[HN Gopher] Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers
___________________________________________________________________
Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers
Author : balboah
Score : 501 points
Date : 2022-08-29 10:07 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (community.blokada.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (community.blokada.org)
| TrianguloY wrote:
| I use DNS66, installed from F-droid.
|
| Play Store has more and more restrictions each month...but it may
| be a good thing? because people is now discovering the alternate
| stores and the advantages of them.
| eleitl wrote:
| Not to forget LineageOS et al.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| why not just use private dns from nextdns
| ignoramous wrote:
| I co-develop a FOSS VPN-based (tcp/udp) firewall for Android.
|
| The original policy is documented here:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220818100735/https://support.g...
|
| What the post misses is Google has exceptions for:
|
| - Parental control and enterprise management apps.
|
| - App usage tracking.
|
| - Device security apps (for example, anti-virus, mobile device
| management, firewall).
|
| - Network related tools (for example, remote access).
|
| - Web browsing apps.
|
| - Carrier apps that require the use of VPN functionality to
| provide telephony or connectivity services.
|
| The part where manipulation of ad-based monetization isn't
| allowed has _always_ been there in one form or another.
|
| A firewall can also be used to firewall ads/trackers though, and
| so it remains to be seen what Google makes of such apps (there
| are plenty!) come November (supposed deadline for compliance).
| Blokada v5 (and below), otoh, isn't a firewall, but a UDP-only
| DNS client.
| wTj8yqRLkg7Dfsp wrote:
| > Ads that appear ... during the beginning of a content segment
| are not allowed.
|
| > Here are some examples of common violations: Unexpected ads
| that appear ... during the beginning of a content segment (for
| example, after a user has clicked on a button, and before the
| action intended by the button click has taken effect). These
| ads are unexpected for users, as users expect to ... engage in
| content instead.
|
| ??? isn't this like... incredibly and blatantly anti-
| competitive considering that their own app (Youtube), which
| they still offer on said store, does this?
| tssva wrote:
| You are glossing over an important word in your quote,
| "unexpected". YouTube ads maybe unwanted but they aren't
| unexpected ads. 3rd party apps are allowed to have similar
| expected ads.
| smileybarry wrote:
| Not entirely, I think they mean ads in games between "new
| game"/"next level" and the game/level starting. Free games
| are filled with them. Pre-roll ads in video apps like YouTube
| are different.
| aliqot wrote:
| It's funny how generations vacillate between "id pay for
| this" and "id watch ads if this were free" but neither is
| actually the correct answer as there seems to just be an
| a/b switch between the two groups and sentiments regardless
| of which path is chosen.
| detaro wrote:
| In what way do you think this aligns with generations? (I
| don't really see a generational thing)
| aliqot wrote:
| Generations was not being used in an age-related context.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| I think having exceptions for that is an extremely severe
| security flaw. Kudos to you for developing something like this,
| but honestly even with a solid firewall leveraging VPN I would
| not trust crapware like Android or iOS with anything
| substantial. We have reached ridiculous levels of paternalism
| from pretty crappy companies.
| tssva wrote:
| You left off an important part of the exception statement.
| "Exceptions include apps that require a remote server for core
| functionality such as:" It is followed by the list you posted
| above. This is completely in line with the original post which
| states that their prior version which did on device filtering
| would be banned and their current version which works in
| conjunction with a remote server to perform the filtering would
| be allowed.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _This is completely in line with the original post which
| states that their prior version which did on device filtering
| would be banned and their current version which works in
| conjunction with a remote server to perform the filtering
| would be allowed._
|
| On-device filtering was never allowed. For as long as I can
| remember, it has always been against Play Store terms of use.
| That part isn't new at all.
|
| Though, it could very well be that Google may come down with
| stringent / permanent bans on VPN-based apps starting
| November (they, notoriously, only allow two violations before
| permanently banning a developer account; in some instances,
| developers have gotten two strikes at once, leaving them
| unable to appeal).
| hestefisk wrote:
| "Improved ad experience"...
| anaganisk wrote:
| For your own safety and convenience.
| kornhole wrote:
| Does this only apply to phones with Google Play Services
| installed?
| suprjami wrote:
| Root access and AdAway from F-Droid. I wouldn't even bother using
| anything else.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Same, but it is more and more annoying to root your phone with
| all these banking apps blocking rooted phones. And now, with
| the new security standards (which are good), banks insist on
| having you install their proprietary app just to authorize
| payments (which is annoying). I am not talking about Google Pay
| here (which I can do without).
|
| There are workarounds of course, but I am becoming tired of the
| cat and mouse game, in fact, I am tired of smartphones
| altogether. Unless things change, my current phone is probably
| the last rooted phone I will use as a daily driver, sadly, the
| last "high end" phone too.
| L3viathan wrote:
| I'm in the same boat.
|
| I recently had to upgrade my phone, and oh boy is is annoying
| to get root working with Google Pay and my banking app. It
| still works, but it took me a few hours(!).
|
| I'm seriously considering switching to iOS for my next phone.
| flosstop wrote:
| Sorry to disappoint but it you feel it is necessary to root
| an Android phone to get an acceptable experience wait until
| you experience iOS
| infinityplus1 wrote:
| To solve the banking apps problem with root:
|
| 1. Root your phone 2. Install Adaway and update hosts 3.
| Unroot your phone.
|
| It just takes a system restart to unroot. Then all banking
| apps work fine. If I need root again, I can just flash
| Magisc zip file again. Easy enough.
|
| But nowadays just setting up adguard's DNS in Android's
| private DNS settings is enough to get Adaway like effect
| without root.
| suprjami wrote:
| If you're just doing a single file, I've always thought
| it would be better to just use adb.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| Going on a tangent, how is the adblocking story on iOS? As there
| is not Firefox+uBlock available, is it possible to block ads via
| VPN or DNS?
| hkc wrote:
| I use Adguard for Safari Content blocking + NextDNS. Adguard
| has launched its own DNS based blocker too which I am yet to
| test.
|
| Link: https://adguard-dns.io
| falcolas wrote:
| Web ads, yes. App ads, or ads served in in-app browsers, no.
|
| I use Firefox Focus as the ad block extension, and it works
| relatively well.
| BeenChilling wrote:
| You can use adguard dns profile
| gbear605 wrote:
| Apple allows ad-blocking filters that are basically Safari
| extensions but must be downloaded through a separate app. I
| can't recommend any specific ad-blocked though.
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/get-extensions-iphab0...
|
| The usual VPN and DNS solutions also work fine.
| evgen wrote:
| I have had a very good experience with 1Blocker so far. Not
| quite ublock origin but close enough that I almost never
| notice a difference from my daily desktop use. There is
| another extension called Vinegar that strips out YouTube ads,
| but unfortunately it only works with Safari on iOS and not
| Firefox (even though both are using the same core engine) so
| I need to remember to bounce over to Safari when watching
| YouTube vids.
| interpol_p wrote:
| Vinegar works with Safari on macOS too. I love it, switches
| YouTube over to the native video player, strips all the
| recommendations and other crap and only plays the video
| nuker wrote:
| > As there is not Firefox+uBlock available
|
| Install Firefox Focus, it istalls Content Blocker which you
| then enable in Safari settings. Plus Ka-Block!. These two
| together do the trick.
| latexr wrote:
| > is it possible to block ads via VPN
|
| 1Blocker1 does it. It's the "Firewall" section of the iOS app.
|
| 1 https://1blocker.com
| sph wrote:
| How do these VPN adblocking setups work with Tailscale and
| other VPNs?
|
| I already have issues with Tailscale and NextDNS, I doubt
| this will make it any easier.
| latexr wrote:
| I can't speak for those services; I never used them. I do
| use 1Blocker and am satisfied with it.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| a) firefox on android is great
|
| b) I wasn't even aware blockada was functional on the play store.
| Been using it on FDroid. So nothing changes for me.
|
| c) Blockada without VPN is a fantastic tool. It works well. And
| 98% of the time app ads are blocked.
| lenova wrote:
| Adguard provides public DNS servers that can be used for blocking
| ads on your phone as well, no VPN required:
|
| https://adguard-dns.io/kb/general/dns-providers/
| Terretta wrote:
| Which has now gone open-source:
|
| https://adguard.com/en/blog/adguard-dns-2-0-goes-open-source...
| lenova wrote:
| Very cool, I didn't know about that, thanks for sharing!
| disintegore wrote:
| I categorically reject ads. I want them completely abolished. I
| will do everything that's in my power to get them out of my
| machines. If I had just a little bit more courage I would go out
| at night with cans of spray paint and deface billboards.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| "I will do everything that's in my power"
|
| Will you pay money for the content you consume?
| folmar wrote:
| Sure, if it's not tied to my identity.
| xhrpost wrote:
| Sadly, even paying for content will often keep ads around.
| NYTimes and WSJ come to mind.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Youtube premium is ad free.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I know this isn't technically youtube's fault, but pretty
| much every video I watch has a 30 second sponsor segment
| (Hello Fresh anyone?).
|
| There's Nebula for some creators and Patreon for others,
| but not everyone has an ad free way to watch them. Also
| Patreon can really begin to add up.
|
| And yeah there's that extension that can skip sponsored
| segments but that's blocking ads, not paying to avoid
| them.
| hoorible wrote:
| For now.
| disintegore wrote:
| Incidentally, yes. I get to choose what my computer displays
| to me and that's non-negotiable however. If that breaks your
| business model that is 100% a you problem.
| sfvegandude wrote:
| This is not a path forward. The people with the money to pay
| for the content are the same people with the money to buy the
| products that advertisers make money by advertising.
|
| You can't outrun the incentive alignment. Nobody can. Case in
| point - Apple is shifting hard into the ad space after laying
| low and crafting a premium brand.
|
| The money is just too good.
| tarakat wrote:
| As the sibling replies illustrates, this is now more akin to
| paying the Danegeld, than paying for a service.
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| I feel like this is somewhat of a false dichotomy - I pay for
| plenty of content and have a good number of subscriptions,
| but that doesn't make the ads go away like magic.
|
| If anything, I've seen more and more services where paying is
| just for "premium features," of which getting away from ads
| isn't one of them. Spotify is a key example - if you pay for
| premium you don't get ads interrupting music, but you still
| see their bundled advertisements on the home screen of the
| app, you get content suggested to you in a way that is very
| advertiser-centric, etc.
|
| I think we should maybe split off the discussion of "how will
| these businesses get paid the way ads get paid" from "ads are
| bad and we should get rid of them." Frankly, I don't care if
| advertising as a business tanks and that takes other
| businesses with it. The externalities of surveillance
| capitalism are pretty shitty, and I'm fairly confident there
| are other ways for people to be productive within the economy
| that don't involve the invasive nature of today's advertising
| ecosystem.
| teawrecks wrote:
| I pay for several subscription services, yet they always want
| more and more of my data. Whatever I give, it's never enough,
| they want to have their cake and eat it too.
|
| I use open source stuff when I can, and similarly, I
| contribute to the projects when I can. This seems to be the
| only legitimate way to avoid ads.
| sofixa wrote:
| How do you propose sites/YouTube channels monetise themselves
| (for sustenance or profit)?
| disintegore wrote:
| I don't really care about their bottom line. They're the
| middle-men. Virtual landlords. They're there to squeeze the
| lemon.
|
| Not to say that the service they provide isn't useful. It's
| obviously more economical to operate media platforms at
| scale, and obviously most content creators don't have the
| technical ability to do it themselves.
|
| When you look at say, podcasts for instance, you have this
| giant shared wealth of free content and you can pick a number
| of creators to support depending on your budget. You usually
| get extra episodes or perks as an incentive for doing so.
| Imagine if, instead of paying YouTube X dollars or watching Y
| ads and letting them choose out how to spread that money
| around, you pay the people you actually watch and the
| platform vendors, who ought to be the least important and
| most replaceable factor in this transaction, gets the cut
| they actually deserve.
|
| Before they were ruined by copyright trolls, streaming
| services like Netflix demonstrated that charging everyone a
| reasonable amount of money for access to the entire park was
| a viable business model.
| Bakary wrote:
| YouTube sounds replaceable or unimportant in an ethical
| sense but in a practical sense it's certainly not that
| simple from the POV of someone trying to build an audience
| for their videography or even the audience itself.
| disintegore wrote:
| Total chicken and egg scenario. That's often the case
| with monopolies. However, to my knowledge Youtube doesn't
| force its content creators into exclusivity deals (like,
| say, Amazon with Kindle Direct) so there may be some
| leeway there seeing as posting your content on another
| platform isn't a major risk.
| Bakary wrote:
| I don't have a definite view on this, but my intuition
| tells me that there is more to it than just the monopoly
| effect. If YouTube had developed with additional
| competitors, it might not necessarily have lead to a
| better market/space for videographers since having a
| single platform has its own advantages for the
| development of the medium/culture/etc.
|
| YouTube is getting more heavy-handed as time goes on, but
| one reason for this is that they were operating at a loss
| for so long, and in doing so provided extra utility that
| we might take for granted.
|
| GP comment mentioned Netflix, but that is in fact a good
| example of what I mean. They started to struggle because
| competitors moved into the space. Unlike YouTube, they
| did not have an unassailable position. Unlike Spotify,
| they did not have a market that allowed sharing
| catalogues across platforms.
|
| In a sense, what we interpreted as Netflix showing a
| viable business model was rather Netflix showing early
| mover advantage on borrowed time. Having an ecosystem
| with multiple mediocre services such as what streaming is
| becoming now would not necessarily have been in the
| advantage of videographers if it had happened to video-
| sharing platforms. It would almost certainly have lead to
| a smaller and less engaged overall audience.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think the only real response is that isn't my problem to
| figure out. I'm sure you could come up with 10 highly
| unethical or outright illegal monetization methods off the
| top of your head, and the argument against them isn't "well
| here's an alternative" but instead "these are bad and
| shouldn't be done full stop." And this is how people view
| ads, it's a values based judgement rather than a utilitarian
| one.
| zamadatix wrote:
| A values based judgement goes both ways though - you
| shouldn't be using such a service in the first place if you
| knowingly can't conceive of an ethical way for it to
| operate. And that's a fair stance but few seem to actually
| care about values based judgement enough to actually stop
| using the services.
|
| That said this case isn't much of a moral mystery. YouTube
| offers a reasonable paid plan, most people just prefer ads.
| Spivak wrote:
| Oh trust me I can conceive many ethical ways businesses
| could operate without ads. I think what you mean is that
| you shouldn't use a service you know is unethical. But
| there are problems with that as a general rule.
|
| First being that there's no ethical consumption under
| capitalism so that makes things difficult.
|
| Second, "voting with your wallet" is pointless, you're
| much better off voting with your votes and ad blockers if
| you want to see real change. If anything by your logic
| buying YouTube Premium is worse ethically since you're
| directly supporting a company that makes money on
| unethical ads. Giving them more money won't make ads go
| away.
|
| And to that, third, demanding self-flagellation to prove
| that one is sincere in their beliefs is puritanical
| nonsense. You are absolutely allowed to both buy Nike
| shoes and fight for legislation that forbids them from
| treating their factory workers poorly.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'm not going to comment on capitalism as a whole or the
| like as that seems neither here nor there for this thread
| but I can see how someone with those views would have
| problems with pretty much any service anywhere in the
| current environment.
|
| I'm not quite sure I follow how opting for the business
| model one doesn't find unethical is supporting unethical
| business models. It may not be attacking the business
| model they find unethical but that's a different claim.
| Unless of course we allow any connection with a service
| to taint the entire lot in which case I can again see how
| someone with those views would have problems with pretty
| much any service anywhere.
|
| As for the conversation on shoes when you have a basic
| need sure, don't let people's ability to source needs get
| in the way of people bettering their working conditions.
| After all they don't really have a choice in forgoing
| either. That's not really relevant to people's desires to
| consume entertainment services though. Particularly when
| people are given their own agency on deciding what is the
| right way to fund it already or even to be able to not
| consume the want should there be nowhere to do so. In the
| end it may come down to whether you think it should be
| alright for people to operate on different morals than
| you so long as their choice is mostly limited to
| impacting them or if there is only one true set of morals
| everyone must be forced to follow by law.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I'm not responsible for Youtube's business plans. Don't they
| pay executives a lot of money to make their business plans
| for them?
| sofixa wrote:
| And they have, as a consumer you can choose ads or Premium.
| Some want neither, so out of curiosity I'm asking, how do
| they see things if not those two options?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I have no idea how they see things, I'm not telepathic.
| I'm in the "want neither" camp; I put up with whatever I
| can't filter. The kind of stuff I look for on YT often
| doesn't seem to be monetized.
| trasz wrote:
| Same as now: Patreon. YouTube monetisation model is pretty
| useless except for Google itself.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Lol, YouTube has minted many millionaires.
| dantyti wrote:
| There are people hacking billboards and posting their own
| subvertisements (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvertising). A
| while ago, I came across this 20 min mini-doc about the
| movement in London: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zunPa9rGndg
| I think you might enjoy it
| aliqot wrote:
| Just go out and paint, good grief. If you want to minimize
| liability, get some wheatpaste and a bunch of posters. Graffiti
| is vandalism, and punishable for higher penalties than
| 'billposting' which is a $50 ticket. Same effect.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I agree a lot of advertising is awful, but there is still some
| purpose in demonstrating your wares for potential customers.
|
| Suppose someone develops a product that you would love and
| would make your life better; how do you think you should find
| out about it?
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| >how do you think you should find out about it?
|
| Word of mouth, basically. Or searching for something that I
| _need_.
|
| What I hate most about advertising is it just shoves
| everything in people's faces and makes people think they need
| this and that. I find myself somewhat immune to ads (as much
| as one can be I guess), maybe I just programmed myself to
| ignore them growing up in early internet days. But it's so
| obvious the large effect that ads can have on most people.
|
| I find out about new and cool stuff generally from peoples
| comments on sites like here, reddit etc. If you have a good
| product, word of mouth is generally pretty damn good. Or
| coming across something from searches for a specific need.
|
| I just can't think about anything that I _needed_ and found
| out from a standard advertisement in like.. any recent
| memory. Maybe I 'm the outlier here.. obviously ads must work
| well enough but I hate them with a passion.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Word of mouth requires someone to learn about a product
| initially. Also, searching for something you 'need'
| presupposes that you know there is a product that addresses
| a need. You would never find improvements to things that
| you didn't realize could be improved.
| haswell wrote:
| I believe marketplaces could/would form, acting as
| aggregators for sellers to list and promote their goods, and
| for consumers to go shopping.
|
| In the 2020s, the web is nearing a level of criticality to a
| functioning society as the neighborhoods, towns, cities we
| access it from. Those physical properties are heavily
| regulated and with good reason.
| cortesoft wrote:
| A marketplace is limited... if you create a product that
| addresses an entirely new market, you wouldn't be found.
|
| Also, physical properties are heavily regulated partially
| because there is a limited amount of physical space for
| them.
| mxkopy wrote:
| The other day in the middle of reading an article a green
| border popped up around the entire page, blocking the
| beginning and ending of most sentences. At the bottom of the
| page was an advertisement for a Sonic burger.
|
| I felt assaulted. There is no reasonable justification or
| purpose for this that takes into account basic human empathy.
| Granted this might be different from ads that do just make
| you aware of a product. But this reasoning is looking more
| and more like justification rather than purpose.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I don't think pointing out useless and intrusive
| advertising is the same as saying there should be no
| advertising at all. We can even agree that ALL current
| advertising is awful and should be abolished, but agree
| some form of promoting your product should be available.
| mxkopy wrote:
| Seems like you can't read.
|
| > Granted this might be different from ads that do just
| make you aware of a product. But this reasoning is
| looking more and more like justification rather than
| purpose.
|
| I have no problem with promoting a product, as long as it
| takes into account basic human empathy. But I guess if
| your bank account is directly correlated with product
| sales, you kind of forget about that.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Telling me I can't read is not a very charitable
| response. I can read fine, I was assuming you were trying
| to respond to my original comment, where the very first
| thing I write is "I agree a lot of advertising is awful".
|
| My original comment was arguing that even if a lot of
| advertising today is bad, that doesn't mean we should get
| rid of all advertising. I don't understand what your
| response has to do with that. Were you just agreeing with
| me?
| mxkopy wrote:
| I don't really have a stance on 'abolish all
| advertising'. I'm just pointing out that in practice,
| "promoting a product" is rarely the only effect of an
| advertisement, and having discussions about ads in the
| context of benign promotion isn't acknowledging that
| reality.
| naillo wrote:
| There's like 5% of people who actually use adblock too. Seems
| rude to go out of their way to just anger people like you.
| webdood90 wrote:
| unless you and everyone else with this ignorant stance are
| willing to pay to use every website you ever visit, they're
| never going away.
|
| I don't understand the blind hate for ads. They can obviously
| be abused but you have never once been solicited a product or
| service that you never would have found otherwise and found it
| useful?
| disintegore wrote:
| They're not going away, point. If they get you acclimated to
| paying subscription fees they will then try to get you
| acclimated to paying subscription fees AND seeing ads. Have
| you watched a UFC pay-per-view event recently?
|
| We should regulate or straight up outlaw it just like any
| other unchecked negative externality. I don't care if it
| makes you money. I don't care if poisoning the waterways
| makes you money either.
| alickz wrote:
| I purposely look away when YouTube starts playing ads.
|
| It's silly I know, but I get a tiny amount of satisfaction from
| not letting them advertise to me.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Can't you still hear them?
| tentacleuno wrote:
| Technically yes. If you block them through your system
| volume settings, then YouTube will be none the wiser. If
| you mute them through YouTube, then they'll probably save
| that into analytics.
| byyll wrote:
| It will still be time and bandwidth lost.
| topicseed wrote:
| Pay for YouTube Premium?
| nfriedly wrote:
| With the combination of Firefox, Ublock Origin, and Sponsor
| Block on desktop, and Vanced on Android, I never see youtube
| ads. I find it very satisfying.
|
| (Sadly, google shut down Vanced, but you can still find it if
| you go looking and ReVanced is coming along nicely.)
| anonporridge wrote:
| Until they require video to be allowed for eye tracking so
| they can stop playing and force you to look at the ad while
| it's playing.
|
| As in Black Mirror's 15 Million Merits.
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| I simply use an ad blocker. Blocks all the annoying YouTube
| videos
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I don't get the hate on Youtube TBH, when they provide
| youtube premium.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Yeah, I want an ads-free music streaming service so getting
| YouTube ads free is just the icing on the cake.
|
| If one is unwilling to pay for a service but still use it
| one needs to realize some other form of monetization will
| be required.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Personally I'm torn between wanting to pay for a useful
| service and not wanting to reward YouTube for intentionally
| degrading their free service.
| exitheone wrote:
| I don't understand this stance. They intentionally
| degrade the service to make it profitable. Video serving
| is incredibly expensive and YouTube is no charity. They
| have a premium tier at a very competitive price so what's
| the issue?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| That's an interesting question. I had been under the
| impression that they were profitable even before they
| started doing that, but it would change my calculus if
| that were true.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| That is quite unrealistic though. You either need to pay up or
| put up with the consequences of wanting a free service, such as
| dealing with the never ending battle of blocking ads.
|
| I wish companies would offer the opportunity to pay what you
| want to remove ads. People with adblock are probably more
| likely to pay for it, because anyone not running ads is
| probably not bothered by them anyway. And people running
| adblock are unmonetisable. So a little bit of money is better
| than no money.
| albrewer wrote:
| The main problem is I don't have the ability to only pay for
| the content I consume.
| disintegore wrote:
| Who says I want a free service? A lot of the time there is no
| paid tier.
| chopin wrote:
| Or the paid tier is infested with ads and/or tracking.
| disintegore wrote:
| Microsoft littered its frickin operating system with ads.
| Something you (officially at least) are expected to pay
| full price for. It boggles the mind that people continue
| to accept this treatment.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'd be willing to bet most Windows users probably haven't
| even thought about Windows costing money - somewhere in
| the high 90 percent range. For the last 13 years upgrades
| have been free and new purchases have the price built in.
| The only exceptions are those that actually know about
| other operating systems and look for the option to buy
| without or people that do custom builds.
|
| At least when one signs up for e.g. Hulu you're forced to
| realize different rates include different things. With
| Windows most don't even realize they had a choice.
|
| It does lead to the question why people are fine buying a
| PC then having ads but again I'm not sure many really
| understand (or necessarily care) about the difference
| between ads in the start menu or ads in something like
| the browser, it's all just "the computer" and ads have
| just always been a part of a computer for most so what's
| to make them expect otherwise.
| wpietri wrote:
| It's not particularly unrealistic.
|
| Advertising is popular on the web for historical reasons.
| Content delivery advanced much faster than payment, so for
| ~20 years ads were the easiest way for many sites to pay the
| bills. Nobody was sure what else to do.
|
| But that's no longer the case. Soft paywalls have been around
| for circa a decade, so selling subscriptions while letting
| your content self-market is viable. Content creators also
| have plenty of direct revenue options. Patreon is doing
| something like $2 billion/year in revenue for creators.
| Twitch became a huge platform without ads, just allowing
| direct cash transfers from fans to creators. And that's not
| even counting the ~$50 billion/year now spent on streaming
| and VOD in the US.
|
| On the other side of it, per-ad revenue has been falling for
| decades. I helped start a content site and keep in touch with
| people in that area. The reason so many ad-supported sites
| look like absolute shit is that to make any money, you keep
| needing to up the amount of ads you run, making them more and
| more annoying to overcome learned ad blindness. So
| advertising is slowly strangling itself, leading to lots of
| people using ad-blockers, and counter-ad-blocker technology
| becoming widespread. What sane person would start an ad-
| funded content business today?
|
| A world-wide web with little or no advertising is not only
| plausible, it looks like that's where we're headed.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| There would not be a problem if we had better smartphone OS in
| the first place. Apple and Google both locked down the
| environments as hard as they could. This is the result of that
| and it will never be a fight that you can win if you don't have
| complete control about your device.
| ruined wrote:
| defacing billboards is more fun and easier than you expect
| disintegore wrote:
| There's a "prepare, Jesus is coming" ad next to my workplace.
| It honestly looks like a grift. That sort of thing is NOT
| normal at all where I live. I'm honestly tempted.
|
| Would be even more stupid to try after writing this post
| though.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > If I had just a little bit more courage I would go out at
| night with cans of spray paint and deface billboards.
|
| It may be less emotionally rewarding, but in many areas
|
| - many places advertisements violate various rules and on
| notification local authorities (or other entity) is likely to
| take action. For example in Poland ads (except political ones,
| politicians exempted themself again) cannot be ever placed on
| bridges, lamp posts, traffic signs, guard rails etc. Every
| single one placed there is illegal and road maintainers remove
| them once notified.
|
| - local authorities may be allowed to pass laws banning or
| limiting their presence (Krakow, Poland recently outlawed large
| part of billboards within city)
|
| Also, removing some of ads may be perfectly legal or with
| penalties so low that eliminating them is not legally risky.
| stevenally wrote:
| I'm with you.
|
| I just moved to a new laptop. I haven't installed ad blockers
| yet. But interestingly, I seem to have got out of the habit of
| using the obnoxious ad supported sites. Probably because they
| became too low quality. I hadn't even realized my ad blockers
| weren't installed until this thread.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > I want them completely abolished.
|
| hmm... you do know this is the reason companies like Google +
| Meta make lots of money, right?
|
| I know you don't like ads but... a lot of people obviously are
| ok with them (otherwise businesses wouldn't find it worth it to
| advertise on those platforms, in hopes of capturing
| customers/increasing sales)
| mplewis wrote:
| That's their problem, not mine. Ads are a security risk to my
| devices.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| I just don't think you're living in reality
| emotionally/mentally. I'm not saying you need to let
| advertisers tracking everything you do but to pretend that
| mobile phone advertising/web based advertising should cease
| to exist for everybody is a little extreme.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > hmm... you do know this is the reason companies like Google
| + Meta make lots of money, right?
|
| I am not sure why it would be reason for ads.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Prepare for a world of ad-free paid subscriptions to everything
| Google Maps and Youtube. Everything free becomes Netflix, if
| every advertiser signs up.
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. I don't like the experience. I don't like the ethos
| of "let's manipulate people so we can fill our pockets." I hate
| how they distort markets. And I absolutely despise that we
| waste hundreds of billions of dollars per year in the US alone
| on them. Advertising is an arms race, one that we could end,
| turning all that brainpower to something that actually helps
| people.
| pmontra wrote:
| For all the love I have for Blockada I'm not going to send my
| traffic through their cloud. I wonder if I can run something like
| PiHole on a VPS somewhere so that I can protect my devices both
| when I'm at home on WiFi and when I'm outside on 4G. I'll
| investigate but does anybody already experienced such a setup?
| cricalix wrote:
| Tailscale have a knowledgebase article on doing it -
| https://tailscale.com/kb/1114/pi-hole/
|
| There's probably other ways.
| tssva wrote:
| I have been using this setup for about 3 months and it works
| great.
| mtremsal wrote:
| That's exactly the problem I had while traveling this month. I
| just posted about my setup:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32512576 -- so far it's
| been great.
|
| See also nextdns.io for a turnkey alternative.
| wmeredith wrote:
| The Pi-hole docs have a an article on setting up a VPN for your
| pi-hole so you can use it from anywhere: https://docs.pi-
| hole.net/guides/vpn/openvpn/overview/
| [deleted]
| qdl wrote:
| there is easy to setup options like wirehole
|
| https://github.com/IAmStoxe/wirehole
| scarface74 wrote:
| Google
|
| > Google claims to be cracking down on apps that are using the
| VPN service to track user data
|
| Also Google
|
| https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2019/01/31/google-apple-deve...
| avel wrote:
| I would take this post with a grain of salt. It is mostly an ad /
| promotion for "Blokada Cloud".
| sph wrote:
| It's not an ad, it's a link from their forum. Of course they're
| talking about their product.
| ignoramous wrote:
| They are known to be hyperbolic on their forums. Ex A:
|
| _Blokada Plus is a VPN optimized to work flawlessly with
| Blokada. You get one of the strongest encryptions with
| minimal impact on battery life and speed. Together with the
| battle-tested content blocking functionality of Blokada, the
| VPN gives you a peace of mind knowing that your private
| activity stays private. Even on public WiFi, no-one will be
| able to see what you're doing or steal your sensitive
| information like bank details. Websites you visit will not be
| able to reveal your real location._ https://archive.is/xyVSn
|
| - Strongest encryption? From when I read the code, they back-
| up private-key without armour (plain-text).
|
| - Battle-tested content blocking? Blokada v5 and below has
| leaked DNS over TCP since its inception (v6+ is closed
| source).
|
| - Peace of mind? https://www-computerbase-
| de.translate.goog/forum/threads/mob...
|
| - The less I say about protecting bank details, 'private
| activity', location... the better.
|
| Disclosure: I have been accused by Blokada of spreading FUD
| before:
| https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/8536
| onphonenow wrote:
| I had to laugh at the no one can see what you are doing
| claim. How do these scammers route the traffic if they
| can't see what websites you are visiting! Of course these
| guys can see what websites you are visiting if they want to
| avel wrote:
| Right, it's both. It's from the "blog" section of their
| forum, where they are talking about their product, and
| promoting their cloud service. A promo is an ad by
| definition.
| naillo wrote:
| I feel like they're just dying to figure out a way to get rid of
| extensions on desktop as well. Soon enough they'll figure out a
| way to rationalize them away.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Who wants to be that 'for your safety and convenience' will be
| part of the press release?
| blibble wrote:
| manifest v3:
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/intro/
|
| > Manifest V3 is part of a shift in the philosophy behind how
| we approach end-user security and privacy.
|
| it requrires you to declaratively specify what to block in
| advance, so it's going to be pretty easy to write some logic
| that can't be declaratively specified
|
| I suspect killing the adblockers is the entire reason behind
| it
| jacquesm wrote:
| Every time google pulls a trick like this they are inviting
| regulatory intervention.
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| glad firefox is allowing and end-run around this
| jsheard wrote:
| With Firefoxes market share continuously declining, and
| AFAICT no real indication they're going to be able to
| turn things around, I fear it's only a matter of time
| before they pull an Edge/Opera and turn into another
| Chromium reskin to cut costs.
| jacquesm wrote:
| What Firefox needs is to be spun out of Mozilla, to get
| competent management and a way to directly donate to FF
| without also ending up sponsoring all of their pet
| projects.
| silon42 wrote:
| No doubt open source "firefox" will continue to exists,
| even if it mean bugfixes only. I plan to use that
| (Haven't used non-Firefox on Android ever, except by
| mistake/deception).
| justaman wrote:
| TPM and Web assembly will be the nail in the coffin and the
| dirt on top.
| david_arcos wrote:
| Original title is about "Google cracks down on VPN based
| adblockers". Changing "VPN Adblockers" to "Android Adblockers" is
| misleading, at least.
|
| BTW, I'm using Brave because of having u-block origin, and I
| recommend it. Needed to change the default chrome widget for a
| brave widget, and lost the chrome sync. Other than that, works as
| a charm.
| ejb999 wrote:
| another vote for Brave browser - switched and never looked
| back.
| userbinator wrote:
| At least you can still "sideload", i.e. download the software
| straight from the source and install it that way, the way
| software used to be distributed before this walled-garden
| dystopia started...
|
| I personally run a MITM proxy on my network which all traffic
| goes through. IMHO the security concerns are overblown and
| largely come from companies like Google trying to stop people
| doing things like this. They are only securing their profits,
| nothing more and nothing less.
|
| _These changes aim to improve the ads experience, tighten
| security and limit misinformation according to the company._
|
| The truth is probably closer to "increase the number of ads you
| see, secure you from getting around that, and limit the
| proliferation of anything but their official propaganda."
| causi wrote:
| In my experience the biggest problem with VPN-based adblocking is
| the battery drain when the signal is poor. I regularly spend time
| in a well-insulated room and forgetting to turn my VPN off has a
| very noticeable impact at the end of the day. Which is a shame,
| because Chrome is a hell of a lot snappier than Firefox Android.
| flerchin wrote:
| Is it? Chrome is definitely not snappier than Firefox with
| ublock origin on Android.
| causi wrote:
| Perhaps it depends on your setup. My device only has 6GB of
| ram.
| tananaev wrote:
| I use Bromite (Chromium fork + ad block) on Android.
|
| It's pretty sad to see Google stoop so low. Back in the day they
| used to win because of the innovation, best products and
| openness. Now they can't build anything new and just trying to
| squeeze every last penny from what they already have.
| anaganisk wrote:
| Well its an Ad company end of the day, all their innovations
| add up to showing better ads.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Some extremely privileged takes in here which don't consider a
| basic truth today: the ad supported web allows information to be
| accessible to a vast number of relatively poor people who would
| rather spend their limited discretionary income on something
| other than online content.
|
| It's not good or great or perfect, but the downside of the demise
| of ads, tracking, ad networks on the web would be a more
| information impoverished society any way you slice it.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| Firefox Nightly + uBlock Origin seems to work well on Android
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| You don't even need nightly, ublock works great on the
| production version too
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| I use Firefox Nightly because I also run Bypass Paywalls
| Clean (c)
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Oooh you can use that on nightly??
|
| I had no idea, in that case I will try it also. I use this
| a lot on my desktop.
| rixthefox wrote:
| Wouldn't this be more evidence that Google shouldn't be running
| the Play Store?
|
| If they are going to start blocking apps that do adblocking on-
| device that sounds like an abuse of power and a HUGE conflict of
| interest with Google running the Play Store AND being owned by an
| advertising company.
| daitangio wrote:
| I will never stop to talk about PiHole and how much changed my
| home browsing experience: https://pi-hole.net/
|
| I suggest everybody to give it a spin
| roncesvalles wrote:
| Why not just change your DNS server to one of the many free
| public ad-blocking ones?
| Havoc wrote:
| Which one would you recommend?
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| It also works on Roku.
|
| I know that ads are used to pay content creator on the web but
| I don't see why I should see ads on the home screen of a TV I
| fully paid.
| psychlops wrote:
| The amount of times roku pings scribe.logs.roku.com just
| makes me angry. I let them see nothing.
| refracture wrote:
| I use pfsense+pfblockerng; the end result is similar. It was
| eye opening how much better browsing is for anything where
| uBlock isn't an option.
| snarf21 wrote:
| We need a $20 appliance that is plug and play. Most users
| aren't installing Docker containers.
| dvtrn wrote:
| Crazy though, but hear me out: what about an old laptop
| klez wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they mean a pre-configured appliance, not
| something you have to provide the hardware for and install
| the software on on your own.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| That's my solution but it's bulky and consumes more power
| than it really needs to. The beauty of using the raspberry
| pi for these use cases is its small footprint and low power
| consumption.
|
| You can remove quite a lot of laptop and still keep a
| working machine (all you need is the power supply and the
| motherboard, really) but there's no quick and easy way to
| do it, you'd have to design a custom case and everything.
| You'd also need a laptop that will just power on without
| keyboard, screen, and other peripherals connected, which is
| not necessarily a given.
|
| Maybe if someone designs a modular enough 3D printed case
| design for common laptop motherboards so that you can
| create your own laptop server easily. In a few years, when
| USB C is available in cheap, old, second-hand laptops, I
| imagine you can build quite the home lab cluster with old
| laptop motherboards if you can design decent cases for
| them.
| hedora wrote:
| Like a raspberry pi?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Google claims to be cracking down on apps that are using the
| VPN service to track user data or rerouting user traffic to earn
| money through ads.
|
| Okay. Those are essentially malware anyway. As long as uBlock
| Origin is not affected I see no problem with Google "cracking
| down" on anything.
| hedora wrote:
| > _However, these policy changes also apply to apps that use
| the service to filter traffic locally on the device. Apps such
| as Blokada v5 and Duck Duck Go. Specifically the policy does
| not allow for "Manipulating ads that can impact apps
| monetization"._
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I don't trust those apps. If uBlock Origin was affected, I
| think they would have mentioned it.
| therealmarv wrote:
| Adguard adblocker for Android works also with an internal device
| only "VPN" and is not on the Play Store for a while (because of
| problems with Google Play Store rules). They are amazing and if
| you use an Android browser without internal adblocking (which I
| still think is better) such a VPN adblocker is a must for Android
| devices. I only had to whitelist a few applications like e.g.
| Google Photos. Have been using the app for some years and it's
| actively maintained.
|
| https://adguard.com/en/adguard-android/overview.html
| petarb wrote:
| Thank you for all the NextDNS recommendations. I've been looking
| for something to help block adds that isn't a VPN on iOS.
|
| Just curious what do folks think of AdGuard. I've seen that come
| up on Reddit but looking at their website it doesn't look
| trustworthy and I couldn't find info about what they actually
| track.
| 62728494929 wrote:
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| > AdGuard
|
| I'm not sure why you found their site untrustworthy, but, I've
| used it for years and I'm a huge fan.
|
| Anyway though, AdGuard on iOS is a VPN and I find it
| unreliable, on macOS it works great.
| yazzku wrote:
| Sounds like the game of ambiguity. They 'crack down' on the
| malware while simultaneously hurting Blockada and the other
| legitimate software/services that protect you from Google's own
| surveillance. Google wins, everybody else loses.
|
| How do Googlers here defend this posture?
| DavideNL wrote:
| So, " _The biggest advertising company in the world cracks down
| on [...] adblockers._ "
|
| I don't understand why people are surprised about this.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Your characterization of people announcing it and discussing it
| as "surprise" is incorrect. Consider it more of a reminder or
| notification.
| thepangolino wrote:
| Wouldn't favour the growth of alternative app stores? Upcoming
| European legislation is forcing eve Apple to allow third party
| stores on iPhones. I doubt Google would get away much longer with
| those practices.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| Third party app stores have always been allowed on Android.
| tpxl wrote:
| Google successfully killed third party stores on Android and
| was fined for it in the EU.
| sobkas wrote:
| I don't use ad blockers, I only block trackers. So if you want me
| to see your adds better not try to track me. If your site
| complaints about it, then I don't see any reason to use it.
| badRNG wrote:
| How do you go about doing that?
| rdudek wrote:
| I've been using NextDNS for quite some time and it's been working
| great for blocking ads on my iOS devices while away from home.
| yokoprime wrote:
| Pi-hole + PiVpn works wonderful (if you can find a rpi that is...
| ). Been using that setup for a couple of years, very stable.
| teekert wrote:
| I use wireguard + adguard home. Both docker containers (in a
| docker-compose.yaml), easy to set adguard as the dns resolver
| for any wireguard connection. It runs from my basement.
|
| I also hear great things about TailScale, will also try that
| (soon I'll be "forced" off my fiber/fixed-ip connection).
| heywire wrote:
| AdGuard Home really is great. One really doesn't need to set
| up docker if they don't want, since it's a single self-
| contained binary.
| teekert wrote:
| Indeed, I hear that some people even run in on their
| EdgeRouterX (Debian afaik) for example.
|
| But I also ave Traefik in the same docker-compose file for
| DNS and certs :) (currently still wrestling with the ports
| and certs for stuff within my lan though.)
| mszcz wrote:
| Seconded. Yeah, I've been using PiHole in a Docker container
| and accessing it over persistent Wireguard tunel for some
| time. It's been great. That and access to all of my services
| without them being exposed to the outside world.
| lawn wrote:
| I run Adguard Home on my router.
|
| Even though the name implies you need to run it on a raspberry
| pi, that's not true.
| owly wrote:
| Same here. It's incredibly simple to set up and add
| exclusions and inclusions.
| gberger wrote:
| > if you can find a rpi that is...
|
| I'm out of the loop, is there a rpi shortage?
| humps wrote:
| Yes, constrained supply means individual customers are going
| to struggle to find stock.
|
| https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/production-and-supply-
| chain...
| fallenhitokiri wrote:
| I was shopping for 2 8GB models a few months ago. There is /
| was a shortage and some shops / resellers charge 200-300%
| above list price. Highest I've seen was 350EUR. This was the
| German market, but from what I heard it doesn't seem to look
| a lot better globally.
| Root_Denied wrote:
| Kinda the same way that there was a GPU shortage up until
| recently. You can go out and order an rPi now and it will get
| delivered within a week, but the markup is insane. It's
| basically impossible to find any Pi hardware at MSRP.
|
| Chips in general are still experiencing supply chain issues
| too, so this is unlikely to change.
| croes wrote:
| And on the road?
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I wireguard home in order to get PiHole filtered internet on
| the road.
|
| I also use PiHole from a docker container on the same server
| that's running wireguard.
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| I guess with PiVPN you don't need to worry about that?
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| NextDNS + DNS-over-HTTPS works really really well. Super happy
| with NextDNS.
| davidcorbin wrote:
| NextDNS is great. Totally worth the $
| hashworks wrote:
| It's just software, you can install it on any server. No need
| to limit yourself to (currently?) overpriced Pis.
| kd913 wrote:
| Sure, but a pi consumes about 3.5W of energy and can run
| 24/7/365.
|
| There are alternatives, but most other solutions will end up
| costing more in electricity costs. Especially problematic in
| say Europe right now.
| hedora wrote:
| If you already have an always-on computer (NAS, router,
| etc), installing it there is likely to increase your
| electric bill less than running a raspberry pi.
| criddell wrote:
| Are you sure about the 3.5W? That seems high. An iPad at
| idle with the display on uses less than that.
| LaputanMachine wrote:
| About 3W is realistic for a Pi 4. Here's a comparison:
|
| https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-
| consumption
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I use RPi 3B because of lower power consumption than 3B+,
| 4B... It is around 300mA. I connect power cable to USB
| from router that has 500mA output. It works great.
|
| RPi 3B+ has sometimes problem with stability because of
| higher power consumption.
|
| Official power supply of RPi is 2,6A if I remember
| correctly, so 3,5 is not even possible?
|
| Btw, many routers support sleep mode. It is not necessary
| to run router/connected RPi 24/7.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Watts vs. current.
|
| At 300mA, that's 1.5W of power.
|
| Maximum current draw on a pi4 is 3A (~15W), but that's
| purely a power supply input limitation. You only get
| close to that with a ton of peripherals and heavy load on
| the Pi.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Ah, yes, sorry, my mistake.
| jaimehrubiks wrote:
| Kiwi Browser (chrome with exts) + uBlock + Instander + YouTube
| ReVanced = winwin
| bloopernova wrote:
| Firefox for Android with ublock origin makes my mobile web
| browsing sane again. Highly recommended.
| pmontra wrote:
| uBlock is wonderful and makes my browser feel sane but it
| doesn't do anything for all the other apps. Blockada blocks ads
| everywhere on my devices. We must use both.
| EastSmith wrote:
| Or do jot use local apps at all, only web apps (yes on
| mobile).
| ge0rg wrote:
| I tend to agree, but for a few years now, Firefox has become an
| ad delivery vehicle for Mozilla. While not as bad as anywhere
| else on the web, it seems that Mozilla is working hard to
| destroy their brand value by pushing notification ads for its
| VPN service to mobile Firefox users (which is a violation of
| the Google Play ToS), and by using the firefox-was-upgraded
| page for VPN spam.
| quitit wrote:
| It's incredible how fast websites load with this combination.
|
| I recall reading that despite the internet being faster, actual
| website performance has never really improved meaningfully.
| Whatever speed gains we've achieved have simply been eaten by
| larger and more complex tracking scripts.
|
| Google themselves are a significant contributor to this
| problem, for many websites, Google's scripts are the core
| source of slowness.
|
| I don't think it's unreasonable for users to want to reclaim
| their browsing experience (and bandwidth). In the sample
| comparison below we can see savings as high as 90% of data and
| speed boosts of ~1500% - it's insanity.
|
| https://twitter.com/fr3ino/status/1000166112615714816
| broguinn wrote:
| I recently learned about 'Jevons Paradox':
|
| >In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons
| observed that technological improvements that increased the
| efficiency of coal-use led to the increased consumption of
| coal in a wide range of industries. He argued that, contrary
| to common intuition, technological progress could not be
| relied upon to reduce fuel consumption.
|
| Which is a criticism, it seems, for any system that values
| resource attribution over efficiency.
| fvrghl wrote:
| Is that basically the same as induced demand?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
| broguinn wrote:
| I very cursory read seems to say yes. The biggest
| difference I see is that Jevons paradox is paradoxical
| because of the intent to increase efficiency (eg. make
| pages load faster, reduce the amount of coal needed,
| etc).
| firecall wrote:
| Since ADSL1 the web has felt much the same.
|
| Of course there was flash to deal with rhen too.
|
| Now back when we had 56K Modems was when it really was
| unusable!
|
| I don't how sites think i want to read an article and warxh a
| totally unrelated video at the same time.
|
| I'm really starting to miss old style magazines lately.
|
| Click bait and fake headlines about the next iphone have
| ruinwd the web.
| connicpu wrote:
| The jump up to 5mbps down was the last time I felt like
| upgrading my internet made the web a noticeably better
| experience, it was incredible to be able to watch videos at
| an okay quality without pausing for buffering. Everything
| else has been only incremental improvements that have been
| eaten up by increasing inefficiency, and my only gains have
| been higher resolution video streams and faster video game
| downloads (also offset by massively larger video games...)
| quitit wrote:
| It becomes most noticeable for me when my phone can only
| get 3G or lower. Once upon a time this was enough to pull
| up a variety of web pages without too much wait, but now
| it might as well be no connection at all.
| adolph wrote:
| We didn't know what a good thing we had with 36.6 and Lynx
| or Gopher
| shostack wrote:
| That plus noscript. Sure I usually have to spend a few seconds
| enabling various domains to get content to load (thanks JS!)
| But honestly it's worth it.
| monopoliessuck wrote:
| You can do this with uBlockOrigin. It provides a drop down
| for disabling js per domain. I run with js disabled by
| default just via uBO alone.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| by now i consider ublock origin as more than a tool. it's an
| integral part of the internet. without it the internet is not
| usable for me. Raymond Hill deserves no less than a Noble prize
| or something alike for crafting and maintaining it.
| alex3305 wrote:
| Whenever I try to use Firefox, I always tend to go back to
| Chrome after a week or so. I'm visually impaired and Firefox
| just messes up the accessibility on certain (news) websites for
| me. While on Chrome it's mostly working fine.
|
| I guess it's mostly attributed to the website handling
| accessibility wrong, but using the web is more important to me
| I guess.
| b0ner_t0ner wrote:
| Install Stylus for Firefox Android, set your own legible font
| families, sizes and weights; that's even better than Chrome.
| alex3305 wrote:
| Thanks for this. I will check it out.
| gonom wrote:
| Same here, but also using private browsing mode only. Plus the
| YouTube Vanced app (including YouTube Music) to be rid of the
| ads there.
|
| I try not to use apps where there's a website equivalent, but I
| also repackaged a couple of them that I like to rid them of the
| ads, using apktool.
|
| My mobile experience is blissfully ad-free. It's a delight and
| I would never go back to the default experience.
| [deleted]
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Apparently Vanced has been C&D'd so it's only a matter of
| time before the API changes and it dies.
|
| Unsure if there's been a development since then.
| blibble wrote:
| revanced popped up within about a day
| gonom wrote:
| It a very unfortunate that Google decided to throw their
| legal weight, but I suppose predictable.
|
| When that day comes, I'll be very tempted to have a crack
| at modding it myself, if nothing else springs up to replace
| it.
| brnt wrote:
| The only downside, and it feels like it's getting larger every
| year, is speed. You can tell Firefox rendering and js execution
| is behind on Chromium. On laptops/desktops there is plenty of
| HW to compensate, but not on phones, is my experience.
| fezfight wrote:
| It's fine. I don't even notice. It's certainly not enough to
| warrant seeing ads and sacrificing the free web to google.
| a-dub wrote:
| so if i install a recommended mozilla add-on like ublock origin
| that has an extreme permission like "access your data for all
| websites" does that mean that every update to the add-on sees
| rigorous security review by mozilla before it is pushed?
|
| if not, is there some mechanism in place that can reduce
| worries around software supply chain attacks on a privileged
| piece of software like this?
| hendersoon wrote:
| That only covers the browser; many mobile apps have embedded
| ads too. DNS-based adblocking is system-wide, even if it isn't
| as effective in the browser as uBO.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I recently had issues with extensions not working after update
| in Firefox and I recoiled in horror at how bad the experience
| is without them. It is ridiculous regular people put up with
| this ( as in, my wife still uses it AFTER she knows I could
| just make most of it go away ; it make me question people
| decision making processes ).
|
| Still, going back to the main subject. Clearly, it seems google
| decided that most people do not care enough to actually make
| decisions to make browsing not painful. I hate this cat and
| mouse game. It is getting to the point where I really think
| legal solution is the only one. All techs need to be brought to
| heel. Hard.
|
| In google's defense, it is not just them. The entire ecosystem
| is broken. When I try to use my bank's website and I use
| unprotected chromium, it takes extra minute to load everything
| up on a page. I am running an equivalent of a supercomputer
| from 90s and I am stunned at the lazy design. If I try to limit
| it, it stutters and blocks me at every opportunity. And it is
| one of the national banks in US. Admittedly, some banks do get
| it mostly right ( kudos to Discover, Chase and Capital ), but I
| started going to the branch again and each time they ask me if
| I used their app/website, I say no and tell them why ( which is
| usually followed by a survey, which I dutifully fill up...
| mebbe something will finally filter through ).
| tjpnz wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| The mobile web experience could almost be described as life
| changing when all of the bullshit is removed.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| I just benchmarked chrome, edge, and Firefox on my Google pixel
| and surprisingly Firefox opens quickest. It's kind of
| impressive that Firefox beat the chrome despite not being the
| native browser on Android.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| We're all gonna be so screwed if Firefox dies.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Or morphs itself into another Chrome in search of more
| revenue to support their new corporate lifestyle. I'm more
| worried about that. Since they made it a corporation with all
| the usual trimmings like an overpaid CEO they are becoming
| like all the other big tech. Flirting with big investors,
| looking at ROIs. All those paths lead the same way and it's
| away from the user.
| tartoran wrote:
| That's pretty much the same as dying..
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| It's frustrating that "filling a niche and filling it well"
| is just anathema these days. Everyone is hustling to become
| a trillion dollar whatever, and burning customers, money
| and good will in the process.
|
| There should be nothing wrong with just bring good at what
| you do and not seeking endless expansion (and yes, I know,
| it's actually dangerous because you're vulnerable to
| predation in that position).
| sofixa wrote:
| > It's frustrating that "filling a niche and filling it
| well" is just anathema these days
|
| On the contrary, a lot of (offline) companies are
| deciding that diversification is bad and they should
| divest everything outside of one core business. Be it
| ThyssenKrupp, Alsthom, Bombardier, GE, Phillips, take
| your pick.
|
| However many web companies choose to diversify. Why not?
| It helps them retain and gain users, and protects them
| against heavy hitting competitors (FAANG can copy your
| business model and features quite quick). E.g. take
| someone like Snapchat - their features were copied by
| competitors and they had no differentiator, so they
| floundered. A Telegram or Signal was little
| differentiation bar potential diversification, which is
| why both tried some crypto crap.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| This really can't be overstated. The CEO's compensation has
| skyrocketed for years while by every objective measure the
| Mozilla is struggling if not outright failing at its
| mission - with a continuously declining market share.
|
| It baffles me that Mozilla had/has _multiple_ offices
| located in some of the most expensive real estate markets
| in the world. Not just in those markets, but in the very-
| most expensive parts of said markets.
|
| For example, in Boston they're dead center downtown, for no
| explicable reason other than the prestige.
| kibwen wrote:
| I don't think Mozilla has any office presence in downtown
| Boston? They used to rent a tiny co-working space there
| for Boston-based employees to use if they felt like it,
| but I think they got rid of it well before the pandemic.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Fork the web. I'd be down for a non-commercial / ad hostile
| design.
| piaste wrote:
| Sounds like Gemini.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >In terms of simplicity, the native content type,
| "gemtext", is meant to be loaded in a single request,
| therefore there are no inline images, no iFrames, fonts,
| scripts or anything else.
|
| Good luck replacing the web with request/response
| markdown. I would figure at the least something that
| could serve Wikipedia would be a bare minimum.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| It sounds like that can serve wikipedia, just without
| inline pictures. In fact, the cursory reading suggests
| that you can even have pictures if they're not in line. I
| admit that that's a small step down from the current
| experience, but it might be worth it.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I guess the larger picture is we all know the internet-
| at-large community would never accept it.
|
| Can you imagine ATT or Amazon or whatever company website
| as a slightly fancier markdown file?
|
| The only people that would do it are blogger types.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Yes, that's true. Although in some ways that's not a
| problem with the technology; companies would hate it in
| no small part because it limits the anti-user things they
| can do, which is part of the appeal.
| adrr wrote:
| And who pays for it?
| buro9 wrote:
| Likewise for NextDNS as Androids Private DNS.
|
| This combination of Firefox+uBlock and NextDNS+Private DNS
| makes Android a pleasurable experience.
| jsmith99 wrote:
| DNS level filtering is the only choice for system level
| filtering but is less flexible and harder to manually
| override false positives than application level filtering
| like ublock.
|
| If your browser supports adblock (eg on Android use Firefox
| or Kiwi) then disable DNS filtering for the browser (ie
| override the system level filtering) by using browser privacy
| settings to choose an unfiltered DoH provider like
| Cloudflare.
| aembleton wrote:
| > If your browser supports adblock then disable DNS
| filtering for the browser
|
| Why would I want to disable DNS filtering? What advantage
| does that give?
|
| UBo is great but does use a small amount of CPU whereas DNS
| filtering won't use any on my phone - its all on the DNS
| server. I'd rather filter out as much as possible with DNS
| filtering and then clean it up with UBo cosmetic filtering
| and more precise blocking.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Is there a way that a vpn could use the dns filtering list
| to reject any requests to or from ip addresses that resolve
| to names in the list? Would that simply break everything?
| Algent wrote:
| Does dns filtering work well with android ?
|
| I've noticed most of the recent android based handled scanner
| we got at office refuse to even use our dhcp provided dns
| including to resolve local address (forcing us to use IP
| instead of dns for our internal warehouse apps) and complain
| about "no internet" because 8.8.8.8 is not open.
| buro9 wrote:
| It works fine against all of the apps, but I don't expect
| it to work fine for Google things.
| turkishmonky wrote:
| On Android, I've become a fan of Kiwi browser - It's a
| chromium fork that includes the ability to install chrome
| extensions on mobile. I've been able to keep the same
| extensions for ublock origin, bypass paywalls, and just read
| that I do on my desktop chrome environment.
|
| It's open source as well.
| tuzemec wrote:
| My only problem with NextDNS is the youtube ads, but that's
| kinda unavoidable. Otherwise works flawlessly.
| blfr wrote:
| YouTube ads are wholly avoidable. I still use the
| deprecated YouTube Vanced but there are many alternatives
| like it coming including ReVanced.
|
| https://github.com/revanced
|
| Not only that but with SponsorBlock (integrated in Vanced)
| you can even automatically skip promotional parts of the
| videos, intros, outros. The experience is excellent.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SponsorBlock
| ctippett wrote:
| 1Blocker on iOS has a safari extension that specifically
| targets YouTube ads [0]. The only caveat is that you need
| to use Safari and not YouTube's native app.
|
| [0] https://backstage.1blocker.com/how-to-block-youtube-
| ads-in-s...
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Brave filters out those for me pretty well - in fact that's
| most of what I use it for, FF + UBlock is my default
| browser on Android, but doesn't do quite as well with
| Youtube (and then I am using Nextdns via Private DNS for
| system-wide blocking).
| Larrikin wrote:
| The experience is so awful when I browse on my iPad, instead of
| my Android phone with Firefox+UBlock. I really don't understand
| how most people can stand to browse with all the ads. The
| modern web is so much worse than the pop up ads of the old web.
| dark-star wrote:
| > I really don't understand how most people can stand to
| browse with all the ads
|
| I mainly browse the web on my PC or laptop at home, which has
| a browser-integrated adblocker + PiHole.
|
| When I need a browser while on the go, I usually just use it
| to google things and for some quick lookups the experience is
| "okay", longer and more in-depth web surfing will be deferred
| to my home PC using the "tabs from other devices"
| functionality
| koheripbal wrote:
| I also use adguard DNS that filters ad urls.
| dchest wrote:
| 1Blocker works fine for me on iPad.
| mikeryan wrote:
| One of my happier hacks was setting up home assistant for
| home automation with adguard and WireGuard VPN.
|
| Whole house ad blocking and my iPhone is pretty much
| consistently attached to my home VPN to take advantage of the
| ad blocking.
|
| There's some small pain points with using public wifi with
| login screens, enough so that I haven't had my wife use it
| yet but I dig it.
| laurent123456 wrote:
| Even without the ads, you still have multiple cookie popups
| and banners, floating videos and newsletter notifications to
| closes before getting to the content. And of course as you
| scroll down some of those come back (floating videos in
| particular).
|
| There was a time where you could just close the tab if it was
| that bad, but now pretty much all websites are like this so
| there's no choice.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| There's always a choice. I have no problem with any
| popups/banners/videos etc. Zero.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| To the downvoters: I block everything and disable js
| totally. Choice is yours to make.
| fezfight wrote:
| ublock takes care of quite a few of those things, too.
| There are more lists you can activate in the options.
| eru wrote:
| Well, the cookie popups are only there because of
| regulation.
|
| You are right about all the rest.
| ajdude wrote:
| > Well, the cookie popups are only there because of
| regulation.
|
| You don't /need/ them if you only have essential cookies:
|
| > At GitHub, we want to protect developer privacy, and we
| find cookie banners quite irritating, so we decided to
| look for a solution. After a brief search, we found one:
| just don't use any non-essential cookies. Pretty simple,
| really.
|
| https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/
| midasuni wrote:
| Please don't spread the ad company's lies.
|
| There is no need for pop ups under the gdpr. If you are
| handling personal information, giving cookies etc which
| aren't required (E.g to sign in), then ask at the point
| of signing in/up. Otherwise you don't need to set
| cookies, you might want to, to track and monetise your
| visitors, but that's different.
| IX-103 wrote:
| How are you supposed to provide a consistent appearance
| for A/B testing changes without being able to store which
| group a user is assigned to? How are you supposed to
| count unique users that visit your site? How are you
| supposed to figure out why most users bounce? These are
| legitimate questions a publisher may want to know to
| improve their site, but are not allowed under GDPR
| without a specific notice and opt-out.
|
| There are many cases where what publications consider
| "essential" for their business do not match what the EU
| has decided is "essential".
|
| Heck, when GDPR was first proposed most publishers
| assumed advertising would be allowed under "essential"
| business uses since they can't provide content if they
| don't get paid. Clarification on this only came a couple
| of months before GDPR enforcement started, causing a bit
| of a scramble for publishers and advertisers.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Many such usecases can be achieved by setting a non-
| personalized cookie, for which you need neither consent
| nor a popup. You can put a cookie like "has_visited=yes"
| or "ABtest=B".
|
| If you want to track unique users, well, you're not
| supposed to unless the users opt in (not avoid opting
| out!), and you have to accept that at least a part won't
| - the society and law has decided such desires are not
| legitimate unless the data subjects themselves want that.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > How are you supposed to provide a consistent appearance
| for A/B testing changes without being able to store which
| group a user is assigned to?
|
| Those are legitimate cookies for which you don't need to
| ask an authorization.
|
| > How are you supposed to count unique users that visit
| your site?
|
| https://plausible.io/blog/google-analytics-cookies#how-
| can-p...
|
| > These are legitimate questions a publisher may want to
| know to improve their site, but are not allowed under
| GDPR without a specific notice and opt-out.
|
| Why would the publisher's questions be legitimate and the
| user's right not to be tracked no? You can still answer
| those questions but you need to ask for permission. A
| physical store owner has also a lot of questions but
| they're not allowed to follow you everywhere in the store
| and in the street.
|
| > Heck, when GDPR was first proposed most publishers
| assumed advertising would be allowed under "essential"
| business uses since they can't provide content if they
| don't get paid.
|
| That's a really weird reasoning. Should drug dealers be
| exempted from police controls because their activity is
| essential for their income and so for their life? Earning
| money is necessary, but there are multiple ways to do so.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > How are you supposed to provide a consistent appearance
| for A/B testing changes without being able to store which
| group a user is assigned to?
|
| You're not supposed to A/B test at all. Users are not
| test subjects.
|
| > How are you supposed to count unique users that visit
| your site? How are you supposed to figure out why most
| users bounce?
|
| You're not supposed to. You simply aren't entitled to any
| of that information.
|
| > These are legitimate questions a publisher may want to
| know to improve their site
|
| It doesn't matter how "legitimate" it is or how much
| money it costs publishers. The attempt to learn these
| facts requires collecting identifying information and
| that is harmful to us.
|
| The least you can do is ask permission.
|
| > There are many cases where what publications consider
| "essential" for their business do not match what the EU
| has decided is "essential".
|
| That's by design. Nobody really cares what an industry
| that's being regulated thinks. Obviously adtech considers
| it "essential" to collect as much personal data as
| humanly possible.
|
| What matters is what society thinks and we think sites
| work just fine with all the tracking disabled.
|
| > publishers assumed advertising would be allowed under
| "essential" business uses
|
| Advertising is allowed. It's just the abusive adtech
| model of targeted advertising that requires consent.
| Nothing stops people from signing a deal with some brand
| and serving static images or something. As long as it's
| not surveillance capitalism it's fine.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Excuse me? What regulation requires cookie popups?
| jand wrote:
| https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...
|
| EU Directive 2009/136/EC
| denton-scratch wrote:
| That is not a "regulation", it is a directive, requiring
| member states of the EU to implement appropriate
| legislation.
|
| It applies to the legislatures of member states, which I
| believe doesn't yet include the USA.
|
| Perhaps the clause you are thinking of is this one:
|
| "(33) Customers should be informed of their rights with
| respect to the use of their personal information in
| subscriber directories and in particular of the purpose
| or purposes of such directories, as well as their right,
| free of charge, not to be included in a public subscriber
| directory, as provided for in Directive 2002/58/EC"
|
| That directive doesn't call for a mist of popups to flash
| before your eyes before you can read content. It could
| easily be satisfied by a menu option that allows you to
| set your preferences. The mist of popups is caused by a
| bunch of angry data traders who don't care how much they
| annoy their users.
|
| Incidentally, citing a directive from 2009 is a bit
| anachronistic: that directive is overridden by the GDPR.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > Well, the cookie popups are only there because of
| regulation.
|
| "only"? No, they are here because you use non-essential
| cookies AND regulation says you must ask visitors about
| them.
| citruscomputing wrote:
| Ditch the cookie pop-ups by adding a custom filter list:
| https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/abp/
|
| Enable the uBlock "annoyances" filters to staunch the tide
| of popups.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I wonder if there would be a market for something like
| ublock, but instead of removing the ads, it removes just
| the content and puts it on an entirely new page - a bit
| like 'reader mode'. Obviously it would probably need logic
| for every web page, but that could be croudsourced
| arkitaip wrote:
| Firefox has the builtin reader mode but there is also
| plugins that auto click or hide cookie banners.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Reader mode sometimes doesn't appear for some sites. I am
| guessing there is a way for sites to disable it with JS
| or indicate to the browser that they don't want it.
| laurent123456 wrote:
| It's a feature of Reader actually. The library they use
| has a "isProbablyReaderable()" function to determine if a
| page can be simplified, and their extension uses that to
| decide if Reader mode should be available or not.
|
| [0] https://github.com/mozilla/readability/#isprobablyrea
| derable...
| londons_explore wrote:
| And reader mode doesn't auto activate during page load...
|
| If I have to wait for all the ads and banners and fonts
| to load anyway, most of the benefits of reader mode are
| removed.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Sometimes Reader mode gets around adblock detectors or
| other stoppers on normal page loads. It'd be nice to be
| able to try it regardless of whether Mozilla thinks it
| would be useful.
| ffpip wrote:
| https://brave.com/speed-reader/
| hk__2 wrote:
| It's already a built-in feature in Firefox and Safari.
| cft wrote:
| The GDPR cookie pop-ups that make navigation on mobile
| often nearly impossible was a major assault in the
| remaining open web. The EU bureaucrats that drafted it
| never created anything constructive in their lives, only
| regulated. As a result, less and less of the independent
| web is getting traffic, everything is consolidating in
| TikTok, Instagram and similar apps
| mrweasel wrote:
| That honestly just poor UX. But fair enough, there either
| aren't many talented UX/UI designer, or companies aren't
| using them.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > As a result, less and less of the independent web is
| getting traffic
|
| Tracking cookies are not mandatory. You are not obligated
| to present cookie banner: you can simply drop
| nonessential cookies.
| cft wrote:
| Getting money for running websites is also non-mandatory?
| Are we going to fund them from the government 5-year
| plans yet? Our hosting expenses alone are 8k per month.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Getting money for running websites is also non-
| mandatory?
|
| Your business problems aren't our concern. If you're
| financing your business by stealing personal information
| from users and selling it to data brokers, then you're a
| crook. Crooks tend to have high hosting expenses.
| cft wrote:
| "Our" as in Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety
| concern? What do you know about hosting expenses? I have
| been running a website that you know and use with 100m
| users since 2004!
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| The CSP has never been Robespierre's "property" and took
| decisions as a, well, committee.
|
| And yes, your expenses aren't our problem. Don't run a
| website if you can't pay for it.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > I have been running a website that you know and use
| with 100m users since 2004
|
| The only website that you know I use is this one. Are you
| saying that you run HN? I do not think you are that
| person.
|
| If that's not the site you're referring to, I'm rather
| curious to know what site it is that you run, that's had
| 100m users since 2004(!), that can correlate a site user
| with this HN user. Will you tell, please?
| PeterisP wrote:
| People have a right to privacy. Your business doesn't
| have a right to profit. It's that simple.
|
| If following the requirements of society makes your
| business unprofitable, too bad, having a business is
| optional, following the requirements of society is not.
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| Yes, it's not mandatory. In fact, running sites
| themselves is not mandatory, so if you can't find a way
| to run a site which respects its users, then I'd argue
| you should fail. That's the free market at its finest.
| sofixa wrote:
| You can serve ads without tracking users across
| sites/apps to gain revenue. Not to mention other income
| generating activities such as partnerships,
| subscriptions, donations, etc.
| cft wrote:
| Those ads will give you 10% of the RPM of the ads that
| track.
| hedora wrote:
| Publishers get 96% as much revenue per impression for
| non-targeted display ads:
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/31/targeted-ads-offer-
| little-...
|
| The ad networks get a lot more for tracking based ads,
| and the advertisers supposedly get more conversions
| (though targeting fraud is a real, well-documented
| thing).
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Fencing stolen car stereos provides a better return than
| retailing legit electronics. Does that make laws against
| receiving stolen property an infringement of your freedom
| to do business?
|
| I don't have much sympathy for your predicament. Perhaps
| the market has a better use for your hosting facility
| than pumping out ads and tracking scripts.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Github.com is example of website capable of limiting
| themself to nonessential cookies.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Getting money for running websites is also non-
| mandatory?
|
| Correct. I've only run a handful of websites in my life,
| but not one of them has ever served ads.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| They are not GDPR "cookie pop-ups". GDPR does not call
| for this plague. You don't need to get the users approval
| for cookies needed for the correct operation of the site.
|
| I believe they are a protest by largely US-owned
| companies against regulation, designed to annoy internet
| users and turn them against regulation.
| orangecat wrote:
| _I believe they are a protest by largely US-owned
| companies against regulation_
|
| Even if this is true, it's something that should have
| been expected by EU legislators. Their beliefs seem to be
| that companies are acting in bad faith by secretly
| tracking users and misusing the information that they
| gather (basically true), and also that if they impose
| vague rules that companies need to get consent for
| tracking then they'll act in good faith and give users
| clear and convenient ways of opting out (ha ha ha).
| PeterisP wrote:
| Much of this brouhaha is about the niche of online
| businesses, which is the thing that's most visible here
| on HN, but which really wasn't the primary focus of GDPR
| which applies to _all_ the businesses in society, the
| vast majority of which aren 't global websites.
|
| If I look at the changes implemented by local
| telecommunications companies, local banks, local
| supermarket loyalty programs, local pizza delivery
| chains, local real estate brokers, etc - these types of
| businesses had all kinds of widespread shenanigans before
| GDPR, but now they overwhelmingly _have_ acted in good
| faith, and have given users clear and convenient ways of
| opting out (because, really, they didn 't have a choice).
| Like, we don't see EU phone carriers selling location
| data to advertisers the way they do in USA - now _that_
| is a significant thing compared to some blog putting on a
| cookie.
|
| For most companies, the transition has happened
| reasonably well - it's just that a few (but large and
| highly visible) global companies are holding out because
| of political reasons preventing enforcement - mostly
| stemming the fact that Ireland's DPA is currently
| permitted to unilaterally shield them from the rest of EU
| and has motivation to do it because it's financially
| beneficial for Ireland to have Facebook/Google/etc have
| their EU domicile be in Ireland.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > it's something that should have been expected by EU
| legislators
|
| It has been - the regulation explicitly outlaws such
| malicious pseudo-compliance. The problem is that GDPR
| enforcement has been severely lacking, so malicious
| actors are allowed to run free.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Yeah, lots of junk is added today, not just ads. I can't
| find the link right now but I'm sure I saw a couple years
| ago (probably linked here) an article showing that over
| half of the data traffic is either ads or junk that wastes
| bandwidth, which isn't flat on mobile.
| disintegore wrote:
| Things got so bad that eventually browser vendors single-
| handedly put a stop to it. That would never have happened if
| the people making the pop-up ads also controlled a majority
| of the browser market.
| brightball wrote:
| I've been using NextDNS on my iDevices and generally don't
| see any issues.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I do most of my web browsing with my iPad, preferring to
| default to private browsing tabs. Recently with iPadOS 16
| beta, I find the Lockdown mode works well for me.
|
| As I write this, I just realized why I have a pleasant
| browsing experience: unless I am searching for tech info, I
| don't do much browsing except for a few favorite sites.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Use brave instead. It's actually chrome with uBlock built in,
| kind of.
| cyborgx7 wrote:
| >kind of
|
| Exactly, kind of. It's actually a Chrome that removes the
| native ads, inserts their own ads they sell as a middle man
| and a built-in weird crypto currency.
| fullstick wrote:
| Brave ads and the crypto rewards are opt-in.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| Why not use an ad blocker on your iPad? I use Wipr on my Mac
| and iPhone.
| kekebo wrote:
| I can also recommend Adguard (mentioned in sibling comments),
| but also for everyone using Mullvad, their iOS client offers
| ad/tracker/malware blocking as well (via vpn/dns).
| mccorrinall wrote:
| Try Orion browser on iOS/iPad. Afaik it's the only browser
| that implements web extensions, therefore you can install any
| native firefox or chrome extension from the store.
|
| It's by the makers of kagi.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Well, the only browser on iOS if you exclude the one that's
| built in.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/sa
| f...
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The built-in extensions support isn't enough to support
| uBlock Origin.
| dividuum wrote:
| Just stumbled upon that yesterday and gave it a try. While
| I could "install" uBlock Origin, it didn't seem to have any
| effect and the configuration page for it was completely
| blank. They also say "Orion even supports some extensions
| out of the box on iOS, but we have much more to do here" on
| their page, so I guess it's not there yet.
| r00fus wrote:
| You can get the same experience by paying Google $10/mo. If
| you can stomach the cost, you can get this for all your
| family for $18/mo.
|
| I can't get everyone on adblockers for all their devices so
| this is worth it to me. Of course, I also setup basic content
| blockers where I can as well.
| christophilus wrote:
| I use Brave on iOS, and it's great.
| egwor wrote:
| I install Sanitize since I was struggling to get web sites to
| work. There was one web site where I couldn't close the
| advert to get to the actual site!!
| pqs wrote:
| I send everything to Pocket.
| neonsunset wrote:
| Just get Adguard it's really good.
| mullen wrote:
| The best part about Adguard is that there is nothing to
| really get. You just start using the DNS servers and it
| just works. Some stuff slips through here and there but not
| for long as the DNS servers catch up on blocking new Ad
| Serving servers.
| heywire wrote:
| AdGuard works great on iOS. Plenty of other options too.
| lloeki wrote:
| Seconding AdGuard.
|
| Also, while not an ad blocker, Hush helps reclaim a bit of
| sanity regarding all these nagging GRPR/cookies "privacy"
| popups.
| pryelluw wrote:
| Thanks for posting. Just installed. Was looking for
| something similar.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Just installed (enabled under Settings->Safari->Ad
| blockers) and it doesn't work at all on some sites I
| tried.
|
| From what I know, it never will as long as Apple only
| allows shitty request inspection with allow/deny result.
| It just cannot work nowhere near as well as uBlock
| Origin.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You mean if Apple adds the ability to add standard web
| extensions?
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/
| saf...
| vachina wrote:
| Have you tried initing or refreshing the filters?
|
| Adguard's blocking is quite potent I.e. YouTube ads don't
| play
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Does it block cookies, or just silently accept them?
| lloeki wrote:
| I'm not privy of the technical details.I don't think it
| acts on cookies themselves, it merely removes the nagging
| banners, and in that case the EU-compliant site is
| supposed not to set any cookie or other tracker since
| none were explicitly accepted.
|
| Basically at a high level it's like what DNT should have
| been i.e "as a default don't track me since I'm not
| giving consent"
| zymhan wrote:
| Firefox Focus also has an adblocker for Safari that works
| well IMO
| kmlx wrote:
| there are a multitude of adblockers for ipads and iphones.
| anonymousab wrote:
| iOS blocking is extremely limited and insufficient - it's
| purely declarative and non-dynamic, and with a hard limit
| on the actual number of filter rules you can have.
|
| It is better than nothing but a world apart from a proper
| ad blocker and more or less insufficient for modern adtech.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| iOS DNS filtering ad blockers are nice because they work
| on most apps and have 0 overhead. Unless the app is
| running first party ad auctions I no longer see any ads
| on my phone. A true blocker for the browser would
| definitely be nice, but I'm pretty happy with the current
| solution.
| FractalHQ wrote:
| I use Brave Browser on iPad (and desktop) so ads are blocked
| by default. Highly recommend!
| danwee wrote:
| > I really don't understand how most people can stand to
| browse with all the ads
|
| In my case, I browse a limited number of web sites that offer
| no ads (or a minimum amount). The moment I visit a web site
| with tons of ads, I just close it immediately and just ignore
| my original intention of visiting that website (e.g., this
| happens sometimes in HN: people link websites of newspapers,
| but I don't last in them more than 2 seconds)
| unicornporn wrote:
| > I really don't understand how most people can stand to
| browse with all the ads
|
| People don't browse, they app.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Even then, most apps are just thinly veiled webapps for
| which the site (with Firefox and uBlock) provides the
| same or superior experience, ad-free.
| NavinF wrote:
| Er no, most iOS apps are not thinly veiled webapps. Have
| you ever used iOS?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Most apps are moving to React Native especially if
| they're targeting Android and iOS, but that's still a far
| cry from being a wrapper around a webapp.
| raydev wrote:
| I think this is only true for small biz.
|
| All the big names quietly or publicly abandoned their
| efforts to fully migrate to React Native, focusing only
| on the most simple use-cases/views if they do keep it
| around. Even with the smartest people working on it, it's
| tough to keep React Native performant.
| xorcist wrote:
| Except when said web site detects your mobile web
| browser, and serves a page telling you to download their
| app instead.
| gowld wrote:
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I've only run into one site (Instagram) that _forces_ the
| use of the app, and I just close the site instead.
| rav3ndust wrote:
| Another great example lately is Reddit. Reddit's mobile
| experience had become awful. Every time someone sends me
| a reddit link and I click on it, I'm taken to Reddit's
| mobile site, which should function just fine and dandy,
| but the minute it detects you are there on a mobile
| browser, it spams you with "Reddit works best in the
| app!" messages, and won't let you view some subs at all
| without signing in. Reddit is a great example of mobile
| done wrong. Don't be like Reddit.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Thankfully there are third party clients for Reddit.
| Check out Infinity @ F-Droid.
| lawn wrote:
| And they'll still see a ton of YouTube ads.
| sofixa wrote:
| Not unless they pay for YouTube Premium (or share it with
| someone else paying for it). It's well worth it, IMHO.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I finally got fed up with ads on youtube and decided to
| put my money where my mouth is vis-a-vis supporting
| business models that I want to succeed (paying for
| content instead of with my eyeballs).
|
| I have a little-used gmail account that I registered a
| few years ago, as my original gmail became completely
| overrun with spam and I switched to Fastmail.
|
| I added a credit card to the account and tried to pay for
| Youtube Premium and was immediately flagged for
| suspicious activity. To reactivate my account, Google
| wants me to verify my identity with photos of goverment
| ID and a full KYC-style form.
|
| No thanks. I signed up for https://nebula.app/ instead -
| they were able to process my payment on the first
| attempt.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Chances are they saw the login as fraud given it went
| unused via years and the first thing that login did was
| sign up for YT Premium via a credit card.
|
| A potential problem they're trying to prevent might be
| where money launderers use google accounts to funnel YT
| Premium money to specific channels via watch time (since
| Premium pays out a lot more, and pay per minute
| watched[0]).
|
| 0: https://youtu.be/Rh5hL47z2us?t=100
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I'm sure they have the best intentions but there's
| literally no way to appeal it. Why can't they verify the
| credit card the way every other merchant seems to be able
| to?
| jjeaff wrote:
| Sounds like there is a way to appeal it. You just have to
| provide a copy of a photo id.
| hendersoon wrote:
| There are a couple of ways to block YT ads, but DNS-based
| adblockers won't do it.
|
| On Android you can simply install an alternate YT client,
| boom, job's done. Works on Android TV also.
|
| On iOS, the content blocker lists in Safari _can_ block
| YT ads, but there 's no way to block them in Google's
| YouTube app unless you jailbreak and install a modified
| app. So just watch YT in Safari.
| fangorn wrote:
| yewtu.be / Invidious for the win!
| [deleted]
| camhart wrote:
| I'm in a similar boat, except for recipe sites. That's the
| one time I find myself bothered by ads.
| Loughla wrote:
| Buy a subscription to America's test kitchen. For just
| ATK it's like $40 for one site or $80 for all of their
| sites and free shipping from their shop. And that's if
| you don't use a discount code (and they are always
| running some kind of a discount). You get access to ATK,
| Cook's Illustrated, Cook's Country, their app, and again
| free shipping.
|
| It's worth it to avoid all the bullshit blogspam, even
| without the ATK rating and reviews (which are super
| useful on their own as well).
| endemic wrote:
| ATK stuff is super high quality. Like you said, probably
| worth it just to avoid reading the author's life story
| prior to the recipe on random food blogs.
| easton wrote:
| If you like to browse recipes on your iPad/iPhone/Android
| device, the Paprika recipe manager app is really good for
| this. It adds a share sheet button that will pull the
| ingredients and instructions out of a page and let you
| read them easily (or save them to the app). It's
| wonderful.
|
| https://www.paprikaapp.com/
| judge2020 wrote:
| Also, the reader function within Safari works pretty well
| in my experience.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| Just push it through an arichiving service?
| amf12 wrote:
| For other websites, Chrome based browsers have a reader
| mode setting. I just use that.
| inglor wrote:
| What's wrong with Firefox Focus as a Safari content blocker?
| I barely see ads on my iPhone and websites breaking because I
| have an ad blocker is more common than seeing ads.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Firefox Focus only seems to block some ads and isn't
| configurable to block the many ads and web annoyances that
| get through.
|
| I also find it annoying that I lose access to my entire
| Firefox ecosystem on my computer and phone since the focus
| of the app is actually on anonymous browsing versus
| blocking ads. If I send tabs to my iPad they still open up
| in regular Firefox. Firefox Focus only slightly makes the
| web useable, while giving up most of the browser
| conveniences.
| rapnie wrote:
| I use Firefox Focus mostly to watch YouTube vids on my iOS
| tablet, and it is one big ad-infested experience. Just
| learned I should look at AdGuard and hope that will bring
| improvement.
|
| _Update_ : On first impression that does not seem to have
| worked.
| rabuse wrote:
| I don't believe there is any way for blocking Youtube ads
| on iOS currently. It's a shame, because those double 15
| second ones drive me mad.
| phubbard wrote:
| The Vinegar extension for iOS and Mac completely solves
| YT ads. Paid, and so worth it.
| StayTrue wrote:
| Brave blocks YT ads for me.
| inglor wrote:
| The simple way to block YouTube ads on iOS is to pay for
| YouTube premium - it's unfortunate you can't get
| SponsorBlock through the regular/legal flow though.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I use Wipr and do not see YouTube ads 90% of the time.
| Although, I only watch 1 or 2 YouTube videos per week.
| nirimda wrote:
| I've never knowingly encountered a website breaking because
| I have an adblocker, but I've being running adblockers of
| one sort or another for about as long as there's been ads
| on the web - so maybe there's just features I don't know I
| should experience.
|
| Can you give an example of a website that breaks with an
| adblocker? (Please describe what breaks as well. Otherwise
| I might not notice it.)
| 93po wrote:
| I seen broken sites at least monthly. Uhaul's site broke
| for me yesterday (the photo upload process to tell them
| where to place a storage container).
|
| Vangaurd's login page doesn't work with adblock
| (completely doesn't show it)
|
| Don't have other examples off top of my head
| nirimda wrote:
| Thanks. We must have different internet usage patterns.
| I'm using ublock origin, maybe it's just less disruptive.
| Or maybe GDPR rules make sites in the EU more forgiving
| of blocked bits.
|
| For the ones you mentioned, Vanguard seems to have a lot
| of different login pages, but every one I found actually
| rendered - although some were white for so slow I
| wondered if they would fail. But not trying Uhaul because
| obviously I don't want to make a transaction.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Reddit
| nirimda wrote:
| What doesn't work for you? I use it occasionally and I
| haven't noticed anything in particular that seemed
| broken.
| tfigment wrote:
| Cannot give specific site of hand but for me its SPA
| sites and the page is just blank.
| easytiger wrote:
| Best browser for ad blocking on mobile I found is Vivaldi.
|
| Benchmarked on reach plc websites. If I open one in Chrome it
| actually freezes it up
| Octabrain wrote:
| In my case, not being able to use Firefox (and therefore all
| the extensions including ublock) was the main reason (among
| others) to get rid of my iPhone 12 pro and go back to a
| modest Android.
| scarface74 wrote:
| iOS has supported ad blocking since iOS 8 and has supported
| your standard web extensions for a couple of years.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I dont browse on my phone that often. I have a iphone 16 mini
| and it isnt that fun to browse with. I pretty much only use
| it when I have to to search something on the go.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Whoa, you have an iPhone 16 Mini??? What's the future
| like??
| rajman187 wrote:
| I have AdGuard installed for Safari on my phone and it seems
| to do fine. Also have a pihole on home network (which
| unfortunately due to the router I can't block ipv6 traffic
| but whatever is left going via ipv4 is at least blocked)
| pdimitar wrote:
| 1Blocker installed locally + PiHole on the router / the local
| network.
|
| Nearly spotless experience, costs me 10 bucks a year. And
| everyone at home is protected.
| mnd999 wrote:
| I just Adblock at the router level on my Turris Omnia.
| WireGuard into that and out again when mobile.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| Others already mention adblockers exist for iOS. This is
| possible because Safari on iOS has support for declarative
| blocking (the inferior API compared to programmatically
| deciding what to block).
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre.
| ..
|
| Initial content blocker support came with iOS 9 in 2015. They
| only work in Safari, maybe also other browsers (not sure
| though).
| tartoran wrote:
| I confirm. Im seeing no ads on iOS in Safari with ad
| blocker. Works quite well and browsing experience is good.
| Should Ad blockers ever be rendered unfunctional I'd simply
| reduce my browsing to a minimum, I'd never ever stomach a
| regular browsing experience, it's maddening, it's
| potentially dangerous and not worth the hassle.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _The experience is so awful when I browse on my iPad,
| instead of my Android phone with Firefox+UBlock. I really don
| 't understand how most people can stand to browse with all
| the ads._
|
| Most people don't.
|
| Most people who use anything for iOS tend to use things like:
|
| - 1Blocker - super full featured, including custom script and
| css rules. business model is paid software, not 'acceptable
| ads' paying them for placement or third parties paying for
| your data
|
| - AdGuard Pro - Similar to 1Blocker, less custom config
| friendly
|
| - https://nextdns.io/ - pihole type blocker with unlimited
| configurations, custom rules, and analytics, native hooks for
| devices
|
| - https://adguard-dns.io/ - similar DNS[1] service to
| nextdns.io with ability to upload your own rules based
| configurations
|
| - Firefox Focus if using that ecosystem
|
| - Brave if using that ecosystem
|
| - iCab Mobile if wanting a super configurable browser with
| filter rules and longest history as indie browser for iOS
|
| Folks also use ancillary quieters such as:
|
| - Hiya - call / sms blocking
|
| - Hushed - throwaway numbers for spam SMS
|
| - - -
|
| 1. Note that the AdGuard public DNS server including custom
| DNS filtering rules has just (26 August 2022) gone open
| source: https://adguard.com/en/blog/adguard-dns-2-0-goes-
| open-source...
| alexb_ wrote:
| 95% of users have no idea what any of this is.
| absove wrote:
| 95% of users have no idea what Firefox for Android with
| ublock origin is
| karaterobot wrote:
| Nobody said they did.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| Or firefox
| Terretta wrote:
| Which is why the privacy measures built into iOS and
| Safari natively are so relevant.
|
| But OP was talking about U-Block Origin so they're not in
| that 95%.
| hhmc wrote:
| Which is probably the only reason the measures are
| allowed to work (relatively) painlessly
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I would guess it's more like 99%
| PeterisP wrote:
| The first random source I googled -
| https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users - asserts that
| 15% of USA users report using an adblocker on mobile - in
| contrast to 37% of USA desktop users using an adblocker.
| [deleted]
| onion2k wrote:
| Developer wages would crash through the floor and all the
| way down to the centre of the Earth if ad blockers really
| took off without users also accepting micropayments or
| subscriptions for web services at the same time. Maybe we
| should be a little bit glad that the main thing keeping
| massive amounts of money in tech is accepted by users.
|
| The key thing that most people in tech don't appear to
| grok very easily is that the overwhelming majority of web
| services like search engines, social media, ad-driven
| news websites, etc are all things that users place
| _practically zero value_ on. People accept ads because
| they 're a way of paying for things without really
| thinking about it. If you start asking users for actual
| money they suddenly decide that all these services
| represent no value and they'll live without them.
|
| The end of online advertising is an existential threat
| for a _massive_ part of the tech industry. If that cash
| cow ends there would be a huge reduction in money for
| devs, and a massive flood of devs on to the market.
| Economics 101 should tell you how bad that would be for
| most HN readers.
| Chinjut wrote:
| If it's true that users place zero value on most of what
| the tech industry churns out, then maybe most of what the
| tech industry churns out really isn't that valuable.
| Tryk wrote:
| > The key thing that most people in tech don't appear to
| grok very easily is that the overwhelming majority of web
| services like search engines, social media, ad-driven
| news websites, etc are all things that users place
| practically zero value on. People accept ads because
| they're a way of paying for things without really
| thinking about it. If you start asking users for actual
| money they suddenly decide that all these services
| represent no value and they'll live without them.
|
| Imagine a world where the only content that survives is
| the one that people value enough to pay for.
|
| What a wonderful catastrophic disruptive event that would
| be. Imagine no more SEO spam which are essentially devoid
| of information. These which are already so plentiful and
| sophisticated that they are threatening the core value of
| online search. No more vacuous blogspam, low-quality
| trash "newspapers" that only survive because they trick
| people into giving them a few morsels of attention.
|
| Imagine a human-curated web.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Reminds me of the web in the 1990s and early 2000s before
| owners of sites and services really found ways to
| monetize every single second and click their users made
| with ads.
| api wrote:
| > Imagine a human-curated web.
|
| The OG Yahoo! was ahead of its time?
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| It actually kinda was, Yahoo just kinda got destroyed by
| going public and endlessly acquiring random tech
| companies chasing quarterly earnings. But it's core
| product was actually solid.
| qu4z-2 wrote:
| > Imagine a world where the only content that survives is
| the one that people value enough to pay for.
|
| Or that the creators value enough to create for free.
| lazyier wrote:
| Advertising is a type of propaganda. One of a myriad of
| different forms of propaganda.
|
| One leads to the other easily. For example taking
| advertising money for television commercials or magazine
| adds leads to "Native Ads". Native ads are sort of like
| product placement except that it's pretending to be a
| news story or whatever.
|
| Like when people on CNBC or CNN start talking about Taco
| Bell menu items or new type of drug that might fight
| cholesterol. That's paid-for propaganda that is
| pretending to be television news.
|
| Pretty soon you have a entire industry based on not
| telling the truth about drugs or food or other products
| they buy because that will piss off their advertisers.
|
| This is the basis of the modern web. It's not a good
| thing even though it makes a lot of people a lot of
| money.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The term for advertising used to literally be
| "propaganda".
| azemetre wrote:
| This is some massive hyperbole and really makes me
| consider if online advertising should be abolished or
| massively kneecapped.
|
| Maybe we should ask users for money because the
| alternative has become some kafkaesque hellscape where
| people think it's totally normal to have a dozen ad
| trackers when attempting to buy shoes. These trackers
| have an enormous costs and maybe their externalities
| should be taxed and regulated.
|
| Maybe by the end of the century we will slowly realize
| that online advertising is the "lead" paint that was
| rightfully eradicated.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I think online advertising as we know it will be
| essentially dead by the end of the decade. Because most
| businesses are paying for google ads, you're basically
| paying a highway toll for the organic traffic you would
| get for free anyway, and advertisers haven't figured out
| the ruse. This whole idea that people search for A and
| are going to be willing to instead click on B if you put
| it at the top is super overblown -- 99% of the time they
| still want to and will click on A, they'll just scroll
| down. Impressions in search don't convert people anymore.
| This is why people's bounce rates have become worse and
| worse since the 2010s -- most ad clicks are miss-clicks.
|
| And when people _are_ shopping around, they search for
| things like "best vpn providers 2022" and then go to that
| article and look at the breakdown. People don't click on
| B unless they're already sold on it, and search placement
| just isn't doing it for people anymore because the ad
| results have just been so bad for so long all trust is
| gone.
|
| The modern populace has become completely innoculated
| against the effectiveness of search ads imo. Most people
| don't even see those results they have mental blinders
| and scroll down a bit.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The people spamming bigger dick pills, viagra, and the
| like back in the day made money, and in some cases quite
| substantial amounts of it. They did so simply for the
| fact that even if 99.9999% of people didn't go for it,
| that 0.00001% was far more than enough to show a healthy
| profit after 'advertising' costs.
|
| The point is that advertising won't end until the formula
| of additional_ad_driven_revenue > ad_costs becomes false.
| And we're a _long_ ways away from that given how
| inordinately expensive advertising is relative to the
| costs incurred by the companies selling the advertising.
| And each time that equilibrium price goes lower, the
| potential market of advertisers who may purchase ads
| grows.
|
| This logic suggests that, if anything, advertising will
| get even worse as ad revenues decline. Go low enough and
| we'll be right back to square one with Google Ads
| promoting big dick pills and viagra. That's to say
| nothing of the fact that as revenues decline, both Google
| and advertisers will be looking for ever more insidious
| and forceful ways to make you watch and make you consume.
| Imagine, for instance, the countless dystopias things
| like Google Nest could enable - if such products ever
| managed to gain widespread adoption.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _without users also accepting micropayments or
| subscriptions for web services at the same time_
|
| I think there's chicken and egg problem here -- users
| aren't going to use micropayments until there's a widely
| used micropayments platform that is also privacy
| protecting. I have no desire in using a micropayments
| platform that's really a cross-platform analytics engine
| that's even more invasive than Google since they can
| positively identify me through my payment method.
|
| I have no problem paying for content, but don't want to
| pay through intrusive ad views, and don't to use a
| micropayments platform that tracks all of my browsing
| throughout the web.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'd still have 99.9% of my clients if online advertising
| went away. Turns out that there are entire sectors of the
| economy that are not dependent on intrusive ads at all in
| order to remain solvent.
| gowld wrote:
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Think about what comes after this hypothetical runs its
| course.
|
| Unable to profit from online advertising, what do "tech"
| companies do next. Are there any other commercial uses
| for surveillance and data collection.
| water-your-self wrote:
| Maybe we shouldnt optimize for developer salaries
| blindly. Surely that human effort could be better
| directed.
| rhino369 wrote:
| A huge part of the reason society values those thing as
| practically zero is because they've nearly always been
| provided by companies for free.
|
| If the ad-supported model fell apart, people would
| eventual change their understanding of the value of those
| services. They'd probably pay a decent amount for it.
|
| But its a race to the bottom since someone will always
| offer ad-supported. It'll take an outside force (like ad-
| blocks by default or bans by governments) to actually
| kill off the ad-supported industry.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I pay $50/year for email, because it is broadly useful
| across many vendors, sites, and service providers.
|
| I would not pay $0.50 for any walled garden social media
| account; I don't even have any with them being free. They
| are just too intrusive and too limited.
| ornornor wrote:
| > web services like search engines, social media, ad-
| driven news websites, etc are all things that users place
| practically zero value on.
|
| I wonder if that's the truth or if it's this way because
| there are free alternatives.
|
| If one search engine starts charging a monthly fee, users
| will just go to another one that pays for itself with ads
| and data.
|
| But if the prevalent model for search engines is monthly
| subscription, then people will start paying for it and
| the value for the user won't be 0 anymore.
|
| Why would you pay for ice cream from the ice cream stand
| if you can get it for free next door for the "cost" of
| them keeping track of how often you come to the stand and
| what flavors you like, and selling that info to others?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > social media, ad-driven news websites, etc are all
| things that users place practically zero value on
|
| > If you start asking users for actual money they
| suddenly decide that all these services represent no
| value and they'll live without them.
|
| So what you're saying is if we use ad blocking technology
| to kill off the advertising business model, we can also
| kill off social media and its addictive algorithms,
| clickbaiting sites that generate and monetize outrage and
| numerous other cancers on society that the advertisers
| enable.
|
| Ad blocking is now a moral imperative.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Then ban drinking, dancing and singing like in years
| past. Sports encourages competitive behaviour and should
| be replaced with cooperate behaviour activities. We have
| been through this.. I wish history was a bigger part of
| the education system.
| int_19h wrote:
| The anti-ad crowd isn't banning anything, while Google is
| trying to ban ad blockers.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| We don't need to ban anything. We just need to use
| technology to reduce their returns on investment as much
| as possible. Make it unprofitable to run ads. Lack of
| advertiser profits will put an end to social media and
| its friends.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| "The key thing that most people in tech don't appear to
| grok very easily is that the overwhelming majority of web
| services like search engines, social media, ad-driven
| news websites, etc are all things that users place
| practically zero value on."
|
| Then why did we build them? This seems like a massive
| waste of effort.
| abraae wrote:
| Because of scale. A few bucks value per user adds up when
| there are billions of users.
| onion2k wrote:
| The things themselves are very useful. They're just not
| things people will pay for. It's quite weird.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| ... and it would still be a great thing for mankind,
| especially long term.
|
| Google et al in adspace winning is mankind losing. Not
| hugely, but its clearly there. But the amount of mental
| gymnastics elite devs have to go through every day to
| keep feeling OK about their jobs just because of huge
| paycheck or working on 'cool' problems' is staggering
| (ignoring how screwing fellow human beings isn't cool in
| any way for now).
|
| A little sidenote - not an expert on psychology, but it
| seems to me practically every human being, including
| psychopathic mass murderers have this desperate desire to
| feel OK with their actions, the need to justify them so
| they are at peace with themselves. If I kill, I follow
| the word of god. If I burn jews and minorities alive in
| concentration camps, I am just following orders and doing
| it for greater good of my nation. If I work in amoral
| company, 1 man doesn't matter anyway, there are tons of
| others that would happily pick up the job, and look at
| what open source and cool free apps we give to the world
| for this little cost of privacy and annoyment. Or I just
| do it so my kids have better starting position, I am
| great parent and that s above anything else. Whatever the
| mental tool, always aiming for the same destination.
| a4isms wrote:
| "Developer wages would crash through the floor and all
| the way down to the centre of the Earth if ad blockers
| really took off without users also accepting
| micropayments or subscriptions for web services at the
| same time. Maybe we should be a little bit glad that the
| main thing keeping massive amounts of money in tech is
| accepted by users."
|
| Somewhere, somebody is saying, "Maybe we shouldn't sell
| drugs to children?" And somebody else is saying, "Won't
| somebody think of the wages for chemists?"
| mbostleman wrote:
| Same argument for simplifying the tax code or even
| completely abolishing the IRS in favor of collection
| infrastructures already in place (like sales tax) - but
| what will happen to the multi-billion dollar tax prep
| industry?
| squarefoot wrote:
| > Developer wages would crash through the floor and all
| the way down to the centre of the Earth if ad blockers
| really took off without users also accepting
| micropayments or subscriptions for web services at the
| same time.
|
| Well, the problem is that there are no rules, morals, or
| code of conduit telling when it's too much, except for
| users leaving. In theory. However, unfortunately, most
| users adapt very easily to being thrown at their face
| more and more advertising every day, so we can't count on
| them. Just look at what advertising became since the late
| 90s until today: the number of ads and wasted
| bandwidth/storage/cpu cycles employed to send and show
| them grows every damn day, why should I think it's going
| to stop? For a while we thought that flashing banners
| were the root of all evil, but what about short articles
| ridiculously split in multiple pages so that they can
| show more ads at each 5 sentences ..er.. page change? Or
| articles altered (possibly by AI) so that they use like 3
| times the necessary words so they become longer and can
| be split like the above? Or unskippable ads during
| videos, user profiling that is becoming so dangerously
| close to digital surveillance, etc. Just no thanks.
|
| I wouldn't mind opening my adblockers if sites kept
| advertising to a reasonable minimum in which I can get
| some information about where to purchase a product I'm
| interested in: actually I _want_ good non invasive
| advertising, but every time I tried to do that I quickly
| had to get back in disgust and set them tight closed
| again for almost all sites, save for the very few ones
| that still do the right thing: what once was a short
| blacklist transitioned over time to a nearly empty
| whitelist.
|
| I have no trust in the system anymore. Until the day
| there are well defined and enforced rules, it will always
| keep choosing what brings more profits, that is, more and
| more advertising. Not holding my breath for that day.
|
| Also, I think the current economic system would need some
| heavy modifications to adapt it to micropayments on a
| large scale for every service one could access to. What
| would be the expenses of a micropayments system that,
| say, charged one cent for daily usage of every now free
| or ad supported service out there? (Google, blogs, social
| media, etc). I mean, that would produce a huge number of
| extremely low value transactions; are we sure it wouldn't
| cost more than the profits it should produce?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You are assuming that most developers work on ad
| supported websites and couldn't be employed elsewhere
| resulting in a wage crunch as supply exceeds demand. In
| fact most developers already work in other endeavors and
| there aren't enough of them to go around now.
|
| Please cite sources backing up your original claim.
| z3t4 wrote:
| The ad market already died in 2010. Today it's just bots
| or big players like Google and Facebook. News sites can
| use placed ads that integrate into the news feed and not
| easily blocked. Surprisingly I pay for more and more web
| content. For example video and music streaming, news
| sites, review sites, sell/buy sites, forum boards, niche
| content.
| jotm wrote:
| They wouldn't. If anything, they'd go up since people
| would have to actually use their brains and set up real
| targeted marketing (even ads) instead of the current
| "show 20 ads, rake the CPM cash and hope we get some
| leads, too, YOLO".
|
| There was a short period where it seemed like it would
| happen - context aware ads, links and affiliate products,
| each page was served different ads or none at all, with
| no privacy stuff it could also be very effetive.
|
| Alas general ads won, and they do make more money for the
| platforms since they can show the same ads for stuff you
| have already bought/installed.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >The end of online advertising is an existential threat
| for a massive part of the tech industry. If that cash cow
| ends there would be a huge reduction in money for devs,
| and a massive flood of devs on to the market. Economics
| 101 should tell you how bad that would be for most HN
| readers.
|
| That's as may be, but little of value would be lost IMHO.
|
| Well, except by those supporting (in a myriad of ways)
| the cesspit of advertising online _and_ elsewhere.
|
| I'm sure many will disagree with my assessment, but
| advertising _as it 's done today_ is invasive, obnoxious
| and alarmingly ubiquitous.
|
| I'm not sure what a better model is, but this is _not_
| the way.
|
| N.B: Advertising paid for my food, clothing, housing,
| etc. for the first 18 years of my life. And a couple
| years later for another five years as well.
| fencepost wrote:
| Duck Duck Go?
| black_puppydog wrote:
| > business model is paid software, not 'acceptable ads'
| paying them for placement or third parties paying for your
| data
|
| This reads like a hint at AdBlock Plus, not uBlock. Or did
| I miss some controversy there?
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| Are you sure about this? Apple isn't really a protege of
| heavy customization, especially anything relating to iOS.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| I just mentally ignore ads unless they're in my way, then I
| just hit the back button and read something else.
| always2slow wrote:
| Well, you think you ignore them but they still influence
| you.
| pbronez wrote:
| 1Blocker mostly operates by pumping rules into Safari's
| rules engine, but it also has an App Firewall feature that
| uses VPN profiles. I've had some compatibility problems
| with that, but mostly it just blocks 10,000s of requests I
| didn't want my device to make in the first place.
| EricE wrote:
| Yup - 1Blocker is amazing and a mandatory install on an iOS
| device I use or provision.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > Most people who use anything for iOS tend to use things
| like:
|
| You probably meant "Most people I know".
| deelowe wrote:
| _Most_ people do this? I seriously doubt it.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Within the context of people who know what uBlock origin
| is, given that was the original comparison, 'most' sounds
| accurate.
| remram wrote:
| That was _not_ the context. 4 posts up: "I really don't
| understand how _most people can stand to browse with all
| the ads_ "
| Supermancho wrote:
| It would be great if threaded conversation was normalized
| to anchoring on the original context. Using every reply
| as a partially-yours-partially-new starting point makes
| the conversations treacherously convoluted until many
| points are concurrently true; only if you focus on the
| right parts.
| ummonk wrote:
| Your comment applies to people who would use Firefox+uBlock
| if they were ok Android (e.g. I use 1Blocker).
|
| GP's comment was asking about normal people who browse the
| internet without adblockers on any device.
| kahnclusions wrote:
| > Most people don't. Most people who use anything for iOS
| tend to use things like: ...
|
| "Most people" don't have a clue what any of those things
| are.
|
| The only non-tech people I know who have any of what you
| mentioned only have it because I installed it for them.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Whoa.
|
| Customized adblocking DNS _servers?_
|
| This is definitely striking me as one of those "why didn't
| I think of that" and "why don't we already have a lot of
| this?" Any ideas? Seems like you could go wild with this
| and do something like "Tor"ify, or "torrentify" or dare I
| say "blockchain" it?
|
| Someone can probably school me on why this is harder than
| it sounds.
| 3np wrote:
| It's not harder than it sounds! Pi-hole is the most
| popular one (could it be the most individually self-
| hosted FLOSS service if we don't count stuff like SSH?)
| but you have various options and it's not that tricky to
| roll your own based on dnsmasq or unbound. If you're on
| openwrt there are two options with Luci web-UI as well.
| ramaro wrote:
| This is what Pi-hole basically does.
| ryandrake wrote:
| And, Pi-hole is basically just dnsmasq, so you don't
| actually need a Raspberry Pi and the official Pi-hole
| software if you already have a Linux box on your home
| network doing other things. Just configure dnsmasq and
| you've got Pi-hole's functionality. With custom firmware,
| your Internet router can host dnsmasq, so you don't even
| need a separate box (this is what I use).
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Yup.
|
| I run a PiHole in the cloud so I can PiHole my phone
| without exposing my home network at all.
|
| EDIT: On my phone, I do use Firefox with uBlock Origin,
| but the PiHole blocks ads that aren't in the browser, or
| use an app's browser view.
| hedora wrote:
| I run pi hole in an x86 docker container on my NAS. No
| raspberry pi required, despite the name.
|
| The reports an dynamic modifications to rule sets are a
| big advantage of pi hole. Sure, you can do it with
| dnsmasq conf files and logs, but the web UI has a lot of
| niceties.
| enlightens wrote:
| I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_over_HTTPS
| really made this possible. I recently started using
| NextDNS and it simply gives you a custom URL to drop in
| your DNS configs. If we were just doing IP address DNS
| server lookup you'd have some severe limitations on
| matching up customers to servers.
| waboremo wrote:
| It's not harder than it sounds. Pihole is used that way
| and can be totally owned by you, alternatively nextdns if
| you want an external solution.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| AdGuard Home is another option along with the PiHole
| another commented mentioned. I have that running at home
| forcing all port 53 traffic to it via the firewall. So
| ads are blocked on all devices on the network. So easy I
| sometimes forget I have it running and then I browse on
| mobile away from home and get bombarded with ads and am
| reminded why I do it.
|
| They do also have their own paid DNS service, but I
| haven't attempted to use it. Might be a way to deal with
| mobile better.
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| For this reason alone, I am seriously tempted by PiHole's
| companion, PiVPN. Browsing without this protection just
| seems crazy to me.
| hendersoon wrote:
| I keep my phone VPN'd to my home network via wireguard
| 100% of the time, pointing at my AdGuard Home hosts for
| DNS. This works great, the beauty of wireguard is it
| reconnects in under a second so it's never annoying.
|
| You do need a reasonable upload speed to do this, though.
| Otherwise I guess you could use an "always free" VM at
| Oracle or something.
| tksb wrote:
| For what it's worth, the "sometimes forget I have it
| running and then I browse on mobile away from home and
| get bombarded with ads" bothered me enough personally to
| attempt to smooth it over. Ended up using Tailscale DNS
| so that every device on my tailnet/VPN benefits. It was
| painless and has been solid for ~4mo now.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| It'd not hard and alternative DNS-es were there as long
| as the DNS itself, for various reasons. There are even
| commercial variants like OpenDNS. In all these cases, the
| control is in the hands of the entity maintaining the
| blocklists. There is no advantage in "torrentifying"
| (there's no much to hide) or "blockchaining" it.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I think I misspoke. I understand Pi-Hole.
|
| What I'm talking about is publicly usable adblocking DNS
| servers. As in instead of me at home having to install
| _anything,_ just (probably clear a cache or something)
| and change all my DNS servers to a public reachable-by-
| anyone DNS server. No installation.
| abawany wrote:
| NextDNS, which I've been using for over 2 years now,
| might help in your endeavor. In addition to its stock
| lists of lookup rules, you are allowed to customize your
| own blacklists/whitelists.
| Yhippa wrote:
| It's almost like half the membership here are trying to serve
| you ads and the other half are trying to avoid them.
| Loughla wrote:
| I do find the conversations here about ads very
| interesting. I would assume that some of the people in this
| forum are actually responsible for what we're literally
| talking about.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| They come out of the woodwork and try to argue their
| position occasionally, but get buried in downvotes and
| slink away
|
| The position is usually something along the lines of:
|
| - They ignore the incredibly invasive
| tracking/profiling/security risks involved with
| downloading and running malicious third-party unvetted ad
| code
|
| - It's stealing if you block ads
|
| - Micropayments/subscriptions just don't work well enough
| manquer wrote:
| There is probably an overlap too , I mean it is not like
| people who work for ad networks like Facebook and google
| want to see ads either
| kiririn wrote:
| HTML level content filtering is built into iOS Safari (so
| whatever Adblock app you use physically cannot access your
| browsing data)
|
| iOS also has system-wide DNS ad blocking via DNS-over-HTTPS
| profiles, without needing any apps or on-device VPN hacks,
| and that works for all networks/cellular seamlessly.
| adolph wrote:
| The close button is very easy to use and doesn't require
| additional software (each solution having
| upgrades/costs/breakage of its own in addition to the
| browser).
| 1-6 wrote:
| When the free and open web starts getting expensive because of
| hosting costs, it becomes a open ad-laced web.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| You can still install content blocking VPNs from sources other
| than the play store.
|
| I use DNS66, which I got from the F-Droid open source app store.
|
| It works very well and blocks ads and trackers on websites and
| apps.
| exabrial wrote:
| Google needs to be slapped with an anti trust lawsuit so hard
| their children feel it.
|
| This is so brazen they don't even care
| twistedpair wrote:
| Ghostery browser on Android is pretty easy to use.
| Terretta wrote:
| It had been excellent. Have you kept track of their ownership
| and business model since the mid 2010s?
|
| - monetization strategy involves affiliate marketing and the
| sale of ad analytics data
|
| - shows advertisements of its own to users
| kuratkull wrote:
| Rooted phone + Lucky Patcher hostsfile based adblocking is also
| pretty good.
| grishka wrote:
| Uhh what exactly is Google cracking down on if Blokada has always
| been distributed as an apk precisely because Google has never
| allowed this sort of thing on Google Play?
| avel wrote:
| Nothing. This post seems to be just a promo with the intention
| to cause some stir and publicity for Blokada.
| elbowjack65 wrote:
| Stay true to the article title, don't editorize to bait readers
| fortran77 wrote:
| > This _could_ mean Google is cracking down on VPN-based ads and
| tracker filtering apps behind the scenes.
| jl6 wrote:
| The problem is not just ads.
|
| In this comment I'm going to explain why the problem is not just
| ads.
|
| What are ads? Advertizing, or marketing, is a common means of
| monetizing content.
|
| Here are the top three reasons ads are used on websites:
|
| 1. Monetization
|
| 2. Tracking users
|
| 3. Malware distribution
|
| Want to know more about how ads track users? Read on.
|
| As a guy growing up in rural Wyoming, ads weren't something that
| ever really bothered me. Sure there was the occasional billboard
| and sure television had a lot of commercials breaks, but I was
| used to it. The idea of using an ad blocker on my television set
| never occurred to me. I remember this one time when my uncle was
| moving house and he needed some help and I helped him move the
| packing crates into the truck and the crates had the logo and
| name of the shipping company stencilled on the side, and it never
| bothered me, although that was in fact an ad.
|
| Experts agree that the following method is great for dealing with
| ads:
|
| First, make sure what you are looking at is an ad. You can often
| tell by the little x in the corner of the ad. If you click this,
| you will be able to close the ad and maybe even give some
| feedback about why you didn't like the ad. Top tip: always fill
| this in to let the ad vendor know how to improve the ad for next
| time.
|
| But take care! This next tip is really important.
|
| If you don't hit the little x exactly on target, you will be
| taken to the website of the ad. If you didn't want the ad in the
| first place, this is surely something to avoid!
|
| Here are 17 resolutions for dealing with accidentally visiting a
| website you didn't want to visit:
|
| 1. Try restarting your phone, laptop or PC.
|
| 2. Close the browser window. Click here for help on how to
| accomplish this task.
|
| 3. Try clicking the back button on your browser.
|
| 4. Write to the FCC if the website caused you distress.
|
| 5. Take a walk. Besides being good exercise, the problem may have
| resolved itself by the time you return.
|
| 6. Hit refresh on your browser. If you didn't like the website
| first time round, you know what they say? Try, try again!
|
| 7. Go to the URL bar on your browser and type in a different
| address. Don't forget to hit the Enter key. Try the following
| helpful URLs from our trusted partners:
|
| https://www.geico.com
|
| https://www.espn.com
|
| https://www.target.com
|
| 8. Raise a ticket with Apple support.
|
| 9. Install Google Chrome.
|
| 10. Re-install Google Chrome.
|
| 11. Contact your ISP. My top tip? Threaten to cancel unless they
| can resolve your issue completely right away!
|
| 12. Close all open windows and applications and wait 30 seconds.
|
| 13. Clear your cookies and web browsing history.
|
| 14. ...
|
| Show more.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Pi-hole in home network, AdAway on all smartphones, uBlock Origin
| an all Firefox browsers.
|
| I'm shocked when browsing web on different devices. I always
| recommend to at least install uBlock Origin to users of those
| devices. Most of them never heard about ad-blocking and they are
| very, very happy with new web browsing experience. 99% of theme
| do not want go back. 1% don't care.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Adguard works so well that I forget it's there until I try
| browsing the web away from home.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| AdAway is main reason, why I root android devices. It block
| ads in all apps and browsers even on data, without VPN.
|
| Another way how to block ads on data is using OpenVPN to
| connect data through you home router that has ad-blocking.
| But it is limited by upload speed of home network connection
| and battery drain of your smartphone is worse with active
| OpenVPN.
| ytch wrote:
| I use OpenVPN/Wireguard to setup split-tunnel VPN, only
| route DNS traffic to Pi-hole at home network. Although my
| connection may be leaked, I thought it's faster since 5G is
| faster than my home network upload speed.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| But your speed in device connected to OpenVPN/Wireguard
| is limited by upload speed of you home connection. Not by
| data connection speed on client device.
| ytch wrote:
| Yeah, So I use split-tunnel. For example only route
| 192.168.1.0/24 via VPN, then set 192.168.1.10 as DNS
| server. Therefore I can use pi-hole at home and other
| traffic are routed by 5G directly.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| I noticed sometime last year Samsung put out an update for my
| Tablet that overrode my DNS delivered by DHCP and used Google's
| DNS directly. It was immediately obvious due to the amount of
| ads I haven't seen for years at this point due to running a
| pihole. Most of the solutions either involve software VPNs in
| the device to restore function or rooting it. Its terrible that
| any device would ignore and have no way to use the network
| settings as provided by the gateway.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Just block Google's DNS servers at the router level.
|
| (Although the best solution would probably be to ditch
| Samsung crap)
| paulmd wrote:
| Google gets all the flak but frankly Samsung has been the
| point of the spear for years on adtech shit - they were one
| of the companies caught mining application logs from other
| applications to bypass permissions that you denied them,
| causing Google to have to go back and implement iOS-style
| application sandboxing.
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/more-than-1000-android-
| apps...
|
| Similarly, their TVs are known as probably the single most
| obnoxious devices on the market right now, and are _always_
| in the news for finding some new and obnoxious way to push
| more ads or more intrusive ways to spy on you in general.
|
| Everyone always asks this about Apple but really it's never
| seemed more relevant than with Samsung: why are you
| purchasing hardware from a company that very very obviously
| does not respect you as a customer? Aren't there _any_ other
| android vendors you could patronize instead?
|
| (to be fair, if you aren't interested in budget hardware, and
| you won't buy a chinese phone, I suppose that list isn't
| _all_ that long. you have... google and sony, I guess?)
| zo1 wrote:
| DNS, proxy and cert settings should be exposed to the user
| without question. And if apps bypass it and do things like
| cert pinning they need to be banned off the stores.
|
| This is the only way to fix the ecosystem.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I use LineageOS on all my Samsung devices. If I want super
| google free android OS, IodeOS or e/os is option.
| monopoliessuck wrote:
| GrapheneOS has "Network" as a permission you can disable per app
| like any other permission. This is such an obvious and purposeful
| omission in stock Android's permission model.
|
| I see NetGuard was mentioned in a comment, but if you have
| Graphene you can just install an app and never let it call home
| via the App Info permission menu. I do it for Google Camera and
| Snapseed, the few non FOSS apps on my phone.
| cypress66 wrote:
| This is what happens when your operating system is developed by
| an ad company.
| btdmaster wrote:
| https://f-droid.org
|
| I've used Netguard off F-Droid before, it's really nice when you
| turn on the filter:
| https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/blob/master/ADBLOCKING.md.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| https://f-droid.org/packages/org.jak_linux.dns66/
|
| Been using this for years, though I don't often use ad-serving
| apps anyhow, so it's mostly just a second layer of defence
| behind firefox/u-block (and noscript, to be honest, but I
| understand not everyone wants to deal with that.)
| k4rli wrote:
| Adaway is also very nice and simple. Allows for custom hosts
| lists so requires root. I think they had a VPN option as well
| but haven't needed it.
| hedora wrote:
| Honest question: Does anyone here successfully use android
| without f-droid?
|
| From what I can tell, non-nonsense opensource utilities are
| simply undiscoverable on the app store.
| propogandist wrote:
| It is/was fantastic and an essential application for android.
| It is the first app I install before letting a new android
| phone connect to the internet.
|
| edit: the app is still maintained & the dev is still active on
| the Netguard thread, although there was a prior issue with
| google where he had stopped development
|
| https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-6-0-netguard-no-root-...
|
| https://netguard.me/
| aceazzameen wrote:
| He only stopped for a few days before the Google issue ended
| up being resolved. He's still developing.
|
| https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail/releases/tag/1.1957
| propogandist wrote:
| Thanks; updated my prior comment and I also see he is
| active in the Netguard xda thread
| thro388 wrote:
| There is a legitimate problem with malware that hijacks all
| traffic via VPN. Maybe you should hear other side before making
| judgement!
| esrauch wrote:
| The only reason people are resorting to vpn for adblocking is
| because Android Chrome and the OS otherwise doesn't allow for
| ad blocking any other way through...
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Android and Chrome OS support DNS-over-TLS/HTTPS. DNS based
| adblocking is obviously not perfect, but good enough in
| practice.
| nottorp wrote:
| In-browser ad blocking is the perfect solution, they just
| need to allow it and make money through honest means. Both
| Google and Apple.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > There is a legitimate problem with malware...
|
| This is a statement and argument that can and is used against
| any form of user control over their devices, user
| customization, or general computing.
| gordaco wrote:
| "But security!" has been the "won't somebody please think of
| the children" of the technology world for a long time. The
| end goal, intentional or not, is the same: restricting
| freedoms (or, on a shorter term, ignore valid criticism).
|
| Unfortunately, at least in the tech world it seems to be a
| great success. We now have walled gardens and unskippable
| updates. The next step, "trusted computing" (which is
| ultimately using a whitelist to forbid the usage of certain
| software), is already halfway here.
| weberer wrote:
| There is also a legitimate problem with malware being
| transmitted through ads.
| ojagodzinski wrote:
| Ok, so using the same logic we should ban all car traffic
| because someone was raped in a taxi?
| thro388 wrote:
| No, this is more like taxi drivers complaining about extra
| regulations, put on place, bcos someone got raped in taxi.
| veeti wrote:
| The "extra regulation" being their entire livelihood taken
| away.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| There is also a legitimate problem where companies protect
| their business case with an argument of security.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _There is a legitimate problem with malware that hijacks all
| traffic via VPN_
|
| Facebook comes to mind: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=onavo
| smileybarry wrote:
| I started using NextDNS years ago and it's been a blessing.
| Blocks almost every ad on a DNS level on mobile devices, and on
| PC I still augment it with uBlock Origin. Per-device logs also
| let me debug connectivity if something breaks, and it's great for
| mapping local device names without mDNS debugging or some dnsmasq
| resolver lying around.
| jorge-d wrote:
| I did the same and I must say it has been a breeze to use. I
| even configured my own list for my family member's devices and
| am still not reaching the free-tier quota. I even unplugged my
| PiHole because this was much simpler.
| smileybarry wrote:
| I was happily on the free tier for a while until I switched
| to iPhone, then suddenly _just_ my iPhone ran though 150k
| queries (compared to a Pixel). But if you 're on Android,
| Google TV, etc. you should be comfortably fine within the
| free tier.
|
| It's definitely worth the $2/month price for Pro though.
| k__ wrote:
| Yes, NextDNS and Brave is my stack.
|
| Sadly, it doesn't work on IG.
|
| But I have blocked a few meme sites, and now I'm doing less
| mindless scrolling.
| laundermaf wrote:
| I regularly find websites that don't work until I disable the
| Adblock, usually on mobile. This isn't intentional generally.
|
| How do you deal with that? Are you just not going to buy a
| plane ticket on the airline's website just 'cause?
| criley2 wrote:
| The internet is basically unusable on a phone without an
| adblocker. This is a bad move from Google and will be on a lot of
| people's minds when they're thinking about their next flagship.
| "Hmm, an Android? Ah but Google's #1 goal is to make sure you're
| staring at terrible internet ads at all times..."
|
| Having said that, Kiwi Browser on Android still seems safe. You
| probably have a different browser anyway, now that Chrome has
| most of the features and featureflags removed.
| zo1 wrote:
| I had my son on an amazon android tablet the other weekend.
| Internet access disabled using parental controls. And by the
| end of that weekend, the tabs that I found opened on the
| default browser was crazy. All from clicking ads in various
| apps, auto-play videos, and what not. Ads for viagra, credit
| cards, home loan applications, other loans, mobile subscription
| content, etc. Luckily internet access was off so none of them
| loaded, but I could still see all the failed open tabs.
|
| Tech giants will turn this example around and say "look we need
| more walled-gardens to protect users". But in reality, as soon
| as they open the floodgates, there will be solutions that can
| do the same without giving away more control to Google/Apple.
| The narrative has to change, and the first step is to give
| device owners full control.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| Assuming you're in the US, if this is really happening, you
| need to take screenshots of the inappropriate ads, document
| the experience and send it to your congressman and senator.
| Go to the local office and speak with the staffers. They need
| to see and hear from their constituents having this awful
| experience for there to be any change.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Most people's phone internet usage is like 95% on apps like
| Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok etc. and they are well
| used to their ads.
| noncoml wrote:
| Run pihole on AWS and set it as your DNS globally on android. You
| will never see ads again, even on apps.
| kaiusbrantlee wrote:
| Yeah I can understand google needing to do this. I mean, they
| aren't making nearly enough money already
| gumby wrote:
| > These changes aim to improve the ads experience, tighten
| security and limit misinformation according to the company.
|
| Yes, according to the company. But improving the ad experience
| for google, not for the user. What Orwellian doublespeak!
| kuon wrote:
| I use adaway which simply replace the /etc/hosts file, but
| requires root. I consider a phone a paperweight if I cannot have
| root on it, but I realize this might be different for other
| users.
| josephcsible wrote:
| What are you going to do once Google makes TEE-based bootloader
| unlock checking a mandatory part of SafetyNet? Right now, I'm
| in the same camp as you, and I don't have a good answer to that
| myself.
| hedora wrote:
| I'll likely just not use banking software that requires
| safetynet.
|
| If that means I need to switch banks, that's OK.
| josephcsible wrote:
| It's a lot more than just banking apps. It's also
| McDonald's, Netflix, Snapchat, Pokemon Go, Super Mario Run,
| etc. Will you just stop using all of them too?
| kuon wrote:
| Yes. If an app dont run, I do not use it. If I cannot
| root my phone, I'll stop having one, I'll have a dumb
| phone.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I've never used any of those apps. But McDonald's
| particularly? I know those other apps are popular, but
| who actually installs the app for a fast food restaurant?
| I thought this was something these companies wasted money
| on because they wanted to feel techy and trendy, I didn't
| think anybody actually fell for it though.
|
| Just walk up to the counter and say _" I'll have number
| whatever"_
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