There is nothing special about the Troubled Engineer's setup. 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. On Android, there is also NewPipe that offers "free Youtube Premium" (play in the background and download).<p>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.
My additional recommendations:<p>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).<p>2. AdAway on Android allows network-level blocking without resorting to a VPN (it's based on /etc/hosts). Though it does require root.
I am so reliant on YouTube Premium that I forget people even see ads on there. I watch an awful lot of long form interviews, lectures, podcasts -- most downloaded for offline. It's the easiest $8/month of all my subscriptions.
I’m the opposite. I’ve almost entirely given up on YouTube because I know that, even if I pay, I’m subjected to the consequences of ads.<p>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...<p>You can’t win in that platform.
You can't completely escape advertising while still participating in modern society but there's still a huge difference between free and premium YouTube in this regard.<p>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.<p>[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?
A recent feature for paid subscribers is the ability to skip frequently skipped sections which de facto skips in-video ads.
SponsorBlock and DeArrow are your friends
If you have a VPN, pretend you're in Moldova to enjoy ad-free, free YouTube.
SponsorBlock. I don’t see in video ads, not self ads and no sponsoring.
Firefox + uBlock Origin + Sponsor Block (includes "skip to highlight feature) + 'Improve youtube!' = no ads, no clickbait thumbnails, and no friction plus tons of optimizations.<p>iOS Safari + uBlock Origin + Vinagre extension = no ads, free background play.
I'm the same as you: long form and essays. I use freetube for Linux and Tubular for android, so no ads at all. I follow only youtubers who have a patreon and I support all of them (10 or so and one via kofi).
Removing ads and downloading videos are both available for free.
Wait a minute, why is mine $13.99 a month?<p>But agree, totally worth it if you at all value your time.
If you don't care about music or background play, and all you want is to eliminate ads, YouTube Premium Lite is $8/month.<p><a href="https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/15968883" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/15968883</a>
Interesting - hadn't heard of this option before. But I see that "Premium Lite" is not available in NZ... <a href="https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6307365?sjid=9275264344830860962-NC#zippy=%2Cpremium-lite-memberships-available-locations" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6307365?sjid=92752...</a>
I still can't believe that they paywalled the ability for the video to keep playing when the screen is turned off.<p>Probably a business decision that's made them a lot of money, well done.<p>Thank goodness for ReVanced.
>I still can't believe that they paywalled the ability for the video to keep playing when the screen is turned off.<p>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<p>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.<p>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
It's only for music where background play isn't supported for free.
> Wait a minute, why is mine $13.99 a month?<p>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.
Damn, I just looked up how long I have been paying using <a href="https://payments.google.com/" rel="nofollow">https://payments.google.com/</a> . Looks like I've been paying for youtube music since October 2014. These grandfathered people must be really really early. :]
They also have a family plan that costs a bit more I think.
I'm using Firefox + uBlock Origin, and this combo blocks ads perfectly for me. Anyone else using the same setup?
I use this combination on my personal laptop, but on my work machine I need to use Edge browser. For some reason, Edge still supports the uBlock Origin extension, so I get to avoid ads on my work laptop too.
> For some reason, Edge still supports the uBlock Origin extension<p>They still accept updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions/developer-guide/manifest-v3" rel="nofollow">https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions/...</a>
Yes, with Sponsorblock to skip in-video ads.
You probably should use AdNausem instead. It uses same uBlock under the hood, but it clicks all the ads.
Site owners make money and advertisers loose them. Additionally, if enough of us switch from uBlock to AdNausem (which are nearly identical), it would be the end of surveillances capitalism. It just wouldn't be profitable anymore.
+ ghostery + pihole.<p>I like his suggestion of VPN via cloud. I might set up something with wireguard or tailscale for that.<p>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?
Ghostery has a history of slightly problematic behaviour if you’re using it for privacy purposes.
The article links to iSponsorBlockTV: <a href="https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV</a><p>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.
>+ ghostery + pihole.<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.
sideload SmartTube. I use it along with youtube premium to get a stellar experience.
what does ghostery do for you on top of ublock origin?
Look into Sponsor Block as well.
Perfect combo, where it can be used.
I prefer poisoning my ad profile instead of passively blocking with Ad Nauseum <a href="https://adnauseam.io/" rel="nofollow">https://adnauseam.io/</a> . It uses Ublock origin under the hood. I've got my click rate set to high but not 100%.
Ad Nauseum is snakeoil. Their FAQ states that they "click" on ads by sending a XHR request[1]. As you might imagine, this is easily detectable, and given how rampant ad fraud is, fake "clicks" like those are almost certainly filtered by every ad network. Otherwise anyone with a botnet would be able to easily make millions of fake clicks with a few lines of javascript.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnauseam-click-ads" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...</a>
Wasn't the whole idea to open links in hidden tabs?
If it didn't work, Google wouldn't have banned it well ahead of them banning the working version of uBlock Origin.
Firefox + uBlock origin and i'm blessed with peaceful browsing experience.
Brave + NextDNS/ControlD is what I've found the be the ultimate ad blocking combo for the entire household(TVs, phones, computers), when balancing cost/effort.<p>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.
librewolf with ublock<p>firefox sold out on their users quit using them
<a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/FObvkFtr2ZU" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/shorts/FObvkFtr2ZU</a>
My Personal Ad/Block Management Strategy<p>Here is the block management setup I personally use regularly:<p>Desktop<p>* DNS blocking is active via NextDNS.<p>* I use Ungoogled Chromium as my primary browser.<p>* I use the uBlock ad-blocking extension along with its filters.<p>* The SponsorBlock extension is very useful for skipping sponsored segments within YouTube videos.<p>Mobile<p>* DNS blocking is active via NextDNS.<p>* To block ads in Safari, I activate ad-blocking in Safari through the free Firefox Focus app.<p>* I use the YouTube app via AltStore. It is a nice feature that it also includes the SponsorBlock extension.<p>If you'd like, I can publish a comprehensive ad-blocking guide on the Ahmet Çadırcı <a href="https://ahmetcadirci.com/" rel="nofollow">https://ahmetcadirci.com/</a> page.
There's nothing too unexpected in this post. Firefox + uBlock is pretty much standard now. It's been impossible to recommend Chrome ever since Google moved to manifest v3, which can only be described as deliberate anti-privacy enshittification. The recaptcha solver is starting to become niche, since cloudflare has really taken over (for better or worse).<p>I would add one more useful tool though: A user-agent switcher[1]. There are still some websites that insist you <i>must</i> 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.<p>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.<p>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?<p>[1]<a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/user-agent-string-switcher/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/user-agent-st...</a>
I have an Apple TV and I’ve been running iSponsorBlockTV [1] on my Synology box for a while. It auto-skips the sponsored segments and with Youtube premium, it gives me a clean, ad-free setup.<p>I can’t stand those in-video intros or sponsored promos, where I’m suddenly pitched a random VPN or productivity app.<p>[1]. <a href="https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV</a>
semi-related: after installing pi-hole and using it on my wifi, Netflix on the TV stopped working, ads on (some, big) polish websites were still present. Uninstalled 10 minutes later. Had similar experience last time I tried (years ago) - pihole gave me problems using work-related pages or whatnot. Is there nothing better? E.g. ublock origin but for dns?
TIL. Need to figure out how to redirect insta over a vpn then
Did same thing, not everything works, but there are (almost) no ads for me.
I would add Smarttube with Sponsorblock extension for android TV to the list. They had hickup recently with melitious hack and malware in their code but now seems to recovered.
And for all ads-trolls: "Oh, you are stealing income from creators." If I consider their work worth it I pay them (semi)directly.
I don't use adblock, I just close a website if its ads interrupt my browsing experience.
Well, ads shown, goal reached.
How do you remember not to click all the links that have them in the future?
Brave+ControlD, for me. I'm not interested in YouTube, so don't care about that part.
HN title optimizer has once again stripped the “How” from the beginning of the title.
> Ads support content creators and free services. If you value specific creators or platforms, consider supporting them directly through memberships or donations rather than relying solely on ad blocking.<p>Sometimes this isn’t available.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
> 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.<p>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.<p>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.
> 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.<p>For me an ad is an ad, in graphical or text form and I very much didn't ask for it.<p>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.<p>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.<p>> 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.<p>I mean, yes I <i>could</i> 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.<p>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.
Daring Fireball has been doing the one ad a week in RSS with no tracking for over a decade. The sponsors must think they work.<p>You could always buy a Stratechery subscription - which is great by the way. Some of that money goes to Gruber for the Dithering podcast.<p>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.<p>His podcast schedule is erratic.
> Daring Fireball has been doing the one ad a week in RSS with no tracking for over a decade. The sponsors must think they work.<p>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?)<p>> He claims to never look at his server logs and got rid of Google Analytics ages ago.<p>That is a good start, hopefully he should consider switching to a community supported model rather than rely on advertisers.
You can also pay for Dithering without stratechery.
Try to buy an ad slot for an ad blocker?<p>(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?)
This seems like a lot of work. I just point my router at AdGuard DNS and that takes care of all ads on every device on my network. No filter lists, nothing to host, completely free.<p>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.
Note that using Helium, you can use a Chromium based browser and still enjoy uBlock Origin properly.
Anyone have a method for blocking ads in RSS?<p>I regularly read <a href="https://daringfireball.com" rel="nofollow">https://daringfireball.com</a> and sick of their ads showing up in my RSS feed.<p>It is bad enough and distracting that ads show up on the site (thankfully Firefox and ublock origin does the job already) but on RSS blocking ads is impossible.
If you use a web RSS reader, then ublock origin will generally work on the ads in the feed.<p>I mostly just avoid subscribing to any feeds with ads. (Or pay for the ad-free feeds.)
I use Inoreader and filter out the ads via keywords. Works for repetitive content too…
I actually wonder if the whole anti-ad movement is moving in the wrong direction. And I’m right there with the author running a pi-hole, but I wonder if it would be better to have an extension that will click <i>all</i> of the ads in a way that is invisible to the user. Make all those companies burn thru their budgets for no gain.
You’re in luck: <a href="https://adnauseam.io/" rel="nofollow">https://adnauseam.io/</a>
see: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46188039">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46188039</a>
It probably is filtered by now, yes. No harm in trying, though, and it puts some pressure on ad networks at least.
Oh awesome, thanks for linking.
You'd have to, like, spawn a background browser or profile or something to capture the click to prevent tracking or even zero-click exploits.
>or even zero-click exploits.<p>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.
For sure, it would be technically challenging. Especially if the click requires use of a secure cookie. But it doesn’t have to be perfect to be effective, either, at least at first.
Big players like YouTube can create detection for that behavior. So it would only harm small sites that are trying to run ads to get by.
That assumes two things: 1. That such a tool couldn’t be limited to the big players (it could) and 2. That “small sites trying to run ads to get by,” aren’t part of the problem. I can understand why someone would believe this, but I believe the web would be a better place without them. These sites are all pretty much designed (poorly) around their ads, which limits their usefulness. Have you tried looking up recipes online? A bread recipe with 5 ingredients is 30 pages long!!!
I don’t think it harms the publishers. If the ad network (well, Google) does detect it, I think they just won’t pay for the “fraudulent”¹ clicks? (And in best case scenario, you’re actually <i>helping</i> small sites!)<p>Advertisers on the other hand will pay for nothing, yes. Some of them are small businesses. I wonder if there’s a way to click on big corp ads only...<p>Edit: ¹ – added scare quotes, see <a href="https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnauseams-clicking-differ-from-click-fraud" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...</a>
basically, ublock origin on PC, tends to work well, I don't really see ads except for when the content creator plugs a product directly in their content.
To block adds in android apps, there is DNS66 available on f-droid. <a href="https://f-droid.org/packages/org.jak_linux.dns66/" rel="nofollow">https://f-droid.org/packages/org.jak_linux.dns66/</a>
On Safari I use Wipr and Sponsorblock. Afterwards I use web version of everything instead of apps, including youtube.
Whoa, if you use a VPN eventually instagram will stop showing you ads?!?! Is that really true? Has anyone else found this?
AI content is become as insidious as ads were. Is there software to block AI content?
Also make sure to block ads on your mobile as well
<a href="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/predator-spyware-uses-new-infection-vector-for-zero-click-attacks/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/predator-spyw...</a>
NextDNS is sufficient on its own. $20 for a year of no ads (or smut if you want to block that too).
Funny story on porn blockers. Back when I attended college, the college I attended blocked porn sites at the DNS level. It was pretty good at its job, but I did notice one false positive: I was trying to access the website for the Extremely Reliable Operating System (whose URL at the time was eros-os.org, though that URL no longer works). The porn blocker blocked my access attempt; I had to click on the "email the sysadmins" link and send them an email saying "Hey, can you add this site to the DNS whitelist? Despite having "eros" in the URL it's got nothing at all to do with porn." They whitelisted it and I had no more false-positives the rest of my college career. But I still laugh about that one, more than two decades later.
What is the point of such restrictions? DNS blacklists can be trivially bypassed by changing the browser's or the operating system's DNS resolver. For example, and somewhat insidiously, Firefox defaults to using Cloudflare AFAIK.
For the iOS folks, is the Mullvad DNS config better or worse than the Ublock Origin Safari Extension? The former seems a bit more invasive
AdGuard Extra (beta) browser extension blocks twitch adds very reliable.
I use uBlock on desktop and laptop with Dan host files. AdGuard DNS on Android, or Firefox Mobile with uBlock extension. Even Edge on mobile has extension support now.
Anyone use SmartTube? Or is it something I should remove?
Some applications tunnel in their ads over non-ad domains, making them unlockable.<p>For example IMDb. And proxying over mitmproxy actually breaks the whole app, because they do certificate pinning.
I think Space Weather started to do it too. I was fine with small ads ad the bottom but suddenly its two huge (full screen), unskippable ads.<p>AdGuard's log shows nondescript servers and suddenly a lot of IPv6 connections and then ads :(
I view this as a sliding scale these days. Nothing is so important that if the ads are a nuisance I won't just stop using it entirely.
Desktop and mobile: Firefox and uBlock Origin.<p>Mobile: Blockada to prevent apps from reaching their ad servers. NewPipe.<p>Desktop: Freetube.<p>uBO has the bonus to have an element picker that I use to remove the empty areas where ads would show. I do it for sites that I use often. I also remove some useless menus and headers. I particularly hate sticky ones.
For Twitch on Android I am using Twire, it works great mainly for replays
DNS-based ad blocking works great if everyone is okay with the degraded experience that can come with that (if you're using aggressive hosts lists). You're making concessions if not.<p>The VPN-based "solution" is basically as realistic as disabling JavaScript. Extremely limiting.
1Blocker on iOS and macOS has been good. It also blocks in-app trackers.
realistically though, most YouTube content is an ad for something ;)
> but I've heard good things about NextDNS<p>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.<p>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.
What support did you need? Sounds like it's only a matter of checking what's blocked in the logs and adding some exceptions to the allow list?<p>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'm a happy NextDNS user. I'm not sure what kind of support you need that wouldn't be solved by asking AI and/or some community online. They have wonderful integrations, instructions, documentation and features. Blocking ads is not even primary reason I use them - the parental control and safety features are the main reason for me.
One should not neglect the power of the /etc/hosts file. I use one from <a href="https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/" rel="nofollow">https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/</a>. I don’t bother with browser extensions; I never see ads.
Brave browser helps a lot. I can't use some browsers due to the ad clutter. Some can handle the ads, some can't.
Anyone have a way of blocking twitter adds?<p>I’ve just been watching streams after they’re done so that I can get rid of them that way<p>Edit: nvm author mentions vpns as a solution
It's a shame the web has become so predatory to neophytes.
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how much time you have to spend online to do all this sh*t to block ads…??!
Amortized 0.<p>I spend more time telling others about uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock and ReVanced.
You must be very tolerant to ads.