Now, I'm not a user of Acceptable Ads, but I don't think either their specific policy of taking money to whitelist AA-compliant ads from large companies, or having that policy apply to entities that have otherwise scummy ads is necessarily dishonest.
- Acceptable Ads is not supposed to allow scummy ads
- Taboola paid to get their ads accepted
- Acceptable Ads is dishonest
If you google a bit, you'll find that the ads that get whitelisted under Acceptable Ads are nothing different from the normal Taboola bullshit. In fact, the whitelist is quite simple: They allow the whole taboola network to operate.