This is a screenshot from an NPR article discussing the rising use of ad blockers. The page is 12 megabytes in size in a stock web browser. The same article with basic ad blocking turned on is 1 megabyte.
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I honestly can’t believe the author would go so far as to suggest using pi-hole when mv3 becomes forced (ubo will likely continue to work, but Google will be able to collect filter stats, so still best to avoid). Not only is a pi-hole a project, that only works when you’re at home (or you’re learning more about networking, and it will likely never work right on mobile data), that costs money to set up, DNS blockers are what Google wants you to use, because they serve their ads through the same domains as their content, and if pi-hole ever becomes popular everyone else will too.
The obvious alternative that is much better in all aspects, respects your privacy, and and is literally free, works everywhere and is not vulnerable to same-domain hosting: firefox. Literally just use firefox. Install ubo, even on mobile, and you’re done. Any qualms you might have about switching to firefox are either false (firefox is now faster than chrome in lighthouse tests) or Google brainwashing you into thinking your workflows are completely static when you could easily adapt to not having the exact extension you so desperately “need” to work. You don’t need it, because you worked fine before the extension, and honestly I’d be surprised if you can’t find a ff extension that does the same semantic thing for you.
Suggesting to continue using chrome but with a worse adblocker is nonsense and the author has drank the kool-aid.
Any qualms you might have about switching to firefox are either false (firefox is now faster than chrome in lighthouse tests) or Google brainwashing you into thinking your workflows are completely static when you could easily adapt to not having the exact extension you so desperately “need” to work
Honestly, why are people so uppity, angry even, about other people’s browser choices around here? Heaven forbid someone dare use something other than Firefox. We must be brainwashed!
The most important aspect of a browser for me currently, besides of course all the stuff both browsers do great already (I love Firefox and would love to swap back to it, I used it for years before Chrome came out), is integrating my Google account at the application level.
I want all my Google integrations to carry across, and all my search history, maps history, location history and so on to be seamless and detailed across all my devices, and there’s just no other browser that does that right now.
I wish I could do that in Firefox. Does it mean Google gets to look at what websites I go on? Sure. But their knowing that I browse amateur radio forums and GitHub doesn’t bother me - it probably helps refine my search results, even. Handy!
Google is evil and capitalist and they don’t have my best interests at heart, but I use android, I’m in their ecosystem and I mostly like it, I like all the Google apps, I like how they work and how much easier it makes my life vs not using them, or using lots of random disparate apps made by many different people that don’t have a shared design ethos, or the same level of quality across the board, and now my data is spread across many places instead of just one, etc.
Sure, I could get an off grid Tomtom GPS for example, but Google maps works so much better, is so much more accurate and less fiddly and time consuming, and does so much more.
I do love firefox though, it rocks. I just wish people would dial back the soapboxing about how everyone should be using it and if you’re not then you’re making some sort of grave awful stupid mistake because you’re a brainwashed idiot… it’s getting tiring :-(
You are literally the type of person I was talking about. Please reevaluate your position.
It would be interesting to correlate this page bloat to carbon emissions. The amount of electricity needed to send 200KB versus 3MB is miniscule, but if you multiply it by a billion people viewing a thousand pages a day it could add up fast.
Not to mention this locks out a lot of the web to developing nations with limited bandwidth
The real issue there is that electricity should be carbon-free with nuclear and renewable power.
Jeff’s solution is pihole not firefox? I thought ad blockers did way more complex and subtle stuff than the DNS approach of blocking entire domains?
I’d go with “firefox with uBlock Origin” + “pi hole or similar”.
Yeah, I use pihole + local in browser on all my devices where I can.
5 years later… changes have only been for the worse…
This is a very good suggestion. And if you do not want to do this, you could always use something like Control-D, just by switching your router’s DNS to it. https://controld.com/free-dns
