I cannot understand how some people are living with this. It is unbearable

  • @[email protected]
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    23011 months ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      17011 months ago

      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.

      • Name is Optional
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        2011 months ago

        Spot on. I was incredulous when they told me they each sent their cheek swabs in to the “free to be me”, the population tracking group 🌊 👁️a. Now I understand that that same company’s entire database is on the dark 🕸️.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      People actually CLICK on ads??? Genuinely never had even an iota of desire to do that. I forgot it was even an option.

      • @[email protected]
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        2611 months ago

        Boomers that aimlessly surf facebook. They’re still trying to figure out what the use-cases are for the internet thingy they pay $60 a month for.

      • @[email protected]
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        1611 months ago

        I do when it is advertising something I hate. Publishers get dollars for clicks, pennies for impressions. That way I force someone I dislike to give money to someone I like.

        • Jamie
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          2811 months ago

          I use adnauseum on my computer so it blocks the ads, but also sends a request simulating a click to the ad network. Based on average CPM, I’ve cost advertisers like $300 so far.

            • @[email protected]
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              1011 months ago

              Yep. The developer recommends to run it in stead of rather than alongside uBlock Origin, though, which is a dealbreaker for me 🤷

              • @[email protected]
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                1111 months ago

                That’s because it’s built on top of uBlock. If you click on the extension it even has the uBlock logo. It’s literally just uBlock except it clicks on ads in the background. It even tells you how much projected money you cost them for clicking their shitty ads. And the websites gets paid. Only the advertisers get shafted.

                Honestly I’m astonished it’s not more popular.

                • @[email protected]
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                  1111 months ago

                  So you’re saying that it does literally everything uBlock does AND fucks over advertisers?

                  If there’s an option to shaft specific sites run by people you dislike too, I’m in! 😄

            • @[email protected]
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              811 months ago

              Yes but Google banned them from the extension store so if you’re using Chromium you need to sideload it.

          • @[email protected]
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            611 months ago

            Interesting. But wouldn’t that still decrease my privacy? Advertisers still won’t know which ads I’m interested in, but they will know what sites I visit and can still build a profile from that data.

            • Fushuan [he/him]
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              411 months ago

              Some people care more about fucking advertisers than privacy, as long as they don’t have to suffer through the ads themselves. But yeah, blocking is more private than fake clicking.

    • Boozilla
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      2411 months ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      1911 months ago

      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?

      • @[email protected]
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        1611 months ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]OP
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          1311 months ago

          yeah you’re right actually. I always use it combined with a local browser adblock and didn’t think of that

      • @[email protected]
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        911 months ago

        PiHole just blocks the DNS. Facebook serves ads from their own DNS so it’s not possible to block them in that way. Same with YouTube, I believe.

        But if they click it, it usually ports you through a tracker link so they can track your clicks, and that’s easy enough to block.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 months ago

          No. Google search results still show sponsored links. But if you then click on them it breaks. Same thing for FB. The links are served from Facebook.Com and so they are not flagged as ads.

          So she is likely getting exactly what she searched for and then it breaks after clicking on it

    • @[email protected]
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      1211 months ago

      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.

      • Jamie
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        1011 months ago

        I block ads on all my devices, but I assume they’re scams by default when I do see them.

      • andrew_bidlaw
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        811 months ago

        Some shops I only used once still send me their written newsletters and I don’t mind checking them if they do them entertaining, or about some niche products, even if I don’t consider buying them at all. I miss well-designed full-page print ads in magazines, or just those with a catchy imagery\wording. Now these all feel like a vintage, premium product, akin to vinyl records, if compared to what garbage web serves today. Such a weird thing to be nostalgic about, but I hope oldschool advertisers\smm persons feel it on their end too.

        • Flax
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          411 months ago

          I get Royal Mint and Royal Mail news leaflets. I just like looking at pictures of stamps and coins lmao

    • Fushuan [he/him]
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      1011 months ago

      “I’ll try to fix it. Now that I put it in taking it down brings the Internet down. Sorry, let me think how to fix this”

      And literally put up excuses until they get used to it. I’m sorry but they made you do stuff you didn’t enjoy for your own good while telling white lies, it’s time for payback.

    • Flax
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      811 months ago

      Great aunt was talking about all of these anti-aging pills that she was going to get

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        The ads on Facebook (and many other sites) are served from the same site as the actual content. So if you try to block ads with pihole it will stop the website from loading any posts.

    • Orionza
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      511 months ago

      Hi, butting in here, hope you don’t mind a question - is there a place to go with basic I instructions on how I can set this up too? Thanks!

      • @[email protected]
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        411 months ago

        Yeah for sure. I’m no expert by any means, but I can talk through what I did.

        I used the instructions directly from their code repository: https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/#one-step-automated-install (I used option 1, the automated install). I did this on an old RPi2B that I had laying around.

        After I set up the pi, I got its MAC address. I used this to set a static IP address in my router settings. This is important to make sure the pi keeps the same IP at all times. Then, also in my router settings, I set the DNS server to be the pi’s static IP address.

        After all that was done, I just plugged the pi into a dedicated power supply and rebooted the router.