Tag Archive for ‘Content Blockers’

I’ve had installing and testing Pi-hole on my to do list for a few months and finally had a chance to give it a try tonight. I used this guide from iMore to get it running on our Mac Mini home server using Docker. I won’t be able to use it on our whole network, though, unfortunately.

I work from home with WordPress.com users and don’t want to use any ad blocking on my work machine, which will cause pages to look different on my end compared to what the user sees. At the moment, I have it setup on each of our Apple TVs, but in practice that doesn’t appear to block as many ads as I was hoping for — I tested with YouTube and Crackle, both displayed ads as per usual.

So I guess I’ll have to think a bit more about what exactly I’ll be using Pi-hole for and where I can integrate it into my setup.

➝ Source: imore.com

Jacob Kastrenakes, writing for The Verge:

Facebook’s plan to stop ad blockers has already been foiled. Adblock Plus has found a way to strip ads from Facebook, even when they’re served up in Facebook’s new ad blocker-proof format. Anyone with a fully updated version of Adblock Plus should once again be able to avoid ads in Facebook’s sidebar and News Feed.

Let the game of cat and mouse begin.

If you’re looking for a Mac content blocker, Ben Brooks suggests Ghostery and I couldn’t agree more.

Dan Primack, writing for Fortune:

A Fortune investigation shows that an iPhone enabled with Crystal — the top paid iOS app right now – is unable to fully render the e-commerce sites of many major retailers, including Walmart, Sears and Lululemon.

I’ve noticed similar problems on a handful of websites while browsing with content blockers enabled. Luckily it’s easy enough to reload the webpage without them — tap and hold the reload button and choose “Reload Without Content Blockers” — but it’s unlikely that the average user is going to know how to do that. How many potential customers are just going to leave and purchase elsewhere when they encounter problems like this because “the site doesn’t work?”

I guess online publishers aren’t the only ones who could be hurt by ad blockers.

Marco Arment:

Today, Apple made the decision for me, in a way that I didn’t even think was possible, and I’m actually happy — or at least, as happy as someone can be who just made a lot of money on a roller coaster of surprise, guilt, and stress, then lost it all suddenly in a giant, unexpected reset that actually resolves things pretty well.

Dave Mark is compiling a list of iOS 9 content blockers. I suggest checking it again in a week or two to see if any innovative and interesting ones show up.