Pi-hole®: A black hole for Internet advertisements

This looks like a terrific use of a Raspberry Pi—blocking adtech surveillance at the network level.

Wouldn’t it be great if the clichéd going-home-for-Christmas/Thanksgiving to fix the printer/wifi included setting up one of these?

There’s an article about Pi-hole in Business Week where the creators offer some advice for those who equate any kind of online advertising with ubiquitous surveillance:

For publishers struggling to survive even with maximum ad surveillance, the Pi-hole team recommends a renewed focus on subscriptions, affiliate links, and curated endorsements for products and services that might truly interest users, similar to the way podcast hosts may talk about how much they personally enjoy a sponsor’s products. There’s nothing wrong with pitching people stuff they might enjoy, the team says. It’s just the constant, ever-intensifying surveillance that needs to stop.

Chrome’s default ad blocker strengthens Google’s data-driven advertising platforms

From a consumer’s point of view, less intrusive ad formats are of course desirable. Google’s approach is therefore basically heading in the right direction. From a privacy perspective, however, the “Better Ads” are no less aggressive than previous forms of advertising. Highly targeted ads based on detailed user profiles work subtle. They replace aggressive visuals with targeted manipulation.

If it weren’t for retargeting, we might not have ad blocking

The more I reflect on the current practices of the online advertising industry, the more I think that ad-blocking is a moral imperative.

Making bad ads sad. Rad! - O’Reilly Media

A great talk from Bruce on the digital self-defence that ad-blockers provide. I think it’s great that Opera are building ad-blocking straight into the browser.

Reasons to Use Ad-Blockers – Coyote Tracks

If you think people using ad blockers are just anti-ad or want to freeload on publishers, you’re completely missing the point. The online advertising industry has been abusing users for 20 years now, and we’re sick of it.

Will 2016 be the year web advertisers realise we don’t want to be monitored?

Ethan Zuckerman:

This is advertising we’re talking about, the industry founded on the hallucination that people secretly appreciate being tracked, analysed and told what to buy. Advertisers, and the technology companies that cater to them, are responding to ad blocking the only way they know how: doubling down on their fantasy that viewers will suddenly love advertising just as soon as ads are so all-knowing that they anticipate one’s every need and desire.