3 ms·

There is a small cottage industry of privacy focused products that do some section of the heavy lifting (adguard comes to mind, and there is a paid DNS service

There is a small cottage industry of privacy focused products that do some section of the heavy lifting (adguard comes to mind, and there is a paid DNS service that essentially does what pihole does with easier configuration as well) but no "one stop shop" as of yet, and I think in part its because - the market isn't conditioned to want these services - awareness of their benefits aren't obvious - Its still within the realm of the technically literate to understand its purpose

Mathnerd314 3y ago
Particularly that last point. I've tried setting up blocking for my friends / relatives, just a simple uBO setup in the browser - their main concern is what happens when it breaks the page or doesn't work. I've explained to them how they can disable it for that page or report a filter list issue, but they just don't seem to "get it" and usually end up uninstalling the blocker. I think to get mainstream a service would have to provide technical support on the grandma-can-barely-click-the-mouse level. I do think though that people can understand the benefits of adblocking. For example the digital video recorders that cut ads out of broadcasts, that was/is a successful product. And my friends complain about the ads - it is just that the blockers are not at a level where they can use them.
autoexec 3y ago
Ad-blocking/privacy as a service has a problem in that it's only a matter of time before your data (DNS queries for example) will be logged and sold to advertisers. Enshittification is inevitable, the cloud can't be trusted, and neither can the state, so the people who want privacy focused products will naturally want to self-host instead of creating an account that can track them before handing over all their data to one or more third parties with nothing but a non-binding privacy policy promise by some for profit company not to look at or sell any of it.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  Isn't DNS over HTTPS and other DNS encryption schemes suppose to protect against this type of tracking since you can't introspect anything in transit?
  - autoexec 3y ago
    If it's a DNS based privacy service (such as the mentioned "DNS service that essentially does what pihole does with easier configuration") they'll need to see your DNS traffic to know when to block the traffic. If you use services like Google or Cloudflare to provide DNS over HTTPS they've got access to your traffic and you're vulnerable to being tracked by them anyway.

Mathnerd314 3y ago

Particularly that last point. I've tried setting up blocking for my friends / relatives, just a simple uBO setup in the browser - their main concern is what happens when it breaks the page or doesn't work. I've explained to them how they can disable it for that page or report a filter list issue, but they just don't seem to "get it" and usually end up uninstalling the blocker. I think to get mainstream a service would have to provide technical support on the grandma-can-barely-click-the-mouse level. I do think though that people can understand the benefits of adblocking. For example the digital video recorders that cut ads out of broadcasts, that was/is a successful product. And my friends complain about the ads - it is just that the blockers are not at a level where they can use them.

autoexec 3y ago

Ad-blocking/privacy as a service has a problem in that it's only a matter of time before your data (DNS queries for example) will be logged and sold to advertisers. Enshittification is inevitable, the cloud can't be trusted, and neither can the state, so the people who want privacy focused products will naturally want to self-host instead of creating an account that can track them before handing over all their data to one or more third parties with nothing but a non-binding privacy policy promise by some for profit company not to look at or sell any of it.

no_wizard 3y ago
Isn't DNS over HTTPS and other DNS encryption schemes suppose to protect against this type of tracking since you can't introspect anything in transit?
- autoexec 3y ago
  If it's a DNS based privacy service (such as the mentioned "DNS service that essentially does what pihole does with easier configuration") they'll need to see your DNS traffic to know when to block the traffic. If you use services like Google or Cloudflare to provide DNS over HTTPS they've got access to your traffic and you're vulnerable to being tracked by them anyway.