrumors, autoblog, uncrate, etc., however you won't see every article from those sites in the main feed but can access these under the favorites section, just like a RSS reader.

I've been using Newsify as my RSS reader and really like it but feel that I am limited to only seeing news on the subscribed feeds. I'm giving Apple News a try for the next few weeks and seeing if it really does personalize the news feeds based on what I'm reading.

 

[LeoNatan]

I thought that Apple extended the functionality of the content blockers to their Safari Web View controller or whatever that is for other apps. I would hope they would include this in their own app. Perhaps I am just mixing up concepts here. Thanks for the super quick response and I agree!

They did extend it, but the News app does not use a Safari viewer, it renders it inside a web view internally, which does not use content blockers.