I always found it strange that the most popular ad blocking method is one that is internal to and relies on the browser itself. Companies can change their brow

I always found it strange that the most popular ad blocking method is one that is internal to and relies on the browser itself. Companies can change their browsers anytime and for whatever reasons they want. As far as I can tell, users have little control over the organizations/companies that write browsers, not to mention that the most popular browsers are written by companies that benefit from sale of the online ads. This make the ad-blocking browser extension brittle. I also find it peculiar that the preferred approach to ad blocking has been blacklisting rather than whitelisting. In other words, users prefer to let a third party pick a list of servers to block. Everything else is allowed by default. Besides issues of delegation and having to trust a third a party, this of course is a very large, constantly growing list that includes many, many servers most users will never, ever encounter in their entire lifetime online. Though it may be unnoticeable for now, an enormous block list is inefficient. The alternative, which I have found easier to manage, is for users to determine what servers they need to access, "whitelist" them (e.g. by placing them in localhost authoritative DNS or /etc/hosts), and then block everything else by default. This is similar to a firewall ruleset. The number of servers any user will use in their lifetime is relatively small compared to the total number of ad server addresses in existence now or in the future. It is manageable. If you are a non-technical Chrome user, and you have no idea of what servers you are actually using repeatedly day-to-day, there is a built-in feature that can help you make your own "whitelist". Here's the URL: chrome://site-engagement