How long did it take to un-break basically every website? I tried doing this and it made pretty much every site that had this problem unusable. I could never find a sweetspot that only blocks ads and let’s legitimate traffic through; and it caused issues with my partner’s work portals.

You are a person of culture, and I respectfully tip my hat to you. Of course, the question left unanswered is: Did it blend?

My wife initially hated my piholes, because they broke some of her phone’s stuff. She runs stock Samsung Android, so lots of the built in Google stuff got broken. She was constantly complaining about it. We eventually spent an evening hunt-and-peck’ing the various blocked DNS requests, to see which ones were required for her phone to work properly, and which ones were just Google Adsense BS. Got her set up with a WireGuard VPN connection that automatically activates when she’s disconnected from the home WiFi, so she’s always protected.

Now that she’s used to it, it’s like a wake up slap whenever she encounters ads. We moved a while ago, and all of my more advanced networking stuff (including the pihole) was sitting in a box until I had time to set it all up. She suddenly started seeing ads again, and was absolutely gobsmacked at how pervasive they are. What really sent her over the edge was when our Roku TV was paused, and went to its idle screen. The idle screen is an auto-scrolling image, and it had an ad plastered across the scrolling image. She was like “what the fuck we’re not even watching anything right now! It’s just idle! Why the hell are they advertising to us on the damned idle screen??” That was what finally pushed her to give me an evening to set all of the networking stuff back up.

Our smart TV doesn’t allow an ad blocker on YouTube, but my kids have developed a way to skip ads anyway. They don’t tolerate ads sny more than I do, and I couldn’t be prouder.

Except we are beginning to not own what we own. The computer is yours, the software is just licensed, and they are trying to take everything away from us, from ovens to washing machines, they want to make it all subscription, spying on us, and serving us ads. We don’t have the right to repair the products when we break, and it’s a federal felony to “break” any sort of digital lock on a device, and I think to change it’s programming too.

That said, it’s a moot point as of yet, because while websites forced me to whitelist their sites to use them when I had adblock, I was told about ublockorigin, and I see no ads, and the sites can’t tell I am using it.

Pacified by $$$ signs. Counter culture doesn’t pay for Bezos next yacht.

The deluge of gambling, crypto currency, GLP, and AI ads only make me hate those things more.

People say this but, if advertising didn’t work, companies would have stopped paying for ads long time ago. It works for them, we view ads and then we are willing to pay more for a product that is worth less; it’s this simple.

The only solution for us is to avoid ads at all cost.

The worse the product is, the more desperate they get to shove it in your face. Good products don’t need to pay others to pretend it’s good, you just find out via word-of-mouth or free trials

Yep I actively avoid companies that inundate me. I’ve switched insurance companies because of it (local agent got me much better rates too).

“Hey this thing is here” and “have this problem try this” are useful enough that even without paid ads people make that content.

The lifestyle manipulation, feeding unfounded fears, biases, anxieties, and rage for almost anyone reason is evil to me.

Back in the good-ish days of reddit, they had ads that I actually appreciated. They were clearly labeled as ads and had a different color, were at the top of the feed only, so once you scrolled past the first one you were done, and we’re essentially just sticky promoted posts, so they had comment sections.

You could find honest reviews of the products in the ads. Shills we’re identified and down voted into oblivion, so the real shit tended to land on top. It encouraged advertisers who actually had quality products on offer and who understood their audience. They were the only online ads that ever led directly to me buying a product.

Yep. One must move beyond an “I hate you and I hope you die” relationship with ads, to a “I don’t think about you at all” relationship with ads. Regardless of how many fits Google throws about ublock, one can always do VPN/DNS type filtering. I’ve honestly almost forgotten ads exist.

You’re not wrong. But as you said yourself, this only applies to your own hardware. Some of us do engage in this weird thing called “going outside”, with some taking it as far as not only going there to touch grass, but also meet other people (gross, I know).

In these situations, even I, an individual who has

• a private e-mail that is exactly that: private (through aliases and strict protocols as to who gets the root address)
• a physical mailbox mostly clean of ads because advertisers either do not get my address in the first place, or they get a friendly letter telling them where to shove their catalogues
• adblocker plugins in every browser
• hosts-based blocking on top of that and
• a network-wide DNS-based adblocker just for good measure,

even I, builder, king and prisoner of this privacy fortress, am exposed to ads when I occasionally leave it.

I see ads when my kid asks me to read out to him the contents of that colourful banner above the parking lot.

I see ads when I watch cable TV with my parents and they just let the ad break wash over them like a jovial stream of diarrhea.

I see ads when I go shopping and I cannot focus on my own thoughts because only a few metres away there’s an ad screen loudly announcing the technological marvels of Buddy’s Fully-automatic Butt Crack Scratcher to the world.

In these situations, I really feel the contents of that OP. I feel the brazen attempt to steal my attention when all I want is to be present. I feel the insult to my intelligence because some twat in marketing decided I’m unable to or unworthy of making my own decisions. And I feel the need to quell this frivolous invasion of my time and headspace.

And that’s why, in these situations, I take the liberty to turn off the shop’s TV while I’m there. I take my parent’s remote, mute the ad diarrhea and strike up a conversation. And I promise the kiddo to read him something proper once we get home, but not one of those stupid ads.

(We recently pulled up in front of another giant ad banner, and the little guy went: “Dad, that’s just another one of those stupid ads, right?” Imagine how proud dad was, seeing that another system-wide adblocker had been installed…)

Thanks for coming to my TED talk!