I also use DNS based filtering since I run my own Unbound instance, but it isn't really necessary with the above setup. It may be useful if you must absolutely have a smart TV or other such appliances, but considering that they have cameras and microphones, I will never connect such a device to the Internet anyway.
Thanks for the corroboration. I once got downvoted when I mentioned this
IME, the SoundCloud mode is less fragile
It would be a win win for everyone.
(people commenting about how a bad design choice in ACorp's flagship product AProduct led to the tragic death of ten labradoodle puppies.)
AD: Buy two AProduct, get one free — limited time offer! Woof! ACorp — your pup will love it!Sent from my iPhone
Heck I have ran modern firefox on tinycore on my 32 bit 1 gig ram mini dell laptop lol
That's good
"It's mostly a matter of using open platforms. With Firefox on the desktop and Fennec on Android (Graphene), you get full uBlock Origin support and therefore never see any ads anywhere, even on Youtube."
The "smartphone" is certainly not an "open platform"
For many years, including before Graphene even existed, if trying to use Firefox for Android without Graphene, either zero or only a small subset of ("curated") extensions were "supported" when not "logged in"
One could get "support" for all extensions by using Nightly. No need to "log in"
The situation may have changed recently but allowing it to persist for so many years like that is a good reminder of Mozilla's priorities and allegiances
Not to mention the ridiculous shibboleth required to change these settings away from the privacy-hostile defaults
"It may be useful if you must absolutely have a smart TV or other such appliances, but considering that they have cameras and microphones, I will never connect such a device to the Internet anyway."
Sounds intriguing. Any good articles on smart TVs with cameras or "other such appliances" with microphones conducting surveillance on purchasers
If there really are such TVs and appliances, then it makes sense to exercise control over whether they can connect to the internet and if so, what DNS data they can use
This cannot be done with uBlock Origin or NewPipe. Something else is needed, e.g., gateway/router firewall, DNS, forward proxy, etc.
The companies that distribute so-called "modern" web browsers are hyperfocused on data collection (Mozilla's telemetry alone is insane), surveillance and ad services as a core "business model". The software has been designed to access cameras and microphones. Mozilla receives millions of US dollars in payment from Google for user search data. The terms of this agreement selling users out are not public
The browser vendor can decide to stop "supporting" extensions such as "uBlock Origin" at any time, as we have seen with Google's Chrome, a project started by former Mozilla employees. The "smartphone" OS vendor can decide to stop allowing "apps" such as "NewPipe" at any time. As it happens the browser vendor, the OS vendor and the ad services vendor are all the same company. Mozilla is its business partner, Chrome was started by former Mozilla employees
1. It is reasonable to use what works until it doesn't, and to have alternatives when something stops working
I use multiple layers of defence against ads, call it an ad avoidance "stack" if that term appeals to you. uMatrix and uBlock Origin are only one layer and only work with popular browsers. Port forwarding on Android is another layer. DNS is another layer. Forward proxy is another layer. Gateway firewall is another layer. I control DNS for reasons other than ads but DNS is remarkably effective at preventing ads and tracking
In the long run, I would bet that DNS-based methods of avoiding data collection, surveillance and ads will remain viable the longest. DNS is older than the web, "smartphone apps" and the practice of using the web or "app stores" as data collection, surveillance and ad delivery platforms
This practice is enabled by and dependent on "popular web browsers" like Firefox and mobile OS like Android, controlled by corporations whose "business model" is support for onllne advertising, e.g., Mozilla Corporation sending search query data to Google LLC, who also collects data for advertising purposes via Android, in return for for millions of US dollars. This makes using Firefox or an Android fork a strange choice as a method for avoiding advertising.^1 These are the software projects, effectively controlled by trillion dollar corporations focused on data collection, surveillance and ad services, through which ads are delivered. These projects are a vehicle for online adverttising. DNS software projects,^2 at least the "good" ones, are not
2. NB. I'm not thinking of dnsmasq/PiHole. I'm not suggesting it's "bad
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?
This comment is sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends
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.
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...
iOS Safari + uBlock Origin + Vinagre extension = no ads, free background play.
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.
(I still use uBlock of course)
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.
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?
But agree, totally worth it if you at all value your time.
Probably a business decision that's made them a lot of money, well done.
Thank goodness for ReVanced.
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
Firefox mobile, m.youtube.com, "Video Background Play Fix" browser extension.
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).
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.
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?
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.
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...
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...
the freetube app has both of those extensions built in. you just have to enable them in the settings
1. You don't need a separate browser extension for blocking cookie notices, Ublock Origin can do that just fine. You just need to enable the cookie notice filters in the settings (they are disabled by default).
2. AdAway on Android allows network-level blocking without resorting to a VPN (it's based on /etc/hosts). Though it does require root.
Private industry invented these dialogs in the hope that you'll be too tired to deny anything.
However, I have found that using NextDNS as a private DNS server works and doesn't cause any problems like this.
Don't forget to give apps that fuck with you in the name of security 1-star reviews!
This works the same way as NextDNS on Android but is less customizeable.
I didn't know it existed. FWIW, it's under Settings > Filter lists > Cookie notices.
[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.
You can get something like NextDNS for $18/year, which is probably less than what you pay for the power required to serve Pihole or Adguard Home, and you get enterprise level infrastructure for it, along with redundancy, and it works "everywhere".
Yes, you (probably) need a caching resolver at home, and that could be Pihole or Adguard, but going through hoops to setup Wireguard and have all DNS resolve over that, just to reach pihole at home, that sounds like overkill.
Anyway, In case it's not obvious, NextDNS is how i roll, using a "stupid" caching DNS resolver at home.
If not, DNS4EU (https://www.joindns4.eu/) is free for personal use, and has no quota, and offers various endpoints for malware protection, adblocking, and other stuff.
Maybe that's what you ask: NextDNS has:
- 50+ blocklists ready to use (including Easylist, Adguard, HaGeZi, Energized). You enable the ones you wish to use
- Many privacy options you can enable, including Disguised Third-Party Trackers (TIP), CNAME flattening
- Many security options you can enable, including Cryptojacking, Google Safe Browsing, IDN Homograph attacks, Typosquatting, dynamic hostnames
- Ready-to-use application-based and category-based allowing/blocking
- Custom blocking options such as allowlists, denylists, blocking certain TLDs, custom rewrites
It also has:
- Option to "Bypass Age Verification"
- Option to keep logs (in EU, Swiss or US) or not
- Free to use up to 300,000 queries / month
- Multiple profiles for different clients
- Supports virtually all browsers and all OS, desktop and mobile, either via its official app, configuration profile (iOS), or IPv4, IPv6, DNS-over-TLS/QUIC, DNS-over-HTTPS
> Can you setup custom filters on the free solution?
No, but as the other person replying said, there's a huge range of built in filters and I've never felt any need to customize them.
EDIT: just spent a few minutes looking over the DNS4EU website. I can't see any configuration options at all. They just have 4 basic levels (standard, child protection, ad block, or unfiltered). So it appears less useful than NextDNS. Where did you see the ability to add custom filters?
The biggest hassle was making sure the world can't hit it (though it's not UDP 53 so it's not an amplification vector anyway) but only local NZ IPs, which I did with GeoFilterig on my router.
That's why i setup a local caching resolver. RTT to NextDNS in Denmark is ~10ms, and RTT to my local caching resolver is 1-2ms, so yes, it's quicker, but my caching resolver is essentially just what my router offers (Unifi), with NextDNS as upstream (DNS over TLS).
"I just have an always-on AdGuardHome"
I've self hosted for 20 years, i honestly can't be bothered anymore. The power consumption of self hosted hardware alone costs more than the equivalent, better, service in the cloud. NextDNS is $18/year, thats 51 kWh at €0.35/kWh. 5W for a year is 43.8 kWh, which is roughly what a Raspberry Pi 3/4 uses, so for just €2.5/year i can have enterprise hardware and massive redundancy with zero operational risk compared to running on a single RPi at home.
Yes, i'm aware you can run better hardware with more services, but that really only makes the problem worse, both in terms of power consumption, but also in terms of TCO with hardware costs, as well as cybersecurity.
For most people, running in the cloud is cheaper than self hosting. If you have less than 5-6TB of data, the cloud will also be cheaper. After that the math starts going in the favor of self hosting, but year for year the amount of data you can store in the cloud cheaper than at home keeps growing. Yes, the cloud prices increase, but so does the price of harddrives and other hardware.
"but only local NZ IPs, which I did with GeoFilterig on my router."
I know geofiltering is usually security by obscurity, but it does keep the worst bots away, and i used to use it as well (when i self hosted). It cut down dramatically on the various "drive by shootings" by random bots constantly pinging various ports.
I also wrote here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46191045
It's basically setup so that i have my internal machines registered in NextDNS as rewrites, and Wireguard is setup to route anything for my internal RFC-1918 network, ie. 192.168.1.0/24, so when NextDNS returns 192.168.1.5 for "host.mydomain.com", it will go over wireguard.
The advantage is that i can keep the tunnel up 24/7, and it has very little impact on battery life as normal requests simply go over the internet.
Host AdGuard on a VPS (same one as the VPN?). Then you can use it from everywhere.
For everybody else, $18/year vs $5/month for a VPS should be an easy choice.
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...
I can’t stand those in-video intros or sponsored promos, where I’m suddenly pitched a random VPN or productivity app.
PiHole is popular but IMO not worth the effort when the above are so cheap. There are free ad blocking DNS servers, but they aren't customizable.
Or do you not import any lists into nexdns?
On my personal computer, I don't remember ever running into this, but if I did I'd just override resolv.conf temporarily.
You can also just whitelist the domain(s) too via oneclick actions in both systems, which was my initial caveat that you can't do that using public adblocking DNS.