I see it as an advantage for all the devices on your network. I mean, to block trackers from Windows computers, or Roku devices or android apps.
But as an adblocker - I feel like I'm missing something. It acts as a DNS server for your local network and blocks what's essentially a host file.
So how does it handle ads served through websockets?
How does it handle ads that come from the same domain as legitimate content (which is increasingly common)?
The complexity of rulesets by addons like ublock origin or PrivacyBadger seem to far surpass what PiHole is capable of.
I think PiHole has it's place on a network - obviously, but people have been promoting this thing like you can just get rid of your adblocker on your browser now.
People also downplay that this can be a pain in a home with a handful a streaming devices, each with a handful of apps. You end up whitelisting so much for those devices, you might as well whitelist the whole device just so the apps can work.
Your wife downloads a game on her phone, and you get that look like "ok, why isn't this working.. what did you do now?"
It just seems like a lot of effort for fairly imperfect results.
Sure installation is easy, but long term maintenance (the OS, the app, constantly whitelisting or troubleshooting when a new service or app breaks for someone in the house).
> Your wife downloads a game on her phone, and you get that look like "ok, why isn't this working.. what did you do now?"
THISSSSSS. The only thing stopping me from using Pi-hole at home are my family members and the inevitable "this isn't working!?!?" rant and then I need to figure out how and what to whitelist. No thanks. I have ad blockers on the kids' PC and when something doesn't work, it's one click to temporarily turn it (browser extension) off.
I've been running it for months now and so far none of my family has come back with any 'major' issues. The only ones, which I could whitelist are when they use something like google shopping that has affiliate links and they're blocked.
>The only ones, which I could whitelist are when they use something like google shopping that has affiliate links and they're blocked.
If you have impatient shoppers in your household, the blocked affiliate(s) might be a benign issue at first, but when you miss out on a buying opportunity and then an algorithm prices it higher (while you are conducting a 'whitelisting' exercise) - things can escalate very quickly..
It's not much effort. You basically write an image to an SD card, put it into a pi and you're up and running. Although it doesn't block everything that ubo does, it does a darn good job and it's also effective for devices where ubo isn't an option. It updates the list on its own. I occasionally update it when I happen to log in to check something and I notice the software is out of date.
I don't think it's a situation where you can ditch your ad blocker if you are dead set on never seeing an ad. It may be good enough for most people though. Personally, I still run ad blockers on my devices. Other people in the household do not.
I seldom have to whitelist anything. I may not have whitelisted anything at all. I have blacklisted a few extra domains - things like analytics requests for IoT devices. I don't recall a time that something didn't work and I had to fiddle with the pi-hole to fix it. It's been very low maintenance and very effective in my experience.
It's a layer of defense, to be used with other layers. It should not be used as the sole solution. I don't use PiHole but I use a similar manual setup using dnsmasq, but also employ browser-based adblocking.
Your fourth sentence is what strikes me as really important. All this discussion about adblockers will not work if Google develops technologies to embed their ads directly inside content providers. It's going to be a race to see if ad blockers and the reliant technologies are faster than Google.
But as an adblocker - I feel like I'm missing something. It acts as a DNS server for your local network and blocks what's essentially a host file.
So how does it handle ads served through websockets?
How does it handle ads that come from the same domain as legitimate content (which is increasingly common)?
The complexity of rulesets by addons like ublock origin or PrivacyBadger seem to far surpass what PiHole is capable of.
I think PiHole has it's place on a network - obviously, but people have been promoting this thing like you can just get rid of your adblocker on your browser now.
People also downplay that this can be a pain in a home with a handful a streaming devices, each with a handful of apps. You end up whitelisting so much for those devices, you might as well whitelist the whole device just so the apps can work.
Your wife downloads a game on her phone, and you get that look like "ok, why isn't this working.. what did you do now?"
It just seems like a lot of effort for fairly imperfect results.
Sure installation is easy, but long term maintenance (the OS, the app, constantly whitelisting or troubleshooting when a new service or app breaks for someone in the house).