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Comment by christophilus | Hacker News Reader

I’m genuinely curious to know: why do some folks browse the web without using an ad blocker? That’s not a rhetorical question. I understand grandma may not be technically savvy enough. But for anyone reading HN, why aren’t you using an ad blocker?

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There are some people who see it as an ethical position: ad supported businesses need to serve ads to survive. If you don't want to see those ads, and the business doesn't offer a subscription plan, just don't go to those websites.

> just don't go to those websites

I know this is Youtube, but in general: I would gladly avoid those sites but they are gaming the SEO. They are getting in the way.

Maybe they watched it on a TV and do not have access to an ad blocker on the Youtube app on the TV.

SmartTube is a life-saver on TV. It replaces the default youtube app and removes all the ads/sponsored sections

Ad blockers don't work on phones, which is increasingly the medium of consumption.

Brave works just fine on phones...

Ad blockers currently work on Android devices[1][2][3][4], preferably by gaining root on the device and using a de-Googled Android, using F-Droid[1] and/or manually installing packages with FFUpdater[1].

If you really have to use Apple devices and other post-general-purpose-computing locked down devices (e.g. televisions), you could try self-hosting privaxy[5][6] (or similar) which performs MITM manipulation of web traffic to remove ads, including via JS or CSS injection.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.marmaro.krt.ffupdater/

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fi...

[3] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android

[4] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/ublock-origin...

[5] https://github.com/Barre/privaxy

[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31432848

On android, just use firefox. Pretty enjoyable if you just switch to firefox everywhere.

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