Blocking Ads in 2023

[supermonkeylove]

Firefox with ETP at strict (disable for a site if it breaks) and uBlock Origin (default mode) or Adguard for desktop (if you want to block ads in other apps). You can also add SponsorBlock.

 

[Doppelmonger]

Really strange considering Brave is supposed to be working with Manifest V2 and support those kind of extensions. Never had that kind of error.

We are also getting that message after installing adnauseaum on Brave desktop. I like firefox but brave gives me less headaches on the websites I use, and even tho I also like vivaldi, I am reluctant to return to it

 

[NickGer]

We are also getting that message after installing adnauseaum on Brave desktop.

Strange. I also did install this extension on desktop Brave and it isn't giving me any errors like that.

 

[Samuel Hyde]

I currently use Brave and will continue to use Brave. I have not and will never move over to the trannies at Mozilla. The devs at Brave have openly talked about the Manifest v3 issue. Basically they can't support Manifest v2 while also supporting the Manifest v3 codebase and also maintain extension compatibility with Chrome. But Brave's adbocking doesn't use Manifest anything so it doesn't matter anyway for adblocking since its native. IIRC Braves adblock is actually a process running on a different thread but that could be wrong/may have changed from the last time I checked.

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

 

[MuuMuu Bunnylips]

There are tons of excellent suggestions in this thread, though I'll have to vehemently disagree with Pappy Nool over using Brave (Ad Nauseam even more so). Brave is more than adequate if you're looking for a drop-in Chrome replacement, but it's still a Chromium fork at the end of the day.

Everything's a Chromium fork.

Even Edge is Chromium-based.

 

[Fuck It We'll Do It Live]

Get your fucking Pale Moon autist filth out of here. I miss XUL just like everyone else, but you niggers who cling to Pale Moon could've been giving SeaMonkey love all this time.

I honestly can't replace Brave with Pale Moon entirely (largely because I have too many useful Chromium-based extensions installed on the former), but I would see it more as the only real alternative to the monopoly of compliance with Chromium-based browsers, simply because Mozilla relies too much on money from Google and it therefore likely has to follow the latter's lead in matters such as Manifest V3. Pale Moon, however, has long split from following any changes made by Mozilla, thanks to its standalone Goanna engine. So in the interest of answering's OP question of how we can all block ads in 2023 despite Manifest V3, Pale Moon with ηMatrix is an excellent way to block ads (and other unwanted things) while surfing the net and there isn't a thing Google can do to bring Pale Moon to heel.

However, it's good to know Brave's built-in adblock ("Shields") is independent of any changes to Manifest:

But Brave's adbocking doesn't use Manifest anything so it doesn't matter anyway for adblocking since its native.

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

 

[Dread First]

Disclaimer: I detest the retards at Mozilla, but as someone who's been using Firefox for well over a decade and refuses to use Chromium or its derivatives beyond the obligatory Chromium-only website, you managed to evoke a desire I haven't felt in years:

The desire to and may Allah have mercy upon me for uttering the following phrase... defend Mozilla.

I can't replace Brave with Pale Moon entirely (because I have too many useful Chromium extensions installed on the former), but I would see it more as the only real alternative to the monopoly of Chromium browsers.

Okay, let's dial back the hyperbole and really look at Pale Moon. It's a fork of Firefox that retains XUL functionality (among other now-deprecated features). We all know this, but you know what people often forget? The goddamn SeaMonkey Project is still alive and making new releases. You know what the best part about SeaMonkey is? It NEVER dropped XUL extension support.

With that in mind, SeaMonkey at this point in time is more of a relic of years past than a sincerely useful browser. I understand why no one uses it now, but it really must be said: every autistic retard who forked Firefox because of Mozilla's bad business decisions could've just as easily... migrated over to SeaMonkey. The project's essentially in "maintenance mode" because no one ever bothers to come their way to liven things up. Everyone who could've done that just moves over to yet another subpar Firefox fork like Waterfox or Pale Moon.

You must also remember that Pale Moon is an independent open source project relying on conventional funding sources like grants and donations. This project is actively maintaining an outdated Gecko rendering engine, and consistently falls further and further behind on web standards that mainline Firefox actually does support. Your outdated engine and your forked extensions also contribute massively to your fingerprint. There are hundreds of data points that internet companies can mine on the client side, and Pale Moon's outdated codebase provides ample attack surface for malware to exploit.

When I say "Firefox is the only real alternative to Chromium," I specifically refer to mainline Firefox. The reason why is that it's the only non-Blink/WebKit browser that's remained in continuous development and actively keeps track of current web standards. Internet Explorer, Edge Legacy, Opera!Presto, they're all dead. If I do see a non-Blink/WebKit browser, it's more than likely a shitty Firefox fork with an inconsistent release schedule and ran by equally autistic developers themselves (i.e. GNU IceCat, Waterfox, Pale Moon). If I'm still gonna be relying on what is ultimately "Firefox, but from the past" then I might as well just keep up with Firefox current.

Mozilla relies too much on revenue from the Google search deal. Therefore, it has to follow the latter's lead in matters such as Manifest V3.

This is where your supposition falls apart entirely. Though I would like to point one thing out: I am addressing the ManifestV3 side of your argument and not the revenue portion.

The Google search deal revenue is a major source of contention, so I cannot defend that whatsoever. Even more, I dislike Mozilla Pocket's horrible marketing and intrusive integration with Firefox and I still wholeheartedly believe that Firefox VPN is inferior to Mullvad. We are both in lockstep about those aspects being terrible.

The only thing I take issue with is that you conflate revenue constraints with the obligation to buckle to Google's every whim. This isn't entirely true. The move over to Manifest V3 will also occur in mainline Firefox, but it will be heavily modified. Namely in respect to retaining WebRequest. See below if you're too lazy to click:

What are we doing differently in Firefox? WebRequest

One of the most controversial changes of Chrome’s MV3 approach is the removal of blocking WebRequest, which provides a level of power and flexibility that is critical to enabling advanced privacy and content blocking features. Unfortunately, that power has also been used to harm users in a variety of ways. Chrome’s solution in MV3 was to define a more narrowly scoped API (declarativeNetRequest) as a replacement. However, this will limit the capabilities of certain types of privacy extensions without adequate replacement.

Mozilla will maintain support for blocking WebRequest in MV3. To maximize compatibility with other browsers, we will also ship support for declarativeNetRequest. We will continue to work with content blockers and other key consumers of this API to identify current and future alternatives where appropriate. Content blocking is one of the most important use cases for extensions, and we are committed to ensuring that Firefox users have access to the best privacy tools available.

Mozilla is obligated to follow ManifestV3, but it's not like they're capitulating to Google because they love the taste of boot. If Mozilla successfully manages to retain the WebRequest blocking support while migrating to ManifestV3, that could be a huge milestone that other Chromium browsers can easily infer is possible on their side.

Pale Moon, however, has long split from following any changes made by Mozilla, thanks to its standalone Goanna engine.

Goanna is tranny Gecko and you can't convince me otherwise.

TLDR answer to OP question (how we can all block ads in 2023 despite Manifest V3), Pale Moon with ηMatrix is an excellent way to block ads (and other unwanted things) while surfing the net and there isn't a thing Google can do to bring Pale Moon to heel.

Or alternatively, you can just use a hardened Firefox profile on an Extended Support Release version. uBlock Origin is a given, but NoScript provides broadly similar functionality to uMatrix/uBlock Medium Mode, and it even has XSS protection on the Firefox version.

Slight tangent: I personally prefer uBlock Medium over NoScript because of UI differences, but I must say: I feel like a douchebag for being dismissive of NoScript earlier.

 

[Fuck It We'll Do It Live]

So in the interest of answering's OP question of how we can all block ads in 2023 despite Manifest V3, Pale Moon with ηMatrix is an excellent way to block ads (and other unwanted things) while surfing the net and there isn't a thing Google can do to bring Pale Moon to heel.

Thank you for your incredibly informative reply/explanation/defence of the benefits of Firefox (and conversely, SeaMonkey), @Dread First; I am unable to directly reply to your post so I'll have to manually quote you:

Or alternatively, you can just use a hardened Firefox profile on an Extended Support Release version. uBlock Origin is a given, but NoScript provides broadly similar functionality to uMatrix/uBlock Medium Mode, and it even has XSS protection on the Firefox version.

On NoScript, uBlock and more importantly, the superiority of uMatrix and its ηMatrix fork, I should have linked this website that I like to return to on matters relating to privacy, particularly its regularly updated article, "Essential privacy (and other) addons".

While it's a website that helped me choose Pale Moon as a non-Chromium alternative to Brave, it's not above criticising every poor decision its devs have made in recent years, even if Dig Deeper does still recommend it over other browsers.

 

[Toolbox]

Have any of you guys set up revanced on your device? Vanced still works, but without something like pihole blocking ads before they even get to it, there's been more and more showing up as google erodes what's still working. Setting revanced up seems like a PIA for a user experience that may not even be as good.

As a way around this entirely, though, how do you set up a pihole instance on a single device? Can it be done on Android?

 

[Dread First]

Thank you for your incredibly informative reply/explanation/defence of the benefits of Firefox (and conversely, SeaMonkey), @Dread First; I am unable to directly reply to your post so I'll have to manually quote you:

On NoScript, uBlock and more importantly, the superiority of uMatrix and its ηMatrix fork, I should have linked this website that I like to return to on matters relating to privacy, particularly it's regularly updated article, "Essential privacy (and other) addons".

While it's a website that helped me choose Pale Moon as a non-Chromium alternative to Brave, it's not above criticising every poor decision its devs have made in recent years, even if Dig Deeper does still recommend it over other browsers.

I've come across Dig Deeper's content and while I'm not (entirely) dismissive of him, I feel as if the lad's fallen down the irrevocable paranoia cliff far too long ago. uMatrix is a great extension, but no one should fall down the rabbit hole of using outdated browsers and forked extensions because they dislike the modern state of the internet. It's okay to move on.

Spoiler alert: a hardened Firefox browser profile, uBlock Origin with all the relevant filters enabled, CookieAutoDelete turned on and deleting shit you don't need, and NoScript for uMatrix/Medium Mode-like functionality are basically all you really need.

I'll end on this: If mainline Mozilla was as awful as these autists think it is, then why the fuck is the Tor Project still using mainline Mozilla instead of pivoting over to a more "ethical" fork like IceCat or Pale Moon?

 

[usernames can change now!]

DNS66 on F-Droid blocks ads across your phone without requiring root, which is nifty

 

[Toolbox]

DNS66 on F-Droid blocks ads across your phone without requiring root, which is nifty

So it's essentially local pi-hole without having to do much setup yourself?

 

[White Devil]

DNS66 on F-Droid blocks ads across your phone without requiring root, which is nifty

So it's essentially local pi-hole without having to do much setup yourself?

Sort of, it doesn't always work though. I've had ads get through on mobile games and jewtube. I still have YTVanced on my phone though and I'm never getting rid of it because it still works.

 

[Dread First]

I've already spoken about FFProfile multiple times, but for anyone concerned with how the process works, here's a brief rundown of each page:

NOTE 1: I prefer to skip the Pocket intro as opposed to disabling it entirely, because I do actually use Mozilla Pocket as a means for saving links that I don't want to create a proper bookmark for. If you disabled Pocket and want to re-enable it later, you can toggle the relevant "aboutonfig" flag.

NOTE 2: You can also permanently disable autoplay of <video> tags, but I've noticed that it doesn't seem to function any differently from "prompt me," so I opt for that instead.

NOTE 3: If you intend to actually watch HBO Max or Hulu on Firefox, you'll need to untick the DRM stuff. If you have absolutely no need for Widevine or DRM-controlled media playback, keep everything as is.

NOTE 4: Disabling WebGL is the default option. Most people generally don't need WebGL, but I personally like to keep it enabled and have NoScript toggle WebGL for the few websites I visit that make use of it.

NOTE 5: I leave everything here stock, except for the following settings:

* Enable resistFingerprinting = MAYBE (I like to use it, but it does have a lot of knock-on effects that some people may find baffling at best and irksome at worst; Privacy Settings is a helpful extension to have if you wish to experiment with this flag without constantly toggling it on/off in aboutonfig)

* Enable first party isolation = YES (It allegedly breaks third party logins, but I personally haven't experienced broken logins for Google, Apple, or Facebook). Also, the above Privacy Settings extension exists to toggle this flag on/off too without the need for aboutonfig.

* Disable webaudio API = NO (If you like using Discord in your browser or making Teams calls online without relying on the app itself, you need to keep this checked off).

NOTE 6: Nothing special here. HTTPS only mode can always be enabled in about:preferences and almost everything by default (save for shady porn sites) uses HTTPS anyway.

NOTE 7: You have the option of pre-installing extensions in your profile. The only ones worth installing are CanvasBlocker, uBlock Origin, Multi-Account Containers, and maybe ClearURLs (uBlock handles 90% of the same shit that ClearURLs does, but ClearURLs does a better job of sanitising email tracking links in web mail clients like Gmail). It takes like 15-20 minutes for your extensions to properly sync with Firefox's extension repositories though, so you can also skip this step entirely if you wish to install the latest versions directly via the official add-on site.

Skip enterprise settings entirely, and then download the profile.zip. You will then want to navigate to "about:profiles" in a fresh installation of Firefox, and then create a wholly new profile.

Follow the steps as is, then open the profile you just created in a new file manager window. Make sure all Firefox processes are completely shut down (i.e. pkill firefox on OSX/Linux or Task Manager on Windows). Unzip your profile.zip folder and then copy the entire contents over to the profile directory (making sure to click on "yes replace files" or whatever option that pops up during the copy process).

Congratulations! You just created your own pseudo Arkenfox profile. You'll still need to do some minor cleanup work in "about:preferences" for general stuff, but it's nothing that the average user can't figure out. Attaching sample profile generated for anyone who wishes to fiddle with it.

EDIT: In my own testing with LibreWolf's defaults, this profile is roughly equivalent. There are some really obscure differences that I'm vaguely aware of, but they amount to LibreWolf-specific modifications to browser code. If you have a working Firefox installation, you don't need to jump ship to LibreWolf at all when you can just import a custom prefs.js instead and have 95-99% of the benefits of LibreWolf immediately available to you.

 

[Toolbox]

Sort of, it doesn't always work though. I've had ads get through on mobile games and jewtube. I still have YTVanced on my phone though and I'm never getting rid of it because it still works.

I had vanced up until it got killed by Google, I've had the experimental features like sponsorblock, in line ad blocking etc enabled since the last update and I've watched them slowly break. I still wouldn't trade it for base YT but I'm really wondering when we'll have to switch to revanced to even block video ads.

 

[NOT Satoshi Nakamoto]

I had vanced up until it got killed by Google, I've had the experimental features like sponsorblock, in line ad blocking etc enabled since the last update and I've watched them slowly break. I still wouldn't trade it for base YT but I'm really wondering when we'll have to switch to revanced to even block video ads.

I use YouTube Vanced as well but the only thing it's good for is commenting on videos (YT on mobile browsers doesn't let you edit comments). Not a great selling point. Everything else can be done better by other apps. I get subscriptions through an RSSfeeder and play videos on NewPipe + SponsorBlock.

By the time Vanced starts showing preroll ads I'll have completely removed Google from my life, wiped my accounts and moved on forever. Goodbye terrible website!

Blocking ads everywhere should probably be done at the DNS level. There's probably a better option than browser extensions but I'll have to look for it.

 

[Dr. Ricearoni]

God I fucking hate advertising. The business strategy of trying to force products into every waking fucking moment of my life is disgusting. They replaced all the gas pumps with new ones that scream a 24/7 spew of celebrity and trivia bullshit at you and play advertisements while you're trying to fill up your tank. I've been tempted to vandalize those fucking speakers everytime I hear that fag scream "CHEDDAR NEEEEWS". And now they're discussing the prospect of beaming advertisements into the fucking smog clouds in the cities. I genuinely fear the day they figure out how to play midroll ads in your dreams. I may actually go postal.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

I'm not using LibreWolf until those autists stop forcing your browser's time zone to UTC so as not to "time zone dox" yourself.
Last time I looked into this, someone had proposed letting it behave normally and the response was "What if a dissident at an Antarctic research station is using LibreWolf and down there your time zone can dox you within a mile?"
I'll keep that in mind next time I'm hunting penguins.

I mean, that seems fine for a browser I'm not using for accessing a work calendar. The concept seems pretty stupid though. Why not just give a user the option of providing a fake time zone fingerprint (like Nepal's GMT+5:45) without having to install an extension, and default to GMT?

 

[Hard Toothbrush]

Have any of you guys set up revanced on your device? Vanced still works, but without something like pihole blocking ads before they even get to it, there's been more and more showing up as google erodes what's still working. Setting revanced up seems like a PIA for a user experience that may not even be as good.

As a way around this entirely, though, how do you set up a pihole instance on a single device? Can it be done on Android?

Yeah, running smooth on my chinese Shitomi. Even managed to install it using the Revanced Manager that they released, but all the pre-manager methods still work afaik.
It has sponsorblock, RYD and all that jazz now.

 

[Dread First]

Hi. I know I've sperged a lot in this thread already but I've decided to give AdNauseam a whirl because I haven't actually used it in Firefox. I only ever used it Brave when I first started using the browser in 2020 but I swapped it out in favour of mainline uBlock Origin.

As for how AdNauseam functions in Firefox? Well... for all practical purposes, it is identical to uBlock Origin. The unintentionally hilarious thing is that AdNauseam actually prompts me that my content blocking settings interfere with AdNauseam's stated purpose to directly interfere with ad revenue.

Why? Well... I've already got tons of redundancies in place to prevent the ads from ever reaching me in the first fucking place. Here's my NoScript readout of WSJ's home page.

Even if that wasn't a factor, AdNauseam doesn't seem to play nicely with certain browser flags per official documentation. Honestly? My hardened profile is already autistic enough as it is. Even with First Party Isolate and Resist Fingerprinting disabled, AdNauseam still returns the browser setting error.

The red settings are shit that I normally control via uBlock Origin/AdNauseam, so they can't even be a factor. Honestly? I don't give a shit. AdNauseam still blocks ads but it only returns a "0" on the default interface. You have to toggle it to a hideous uBlock mode when it finally shows you the elements it's blocking.

Honestly? If you wanna use AdNauseam, it's functionally identical to uBlock and the gimmick is spiteful in a way I'm inclined to enjoy. The problem? I can't really enjoy that gimmick when I'm already well set in terms of redundancies for circumventing ads, even bypassing the "1 of 3 free articles" shit.

Just use uBlock Origin man. It's functionally identical in every way, and the gimmick is useless if you're an autistic tard who hates ads as much as you claim to. At least with mainline uBlock, you can still easily install it from the Chrome store.