Posted by StrLght 7 days ago
https://github.com/time4tea-net/py-hole/
You can run it on your openwrt router - see readme. Its just a python script that updates a file that dnsmasq uses. No funny business, you are in charge of everything.
Disclaimer: author of said script.
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.
Sometimes this isn’t available.
I would like to support Daring Fireball (a publication I read a lot) but the only way is to buy an ad slot for $11K which seems like a scam to both the viewer and the advertiser.
The advertiser isn’t getting any ROAS (since we are blocking the ads) and since the ads are annoying and repetitive, the viewers would just go elsewhere.
I wish more creators would have a “remove ads” tier or an alternative membership tier as a different way to support their content rather than ads.
AFAIK, Daring Fireball never runs these tracking ad networks with tons of flashing and annoying ads. It does one tiny graphical ad on the web page and has a weekly sponsor post, both of which can be easily ignored. The graphical ad does not even appear in the full RSS feed.
To support Daring Fireball, you can use the links to the weekly sponsor if that product is of interest to you. Once or twice in a year or so, there may be posts with Amazon affiliate links (with full disclosure), which you can use if you want. Other than that, you can share the posts and have more people read it. That in turn could potentially help with the above mentioned aspects.
For me an ad is an ad, in graphical or text form and I very much didn't ask for it.
I feel it is psychologically trying to convince me to buy or make me be aware about something I don't want or need and very much not want this ruin my flow of consuming content.
On his links Daring Fireball IS tracking, they all do tracking in the URL of the sponsored post otherwise it doesn't make sense for the sponsor to pay $11K (a week!) for the spot.
> It does one tiny graphical ad on the web page and has a weekly sponsor post, both of which can be easily ignored. The graphical ad does not even appear in the full RSS feed.
I mean, yes I could ignore them, but would massively prefer if these ads didn't exist at all, I have no interest in anything that is being advertised there. Luckily Ublock Origin blocks Daring Fireball ads by default and not sure if his advertisers would be happy about this, but if I spend $11K a week on ads to find most people block them by default, I don't think I would bother wasting another ad slot.
To be fair maybe it is a sign that instead of ads, a membership, patreon or whatever would be much more sustainable, freeing, less scammy and more profitable than running junk ads that people don't want.
You could always buy a Stratechery subscription - which is great by the way. Some of that money goes to Gruber for the Dithering podcast.
But Gruber is a famously self described bad business person for a content creator. He never tries to be an early reviewer when press embargoes are over for hardware. He claims to never look at his server logs and got rid of Google Analytics ages ago.
His podcast schedule is erratic.
I have no interest for anything sold in ads in their RSS and I assume they are tracking in the links that you click too (otherwise why spend all $11K for no results?)
> He claims to never look at his server logs and got rid of Google Analytics ages ago.
That is a good start, hopefully he should consider switching to a community supported model rather than rely on advertisers.
Then their content can just go away tbh. This isn't some big ethical dilemma either.
Either find a way to make content that doesn't rely on ads, or stop making content. If the whole ad-funded internet disappeared tomorrow morning, would it really matter?
(A less tongue-in-cheek option would be to email John, say that you’re blocking ads, and ask if you can donate instead. If enough people ask he might put up a form?)
If Daring Fireball had this membership subscription model and not selling highly and questionably expensive ad slots I would definitely subscribe, even if the price would be $20 a month or $200 a year. (I would argue he can make more than he charges for ads does already given this model.)
But $11K (a week!) is outrageous to support Daring Fireball.
Here is the block management setup I personally use regularly:
Desktop
* DNS blocking is active via NextDNS.
* I use Ungoogled Chromium as my primary browser.
* I use the uBlock ad-blocking extension along with its filters.
* The SponsorBlock extension is very useful for skipping sponsored segments within YouTube videos.
Mobile
* DNS blocking is active via NextDNS.
* To block ads in Safari, I activate ad-blocking in Safari through the free Firefox Focus app.
* I use the YouTube app via AltStore. It is a nice feature that it also includes the SponsorBlock extension.
If you'd like, I can publish a comprehensive ad-blocking guide on the Ahmet Çadırcı https://ahmetcadirci.com/ page.
I've bee trying these and alternatives in FF via LibRedirect for years. I keep on wondering if it's just me but I have to babysit the setup and cycle through instances every so often.