There is nothing special about the Troubled Engineer's setup. It's mostly a matter of using open platforms. With Firefox on the desktop and Fennec on Android (Graphene), you get full uBlock Origin support and therefore never see any ads anywhere, even on Youtube. On Android, there is also NewPipe that offers "free Youtube Premium" (play in the background and download).
I also use DNS based filtering since I run my own Unbound instance, but it isn't really necessary with the above setup. It may be useful if you must absolutely have a smart TV or other such appliances, but considering that they have cameras and microphones, I will never connect such a device to the Internet anyway.
Same. Firefox works well on mobile and allows uBlock Origin (in my experience NewPipe is fragile).
Just to throw one on the pile https://github.com/yuliskov/smarttube for android based TV media box is great.
Be careful with this one, it was recently compromised: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46103657
The latest versions 30.56 and onwards are fixed.
How are you not seeing any ads with that setup? I just read your comment and saw multiple ads!
No those are (most provably) unpaid recommendations. Those are not the same as ads, because there is no economic insentive, and is strictly not ads.
It would be so easy to place ads based on page contents and not based on retargeting. It would be such a breath of fresh air. You wouldn't need to know anything about the person visiting the page. You can still do programmatic ads with competitive bidding. And even according to Double click study, you would make about fifty five percent (iirc) of what you would make with all this invasive tracking.
It would be a win win for everyone.
In an alternate reality where tracking was 100% illegal all the time, would the ad revenue come closer to say 90%, with perhaps 10% choosing another medium altogether? These studies by ad companies seem to always presume their own perfect world where everything else remains just as it is.
Mostly, although some text analysis would need to be done to prevent this:
(people commenting about how a bad design choice in ACorp's flagship product AProduct led to the tragic death of ten labradoodle puppies.)
AD: Buy two AProduct, get one free — limited time offer! Woof! ACorp — your pup will love it!You mean, like how Google ads were back in the beginning?
An ad doesn't have to be paid for to be an ad.
Likewise, mentioning a product is not de facto an ad.
Android FF allows background play in desktop mode.
There is an extension you can download which can enable background play without dekstop mode too. I forgot its name but I thought it was relevant to the discussion and maybe someone can help find it.
This is the one, I use it too: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-backgro...
I use brave in android but I have used firefox on android too, firefox actually still supports old devices which is nice
Heck I have ran modern firefox on tinycore on my 32 bit 1 gig ram mini dell laptop lol
I am so reliant on YouTube Premium that I forget people even see ads on there. I watch an awful lot of long form interviews, lectures, podcasts -- most downloaded for offline. It's the easiest $8/month of all my subscriptions.
I’m the opposite. I’ve almost entirely given up on YouTube because I know that, even if I pay, I’m subjected to the consequences of ads.
Content creators have paid sections in the video itself, the format optimises grabbing your attention, some legitimate-presenting channels are just real state for product placement...
You can’t win in that platform.
A recent feature for paid subscribers is the ability to skip frequently skipped sections which de facto skips in-video ads.
I see the button to skip, but is there a way to automatically skip these sections?
SponsorBlock for desktop browsers is a way around that
I forget how bad YouTube is these days. I'm so spoiled by MPV with yt-dlp and mpv_sponsorblock_minimal. It's great.
ReVanced has an integration for SponsorBlock, and SponsorBlock is also available for Firefox Android
Not yet, that I know of
You can't completely escape advertising while still participating in modern society but there's still a huge difference between free and premium YouTube in this regard.
Yes, creators have paid sections but they are skippable (and note YouTube helps you skip with a little white dot in the UI[1]) and creators have a strong incentive to protect their credibility. They have an ongoing "relationship" with their viewer. Not so for the random companies that get to spam you with unskippable adverts for crypto scams or fat-free yoghurt in the freezer version.
[1]They don't like sponsored segments as they don't get a cut most of the time. They do have a programme for arranging sponsored segments via the platform, in which case they _do_ get a cut. I'm not sure if they still offer the little skip-helper dot in that case... Anyone know?
> creators have a strong incentive to protect their credibility.
This comment is sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends
> YouTube helps you skip with a little white dot in the UI[1])
Is that a premium feature? How does it look? I don't remember ever seeing it (that said, SponsorBlock solves this).
> and creators have a strong incentive to protect their credibility.
I haven't seen this play out very much to be honest.
> > and creators have a strong incentive to protect their credibility.
> I haven't seen this play out very much to be honest.
"Credibility" means "relative to the interests of their audience". Faux News has a completely different, almost inverse metric for "credibility" with their "Aliuns made the pirramids!" fanbase. CNN follows a more strict "if it bleeds it leads" policy to keep their audience believing them.
There's a huge difference indeed — uBlock + SponsorBlock are superior. Not only do I not see any ads at all—including self-promotions of the video creators and their sponsorship segments—I also get to skip content-free intermissions, tangents, etc. and jump straight to the highlight of the video.
If you have a VPN, pretend you're in Moldova to enjoy ad-free, free YouTube.
Why do Moldovans get add-free Youtube?
Advertisers generally avoid spending money on displaying ads to poor countries. It is interesting to see how the ads change depending on the country your IP address is from.
I expect that Molovan businesses want to advertise there.
Perhaps because of their interesting geopolitical situation with Transnistria?
SponsorBlock and DeArrow are your friends
SponsorBlock became an instant, install-everywhere extension for me the same way UBO had. I'm amazed how few know of it considering its value and elegance.
SponsorBlock. I don’t see in video ads, not self ads and no sponsoring.
Family memberships are not available for G Suite accounts. Sign in with a personal Google account or buy an individual membership to continue.
All I wanted years ago was an email address with my vanity domain. Had I only known I was shunting my whole family into a Bizarro Elgoog world...
Firefox + uBlock Origin + Sponsor Block (includes "skip to highlight feature) + 'Improve youtube!' = no ads, no clickbait thumbnails, and no friction plus tons of optimizations.
iOS Safari + uBlock Origin + Vinagre extension = no ads, free background play.
I pay for YouTube Premium and I still use ReVanced on mobile.
Being able to remove Shorts from the app and to revert Alphabet's many incoherent design decisions makes the whole thing usable.
How do you hide Shorts? I can't figure out how to do it.
Search "YouTube Revanced" on Android. It's a bit of a pain to install, but it lets you customise your YouTube app and add or remove as many features as you want.
These kinds of customisations should be standard for apps people use every day.
To be clear, I have revanced and use it daily. I'm just too stupid to be able to figure out how to hide Shorts
You -> Gear icon -> Revanced Settings -> General -> Navigation Buttons -> Hide Shorts.
You need to also hide them from the feed and a few other places. You are not stupid; Revanced has too many options and the settings and large and confusing. It's easier to search "shorts" and toggle everything.
So you just manually skip the sponsor segments that most popular creators include in their videos or what?
Sponsorblock exists and is absolutely marvelous. It's a crowdsourced database of sponsored segments + an add-on that queries this database and automatically skips the sponsor segments. There's also Sponsorblock plugins for MPV if that's more your thing.
I used to be have a premium family suscription, canceled it the moment google increased the price by 30%, I considered such a jump unfair compared to the rest of the economy where salaries are hardly getting adjusted to the inflation.
You cancelled YouTube Premium because YouTube was trying to keep content creator income on pace with inflation?
I read it more as katrotz cancelling YTP because it became more expensive while katrotz' income did not increase by the same amount. If things become more expensive and my wages don't increase as much I am going to cut some expenses.
Are you prepared to donate 100% of your income to all those poor "content creators" then?
Most people would like to have a roof over their heads and eat once in a while.
$22 a month for YouTube Premium is what I pay. Donating 100% of my income (a number larger than $22/mo) was not the issue being discussed in this post.
It was, because every "content provider" wants your subscription.
How many links that you clicked on from HN today are asking for a subscription, and how many have you supported?
I'm the same as you: long form and essays. I use freetube for Linux and Tubular for android, so no ads at all. I follow only youtubers who have a patreon and I support all of them (10 or so and one via kofi).
Yeh, for all Google's faults in this arena, YouTube Premium is such a good buy. I consume so much YouTube I think it would be unethical for me not to pay.
(I still use uBlock of course)
Wait a minute, why is mine $13.99 a month?
But agree, totally worth it if you at all value your time.
If you don't care about music or background play, and all you want is to eliminate ads, YouTube Premium Lite is $8/month.
Interesting - hadn't heard of this option before. But I see that "Premium Lite" is not available in NZ... https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6307365?sjid=92752...
But at least you have IKEA
I still can't believe that they paywalled the ability for the video to keep playing when the screen is turned off.
Probably a business decision that's made them a lot of money, well done.
Thank goodness for ReVanced.
>I still can't believe that they paywalled the ability for the video to keep playing when the screen is turned off.
That's why I will never pay, no matter how much people glaze yt premium. I distinctly remember the day they took that simple feature away. uBlock and Vanced work fine, and it's also not hard to download to my media server for offline
I don't want to reward a company for shitty practices. What are they even doing at youtube besides changing the UI every 3 months and stuffing AI where it isn't wanted/needed.
At the bare minimum they need to enable the ability to blacklist entire channels, like I can easily do on my home setup. And ban AI videos without a label. Then they can have my $8
It's only for music where background play isn't supported for free.
Is this true? Nothing will play for me with my screen off.
Yes YouTube Premium will play with the screen off (using the app. No idea about using a browser).
In a browser, it works even without Youtube Premium :-)
Firefox mobile, m.youtube.com, "Video Background Play Fix" browser extension.
Works for me without an extension, you just need to click play again after leaving the YouTube tab/locking the phone
So does ReVanced YouTube
On iOS I use Brave and it works fine.
> Wait a minute, why is mine $13.99 a month?
Only the earliest google music people are still grandfathered in at the insanely low rate. The rest of us have been "upgraded" to at least $14/mo.
Damn, I just looked up how long I have been paying using https://payments.google.com/ . Looks like I've been paying for youtube music since October 2014. These grandfathered people must be really really early. :]
They also have a family plan that costs a bit more I think.
Removing ads and downloading videos are both available for free.
My additional recommendations:
1. You don't need a separate browser extension for blocking cookie notices, Ublock Origin can do that just fine. You just need to enable the cookie notice filters in the settings (they are disabled by default).
2. AdAway on Android allows network-level blocking without resorting to a VPN (it's based on /etc/hosts). Though it does require root.
But Consent-O-Matic doesn't just block cookie notices, it clicks on the appropriate buttons to deny them first for the major kinds of cookie dialogs.
Isn't the point of the notices that you have to explicitly agree to them for the site to be allowed to track you? Wouldn't never accepting be equivalent to rejecting?
Some of them still come preset to accept all.
The problem with ad blocker apps on Android is that they always require a either a VPN, in which cases my banking apps don't work, or root, which is getting harder and harder to get and probably also breaks my banking apps.
However, I have found that using NextDNS as a private DNS server works and doesn't cause any problems like this.
I'm still having good results with root, Magisk, and Play Integrity Fix. That does involve some knowledge and effort though, so what I point others to is Mullvad DNS, which is free: https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls
Don't forget to give apps that fuck with you in the name of security 1-star reviews!
> Mullvad DNS
This works the same way as NextDNS on Android but is less customizeable.
True, but it doesn't require an account, and is free for unlimited use. Not having to sign up for anything is a plus when I'm recommending things to others.
> You just need to enable the cookie notice filters in the settings
I didn't know it existed. FWIW, it's under Settings > Filter lists > Cookie notices.
I'm using Firefox + uBlock Origin, and this combo blocks ads perfectly for me. Anyone else using the same setup?
Yes, with Sponsorblock to skip in-video ads.
Same, but I only watch Youtube through MPV (which also has Sponsorblock plugins). When I need to actually browse Youtube I use an Invidious instance. I don't even remember the last time I intentionally watched a video on the Youtube website proper.
I use this combination on my personal laptop, but on my work machine I need to use Edge browser. For some reason, Edge still supports the uBlock Origin extension, so I get to avoid ads on my work laptop too.
I use Firefox with uBlock Origin for pretty much everything, but I still occasionally use Chrome, now with uBlock Origin Lite.
I can't say I'm noticing any ads on Chrome, the lite ad blocker seems just as effective.
> For some reason, Edge still supports the uBlock Origin extension
They still accept updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions [1].
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions/...
+ ghostery + pihole.
I like his suggestion of VPN via cloud. I might set up something with wireguard or tailscale for that.
I don't really use youtube, but my family does, so If anyone knows a way to get a better ui experience as a google tv app I'd be keen to hear it?
Ghostery has a history of slightly problematic behaviour if you’re using it for privacy purposes.
>+ ghostery + pihole.
Both are superfluous if you have ublock, and pihole doesn't do anything for "native" ads like on twitch or youtube. The only benefit is that it blocks ads in apps that use third party ad SDKs.
The article links to iSponsorBlockTV: https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV
This doesn't change the UI as such, but it auto-mutes ads, and auto-skips once the skip option is available. It's a bit of a funny thing to setup, but it works great once setup.
I use this via Home Assistant add on to skip ads on my apple tvs. Not as good as smarttube on nvidia shield, but best you can do on tvOS.
You can self-host Invidious and connect to it with yattee. (The UI is… not the best, but it’s generally functional, and better than ads.)
There's also an app called Clipious on F-Droid that can connect to an Invidious instance.
I don't use it much since I started using the ReVanced patched YouTube app, but it used to work well enough for casual usage.
Interesting could you share how to do this?
https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV should get you started. In HA, it will available in the Settings > Add-ons / Add-on store. If you don't have home assistant, you can always run it on an rpi or in docker on a system on your network.
https://medium.com/@lumenyx/isponsorblocktv-on-a-raspberry-p...
sideload SmartTube. I use it along with youtube premium to get a stellar experience.
what does ghostery do for you on top of ublock origin?
You probably should use AdNausem instead. It uses same uBlock under the hood, but it clicks all the ads. Site owners make money and advertisers loose them. Additionally, if enough of us switch from uBlock to AdNausem (which are nearly identical), it would be the end of surveillances capitalism. It just wouldn't be profitable anymore.
When I tried it a few years ago it just didn't work. It just did not block ads. I have no clue why.
> it clicks all the ads.
sound dangerous...
From FAQ:
>AdNauseam 'clicks' Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions this is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a 'click' on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads. Although it is completely safe, AdNauseam's clicking behaviour can be de-activated in the settings panel.
https://github.com/dhowe/adnauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...
Look into Sponsor Block as well.
and also "dearrow" for good measure. it replaces the titles and thumbnails with something less sensational. not having to look at those stupid faces that youtubers make is a big plus as well
the freetube app has both of those extensions built in. you just have to enable them in the settings
Don't forget Consent-O-Matic if you live in the EU+UK, to auto-reject all cookie and GDPR forms.
GDPR requires opt-in consent, so simply not displaying the cookie notice is functionally equivalent to rejecting permission.
We need it everywhere, we get those gdpr forms because sites don't differentiate at all.
Perfect combo, where it can be used.
I prefer poisoning my ad profile instead of passively blocking with Ad Nauseum https://adnauseam.io/ . It uses Ublock origin under the hood. I've got my click rate set to high but not 100%.
Ad Nauseum is snakeoil. Their FAQ states that they "click" on ads by sending a XHR request[1]. As you might imagine, this is easily detectable, and given how rampant ad fraud is, fake "clicks" like those are almost certainly filtered by every ad network. Otherwise anyone with a botnet would be able to easily make millions of fake clicks with a few lines of javascript.
[1] https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...
Wasn't the whole idea to open links in hidden tabs?
> This lightweight request signals a 'click' on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads.
You might be thinking of TrackMeNot, which does use tabs (iirc).
If it didn't work, Google wouldn't have banned it well ahead of them banning the working version of uBlock Origin.
From google's perspective it operates as a botnet consuming their resources and creating doubt as to the validity of their product among advertisers (disclaimer: I am not defending their business at all). That's the goal, but costing the advertisers themselves money doesn't necessarily follow.
Is running Pihole or Adguard home even worth it these days ?
You can get something like NextDNS for $18/year, which is probably less than what you pay for the power required to serve Pihole or Adguard Home, and you get enterprise level infrastructure for it, along with redundancy, and it works "everywhere".
Yes, you (probably) need a caching resolver at home, and that could be Pihole or Adguard, but going through hoops to setup Wireguard and have all DNS resolve over that, just to reach pihole at home, that sounds like overkill.
Anyway, In case it's not obvious, NextDNS is how i roll, using a "stupid" caching DNS resolver at home.
I've been using NextDNS for years and never paid anything. Very occasionally (maybe twice) around the last few days of the month I get an email saying I reached my quota and filtering will stop working.
Can you setup custom filters on the free solution ?
If not, DNS4EU (https://www.joindns4.eu/) is free for personal use, and has no quota, and offers various endpoints for malware protection, adblocking, and other stuff.
Wdym by custom filters?
Maybe that's what you ask: NextDNS has:
- 50+ blocklists ready to use (including Easylist, Adguard, HaGeZi, Energized). You enable the ones you wish to use
- Many privacy options you can enable, including Disguised Third-Party Trackers (TIP), CNAME flattening
- Many security options you can enable, including Cryptojacking, Google Safe Browsing, IDN Homograph attacks, Typosquatting, dynamic hostnames
- Ready-to-use application-based and category-based allowing/blocking
- Custom blocking options such as allowlists, denylists, blocking certain TLDs, custom rewrites
It also has:
- Option to "Bypass Age Verification"
- Option to keep logs (in EU, Swiss or US) or not
- Free to use up to 300,000 queries / month
- Multiple profiles for different clients
- Supports virtually all browsers and all OS, desktop and mobile, either via its official app, configuration profile (iOS), or IPv4, IPv6, DNS-over-TLS/QUIC, DNS-over-HTTPS
Oh thanks, that looks like an interesting alternative
> Can you setup custom filters on the free solution?
No, but as the other person replying said, there's a huge range of built in filters and I've never felt any need to customize them.
EDIT: just spent a few minutes looking over the DNS4EU website. I can't see any configuration options at all. They just have 4 basic levels (standard, child protection, ad block, or unfiltered). So it appears less useful than NextDNS. Where did you see the ability to add custom filters?
FYI: NextDNS is free up to 300,000 queries a month.
I also wrote here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46191045
Would recommend using the NextDNS software as the on-prem caching resolver — it can pass through the requesting client information so you're not losing any of the logging you'd have running Pi-hole, etc. at home.
You can just use Tailscale or similar service and not fight with setup of Wireguard. It's as simple as installing the app on devices and starting it
Wireguard is simple enough to setup, and i actually use it much like OP does, though i don't force all my DNS queries through it, and instead use NextDNS.
It's basically setup so that i have my internal machines registered in NextDNS as rewrites, and Wireguard is setup to route anything for my internal RFC-1918 network, ie. 192.168.1.0/24, so when NextDNS returns 192.168.1.5 for "host.mydomain.com", it will go over wireguard.
The advantage is that i can keep the tunnel up 24/7, and it has very little impact on battery life as normal requests simply go over the internet.
> just to reach pihole at home, that sounds like overkill.
Host AdGuard on a VPS (same one as the VPN?). Then you can use it from everywhere.
I doubt the VPS/VPN route is for the majority of people, but if "you" are one of those, then yes, it would make sense.
For everybody else, $18/year vs $5/month for a VPS should be an easy choice.
There is also py-hole
https://github.com/time4tea-net/py-hole/
You can run it on your openwrt router - see readme. Its just a python script that updates a file that dnsmasq uses. No funny business, you are in charge of everything.
Disclaimer: author of said script.
Firefox + uBlock origin and i'm blessed with peaceful browsing experience.
There's nothing too unexpected in this post. Firefox + uBlock is pretty much standard now. It's been impossible to recommend Chrome ever since Google moved to manifest v3, which can only be described as deliberate anti-privacy enshittification. The recaptcha solver is starting to become niche, since cloudflare has really taken over (for better or worse).
I would add one more useful tool though: A user-agent switcher[1]. There are still some websites that insist you must use Chrome (or sometimes Edge). They will block you if you try to use them with Firefox, even though they work perfectly well and sometimes even better on Firefox than they do on Chrome. A user-agent switcher gives you the option to simply uninstall Chrome for good.
e.g. My ISP provides a website for streaming live TV (e.g. sports) that claims to be incompatible with Firefox, but actually runs better (i.e. fewer glitches) on it than it does on Chrome. However, it refuses to load on Firefox unless you use a user-agent switcher.
Why do people write websites that refuse to run based on user-agent checks? By all means, warn users that you couldn't be arsed to test things on more than one browser, but why go that extra mile to brick your site when other browsers probably support it quite well?
[1]https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/user-agent-st...
I'd recommend chrome mask instead. It's written by a Firefox engineer
oh! That's nice! sound even better since I just switch my user agent to chrome anyway.
Every time I turn on ua switcher I wind up in an infinite loop with cloudflare captchas. I literally cannot turn it on because of the aggressive practice of this one company. I am going to try the chrome mask extension the other user just posted, since it deals with some js shenanigans as well.
I have an Apple TV and I’ve been running iSponsorBlockTV [1] on my Synology box for a while. It auto-skips the sponsored segments and with Youtube premium, it gives me a clean, ad-free setup.
I can’t stand those in-video intros or sponsored promos, where I’m suddenly pitched a random VPN or productivity app.
Brave + NextDNS/ControlD is what I've found the be the ultimate ad blocking combo for the entire household(TVs, phones, computers), when balancing cost/effort.
PiHole is popular but IMO not worth the effort when the above are so cheap. There are free ad blocking DNS servers, but they aren't customizable.
How do you handle the constant complaints about clicking on a email link or some other tracking link and it not working?
Or do you not import any lists into nexdns?
I handled that complaint by switching the house in general to eero’s adblocker, which is more permissive than nextdns and doesn’t generally block tracking links (and intercepts DNS requests to outside servers that aren’t using DoH/DoT), and just using nextdns on my personal devices.
Good question, I forgot this happens time to time. I set DNS at the router instead of devices, so just tell them to turn off wifi on their phones when that happens. It's actually slightly more complicated because of parental controls(if you care)... essentially the router gives out its own IP for DNS via DHCP, and the router itself is configured to use controlD.
On my personal computer, I don't remember ever running into this, but if I did I'd just override resolv.conf temporarily.
You can also just whitelist the domain(s) too via oneclick actions in both systems, which was my initial caveat that you can't do that using public adblocking DNS.
There are more permissive hosts lists that allow email trackers. You can also configure hosts lists per device with adguard home or firewalla
I don't use adblock, I just close a website if its ads interrupt my browsing experience.
Well, ads shown, goal reached.
How do you remember not to click all the links that have them in the future?
Learn more about black-listing at /r/PiHole (or Pi-Hole.net)
You start to remember sites after a while to be honest.
NewPipe or Invidious
I've bee trying these and alternatives in FF via LibRedirect for years. I keep on wondering if it's just me but I have to babysit the setup and cycle through instances every so often.
My Personal Ad/Block Management Strategy
Here is the block management setup I personally use regularly:
Desktop
* DNS blocking is active via NextDNS.
* I use Ungoogled Chromium as my primary browser.
* I use the uBlock ad-blocking extension along with its filters.
* The SponsorBlock extension is very useful for skipping sponsored segments within YouTube videos.
Mobile
* DNS blocking is active via NextDNS.
* To block ads in Safari, I activate ad-blocking in Safari through the free Firefox Focus app.
* I use the YouTube app via AltStore. It is a nice feature that it also includes the SponsorBlock extension.
If you'd like, I can publish a comprehensive ad-blocking guide on the Ahmet Çadırcı https://ahmetcadirci.com/ page.
I see what you did there :P
May I suggest Cromite, instead of ungoogled-chromium?
HN title optimizer has once again stripped the “How” from the beginning of the title.
what's the point of this?
"I block all online ads" is a less useful title than "How I block all online ads", and pointing out when the title mangler has made the title worse serves as a request to moderators to fix it if they agree. Which they did here, I believe for a net win.
I meant what's the point of truncating the title like this
an early anti-clickbait feature that dropped “why” and “how”; you can manually edit after submission to append the ‘how’ or ‘why’ back onto the article.
An anti-clickbait measure, IIRC. I can’t, off the top of my head, think of an example this prevents, though.
This seems like a lot of work. I just point my router at AdGuard DNS and that takes care of all ads on every device on my network. No filter lists, nothing to host, completely free.
Only caveat is it doesn’t block ads served by the content provider itself e.g. some streaming services, but from what I hear those are difficult to block with any approach.
as per the response to my comment, try SponsorBlock
My free and 5 minute setup: I am using Brave + uBlockOrigin Lite + AdGuard + AdGuard DNS on my home network. On android Brave + AdGuard DNS. No configuration just works, no annoyances. On youtube as well. Is there anything I should further do? I think I sometimes see ads in android apps maybe this can be optimized without root somehow?
> Ads support content creators and free services. If you value specific creators or platforms, consider supporting them directly through memberships or donations rather than relying solely on ad blocking.
Sometimes this isn’t available.
I would like to support Daring Fireball (a publication I read a lot) but the only way is to buy an ad slot for $11K which seems like a scam to both the viewer and the advertiser.
The advertiser isn’t getting any ROAS (since we are blocking the ads) and since the ads are annoying and repetitive, the viewers would just go elsewhere.
I wish more creators would have a “remove ads” tier or an alternative membership tier as a different way to support their content rather than ads.
> Sometimes this isn’t available.
Then their content can just go away tbh. This isn't some big ethical dilemma either.
Either find a way to make content that doesn't rely on ads, or stop making content. If the whole ad-funded internet disappeared tomorrow morning, would it really matter?
> I would like to support Daring Fireball (a publication I read a lot) but the only way is to buy an ad slot for $11K which seems like a scam to both the viewer and the advertiser.
AFAIK, Daring Fireball never runs these tracking ad networks with tons of flashing and annoying ads. It does one tiny graphical ad on the web page and has a weekly sponsor post, both of which can be easily ignored. The graphical ad does not even appear in the full RSS feed.
To support Daring Fireball, you can use the links to the weekly sponsor if that product is of interest to you. Once or twice in a year or so, there may be posts with Amazon affiliate links (with full disclosure), which you can use if you want. Other than that, you can share the posts and have more people read it. That in turn could potentially help with the above mentioned aspects.
> AFAIK, Daring Fireball never runs these tracking ad networks with tons of flashing and annoying ads. It does one tiny graphical ad on the web page and has a weekly sponsor post, both of which can be easily ignored. The graphical ad does not even appear in the full RSS feed.
For me an ad is an ad, in graphical or text form and I very much didn't ask for it.
I feel it is psychologically trying to convince me to buy or make me be aware about something I don't want or need and very much not want this ruin my flow of consuming content.
On his links Daring Fireball IS tracking, they all do tracking in the URL of the sponsored post otherwise it doesn't make sense for the sponsor to pay $11K (a week!) for the spot.
> It does one tiny graphical ad on the web page and has a weekly sponsor post, both of which can be easily ignored. The graphical ad does not even appear in the full RSS feed.
I mean, yes I could ignore them, but would massively prefer if these ads didn't exist at all, I have no interest in anything that is being advertised there. Luckily Ublock Origin blocks Daring Fireball ads by default and not sure if his advertisers would be happy about this, but if I spend $11K a week on ads to find most people block them by default, I don't think I would bother wasting another ad slot.
To be fair maybe it is a sign that instead of ads, a membership, patreon or whatever would be much more sustainable, freeing, less scammy and more profitable than running junk ads that people don't want.
Daring Fireball has been doing the one ad a week in RSS with no tracking for over a decade. The sponsors must think they work.
You could always buy a Stratechery subscription - which is great by the way. Some of that money goes to Gruber for the Dithering podcast.
But Gruber is a famously self described bad business person for a content creator. He never tries to be an early reviewer when press embargoes are over for hardware. He claims to never look at his server logs and got rid of Google Analytics ages ago.
His podcast schedule is erratic.
> Daring Fireball has been doing the one ad a week in RSS with no tracking for over a decade. The sponsors must think they work.
I have no interest for anything sold in ads in their RSS and I assume they are tracking in the links that you click too (otherwise why spend all $11K for no results?)
> He claims to never look at his server logs and got rid of Google Analytics ages ago.
That is a good start, hopefully he should consider switching to a community supported model rather than rely on advertisers.
You can also pay for Dithering without stratechery.
Try to buy an ad slot for an ad blocker?
(A less tongue-in-cheek option would be to email John, say that you’re blocking ads, and ask if you can donate instead. If enough people ask he might put up a form?)
Is there anything like gofundme, but for long-running projects? e.g. “Collect money indefinitely to gofundme escrow until the total is sufficient to buy a daringfireball ad slot.”
There is always Patreon and other sites in that style. I support several content creators, both technical and nontechnical, with small monthly payments there.
This is the best model IMO as it supports creators directly and not the advertisers.
If Daring Fireball had this membership subscription model and not selling highly and questionably expensive ad slots I would definitely subscribe, even if the price would be $20 a month or $200 a year. (I would argue he can make more than he charges for ads does already given this model.)
But $11K (a week!) is outrageous to support Daring Fireball.
basically, ublock origin on PC, tends to work well, I don't really see ads except for when the content creator plugs a product directly in their content.
SponsorBlock works really well against this.
I just installed this, looks good on the few videos I've tried!
Glad to hear your entertainment journey will now be free of cheap Chinese earpods, VPNs, website builders and meal kit boxes.
and if you find a video that hasn't had the ads tagged yet, the UI for it is pretty easy to figure out.
Did same thing, not everything works, but there are (almost) no ads for me. I would add Smarttube with Sponsorblock extension for android TV to the list. They had hickup recently with melitious hack and malware in their code but now seems to recovered. And for all ads-trolls: "Oh, you are stealing income from creators." If I consider their work worth it I pay them (semi)directly.
Brave+ControlD, for me. I'm not interested in YouTube, so don't care about that part.
Blocking isn't the issue, it's the websites that straight up break that are the hard part.
For example, Shopify hates ublock and will sometimes not load apps at all
DNS level ad-blocking usually doesn't break websites. (I use NextDNS)
The ad domains straight up don't resolve at all and never get loaded. I don't have any adblock/ublock, so the websites almost never could detect if I block ads or not.
Anyone have a method for blocking ads in RSS?
I regularly read https://daringfireball.com and sick of their ads showing up in my RSS feed.
It is bad enough and distracting that ads show up on the site (thankfully Firefox and ublock origin does the job already) but on RSS blocking ads is impossible.
If you use a web RSS reader, then ublock origin will generally work on the ads in the feed.
I mostly just avoid subscribing to any feeds with ads. (Or pay for the ad-free feeds.)
I use Inoreader and filter out the ads via keywords. Works for repetitive content too…
I actually wonder if the whole anti-ad movement is moving in the wrong direction. And I’m right there with the author running a pi-hole, but I wonder if it would be better to have an extension that will click all of the ads in a way that is invisible to the user. Make all those companies burn thru their budgets for no gain.
You’re in luck: https://adnauseam.io/
It probably is filtered by now, yes. No harm in trying, though, and it puts some pressure on ad networks at least.
Oh awesome, thanks for linking.
You'd have to, like, spawn a background browser or profile or something to capture the click to prevent tracking or even zero-click exploits.
>or even zero-click exploits.
You'd need a VM to safely contain any exploits, although you're probably safe from 0days if you're just doing some run of the mill ad clicking. Nobody is burning a 6-7 figure 0day on a public ad network, when they need to save that for targeted attacks like politicians/journalists, so keeping your browser reasonably up to date will be sufficient.
For sure, it would be technically challenging. Especially if the click requires use of a secure cookie. But it doesn’t have to be perfect to be effective, either, at least at first.
Big players like YouTube can create detection for that behavior. So it would only harm small sites that are trying to run ads to get by.
That assumes two things: 1. That such a tool couldn’t be limited to the big players (it could) and 2. That “small sites trying to run ads to get by,” aren’t part of the problem. I can understand why someone would believe this, but I believe the web would be a better place without them. These sites are all pretty much designed (poorly) around their ads, which limits their usefulness. Have you tried looking up recipes online? A bread recipe with 5 ingredients is 30 pages long!!!
> A bread recipe with 5 ingredients is 30 pages long!!!
Is that anything to do with ads? I've always read that the padding is to make it copyrightable.
It’s only 15 pages without the ads ;)
I don’t think it harms the publishers. If the ad network (well, Google) does detect it, I think they just won’t pay for the “fraudulent”¹ clicks? (And in best case scenario, you’re actually helping small sites!)
Advertisers on the other hand will pay for nothing, yes. Some of them are small businesses. I wonder if there’s a way to click on big corp ads only...
Edit: ¹ – added scare quotes, see https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...
Whoa, if you use a VPN eventually instagram will stop showing you ads?!?! Is that really true? Has anyone else found this?
Not a vpn, but use a known public cloud IP address through a vpn (but you could set a socks proxy, etc).
And?
Also make sure to block ads on your mobile as well https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/predator-spyw...
I just pay $1.99/month to NextDNS tbh
To block adds in android apps, there is DNS66 available on f-droid. https://f-droid.org/packages/org.jak_linux.dns66/
Thanks. From that page -
> NOTE: Dvelopment has stopped. The newer dev.clombardo.dnsnet continues development.
DNSNet
Looks like I've been using an outdated version for a few years. Thanks for the notification.
NextDNS is sufficient on its own. $20 for a year of no ads (or smut if you want to block that too).
Funny story on porn blockers. Back when I attended college, the college I attended blocked porn sites at the DNS level. It was pretty good at its job, but I did notice one false positive: I was trying to access the website for the Extremely Reliable Operating System (whose URL at the time was eros-os.org, though that URL no longer works). The porn blocker blocked my access attempt; I had to click on the "email the sysadmins" link and send them an email saying "Hey, can you add this site to the DNS whitelist? Despite having "eros" in the URL it's got nothing at all to do with porn." They whitelisted it and I had no more false-positives the rest of my college career. But I still laugh about that one, more than two decades later.
What is the point of such restrictions? DNS blacklists can be trivially bypassed by changing the browser's or the operating system's DNS resolver. For example, and somewhat insidiously, Firefox defaults to using Cloudflare AFAIK.
Adding friction, reducing "accidents" and ticking the "we tried" box.
semi-related: after installing pi-hole and using it on my wifi, Netflix on the TV stopped working, ads on (some, big) polish websites were still present. Uninstalled 10 minutes later. Had similar experience last time I tried (years ago) - pihole gave me problems using work-related pages or whatnot. Is there nothing better? E.g. ublock origin but for dns?
Take a look at AdGuard Home. It's functionally similar to pihole but overall better made / easier to use (IMO). I only use the first AdGuard DNS Filter and have only need to allow one domain to unbreak a site, but I also combine it with the browser extension (DNS-level blocking isn't going to remove all ads no matter what you do). You can check the query log to see what's getting blocked.
Maybe try a less aggressive blacklist in Pi-hole, or better yet, cancel your Netflix subscription and source your content in the high seas.
AI content is become as insidious as ads were. Is there software to block AI content?
Ublock Origin + firefox/zen are so good.
AdGuard Extra (beta) browser extension blocks twitch adds very reliable.
Note that using Helium, you can use a Chromium based browser and still enjoy uBlock Origin properly.
Some applications tunnel in their ads over non-ad domains, making them unlockable.
For example IMDb. And proxying over mitmproxy actually breaks the whole app, because they do certificate pinning.
I think Space Weather started to do it too. I was fine with small ads ad the bottom but suddenly its two huge (full screen), unskippable ads.
AdGuard's log shows nondescript servers and suddenly a lot of IPv6 connections and then ads :(
I view this as a sliding scale these days. Nothing is so important that if the ads are a nuisance I won't just stop using it entirely.
I use uBlock on desktop and laptop with Dan host files. AdGuard DNS on Android, or Firefox Mobile with uBlock extension. Even Edge on mobile has extension support now.
On Safari I use Wipr and Sponsorblock. Afterwards I use web version of everything instead of apps, including youtube.
Going through the web version instead of the app is so much better when it comes to ad blocking.
I run 1Blocker + NextDNS and I basically don’t see ads anywhere. Not even on YouTube.
For the iOS folks, is the Mullvad DNS config better or worse than the Ublock Origin Safari Extension? The former seems a bit more invasive
Way better. It blocks ads device wide across all apps.
TIL. Need to figure out how to redirect insta over a vpn then
For Twitch on Android I am using Twire, it works great mainly for replays
DNS-based ad blocking works great if everyone is okay with the degraded experience that can come with that (if you're using aggressive hosts lists). You're making concessions if not.
The VPN-based "solution" is basically as realistic as disabling JavaScript. Extremely limiting.
Anyone use SmartTube? Or is it something I should remove?
Just make sure you're using the new version (old one was compromised):
I use it. Works great.
1Blocker on iOS and macOS has been good. It also blocks in-app trackers.
> but I've heard good things about NextDNS
I have used them both paid and free and they are not good. I will pick just one point - support. It's pathetic. Maybe because it's non existent. I stopped paying for it, started using free, then removed it altogether.
uBlock Origin really is that good as others are saying. I haven't really needed anything else. Ads in other apps? Well, that's a hit or miss but then a lot of my finance/investment related apps anyway don't work if I use any ad blocking on local network or device label, sadly. Tweaking around it is how I needed support with NextDNS and then realised I've been paying for something with essentially no support.
What support did you need? Sounds like it's only a matter of checking what's blocked in the logs and adding some exceptions to the allow list?
I'm pretty aggressive with the block lists I have selected and expect to fiddle with it lots, but I have a second (much more "reasonable") profile that family uses and it works great (still catches a huge amount of stuff that browser adblockers miss) despite never needing any fiddling. It's been great for me.
I'm a happy NextDNS user. I'm not sure what kind of support you need that wouldn't be solved by asking AI and/or some community online. They have wonderful integrations, instructions, documentation and features. Blocking ads is not even primary reason I use them - the parental control and safety features are the main reason for me.
Desktop and mobile: Firefox and uBlock Origin.
Mobile: Blockada to prevent apps from reaching their ad servers. NewPipe.
Desktop: Freetube.
uBO has the bonus to have an element picker that I use to remove the empty areas where ads would show. I do it for sites that I use often. I also remove some useless menus and headers. I particularly hate sticky ones.
One should not neglect the power of the /etc/hosts file. I use one from https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/. I don’t bother with browser extensions; I never see ads.
I use uBlock Origin because beside blocking ads, it also blocks tracking.
The VPN trick doesnt work for YouTube on mobile anymore. I get popups saying I need to log-in or disable my VPN to watch videos. I could probably buy a silly gmail account online and link it to my YouTube app, but am afraid it will log-in my whole phone to this shady Google account.
Brave browser helps a lot. I can't use some browsers due to the ad clutter. Some can handle the ads, some can't.
Brave is great, but I just wish it wasn’t Chromium based.
It’s always been ironic to me that a Privacy browser is dependent on source code primarily controlled by a company that derives the majority of its revenue from ads… exactly what the browser itself was spun off to shield its users against.
The majority of Mozilla and Apple's revenue for their browsers comes from ad revenue sharing agreements.
I tried using Firefox. I had it as default browser for 2 years but I just keep going back to Chromium. Firefox is slow and crashes/hangs too much in my experience. It was even very slow to open my automatically generated tables for accounting (for simple html but very big files because accounting regulation in my previous country of residence were brain dead). I don't think often published benchmarks tell the whole story there.
Now I am back to Brave and very happy. Almost no ads, super fast, doesn't crash or hang.
Anyone have a way of blocking twitter adds?
I’ve just been watching streams after they’re done so that I can get rid of them that way
Edit: nvm author mentions vpns as a solution
realistically though, most YouTube content is an ad for something ;)
librewolf with ublock
firefox sold out on their users quit using them https://youtube.com/shorts/FObvkFtr2ZU
It's a shame the web has become so predatory to neophytes.
how much time you have to spend online to do all this sh*t to block ads…??!
You must be very tolerant to ads.
I’m 50, don’t even see them anymore
ads can infect your system with malware. whether you are paying attention to them out not is irrelevant
Amortized 0.
I spend more time telling others about uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock and ReVanced.