Pi holes don't swallow everything, in stream ads like on Youtube and Twitch and served by the ___domain all make it through the Pi hole approach. It also doesn't allow you to turn it off for a particular page or site either, if you want to allow ads on Phronix you can't do it without enabling that advertiser everywhere since it lacks the context of the DNS calls.
The advantage is it works with every browser on every device, its network wide and it blocks a tonne of other calls that aren't made by the browser such as telemetry.
Also plugging Firefox mobile here if you do any web browsing from mobile. You can add uBlock Origin on Firefox mobile, which you can't do on Chrome mobile.
From a quick web search, while it supports installing firefox plugins they may not all work as expected due to limitations/differences in the browser APIs, and ublock origin fails to work properly as a result.
So IMHO mozilla are probably choosing "Let's not" rather than "Let's deliver a broken experience"
As one user on reddit said - "Orion supports Firefox and Chrome extensions. Yes. And you can install them. Yes. Do they work, though? No, most of them don't. Orion is lying about their extension support. "
Safari is limited in the same way as Chrome manifest v3, allowing basically only a URL blacklist. They're crippled compared to uBlock Origin's various other blocking capabilities.
I’m also going to add for now you can still manually install ublock on the latest chrome by downloading it from GitHub and installing it under manage extensions. For now.
Use a third-party browser with integrated ad blocker - then all this Manifest v3 stuff doesn't matter even if the browser is Blink-based. One example is Vivaldi.
Pi-Hole (or better yet AdGuard) is still desirable because it will block ads for other apps and devices. Defense in depth.
I have found a really amazing way to block ads on websites. It's by not visiting them in the first place. Imagine how well this could work. It's sort of like abstinence and chastity rather than contraception. "Oh you know I love you, let me just have a little for free, and not worry so much about consequences, baby!"
Also I found this amazing hack for YouTube and YT Music. I am nearly hesitant to write it down here, lest everyone try it out. I figured out that if I pay them like $20/mo, all the ads disappear from both apps! Can you believe what suckers they are! I fear that this loophole may be closed soon, but for now I'm living high on the hog!
Nothing wrong with paying for a commercial service. I rather pay with money than indirectly by losing time and being annoyed in the best case and manipulated in the worst case.
With the sites that I choose to not visit (Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram) this is not possible, as the attempted manipulation of users is an integral part of the business model.
Also, your attempt of being funny is not working, neither is your metaphor.
No, my friend, what is reprehensible to me is freeloaders who believe that they can just play cat-and-mouse wars by installing software and then scrape whatever web content they want, without giving the company their due expected revenue.
This is cheating of the cheapest cheapskate order. It's dishonest, it's disingenuous to say "please send me your web content but only the stuff I like". Perhaps you feel a little guilty, and needed to take a dig at my comment tone in turn?
I can understand needing to protect/defend yourself against malice and undue surprises. The web is wild and wooly. I can understand how intrusive and troublesome ads can become. But people with adblockers? They are ruining it for everyone -- raising prices, jacking up the cost to deliver and maintain sites, and in fact, you're to blame for ads becoming more intrusive and more ubiquitous, because how else are they going to get past your damn blockers???
But if you're going to visit a site, and you want to see/read their stuff, then I feel it would be ethical to engage with them on a level playing field. Because how badly do you want their stuff? If the ads turn you off so much, then don't go to the site. I simply find 98% of the Web is not worth my time after this calculus. News sites don't really report news anyway; why should I waste my time.
All this Hacker News ethic of cheating with ad blockers and yt-dlp and posting archive.is links to "help you bypass this evil paywall" is just ripping off companies. It is not a victimless crime. It is not working and it is most definitely not funny!
> "please send me your web content but only the stuff I like".
That's the deal. Publishing something on the public internet does not entitle anyone to decide if/how I choose to consume that content. There's no reason to complain about people who choose to not download a bunch of ads, or those who replace fonts, or those who use custom CSS or userscripts, or those who use a screen reader, etc. If you publish something to the internet be grateful that anyone consumes any part of it. That's all you'd be due. "expected revenue" is not a right. It's not ripping off companies. It is not a victimless crime, because it isn't a crime at all.
> But people with adblockers? They are ruining it for everyone
Ads are "ruining it for everyone". If ads were all respectful, honest, safe, and non-obtrusive, ad blockers wouldn't have so many fans. The ads shot first. Blaming people now for making ads "worse" has strong "look at what you made me do!" vibes.
Me personally, I think it's hilarious. It's only unfortunate that it doesn't translate to any significant economic harm to those companies, but every little bit helps, so do your part and help your neighbor block ads, as well.
“Won’t somebody pleeease think of the billionaires!!” - you.
As a side note, your disdainful tone is incredibly grating and will likely convince others to ignore your points out of principle, which should go against your goal if your goal is to actually change people’s minds.
But I suspect your goal is to feel smug and fake morally superior, as you’re not acting in good faith. So congratulations, I’d suggest some personal introspection is in order.
||It's dishonest, it's disingenuous to say "please send me your web content but only the stuff I like"||
It's MY metered bandwidth that I'm paying for - that a site loads 50MB of trash javascript when I merely clicked on a link for a 300kB PNG is an absolutely outrageous strain on my resources, not to mention a total waste for that site whose devs obviously know nothing about optimization.
Well that's awfully self-centered of you. It's their resources too, isn't it? It's them keeping the lights on; redundant reliable Internet connection; carrying insurance, rent; paying devs to write JS; data center storing that PNG you wanna get at so desperately. That PNG that belongs to them and they are choosing to give to you with whatever other collateral data belongs in the transaction?
If you feel that they're exploiting your resources then you have a right to decline to use theirs, right? You don't need to offer your resources to them. It was a voluntary click, a freewill request? Or just hack the shit out of them, and fuck your social contract?
If you disdain this provider so much that you criticize their developers and wish to connect to it on your own terms, then perhaps you're better off not doing it at all. In fact, anyone using adblockers or other "defensive ware" should carefully pore over all Terms of Service, EULAs and AUPs, because you could eventually be found in breach, and then perhaps they'll just nip you in the bud, at the Cloudflare level, and you won't have to worry much about ads at all!
