Video playing, ad that scrolls, two lines of a story, the bottom popping up with notifications every few minutes over the top of more scrolling ads.
Yay internet.
Edit: Oh wow! Did not expect so many responses. First let me say, thank you for taking the time to read and respond! To address the biggest response to use Firefox I actually have it on my phone it’s just remembering to break the habit. This was more to show what an average user who just uses what they’re used to experiences on mobile browsing.
Cries in iphone…
(But you can install pihole on a raspberry pi, install it on your home LAN, set up a VPN on your home LAN, and connect to that VPN and enjoy a lot less ads!)
No crying required, you can use something like NextDNS for DNS level ad blocking on iOS, and there are plenty of Safari extensions to help with this stuff.
I use 1Blocker for ads, Hush to block cookie notices, and Unobstruct to remove persistent overlays as needed. While we’re at it, Noir adds dark mode support to every webpage, StopTheMadness prevents websites doing hostile things (such as preventing copy and paste), and PiPifier makes every web video support picture in picture mode.
Wait hold on, I’m just now learning how to operate my raspberry pi, what is pi-hole?
I installed Rvnc on it last week, is pi-hole similar?
VNC is remote desktop.
This is PiHole, network-wide ad scrubbing. I’ve been running it for years, highly recommend. It’s not perfect, but in conjunction with things like ublock origin on a desktop, it’s a whole different internet.
Is this as difficult as it sounds?
The difficulty is getting the LAN settings right because each router has different setups, especially if you’re not familiar with somewhat more advanced settings like making the Pi/PiHole the DNS for devices on the LAN, then getting the VPN to do the same - I run the VPN on the Pi as well with OVPN. You’ll also need DDNS so you have a fixed IP to use to login to your VPN. Once done though, other than an occasional update, you never really need to touch it again. I’m only modestly tech savvy, FWIW, but it’s been worth it to install the PiHole.
No. You can install PiHole on basically any computer. Old laptop, existing PC, RaspberryPi, etc.
Establish that device as your DNS server inside your router.
Tada.