I agree with your position. I'm trying to figure out how to limit my kid from seeing any ads at all. Where can I get more information for this beyond adblock and host file manipulation?
I'm not sure if complete abstinence is good. I see my parents struggle with ads sometimes. They grew up as farmers in a rural enviroment with only a black and white TV (with 2 state channels). They seem unable to distinguish ads from proper content (unless it's obviously an ad), or they see ads as a kind of honest product documentation.
Let’s be honest, the kids of hacker news commenters are probably going to be fine. It’s the way ads influence the unwashed masses that becomes problematic.
It's also just a thing we keep in mind and work around in life. We won't use any service that has ads, or any site that finds ways around the Pi Hole, or watch shows/movies with heavy product placement, etc etc. It's just part of mine and my wife's core beliefs (privacy in general) so we just guide our kids towards "good" content and taught them from the minute they could understand, that "ads are bad, we don't like ads".
don't allow commercial TV (they only watch Netflix or ABC Kids app
Even PBS is "commercial", given the growing practice of underwriter ads.
All that I had to do was assign a static IP address to the MAC address of the VM network interface, and configure my router's DHCP to hand out that static IP for DNS.
It's all done over a singular ethernet connection between my router and the server; the amount of traffic is very minimal.
Economically, I'm not sure we're ever going to get away from ads. As I've said before in some of my comments, it's not just about paying for things you use. It's about paying more than the people who are willing to put up with ads, because otherwise companies will just do both: charge, and use ads. That's what we see in TV, in addition to many other places, and there's no reason to expect that not to continue unless there were widespread backlash, and I just don't see that happening. I don't like ads, but most of my friends don't seem to see things the way I do.
Why? Was there no human economic activity before they were ads?
If spaceships appeared in the sky, and shot lasers at all ads, and anyone making new ones, would we find no way to make and sell and buy things regardless? That seems less likely to me than said spaceships.
> I just don't see that happening.
True, and saying "it should be possible" is not the same as knowing how to get from here to there. But I wouldn't say "never ever" in this context.
A link posted on HN a while ago. Long story short it uses a raspberry pi as a DNS server which blocks all requests for ads.