What's your favorite way to block ads in web browsers?

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hinduclient

hinduclient

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  • #1
    Every now and then I revisit the best way to block ads. What's your favorite software to block ads on browsers?

    I use Firefox for personal web stuff, Chrome for biz and Vivaldi for special interest searching and browsing. I know Chrome is gonna try to discourage adblockers but they're not the only browser - I may even have to try MS Edge again.
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #3
    In Chrome I use AdBlock Plus, ScriptSafe and uBlock Origin, to get as much protection as possible. I'm often confused when people talk about site layouts or how hard they are to read because of ads, until I go and load it in Firefox and see that it's virtually unusable. I use that with no blocking of any kind except for "strict" tracking protection, for when I want to make certain a site works as intended without any broken scripts or because they code it to not load unless the ads display and I don't want to whitelist them. Sometimes there are sites that act like they're working okay and you do something like filling in forms and then the submit button doesn't work because the function was blocked. I used Edge with no blocking before that but got tired of the bloat of non-web browser features that kept enabling themselves. I occasionally use it now for a site that doesn't like Firefox.

    I use the default ad-blocking in Brave for some other sites. It does break a site sometimes but is mostly effective.

    I think if Google gets really pushy about preventing adblockers from working, everybody else will at some point take that as a sign that it's okay for them to go ahead and do the same, whether Google pushes it into Chromium directly or not. Apple may or may not. Firefox may not follow along, but at this point it's almost irrelevant.
     
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    brendan_kearney

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  • #7
    i am mostly a linux user, so not sure how applicable my setup is for the windows side of the world. i run proxy infrastructure that consists of Squid (forward, caching proxy) and Privoxy (non-caching forward proxy that does pattern based ad blocking and could be used for an entry point to TOR, via SOCKS5). the browser talks to squid and squid talks to privoxy. ads are blocked based on URL patterns and logs are generated for the blocked URLs. i parse the logs looking for the blocked URLs and add those URLs to a DNS RPZ so that the offending URL does not resolve. the RPZ returns NXDOMAIN when a resolution request is received for a blocked domain.

    this is a bit of belt and suspenders layered approach, but once i spend the computational effort to identify the ad URL, i dont want to spend that same level of effort again. thats why i setup the RPZ. DNS is a lot faster and computationally easier to block with.
     
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    dcook32p

    dcook32p

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  • #10
    It should be noted for those of you mentioning Microsoft Edge that they intend to implement Manifest V3, as well. That means come June, your ad blockers won't work as anticipated in Chrome or Edge (though I can't speak for other Chromium-based browsers).

    I use AdGuard for Windows (not the browser plug-in), and it works great. I can use any browser I want, even the browser in the Steam overlay, and it blocks the ads for me.
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #14
    singebob said:
    i have been toying with the idea of pihole at home
    Click to expand...
    I consider network-level filters like this, but then this is a 100% block for everything on a domain, and wouldn't be good for my usage. You can't use one browser without ad-blocking, or allow scripts from certain sites in a certain browser but also block the ads, etc. Good for devices where you can't otherwise do any blocking but I wouldn't want it for my PCs. And it works at the DNS level, so if you do need to unblock, it's extra work, not just a couple of clicks in that browser. And if you have a mobile device, it works while you're at home, but when you go out, you're dependent on filtering on that device alone, so I'd just rather always have that other stuff be working at the level I need and not having the blocking level change when I go out. (I use AdGuard's DNS server on my phone and that's it, and it works well, but also causes some problems on occasion. Never anything important enough for me to want to unblock it, though, just because nothing I use it for is that important to me.)
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #15
    Commie64 said:
    Fwiw, I don't remember tweaking any settings. Works fine for me.
    Click to expand...
    uBlock Origin is even easier to use than AdBlock Plus. It works really well without any settings being changed, no need to add custom filter lists, create manual custom filters, or anything. All I ever need to do with it is add a site to the whitelist. (ScriptSafe is just as easy.)
     
    SportivoA

    SportivoA

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  • #16
    Firefox and uBlock Origin on everything right now. Running outdated malware-only hosts file on my laptop and a malware + ads hosts file on the gaming computer due to the "innovation" in invasive adware desktop applications.

    Skoop said:
    Is there a tutorial somewhere for that one, or am I just overthinking it?
    Click to expand...
    Install and go! If you feel like it, add one of the cosmetic filtering lists that will catch things like GDPR cookie warnings. Filtering things yourself is quite easy, too. The element picker tool works well for nagging pop-ups and their associated wash-out effect, specific image objects you don't want, and more.
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #18
    Skoop said:
    Can you expand upon that or gives an example, please?
    Click to expand...
    It's meant for things like whole sections of a site, containers and the like. If you see a section of the page showing ads or something annoying, click the "dropper" icon in UBO and move it around until that section is highlighted, and when you click, it tries to remove the code for that section from the page. Sometimes it doesn't work because the exact code gets changed with each page refresh or new ad, or becomes too aggressive. Try to narrow in as specifically as possible first, and if that doesn't work, become less specific by moving away from the specific item to highlight a larger section. (Element zapper mode (the lightning bolt) can be used to do it temporarily.)

    github.com

    Element picker

    uBlock Origin - An efficient blocker for Chromium and Firefox. Fast and lean. - gorhill/uBlock
    github.com github.com
     
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    singebob

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  • #19
    Lord Evermore said:
    I consider network-level filters like this, but then this is a 100% block for everything on a domain, and wouldn't be good for my usage. You can't use one browser without ad-blocking, or allow scripts from certain sites in a certain browser but also block the ads, etc. Good for devices where you can't otherwise do any blocking but I wouldn't want it for my PCs. And it works at the DNS level, so if you do need to unblock, it's extra work, not just a couple of clicks in that browser. And if you have a mobile device, it works while you're at home, but when you go out, you're dependent on filtering on that device alone, so I'd just rather always have that other stuff be working at the level I need and not having the blocking level change when I go out. (I use AdGuard's DNS server on my phone and that's it, and it works well, but also causes some problems on occasion. Never anything important enough for me to want to unblock it, though, just because nothing I use it for is that important to me.)
    Click to expand...
    It'd be fine for me as I have multiple separate networks (i.e. not vlans but entirely physically separate networks with separate lines) and i'd be looking to stick it on the home general network where e.g., the majority of my iPads that I inanely watch YT and twitch on are
     
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    Oddabe19

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  • #22
    uBlock Origin on browsers; PiHole for mobile. Mullvad VPN, sometimes, mostly when I want streaming from CBC or BBC of <event> and local TV stations suck at carrying it (i.e. Olympics).

    I used to use extensions such as Disable WebRTC; LocalCDN; and Privacy Badger, but uBlock Origin (with a couple of additional filters selected) has made them basically obsolete at this point.

    The biggest change I made (that took a bit of getting adjusted to) was browsing in Private Mode, and only signing into things I need to at the time. It solved so many privacy and ad-related issues for me. Youtube doesn't track history for example.
     
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    Paladin

    Paladin

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  • #24
    hinduclient said:
    I was unfamiliar with uBlock Origin. At first blush - it's TERRIFIC. I've used adblock plus in the past. uBlock Origin is my only adblocker in Chrome and I like it a lot!

    Will Google be able or likely to totally nuke it it along with all extensions in June?
    Click to expand...
    They tried already and the pushback was so strong the put it off and changed their plans a bit. I read that somewhere around 40% of internet users are now using an adblock feature of some kind so if they do succeed in breaking that kind of functionality in a meaningful way, they will have a lot of upset people.

    I think we are at the point where people will just stop using some services/sites/apps if the ads keep getting worse. It happens over time with a sort of fatigue that builds up but it happens for sure. The attention level drops and people just find something else to look at.

    I figure, if Google really messes up the ability to do ad blocking via a plugin, browser makers outside of Chrome will simply integrate it even more deeply in the browser itself.

    I would not mind if companies started working in a much more polite manner, asking something like, 'If you enjoyed this content, would you mind watching an ad to help us continue providing it?' and even options to provide feedback on the ads to help them make even more productive advertising and more revenue. As things are now, ads I see in most content serve to push me away from the products they are trying to sell unless they are particularly clever, entertaining, or unusually candid about the product in question. I would say that for me, about 5% or less of advertising is actually a positive for the product it is pushing. The rest makes me want to actively avoid the product. And services that add more advertising after the fact (like Amazon adding ads to the Prime paid video service) make me want to avoid or cancel their service as quickly as possible.
     
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    hinduclient

    hinduclient

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  • #25
    I'm OK with advertising - until the media gets greedy. Case in point are the broadcast networks and their local affiliates. Broadcast or linear TV contains just about 30% ads and non-programming elements like self-promotions. That's a whopping 20 minutes an hour. Well that worked when there were only 4 networks and they were indeed a monopoly under government license, but as I watch Netflix and even Amazon, their commercial load is closer to 4-5 minutes an hour as opposed to 20 minutes on the broadcasters. Broadcast ratings are now close to only 15% of their heyday. I can and do live with Netflix with ads. Back to browsers, the New York Times has a LOT of ads per article. Yet they're one of a very small number of existing news outlets. I'm still blocking their ads, and paying a monthly subscription.

    Sorry about the above ... it reads a bit like a rant about greedy media. Mea Culpa:judge:
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #26
    Paladin said:
    I think we are at the point where people will just stop using some services/sites/apps if the ads keep getting worse.
    Click to expand...
    When I'm using my phone with AdGuard DNS most of the usual ad-network ads are prevented from loading, but there are lots of sites that still show annoying auto-play video ads that randomly load when I've scrolled partway down the page already, causing the positioning to change or videos to pop up that I have to close. I figure if they can show me those despite DNS filtering, they can show me other ads that don't go out to third-party sites as well (or at least that AdGuard considers okay),. and I'm "paying" for the content by allowing the ads to load that don't put me at risk or make the site unusable (and I'm paying for the bandwidth and time to load that stuff). But now many of them are popping up "We see you're using an ad-blocker. Please whitelist us to continue reading." messages, and 1) I can't just disable it for the site, and 2) I can already barely read the site even with most ads blocked. It's on the verge of unusable when ads are displayed, so no, your content isn't worth enabling ads to read it. I might whitelist it if I'm interested enough to view it on my desktop, but that's probably not going to happen, and any sites like Ars that I think are worth supporting directly and in a way that is measurable to me and makes it more enjoyable for me, I pay to view without ads.
     
    Paladin

    Paladin

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  • #27
    hinduclient said:
    I'm OK with advertising - until the media gets greedy. Case in point are the broadcast networks and their local affiliates. Broadcast or linear TV contains just about 30% ads and non-programming elements like self-promotions. That's a whopping 20 minutes an hour. Well that worked when there were only 4 networks and they were indeed a monopoly under government license, but as I watch Netflix and even Amazon, their commercial load is closer to 4-5 minutes an hour as opposed to 20 minutes on the broadcasters. Broadcast ratings are now close to only 15% of their heyday. I can and do live with Netflix with ads. Back to browsers, the New York Times has a LOT of ads per article. Yet they're one of a very small number of existing news outlets. I'm still blocking their ads, and paying a monthly subscription.

    Sorry about the above ... it reads a bit like a rant about greedy media. Mea Culpa:judge:
    Click to expand...
    Yeah I agree. It's about the spiral they put themselves in. Someone got greedy at some point, not sure who, and decided to add just a little more advertising to content ratio and it pushed people to start ignoring the ads, finding ways to skip them, changing the channel, using ad blockers, or just pirating content. Yeah, there were always a fringe element of people who would avoid or evade advertising (or never paid shareware, etc.) from day 1, but the masses were ok with the exchange for a while. The balance was upset at some point and they can't easily go back because the glut of advertising (especially really bad/stupid/annoying advertising) made people start to reject it at a certain level so now the value of each ad impression is near worthless and they have to put in more and more to try to make it seem like it is working.
    Lord Evermore said:
    When I'm using my phone with AdGuard DNS most of the usual ad-network ads are prevented from loading, but there are lots of sites that still show annoying auto-play video ads that randomly load when I've scrolled partway down the page already, causing the positioning to change or videos to pop up that I have to close. I figure if they can show me those despite DNS filtering, they can show me other ads that don't go out to third-party sites as well (or at least that AdGuard considers okay),. and I'm "paying" for the content by allowing the ads to load that don't put me at risk or make the site unusable (and I'm paying for the bandwidth and time to load that stuff). But now many of them are popping up "We see you're using an ad-blocker. Please whitelist us to continue reading." messages, and 1) I can't just disable it for the site, and 2) I can already barely read the site even with most ads blocked. It's on the verge of unusable when ads are displayed, so no, your content isn't worth enabling ads to read it. I might whitelist it if I'm interested enough to view it on my desktop, but that's probably not going to happen, and any sites like Ars that I think are worth supporting directly and in a way that is measurable to me and makes it more enjoyable for me, I pay to view without ads.
    Click to expand...
    Yup, the moment I see any of those 'disable your adblocker to continue' or 'login/subscribe to continue reading', I'm out. I don't even think twice anymore. If the subject is interesting, I'll go find a different source rather than futz around trying to comply with people who think that annoying me is the best way to make me pay them money. I'll subscribe to services I really enjoy using, or I'll allow ads if that is the only option on something I really think is worth it as long as they are tolerable. Anything that immediately puts up a barrier like those, I'm out. The option in ublock to block specific content on a page usually works to block those auto play videos or similar annoying content on pages I go back to again. If it is a one time use of a page and it loads a video, sometimes I just back out and leave, other times I just look for the tiny x to close it. I'll at least do that. If it loads another video later, I'll do my best to never come back to that site again.
     
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    andygoblins

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  • #28
    koala said:
    I use NoScript on Firefox. It actually improves a ton of sites.

    However, many sites require enabling JS so that they are not a blank page. So it's a bit of a pain sometimes, but I kinda like it. Although I wouldn't recommend it to most.
    Click to expand...
    Yeah, I used this method for several years, but then everybody started developing web pages with trash like Angular, and nobody's web pages would load anymore, so I gave up.

    I feel like in the last few years people have backed away from bloated js frameworks. Have you noticed it getting any easier?
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #30
    koala said:
    But I do think that it truly improves some sites (e.g. the content loads, but besides losing ads in many cases, I suspect some webs just work better, or are lighter).
    Click to expand...
    Anything that prevents content, especially anything involving scripting, from loading that you're not interested in seeing will make the site seem "better" to you and faster, but if the blockers are removing things besides ads you're not getting the full site so whether it's actually better is subjective. So yes, it is faster because it's not having to make as many connections out to servers and process as many scripts or wait for things to download, and not using as much memory or CPU time, and it seems to load faster because the sites are designed to load the ad content and scripts first usually (it all gets loaded up at the top of the page code as a block rather than interspersed with the content) so without that the content starts to get processed right away. But it's nothing to do with there just being a smaller amount of code as in with ads it's a 1MB page and without ads it's only 750KB; actual text of code is nothing these days unless you're on a really slow machine and a really slow Internet connection. It's just what the code makes the browser have to do.
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #31
    andygoblins said:
    Have you noticed it getting any easier?
    Click to expand...
    It's a little better in some ways, worse in others, which may be down to improvements in the filtering tools and bad site design. They get smarter about what they remove so that the pages can still function well enough to be usable without having to fiddle with them, but there are still plenty of times that I have to manually allow (usually temporarily) multiple domains and subdomains to get a page to work, and there are a lot more pages now it seems to me that just load up blank compared to a couple of years ago. (ScriptSafe will never apply temporary permissions to all subdomains of a site, but permanently allowing a site does allow all subdomains. It's annoying especially with sites that have dozens of subdomains so that every time the page refreshes, a different one has been selected and I have to go allow it. But I stopped using NoScript years ago and I can't remember why now. I think maybe it didn't work in Chrome at the time that I switched from Pale Moon.)
     
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    koala

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  • #32
    Lord Evermore said:
    Anything that prevents content, especially anything involving scripting, from loading that you're not interested in seeing will make the site seem "better" to you and faster, but if the blockers are removing things besides ads you're not getting the full site so whether it's actually better is subjective. So yes, it is faster because it's not having to make as many connections out to servers and process as many scripts or wait for things to download, and not using as much memory or CPU time, and it seems to load faster because the sites are designed to load the ad content and scripts first usually (it all gets loaded up at the top of the page code as a block rather than interspersed with the content) so without that the content starts to get processed right away. But it's nothing to do with there just being a smaller amount of code as in with ads it's a 1MB page and without ads it's only 750KB; actual text of code is nothing these days unless you're on a really slow machine and a really slow Internet connection. It's just what the code makes the browser have to do.
    Click to expand...
    You'd be surprised.

    What was (maybe still is) the most popular Spanish newspaper, is 2mb with NoScript. I enabled scripts and it was still continuing to make requests after 7mb transfered. Over 500 requests, over multiple domains, compared to 100 requests with NoScript on. The big difference is of course that JS pegs my CPU, while with NoScript it doesn't- but over x3 data transferred, and x5 of number of requests (esp. when those are over multiple domains, which IIRC have an outsized impact on performance) is not a small thing either!

    The page loads in 5.5s with NoScript, With JS, Firefox considers it loaded in 36s.

    That's a bit of an extreme case, surely, but...
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #33
    koala said:
    You'd be surprised.

    What was (maybe still is) the most popular Spanish newspaper, is 2mb with NoScript. I enabled scripts and it was still continuing to make requests after 7mb transfered. Over 500 requests, over multiple domains, compared to 100 requests with NoScript on. The big difference is of course that JS pegs my CPU, while with NoScript it doesn't- but over x3 data transferred, and x5 of number of requests (esp. when those are over multiple domains, which IIRC have an outsized impact on performance) is not a small thing either!

    The page loads in 5.5s with NoScript, With JS, Firefox considers it loaded in 36s.

    That's a bit of an extreme case, surely, but...
    Click to expand...
    But when was the page usable? That's what matters. A site with dynamic content that repeatedly checks the server and transfers additional data, or does stuff in the background after loading the page to the point you can use it, is different from a site that simply pulls a bunch of stuff and then is done.

    CPU usage isn't really relevant (when the site loading is the only task being considered) unless the reason it's maxed out is because it's so limited that the threads are sitting and waiting for available CPU time, which can be an issue with systems that are devoted more toward core count than frequency and if the scripts are dependent on each other or can't be multithreaded well. It's better for the CPU to be getting used as much as possible than for it to be sitting idle because the browser/OS can't organize the threads to make maximal use of it.

    Multiple domains do have a large impact because the connections can't be reused and pipelining isn't as effective. After the first connection to a domain, additional requests can usually use the same session which reduces the amount of connection setup, which isn't a lot of raw data but can be a large amount of time due to the latency of all the steps adding up. If each script is from a different domain or subdomain, a whole new session has to be brought up for each one.
     
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    egdod

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  • #34
    On desktop: uBlock Origin in all browsers, it is 100% the gold standard for “set-and-forget” adblocking.
    On iOS and iPadOS: Wipr. It is highly effective (but not 100% perfect) at cleaning ads in Safari.

    However… I am honestly very concerned about the future of end-user adblocking. Manifest V3 in Chrome will destroy uBlock Origin in every major browser except Firefox. (It already does not exist for Safari.) I have been a Firefox user for many years, but I worry that Firefox will become the only option for consumers who want to run their browser extensions of choice. That makes Firefox a single point of failure - if something happens to Mozilla, and somehow Firefox ceases to be viable, that’s GG for adblocking.

    I really wish there were more options. It feels very much like Google is dominating the web browser market and forcing change on it to pad their advertising profits.
     
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    koala

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  • #35
    Actually, advertising is a choice by the publishers. If you don't want to run ads, or run ads without having Google in between, you absolutely can.

    It's just that my browser, unfortunately, does not default to running JS, and unluckily, most ads require JS to be seen. They could put animated gifs as banners, or text ads, and I would absolutely see them.

    (Of course, many publishers' ad-blocker-blocking mechanisms mistake NoScript for an ad-blocker now :(
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #36
    koala said:
    (Of course, many publishers' ad-blocker-blocking mechanisms mistake NoScript for an ad-blocker now
    Click to expand...
    That is the primary reason most people are using such tools, so, it makes sense from the advertisers' perspective. But yes, if they just did first-party stuff, basic ads, more people would see them (I might still block animated GIFs where possible since they can't seem to comprehend that insane motion going on along the side of the content makes the site unusable), but without all the JS stuff they can't track it all and run it all from an ad network and the like.
     
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