How I Block All Online Ads
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The art of ad-blocking is sparking a lively debate, with users sharing their favorite tools and browsers for a cleaner online experience. Some swear by Brave browser, while others lament its Chromium roots, pointing out the irony of a "privacy browser" relying on Google's code. Firefox fans and critics weigh in, with some citing speed and stability issues, while others praise its ad-blocking prowess when paired with uBlock Origin. As users discuss their ad-blocking strategies, a common thread emerges: finding the right balance between convenience, privacy, and performance.
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It’s always been ironic to me that a Privacy browser is dependent on source code primarily controlled by a company that derives the majority of its revenue from ads… exactly what the browser itself was spun off to shield its users against.
Now I am back to Brave and very happy. Almost no ads, super fast, doesn't crash or hang.
I would add one more useful tool though: A user-agent switcher[1]. There are still some websites that insist you must use Chrome (or sometimes Edge). They will block you if you try to use them with Firefox, even though they work perfectly well and sometimes even better on Firefox than they do on Chrome. A user-agent switcher gives you the option to simply uninstall Chrome for good.
e.g. My ISP provides a website for streaming live TV (e.g. sports) that claims to be incompatible with Firefox, but actually runs better (i.e. fewer glitches) on it than it does on Chrome. However, it refuses to load on Firefox unless you use a user-agent switcher.
Why do people write websites that refuse to run based on user-agent checks? By all means, warn users that you couldn't be arsed to test things on more than one browser, but why go that extra mile to brick your site when other browsers probably support it quite well?
[1]https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/user-agent-st...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/chrome-mask/
[1] https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...
You might be thinking of TrackMeNot, which does use tabs (iirc).
Ordered in what I use the most - Fanfics, novels - profile 1. Netflix, others - profile 2. General browsing - profile 3.
For example IMDb. And proxying over mitmproxy actually breaks the whole app, because they do certificate pinning.
AdGuard's log shows nondescript servers and suddenly a lot of IPv6 connections and then ads :(
Only caveat is it doesn’t block ads served by the content provider itself e.g. some streaming services, but from what I hear those are difficult to block with any approach.
But agree, totally worth it if you at all value your time.
Only the earliest google music people are still grandfathered in at the insanely low rate. The rest of us have been "upgraded" to at least $14/mo.
Mostly watch via Android TV (NVidia Shield TV).
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/15968883
Probably a business decision that's made them a lot of money, well done.
Thank goodness for ReVanced.
Firefox mobile, m.youtube.com, "Video Background Play Fix" browser extension.
That's why I will never pay, no matter how much people glaze yt premium. I distinctly remember the day they took that simple feature away. uBlock and Vanced work fine, and it's also not hard to download to my media server for offline
I don't want to reward a company for shitty practices. What are they even doing at youtube besides changing the UI every 3 months and stuffing AI where it isn't wanted/needed.
At the bare minimum they need to enable the ability to blacklist entire channels, like I can easily do on my home setup. And ban AI videos without a label. Then they can have my $8
Content creators have paid sections in the video itself, the format optimises grabbing your attention, some legitimate-presenting channels are just real state for product placement...
You can’t win in that platform.
Yes, creators have paid sections but they are skippable (and note YouTube helps you skip with a little white dot in the UI[1]) and creators have a strong incentive to protect their credibility. They have an ongoing "relationship" with their viewer. Not so for the random companies that get to spam you with unskippable adverts for crypto scams or fat-free yoghurt in the freezer version.
[1]They don't like sponsored segments as they don't get a cut most of the time. They do have a programme for arranging sponsored segments via the platform, in which case they _do_ get a cut. I'm not sure if they still offer the little skip-helper dot in that case... Anyone know?
Is that a premium feature? How does it look? I don't remember ever seeing it (that said, SponsorBlock solves this).
> and creators have a strong incentive to protect their credibility.
I haven't seen this play out very much to be honest.
> I haven't seen this play out very much to be honest.
"Credibility" means "relative to the interests of their audience". Faux News has a completely different, almost inverse metric for "credibility" with their "Aliuns made the pirramids!" fanbase. CNN follows a more strict "if it bleeds it leads" policy to keep their audience believing them.
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Being able to remove Shorts from the app and to revert Alphabet's many incoherent design decisions makes the whole thing usable.
These kinds of customisations should be standard for apps people use every day.
You need to also hide them from the feed and a few other places. You are not stupid; Revanced has too many options and the settings and large and confusing. It's easier to search "shorts" and toggle everything.
Most people would like to have a roof over their heads and eat once in a while.
How many links that you clicked on from HN today are asking for a subscription, and how many have you supported?
All I wanted years ago was an email address with my vanity domain. Had I only known I was shunting my whole family into a Bizarro Elgoog world...
(I still use uBlock of course)
iOS Safari + uBlock Origin + Vinagre extension = no ads, free background play.
Mass surveillance is one of the biggest threat to society that has come out of our industry, and is the biggest objection that many people have against modern adtech.
So how does YouTube Premium address this? Well, first you login to Google and let them associate your real name to everything you do online, not just what you do on YouTube. Then, you give them your credit card info, home address, and phone number because why not? On top of that, you get to foot the bill for all of this.
Uh, I'll continue to stay out of this.
I have used them both paid and free and they are not good. I will pick just one point - support. It's pathetic. Maybe because it's non existent. I stopped paying for it, started using free, then removed it altogether.
uBlock Origin really is that good as others are saying. I haven't really needed anything else. Ads in other apps? Well, that's a hit or miss but then a lot of my finance/investment related apps anyway don't work if I use any ad blocking on local network or device label, sadly. Tweaking around it is how I needed support with NextDNS and then realised I've been paying for something with essentially no support.
I'm pretty aggressive with the block lists I have selected and expect to fiddle with it lots, but I have a second (much more "reasonable") profile that family uses and it works great (still catches a huge amount of stuff that browser adblockers miss) despite never needing any fiddling. It's been great for me.
I like his suggestion of VPN via cloud. I might set up something with wireguard or tailscale for that.
I don't really use youtube, but my family does, so If anyone knows a way to get a better ui experience as a google tv app I'd be keen to hear it?
This doesn't change the UI as such, but it auto-mutes ads, and auto-skips once the skip option is available. It's a bit of a funny thing to setup, but it works great once setup.
I don't use it much since I started using the ReVanced patched YouTube app, but it used to work well enough for casual usage.
https://medium.com/@lumenyx/isponsorblocktv-on-a-raspberry-p...
Both are superfluous if you have ublock, and pihole doesn't do anything for "native" ads like on twitch or youtube. The only benefit is that it blocks ads in apps that use third party ad SDKs.
They still accept updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions [1].
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions/...
I can't say I'm noticing any ads on Chrome, the lite ad blocker seems just as effective.
the freetube app has both of those extensions built in. you just have to enable them in the settings
sound dangerous...
>AdNauseam 'clicks' Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions this is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a 'click' on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads. Although it is completely safe, AdNauseam's clicking behaviour can be de-activated in the settings panel.
https://github.com/dhowe/adnauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...
You'd need a VM to safely contain any exploits, although you're probably safe from 0days if you're just doing some run of the mill ad clicking. Nobody is burning a 6-7 figure 0day on a public ad network, when they need to save that for targeted attacks like politicians/journalists, so keeping your browser reasonably up to date will be sufficient.
I can’t stand those in-video intros or sponsored promos, where I’m suddenly pitched a random VPN or productivity app.
[1]. https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV
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