I cannot understand how some people are living with this. It is unbearable
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/
I recommend Airplane mode or getting this https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.kaajjo.libresudoku
get a foss one like SUD💜KU by TheSunCat on F-droid
I got a lot of complaints from family, too. Especially because I block Meta. I just let them bitch and I tell them things like “those ads are broken because of malware” which isn’t entirely untrue.
People actually CLICK on ads??? Genuinely never had even an iota of desire to do that. I forgot it was even an option.
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.
Even if I do want something advertised, I search for it in a new tab.
I have zero confidence about putting my credit card info into an advertised site.
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

You forgot the endless popups in the 2000s, which led to every browser integrating a popup blocker since then (and which often fail to stop actual malicious popups, no less)
Yes, in these years are a lot of pop ups, pop unders among other crap in some pages, but normally in most pages there was, apart of an ocassinal Banner not much else to justify an adblocker. But nowadays, between ads, clickbaits, cookie consent, adblocker detections and ant-adblocker, paywalls and other shit like these, you need a lot of extensions and scripts if you don’t want that the page fills your browser and HD with all kind of PUPs and unwanted scripts, apart of an ad/trackerblocker. It’s a cats and mouse game between companies which want to track and profile you with all kind of dirty tricks, and the user and devs continuos searching contrameasures to show them the middle finger.
deleted by creator
Only in apps from Google Play. Use InVizible Pro from F-Droid
Almost, but needs a few tweaks:
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Content should be border-to-border in the 2000 panel.
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Needs to be 3 lines of content in 2010 and only two lines of content in 2018.
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2018 needs a slide-over autoplay video on the bottom-left of the content space.
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reminds me of this scene from Idiocracy
As I recall, back in the late 90s there was a story in the Wall Street Journal about a man who loved receiving email spam. After a long day’s work he would go home and relax by looking through his email spam and order things.
Some people are just like that.
I don’t like spam but I do like a good scam email, especially if they’ve actually given it some plot.
I’m noticing some sites have become pretty unusable on mobile and I dunno what to do.
firefox for android + ublock origin and/or adguard-dns
@gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de I turned off my ad blocker by accident the other day and freaked out as the internet was unbearable.
I have it on good authority, if you type Google into Google, you can break the internet.
Wait a minute, the “Elders of the Internet”!? The Elders of the Internet know who I am!? You’ve got to let me have it!
I miss the IT Crowd and I am sad a show like it will never exist again.
I like your glasses.
I’m afraid they’re not for sale.
Dead.
Nice tie! Haha
(Quietly) Thanks.
Hahahhahahah
My former co-worker was daily driving his browser without any extensions and didn’t see anything wrong with it. I was watching him work one day and he was literally fighting a battle against the unholy pop-ups just tryna download some free fonts. What could’ve been done in 2 clicks took him minutes to do trying to close all the ads and tabs kept opening, videos kept playing. It was painful just to watch.
Linux
I have a friend who has their entire center 5th of their laptops screen just dead. they move windows around it to deal with it. I look at the way they’re using their computer and like I can barely reach it at their window size but it’s better than paying the $500 MacBook repair to them
I used this scene in a cybersecurity training session. I knew it got the point across, when our resident ad-clicker asked me for advice to avoid that situation.
E: she asked for advice for her home computer, as she didn’t understand that “at home and at work” meant “at home and at work with any device, not just work’s”
In Firefox, on Linux, behind a VPN and firewall with ad blocker, I run 5 different privacy/ad blocking extensions. I keep hearing about adds, but not seeing them.
Supposedly Youtube now is getting more agressive on this? I wouldn’t know. Haven’t seen a Youtube notice about it yet.
But really, I dream of the day youtube is replaced by something else. Fracture Youtube into 1,000 pieces and scatter it into the wind.
I remember some video. It was a joke about IT remoting in to fix a computer. The icons on the desktop were shaped like a dick. Then it guy took a screenshot and was like I’m definitely sending this to HR as he sorted them alphabetically. Then the other dude was like “no put it back, infant find anything!” And the line that sticks with me, the IT guy says “there’s no sort by dick”.
No, this is just macOS when you boot up.
And google thinks I’m willing to turn my adblocker off.















