im getting sick and tired of seing ads and commercials everywhere on the internets. i understand they are TRYING to sell their stuff to me and everyone else but the amount is just sickening. its a business. but the way it has become and it might get worse. specially on social media its every second post coming as suggestions and other weird fake news and crazy stories. are you aware of this?
ads are everywhere now. its scary. if i think about buying a synth i gets ads of that synth. and i did not even buy it. also.. the excess advertisement on youtube..
Switch off and go on vacation—or read only the absolute essentials! Set an alarm and tell yourself that, say, an hour or so is enough. When the alarm goes off, turn off the device and head to the park! Is your brain a garbage dump where every piece of written nonsense and every advertisement gets dumped?
Ads? social media? what are those? idk, I stay away from social media and use a private dns coupled with ublock origin on all my devices. Only time I see ads is when I'm taking the train, but closing my eyes or just looking the other way is enough to avoid them.
I use a combo of 3 browser add-ons: 1) Ghostery, 2) uBlock Origin, and 3) AdBlock. I hardly see any ads. When I use another computer, a friend's for instance, I'm shocked at how many ads there are. But the internet is quite tolerable with ad-blocking add-ons.
When you open a webpage, your browser (and sometimes embedded scripts running inside it) makes outbound requests to multiple servers to fetch the page content. That includes the site itself plus whatever third-party resources the page is designed to load like ads, trackers, analytics, etc. A system level firewall like Little Snitch on MacOS doesn’t “see ads arriving.” It sees outbound connection attempts from processes on your machine and can block those connections before they complete. If a request to an ad server is denied, the content is never downloaded at all. That’s different from browser adblockers, which typically allow the request to happen and then filter or not display the results. I think maybe PortMaster is close to it for Windows. Maybe someone will know a better one. There are a lot more blocklists available in Little Snitch than this screenshot shows but you will get the idea. They are also free to subscribe to so you get updates... Last edited: May 27, 2026 at 8:52 AM
Run AdGuard or similar in a Docker container. If you have a raspberry pi or low-power pc, you can use it as your DNS Server to filter out most of the junk. You can also get a Unifi Gateway Max to replace your router and apply telemtry and ad blocking easily. I also pay for youtube premium because it makes a HUGE difference...and they usually serve ads on the same port as the video stream, which bypasses most tools these days. Sometimes just hearing "garbage" is unhealthy, even if you think you can tune it out. I refuse to watch some ad about "We found this little known method...." while I'm trying to find helpful resources quickly.
Those of us old enough might get a kick of this uBlock Origin Lite fork: They Live Adblocker I'm gonna keep this around for those few times I actually the Chrome installation. Like most of us I'm already used to not seeing too many ads and it's always a slight shock to see the web unfiltered. This extension kind of hammers the point home. It's great.
That is why I'm not on socials any more. It is a lost fight. After adblockers could not distinguish between posts and ads any more it was time for me to say good bye. So one user less, making the price for one ad go down, making Mark put mor ads in there. That is what we in the business call malicious cycle. Sooner or later 'no users at all', '100% ads'
Mostly down to your browsing behaviour. I don't necessarily mean what you click on. Browsing times (unusual sleep patterns, unemployment, no regular schedule, ..), hesitating, lingering when scrolling over "crazy" content will nudge your suggestions ever further towards mentally ill content. Reality check: Open YouTube in an anonymous browser window. Makes me laugh out loud every time. I'm so out of touch https://myaccount.google.com/ - takes like 20 minutes to unlink, disable, cancel, anonymise, stop/pause recording, wipe everything on every page. It's not much, but it's ... something. Do the same for your phone, all apps & phone settings. On desktop, use a hosts file + adblocking DNS provider/self hosted adblocking DNS server + browser adblock (AdGuard, uBlock Origin). On phone, install an on-device VPN with hosts file functionality + DNS + browser w/ adblock capability. Afterwards, wipe your browsers' cookies and start from scratch. I do this every couple years because I'm sure I accidentally clicked the wrong thing on some page at some point. Ignore cookie banners if you see them, only click if required to restore the site's functionality. Consider getting a cookie banner autoclicker extension for your browser. I have no idea how people deal with ads - mentally. 2x pre-roll, 1x mid-roll, 2x post-roll on video content?!
If you don't like to use uBlock Origin ad-blocker, use easylist from github and put it into your hosts file. This way you don't need an ad-blocker but you have to remember to update it from time to time. I'd like to be able to block these ad-sites at the router level, though. It depends on the router, of course. Maybe get a better one or use a little PI computer as a router and DNS server... hmmm
Yeah, I'm thinking about a Pi-hole for quite some time now. It's just another day or two wasted until everything is the way I want it. Atm I do both, the hosts file entries from easylist plus ublock in firefox. Works very well for me. Just socials where ads are camouflaged as posts are a problem. but I solved that by not showing up.
Pi-hole is comparable in goal, but Portmaster is closer to a Little Snitch style tool, while Pi-hole is more like a shared DNS filter for everything on your network. It could very well be worth the effort. But something with github or other- hosted blocklists gets there by community collected data that someone is probably "curating" into their lists. So a desktop version of it makes for someone who doesn't want the solution for the entire network. There are other reasons to setup a dns sinkhole, but easy application level control is the same reason why desktop firewalls are usually more useful (by being easier and faster) than a network hardware firewall, for regular, or individual users.
U block Origin gets rid of all of it til here. No ads, youtube included. Finger crossed. Yet, there are still places where you just can't avoid them. Radio shows ! There's a radio show I like but it is riddled with ads holes ! ^^ And they're quite long. EDit : after thought, how effing hard it is to see tv ads again when you haven't seen any for years
This is my Anti-AD-Shit chain for all Chrome Browsers and DNS service, maybe you find it useful NextDNS (privacy all ADblock Lists) + uBlock origin development + uBlock Lite uBlock Custom Filters if needed for specific sites (right click in browser for block element) I use 4 different Browsers for different purpose: Brave for AI split Gemini , Perplexity Opera for Videos or Gaming Vivaldi anything else Firefox (with uBlock) for email accounts i would say my Internet surfing is 90-95% Adfree , if i get an ad i remove it by right clicking on it then "Block Element" To Switch DNS servers i use DNSJumper 2.3 https://www.sordum.org/7952/dns-jumper-v2-3/
