I installed a network level adblocker (pi-hole)

Submitted by devtesla in technology

This means it blocks ads and trackers not just in web browsers but in any software in my house, including mobile apps and smart tvs. Check out this blank ad on my roku! Incredibly satisfying.

The software I'm using to do this is called Pi-Hole and I'm running it on a Raspberry Pi. You set up your network to run all of their DNS through the pi-hole and it's then able to run that against a block list. It's not perfect at blocking ads (I'm still running browser ad blockers, basically to do things that aren't just removing the ads themselves), but it's cool in a philosophical way of never letting anything happen on my network that I can't check up on. Cause yea, I now get logs of everything going on in my network. There's a lot of interesting, messy stuff in what it blocks!

Anyway it was fun, I'll update if anything goes wrong (lol) thank u for reading my blog

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Comments

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skookin wrote

im a technodummy can i run this with windows?

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devtesla OP wrote

Nah it's only on Linux. You could probably get it to work but it would require that you know what you were doing

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twovests wrote

the only PI HOLE i need is the one i use... to eat pi....

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Dogmantra wrote

yeah I love this concept and I am thinking of doing it myself.

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neku wrote

weird that it wouldnt work on youtube ads for you when ime browser adblockers work fine blocking yt ads

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devtesla OP wrote (edited )

I mean that's because they put a lot of effort in, youtube does a lot to thwart ad blockers. At the network level there's some limitations which mean they can't tell difference between an ad from youtube and an actual video.

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