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Comment by AegirLeet | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: Why do you browse the web without an ad blocker? I can't imagine subjecting myself to that kind of torture.

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Why should I? I don't bother, that way I know which sites to not visit because they can't put together a usable website. If I go out of my way to force their site to be useable then they see they get traffic while doing such things instead of learning not to, or going out of business.

> Why should I?

To reduce the risk of malware delivered via your browser?

uBO shows you what it has blocked on each site. So you can see which sites would subject you to ads without actually having to expose yourself to the psychological terror of seeing those ads.

It also blocks things that you don't see (tracking), improves performance and prevents malware infections.

Edit: Replies are far more informed than I am. I'm using Firefox on Android for the reasons outlined in my original comment, preserved below

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> Serious question: Why do you browse the web without an ad blocker? I can't imagine subjecting myself to that kind of torture.

As best as I know: doing this on mobile (assuming that's their platform) requires both:

* a non-iOS device (Android basically)

* a non-Chromium browser on said device (Firefox basically)

That pairing is the only reason I can adblock on mobile. Not sure if things changed on Chrome or related browsers on Android, but as best as I remember, iOS and Android+Chrome aren't adblock-friendly.

On iOS, there's AdGuard if you want to use Safari, and Firefox Focus if you don't.

Firefox focus blocks ads in Safari too. Any content blocker will work in Safari, as far as I know.

FWIW, I use firefox focus in Firefox in iOS, and it didn’t stop one of the things the parent mentioned.

NextDNS works really nicely on OS/Apps. Also blocks ad/tracking content in iOS. It's actually quite easy to roll this yourself, which I intend to: wireguard+pihole.

would need to subject oneself to the pushy notifications, whims of Brendan Eich, and the dubious approach of the BAT cryptocurrency [1], but the Chromium based Brave browser on Android has a built in ad-blocker.

I think Opera might have one too.

[1] <https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-br...>

If I am not wrong, don't Brave and Vivaldi (Chromium browsers) have inbuilt ad blocking?

You are not wrong, I'm using Vivaldi on Android and it has built-in ad blocker. On this page though are two big dialogs: for cookies on top and "2 free stories remaining" on bottom, so even with ad blocker only 1/3 of the screen is visible until you manually remove these annoyances.

> a non-Chromium browser on said device (Firefox basically)

Mmmm. I can use Adblock in Edge Beta on Android.

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