[OnePlus 3T ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other Deve] MSe1969:
Hi [MENTION=5842226]anupritaisno1[/MENTION] - thanks for your feedback.

Indeed a valid point - do you have a good idea how to "establish a link" between Settings in the ROM and the "backup tool" (see also next item)? One of my objectives is to provide functionality not necessarily requiring active root - so anything which would need to remount the system partition (which can only be done with root access) is out of scope.

Issue is that the backup tool by default first takes the contents of /system/addon.d, then executes the "pre-backup" tasks, then flashes the new ROM, then executes the "past-flashing" tasks - still with the /sytem/addon.d files from the previous ROM! The only thing I could think of would somehow be a modified updater-script in the flashable ZIP - which brings me to the question, where to find the place in the build tree, where that is defined (I have started searching for it, but wasn't lucky finding it yet - because if I consider that approach, I would like to make sure to build and use that modified updater-script automatically in the ROM ZIP). Any thoughts?

Well, a point which definitely is subject to the individual point of view. I don't want to object to your point stating "leave it up to the user", because you are right!

Nevertheless, this ROM has the idea of some "pre-delivered privacy" in focus (which means something "ready to use" rather than "gain root, search the net and take care yourself") and people keen on using microG instead of Google are usually also not the kind of people who consider unrelated ad pop-ups on sites, they visit, as something valuable, which they would miss, if not present . . .

My ROM e.g. also uses Bromite WebView and not the "vanilla AOSP" Webview and the question "why not leave that up to the user, whoever wants Bromite should flash it himself" would be equally valid. . .

EDIT:

True - Alternative is to activate root and use e.g. the AdAway app (from which I take my updates).

Without root, a frequent monthly update is better than nothing (one objective of this ROM is to provide features, for which you normally would need root).

/EDIT

The idea of defining an own DNS is still on my to-do list

- independently of ad-blocking. More to come.

The motivation to use a different DNS is driven by different factors: circumvent censorship (which also is a topic in the "free and democratic countries", if you ask me - of course, it is then called "copyright" or "ban of fake news" instead of "censorship" ;) ), no logging ("Hey Google!") or - as you indicated - filter out ads. The DNS servers recommended by those organizations supporting data privacy and net freedom have especially no-logging and no-filtering in mind - to my knowledge, ad-blocking DNS are mostly operated by commercial companies who in parallel are interested to sell their solutions. Different from the hosts file, which can be viewed by everybody, the filtering of such an ad-blocking DNS is not necessarily transparent. Maybe you have some DNS to recommend, which would address those concerns?

Further - some public WiFi / Hotel WiFI etc. have "funny" setups enforcing their specific DNS, which you can't really circumvent. The hosts file still works under those conditions . . .

Also, web sites fighting against ad-blockers are quite good in doing so if you use browser add-ins, but they mostly still work with an ad-blocking hosts file. :)