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PiHole Ad Blocker

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codecage
(@codecage)
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Several members commented on the ads they saw, or didn't see for some, while watching Bill's interview with Paul McWhorter.  If you watched it live there were no ads, but if you watched after the fact YouTube inserts a ton of ads in a one hour video!

This got me to wondering about something called PiHole.  It is an ad blocker piece of software that can run on something as simple as a Raspberry Pi.  Even a RasPi Zero.  Maybe that is how it came by its name anyway.

I'm going to set this up for myself and was wondering if anyone has any experience with PiHole that they might want to share.

One question that has come up for me in my minimal research is whether I should use a vanilla RasPi OS like Buster Lite, or go for something called DietPi that can also be downloaded as an image.  My guess is that DietPi is just a stripped down, thus the reference to diet, version of RasPi OS.  Does anyone have any thoughts on using DietPi versus the straight RasPi OS?

And I would like to keep this thread alive for all to benefit from.

SteveG


   
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frogandtoad
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Posted by: @codecage

Several members commented on the ads they saw, or didn't see for some, while watching Bill's interview with Paul McWhorter.  If you watched it live there were no ads, but if you watched after the fact YouTube inserts a ton of ads in a one hour video!

I use "Brave" - A browser based on chromium with security in mind, and of course, a built in add blocker.  I never see any adds during video's, so may be worth looking into 😉


   
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codecage
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@frogandtoad

Afternoon my good friend.  Yes using something like "brave" works on a per machine basis with chrome or maybe even other browsers that have 'add-ons' like chrome has, but using Pi-Hole doesn't require anything on your PC, or on any device connected to your network.  It is capable of stopping most ads to anything connected, even on your smart phones.

Look into it if you care to, or stay tuned here as I discover more and more about it.

I just got finished setting up a fresh install of RasPi OS Buster Lite and will proceed with installing Pi-Hole right after finishing this post.

SteveG


   
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frogandtoad
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@codecage

Posted by: @codecage

but using Pi-Hole doesn't require anything on your PC, or on any device connected to your network.  It is capable of stopping most ads to anything connected, even on your smart phones.

Look into it if you care to, or stay tuned here as I discover more and more about it.

Thank you for the information, I didn't know that, and will definitely check it out.

Cheers.


   
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codecage
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Well, I must report that I'm under impressed!  I've watched perhaps a half dozen videos about installing and using a Pi-Hole, and now having done that myself I really see no difference in the ads I'm getting.  At least not a tremendous improvement, and ZERO improvement on ads while watching YouTube.  I did find some Reddit posts on Pi-Hole's effectiveness with YouTube that say it is almost negligible.

So much for Pi-Hole for the moment.  If anyone else has been successful with it, please join the fray.

SteveG


   
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frogandtoad
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@codecage

Interesting... what device did you install it on if I may ask?

Cheers.


   
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(@dronebot-workshop)
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I'm just curious how something like this would work on YouTube, perhaps someone could enlighten me?

I can understand how an ad blocker works on a website, as it's just looking for common advertising-serving websites like Doubleclick and blocking their content. You could probably block most of those in your router, I currently block sites like Outbrain to avoid seeing those clickbait "You won't believe the real reason they ended Gilligans Island" bits of nonsense that clog up most news and weather sites.

But, and again please correct me if I'm wrong, don't the advertisements on YouTube come directly from YouTubes own servers? Are they not essentially embedded right in the video feed, especially the in-line advertisements? And if I'm correct, then how would a blocker distinguish an advertisement from the actual video content?

Perhaps they do send a signal of some sort, I know they do track when you've watched an in-line ad and if you try and skip past it they put it in there anyway.  So maybe some product could pick up on that.

Enlighten me, please!

😎

Bill

 

"Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window." — Steve Wozniak


   
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codecage
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@frogandtoad

It is a Raspberry Pi 3.

SteveG


   
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codecage
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@dronebot-workshop

Yes that does seem to be the issue with trying to block YouTube video ads.  The ads are coming directly from the feed that is delivering the video, so if that was blocked, then goodbye video as well.

All of the videos that I've watched about installing Pi-Hole were all done some time ago, so maybe the content providers have become wise to Pi-Hole's method of blocking ads and have worked around it.  So installing Pi-Hole now may just be an exercise in futility.

I would sure like to be wrong, and I have been several times in the past!  I was once quoted as saying Token Ring would win the network infrastructure war with Ethernet! 🙃 I must have been one of those BetaMax users as well!  Actually no, I always went VHS!!

Someone please enlighten me as to getting Pi-Hole to do what I thought it would.  

SteveG


   
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frogandtoad
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Posted by: @codecage

@frogandtoad

It is a Raspberry Pi 3.

Ok, thanks.

I started to have a look, and it does seem a bit of mucking about to set up the DNS and a bunch of other stuff.  I went to the Pi-Hole site itself ( pi-hole ).  I'm not sure if you've looked there or not... but it might be a good idea to compare against the tutorial you followed, if you haven't.

Cheers.


   
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codecage
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@frogandtoad

I did go to the Pi-Hole site, but didn't glean any further information than I thought I had already accumulated from the videos.  In fact I went there first and saw that one line "install" using the curl command.  That makes it a breeze to setup initially.  Didn't really have to muck around with DNS itself. The toughest part was getting further blacklists added by figuring out the methodology of how that works.

I still have it up and running and will provide updates as they present themselves. 

SteveG


   
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Spyder
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@dronebot-workshop @codecage

The only ad blocking software I've got on my PC is the ABP plugin running on chrome, and I haven't seen any ads on my PC while on YT

According to this...

https://www.sunshine.it/disable-youtube-video-advertising-with-pi-hole-finally-video-2/

... their blacklist.txt file will block ads on YT, and the webpage as well as the blacklist are both dated 15 October 2020, so, appears up to date


   
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codecage
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@spyder and @dronebot-workshop

I will definitely look into that!

What needs to be added is right now one of the more difficult items to figure out in configuring the Pi-Hole.

SteveG


   
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codecage
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Posted by: @spyder

@dronebot-workshop @codecage

The only ad blocking software I've got on my PC is the ABP plugin running on chrome, and I haven't seen any ads on my PC while on YT

According to this...

https://www.sunshine.it/disable-youtube-video-advertising-with-pi-hole-finally-video-2/

... their blacklist.txt file will block ads on YT, and the webpage as well as the blacklist are both dated 15 October 2020, so, appears up to date

Well they claim it will work, but at least for me it did NOT!  It did add enough 'block domains' to my list that the list now is over 1 million, but it blocks no ads from YouTube.

As Bill mentioned above, the YouTube ads come from YouTube servers, not from 3rd parties, so you'd have to block the YouTube feed to stop the ads, and therefor you wouldn't get the video you wanted either.  Might as well not watch the YouTube video in the first place.  If you're not watching, NO ads.

The only way to not get ads from YouTube is to pay them for their ad free feeds.  Long gone are the days of the 'free' Internet.

SteveG


   
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Spyder
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@codecage

So then that begs the question of "How does AdBlockPlus manage to successfully block ads while still allowing the video in the browser plugin ?" because it plays the videos and I see no ads, on my computer anyway, and I just loaded the ABP browser on my phone, and it seems to be working there too, but there's no way to load it on the Roku monitor or my Amazon monitor. I see ads all the time on the Roku, and I only use the Amazon as my main screen (I LOVE having a 38 inch monitor on my desktop)

There might be a way to side load it, if I play around a bit with it... I think the Amazon thing runs on android... I think. Not sure about the Roku one


   
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