by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2025-12-10 19:53:33+00:00
"There is nothing special about the Troubled Engineer's setup."

That's good

"It's mostly a matter of using open platforms. With Firefox on the desktop and Fennec on Android (Graphene), you get full uBlock Origin support and therefore never see any ads anywhere, even on Youtube."

The "smartphone" is certainly not an "open platform"

For many years, including before Graphene even existed, if trying to use Firefox for Android without Graphene, either zero or only a small subset of ("curated") extensions were "supported" when not "logged in"

One could get "support" for all extensions by using Nightly. No need to "log in"

The situation may have changed recently but allowing it to persist for so many years like that is a good reminder of Mozilla's priorities and allegiances

Not to mention the ridiculous shibboleth required to change these settings away from the privacy-hostile defaults

"It may be useful if you must absolutely have a smart TV or other such appliances, but considering that they have cameras and microphones, I will never connect such a device to the Internet anyway."

Sounds intriguing. Any good articles on smart TVs with cameras or "other such appliances" with microphones conducting surveillance on purchasers

If there really are such TVs and appliances, then it makes sense to exercise control over whether they can connect to the internet and if so, what DNS data they can use

This cannot be done with uBlock Origin or NewPipe. Something else is needed, e.g., gateway/router firewall, DNS, forward proxy, etc.

The companies that distribute so-called "modern" web browsers are hyperfocused on data collection (Mozilla's telemetry alone is insane), surveillance and ad services as a core "business model". The software has been designed to access cameras and microphones. Mozilla receives millions of US dollars in payment from Google for user search data. The terms of this agreement selling users out are not public

The browser vendor can decide to stop "supporting" extensions such as "uBlock Origin" at any time, as we have seen with Google's Chrome, a project started by former Mozilla employees. The "smartphone" OS vendor can decide to stop allowing "apps" such as "NewPipe" at any time. As it happens the browser vendor, the OS vendor and the ad services vendor are all the same company. Mozilla is its business partner, Chrome was started by former Mozilla employees

1. It is reasonable to use what works until it doesn't, and to have alternatives when something stops working

I use multiple layers of defence against ads, call it an ad avoidance "stack" if that term appeals to you. uMatrix and uBlock Origin are only one layer and only work with popular browsers. Port forwarding on Android is another layer. DNS is another layer. Forward proxy is another layer. Gateway firewall is another layer. I control DNS for reasons other than ads but DNS is remarkably effective at preventing ads and tracking

In the long run, I would bet that DNS-based methods of avoiding data collection, surveillance and ads will remain viable the longest. DNS is older than the web, "smartphone apps" and the practice of using the web or "app stores" as data collection, surveillance and ad delivery platforms

This practice is enabled by and dependent on "popular web browsers" like Firefox and mobile OS like Android, controlled by corporations whose "business model" is support for onllne advertising, e.g., Mozilla Corporation sending search query data to Google LLC, who also collects data for advertising purposes via Android, in return for for millions of US dollars. This makes using Firefox or an Android fork a strange choice as a method for avoiding advertising.^1 These are the software projects, effectively controlled by trillion dollar corporations focused on data collection, surveillance and ad services, through which ads are delivered. These projects are a vehicle for online adverttising. DNS software projects,^2 at least the "good" ones, are not

2. NB. I'm not thinking of dnsmasq/PiHole. I'm not suggesting it's "bad