I think I ran into one of the most dangerous situations without looking for it. What happens if you install the first result and put your microsoft account credentials in...

It's not clearly labeled, it is a very small label with white text on a pale blue background in an already very busy UI. It is clearly made to look like a real search result and not an ad. On top of this, the screenshots are clearly made to mislead the user into thinking that this is the officiel Microsoft authenticator app by having a large text saying "Authenticator for Microsoft" and a second screenshot with a "Microsoft" TOTP entry.

This is an example of a company whose financial incentives are in direct conflict with the interests of their users, and so they choose to be complicit in borderline fraudulent auctivities.

I knew the top result is an ad and is marked, and still didn't notice the mark. I think there's actual research put into making these markings "visible" but not "noticeable". And on my phone only the top result shows that big picture banner taking all the attention while the rest of the "real" apps are presented as one liners. [1]

But what's worse than an ad is that too many times these apps are actually scammy. A whole host of apps with almost identical and misleading names, icons, banner pictures, descriptions, developer names, and so on.

Ok, I search for Netflix and you show me Prime first is one think. But showing me a scam app is a different offense altogether. And it doesn't matter if your phone costs $600 or $1600 you'll get served up to the scammers just the same.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/BkGmPGc

A clear blue ad label!! Is this sarcasm? Your remark is so dystopian, you full accepted this as normal.

Btw, I'm checking now, the label "ad" is not there, it's just highlighted. Or is it that blue tag? I thought that signified in-app ads? Shouldn't the highlight itself have a label? Probably this is some A/B test optimized BS, that tag was the option where most people WRONGLY clicked on the stuff they didn't search for.

When I came from Android I first couldn't figure out why app store search was so bad. Dumb me, expecting the highlighted option to be something most relevant to ME and MY search, no it's most relevant to some paying company and can even be a scam. And you and me can reason through this, but my kids get this BS as well, the grow up with this as normal.

You search for something, you don't get what you search for. This is our normal.

Absolute disappointment on day 1 with iOS.

My next phone will be something like FairPhone with e/OS or Sailfish. Or I'll wait for that Graphene hardware partner stuff to finally be revealed. I'm so sick of this bs. You pay a lot of money for something and they slap you with ads. Same on smart TVs, my Philips Hue system (hundreds, maybe thousands of euros I spend on that), ads ads ads.

Seriously? I haven't noticed it.

Maybe it's clear to you... or you work in marketing and have a different definition of "clear".

Note that this is a screenshot from a hi dpi iphone that went through a few upload/download/reencode cycles [1] so it lost all density information. On the real phone screen the "Ad" thing is extremely tiny and unnoticeable.

[1] Downloaded it from my work chat where i posted it as a warning to my colleagues a couple days ago.

It's marked as an ad the exact same way they do it on Android and the exact same way it's done on Google.

These responses are a bit surprising. I wonder how people would have responded if this were about Android.

Meh.

Context: we're migrating to MS cloud services at work from Google so everyone is setting up accounts, authenticators etc. Pretty seamless migration overall btw, guess our admins worked like dogs.

So I post this screenshot in a work chat as a warning (that's why i still have it). All my Android using colleagues tell me "it's the same in the Play Store, watch what you click."

It’s well known that the App Store is a cesspool of scam apps and ads, they’ve been criticised for many years for it, including by prominent Apple-centric blogs and authors, many of them submitted to HN over the years.

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