This is literally the internet nowadays without an adblock

I cannot understand how some people are living with this. It is unbearable

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My retired parents live with me. I went ahead and put a PiHole on our home wifi. A day later my mother was literally complaining that she couldn’t click on ads on facebook. I told her those are ads and they track her and she says “well everyone likes to use the internet how they like to use it.. can you put it back the old way? I want to look at these shoes”. Can’t fucking win.
- My wife turns off the WiFi on her phone to avoid the pihole. She does this so she can watch the ads in her games to get an extra life or whatever. You'll never win on that front and I won't either.
  
  I get so pissed off when I try to play sudoku on the bus and it forces me to watch 30 seconds of ads between each game. And then during the game I have to ignore the flashing banner ad at the bottom of the screen.
  
  Just pay for a good offline sudoku app. It probably costs less than a cup of coffee. Then we'll all be happier.
  
  or get an open source, free and privacy friendly one from f-droid in case you haven't tied your hands with an iphone
  
  Simple games don't need internet access. Can't you block network connection for that app?
  A better option even is getting something like what BurnedOliveTree@lemmy.world suggested, or this other one https://f-droid.org/packages/org.moire.opensudoku/ or this other one https://f-droid.org/packages/org.secuso.privacyfriendlysudoku/
  
  Then pay 99 fucking cents for the app.
  If the ads annoy you enought to post online, but the app is good enough that you keep playing anyway, then pay the developer for their work.
  I swear to God some people around here have heard the term FOSS and thought "I don't have to pay for software, hur dur it's free and writes itself!"
  
  I recommend Airplane mode or getting this https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.kaajjo.libresudoku
  
  Lol at all of these comments coming up with ways to not pay someone $1 for a sudoku app.
  
  There's TrackerControl.
  
  I also really don't like ads, but I think what's lately been bothering me more is every short form video that exists has subtitles added to the middle of the video. I can't even look at the videos because I hate getting distracted by the unnecessary text in my face. Like just let me watch your video, I don't need you to spoon feed me the words too.
  
  It's a decent value to play the ad while you actually pay attention to the show you're "watching" for 30 seconds.
  
  You ever consider divorce? /S
  
  Same. My wife gets mad that her ad emails won't load on her phone. I'm like, hun, just delete them, we don't have money anyway.
  
  💢
- People actually CLICK on ads???? Genuinely never had even an iota of desire to do that. I forgot it was even an option.
  
  Boomers that aimlessly surf facebook. They're still trying to figure out what the use-cases are for the internet thingy they pay $60 a month for.
  
  I do when it is advertising something I hate. Publishers get dollars for clicks, pennies for impressions. That way I force someone I dislike to give money to someone I like.
  
  I use adnauseum on my computer so it blocks the ads, but also sends a request simulating a click to the ad network. Based on average CPM, I've cost advertisers like $300 so far.
  
  Is that a browser extension?
  
  Yep. The developer recommends to run it in stead of rather than alongside uBlock Origin, though, which is a dealbreaker for me 🤷
  
  Interesting. But wouldn't that still decrease my privacy? Advertisers still won't know which ads I'm interested in, but they will know what sites I visit and can still build a profile from that data.
  
  Some people care more about fucking advertisers than privacy, as long as they don't have to suffer through the ads themselves. But yeah, blocking is more private than fake clicking.
- I got a lot of complaints from family, too. Especially because I block Meta. I just let them removed and I tell them things like "those ads are broken because of malware" which isn't entirely untrue.
- but this means that she would see the ads but not being able to click? I don't get it. They should had just disappeared, no? Or was she complaining that she wasn't seeing the ads?
  
  The ads still appear in the facebook feed but clicking them results in a “this site could not be found” or similar error, is how I understood it to work. I know the PiHole basically makes it so the routes from “whateveradwebsite.com” end up not resolving to an IP address. I’m not sure how FB is serving them; so the text/image content might be coming from an FB server and the link is just an ad URL with a bunch of tracking info on it.
  
  yeah you're right actually. I always use it combined with a local browser adblock and didn't think of that
- I know it’s rare, but there have been times I intentionally clicked on an ad - if it genuinely seemed like a unique or useful product I had some interest in.
  I imagine the fake-social-post type of ads are worth blocking though since it’s based in dishonesty and deception.
  
  I block ads on all my devices, but I assume they're scams by default when I do see them.
  
  Some shops I only used once still send me their written newsletters and I don't mind checking them if they do them entertaining, or about some niche products, even if I don't consider buying them at all. I miss well-designed full-page print ads in magazines, or just those with a catchy imagery\wording. Now these all feel like a vintage, premium product, akin to vinyl records, if compared to what garbage web serves today. Such a weird thing to be nostalgic about, but I hope oldschool advertisers\smm persons feel it on their end too.
- "I'll try to fix it. Now that I put it in taking it down brings the Internet down. Sorry, let me think how to fix this"
  And literally put up excuses until they get used to it. I'm sorry but they made you do stuff you didn't enjoy for your own good while telling white lies, it's time for payback.
- If you want to click on ads just install a mobile game
- How could she even see the Ad? I don't use facebook btw.
  
  The ads on Facebook (and many other sites) are served from the same site as the actual content. So if you try to block ads with pihole it will stop the website from loading any posts.
- Hi, butting in here, hope you don't mind a question - is there a place to go with basic I instructions on how I can set this up too? Thanks!
  
  Yeah for sure. I’m no expert by any means, but I can talk through what I did.
  I used the instructions directly from their code repository: https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/#one-step-automated-install (I used option 1, the automated install). I did this on an old RPi2B that I had laying around.
  After I set up the pi, I got its MAC address. I used this to set a static IP address in my router settings. This is important to make sure the pi keeps the same IP at all times. Then, also in my router settings, I set the DNS server to be the pi’s static IP address.
  After all that was done, I just plugged the pi into a dedicated power supply and rebooted the router.
  
  https://lukesingham.com/pi-hole/
- My dad's the same way.
- Would url cleaner help in this case?

194 comments