Well, yes, if you're on a server then polluting your hosts like that probably isn't good. I'm just a regular home user and more of a system programmer than a we

Well, yes, if you're on a server then polluting your hosts like that probably isn't good. I'm just a regular home user and more of a system programmer than a web developer, so for me it's fine. It's also a rat race of sorts, as is inherent with blacklisting over whitelisting. But I don't exclusively use this approach either, I spoof user agents, referers, X-Forwarded-For headers and have Privacy Badger running on Firefox, as well. I just use hosts as an alternative to ABP in particular, due to the lower baggage.