uBlock Origin is easier and cheaper to set up, less maintenance, and more effective.
As mentioned in the article, pi-hole complements a browser ad block, doesn't replace it.
My wife likes to cast youtube videos from her phone to the TV, so the experience is nearly the same to her on her phone as it is watching on TV. Maybe if she only used the PC interface she wouldn't mind, but she likes to search / scan / scroll youtube on her phone, and cast the bits she's going to actually watch.
She was very frustrated by having to find the video she wanted to watch on her phone on the PC using the some what finicky mouse touch pad to get the cursor to open the web browser, navigate to youtube, enter the title in the search box (possibly) scroll to find the video, and then a couple more steps getting it playing full screen.
I'm happy we have options to block ads that aren't uBlock Origin in firefox, even though that works great, and better than other options.
My best guess at why people don't want to do this is that we're conditioned not to do anything that isn't advertised to us, and nobody is running adverts telling you to hook a laptop up to your TV for a superior smart TV experience.
But I also get why people just want to sit on the couch, find a nice video on the phone and with the press of a button want to see it on the TV. No computer boot time, no updates, no writing on the keyboard while laying down.
I get that you can buy a fanless pc, install linux with unattended-upgrades and you have something more powerful. But most people don't know how or don't want to go through that hassle.
Again, for you yes. But some lay down on the couch and a keyboard in that posture is just annoying.
And copying a youtube video from the app, into firefox app to just send it to the computer is bonkers complicated when you could just press the cast icon.
A lot of people interact with their phone all the time, but rarely use the computer. I'm telling you, it's more easy to use the build in Youtube app for a lot of people.
It's best to run both.
Yes, but don't we expect all of those devices (and apps) to move to DoH resolution if they haven't already ?
In that case the pihole (or nextdns, etc.) are bypassed ...
I suppose you could proxy all TLS traffic and block it but if the DoH is being served by the same FQDN as the traffic you want in the first place aren't you out of options ?
A couple years ago it was like night and day. Now it is still better than nothing, and in a year or two it might not be worth running.
It's definitely a moving target, but "we expect ... to move to DoH resolution" means that they haven't all moved yet, and a DNS based ad/telemetry/etc blocker still works today (for some apps / smart devices). If it works for some things today why would I turn it off because it might not work for a subset of those things tomorrow? Agreed the value proposition of setting one up is probably dropping, but I still prefer it to nothing.
Now that I think of it I should probably start logging how many DNS look ups "fail" because of the DNS blocking list, and monitor for changes. If it ever gets to less than one a day it's probably not worth the couple of W to power the RaspberryPI
On the "less maintenance" front, I honestly don't pay any attention to the pi-hole in any given month. It has automatic updates running, and reboots when it needs to. It pretty much just works and I forget about it.
* I haven't actually used PiHole itself that much, mostly AdGuard and PfBlocker. Same basic idea, though. The cost for me to run PfBlocker on my router is basically zero, it's pretty much set-and-forget.
Pi-hole blocks for IoT devices, all apps across all smartphones on the network, all programs across all OS's on your network.
- I need it to work within phone apps, my TV, on Safari, and on Chrome
- I just don't trust Chrome addons. When you go to install an ad blocker, there's an extremely ominous warning about how it can read everything shown on my browser.
What's worse - apparently these addons can change hands down the line, and the new owners can simply push new code.
I don't want this thing phoning home with screenshots of my bank and email.
I'm not sure how a blocker would work if it couldn't see the content of the page...
Best to run both if you're in a position to do so
When I ran it, I ran into various hard-to-diagnose compatibility issues on different devices. Or, guests coming over and having their various websites be broken in ways that I'd have to troubleshoot.