The only thing I’ve ever had to “futz around with” on Ublock Origin is to check all of the filter boxes, one time. Besides that I’ve never had to do anything to it to make it work.
Okay, that’s different than what I was thinking. I’ve got uBlock Origin running (with no major adjustments to how it was installed) and it never even blinked at that. The ‘issue’ I was having is that after my five ‘free’ articles, I couldn’t get any further without subscribing. In that case, clearing cookies (or closing/reopening your incognito window) would start the counter over.
Some sites have an option, cleverly disguised in small print, that says, “continue without disabling” or “continue without contributing,” or some such. This is in contrast to the much larger print that says, “CONTINUE”, which leads you to the signin or subscribe page.
If you can find that option, try it.
Also keep in mind that for every site that restricts you for major news articles, there are fifteen other sites that welcome you, with the same info available, and no restrictions.
Especially for local stuff, where the newspaper has you locked out, but the local NBC, CBS, FOX and ABC affiliate have, more or less, the same things on their sites and always free.
ETA, I don’t know the answer, but blocking people that are never going to subscribe to your paper is probably going to be one of the last nails in print journalism’s coffin.
Another vote for Privacy Badger and Ublock Origin. (Not AdBlock or AdBlock+ – they’ve been bought by the advertising industry, and let paid ads through.) And the default settings on UBlock Origin seem to work fine for me – no fussing needed.
And many sites that ask you to skip blocking DO HAVE a Continue link hidden somewhere in the small print. But I’ve gotten to the point of wondering if it’s worth the effort to me to find it and click it? Am I really that interested in reading what they have hidden?
Finally, as others have said, a quick online search will often find dozens of other places with the same info available. I’ll just look at one of them instead. Or rethink how interested I am in this.
Especially if they are selling something – lots of other sites will be selling the same thing. I’ve only found 2 sellers whose website wouldn’t work, and I complained to both of them. (Attaching a copy of your purchase order to one of their competitors seems to get their attention!)
I had couple extra Raspberry Pis lying around (Raspberrys Pi?) and now have Pi-Hole running on both my home and my work network. Accidentally unplugged one the other day and thought I might explode, the ads were so thick. Blocking at the network level is just amazingly convenient.
walk me through it like I’m a baby deer. Pretend I’m really stupid but have like 50 bucks to play around with for a home network.
Please?
Very loosely, possibly with some hand waving 'cause I’m drinking an posting on mobile.
[ol]
[li]Get a Raspberry Pi[/li][li]Get a 16 gig micro SD card[/li][li]Make sure your computer has an SD card reader, if not get one[/li][li]You probably have a spare usb-based charger. You need one to power the Pi. [/li][li]Download Raspbian (the Raspberry Pi) OS and follow the instructions to put it on the Micro SD card.[/li][li]Google how to modify the files on the SD card to contain your WiFi info if you’re not plugging it directly into your router. These instructions are probably on the RPi site.[/li][li]Put the SD card into the Raspberry Pi and fire it up.[/li][li]Find the IP address of the Pi. Google will help. [/li][li]SSH to the Raspberry Pi. [/li][li]Follow the install instructions on the Pi-Hole site. It involves typing one line (curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash)[/li][li]Change the default DNS address on your router to the address of your Pi-Hole[/li][li]Profit[/li][/ol]
Yes, I don’t understand the logic of some of these site- especially newspapers. Lets pretend we were happy free-spending consumers of the paper Moghuls’ dreams. For anyone not looking for local news especially, this is like the TV streaming fight going on now - how many news sites would you subscribe to for anything other than local news? Does the Seattle Times or the Podunk Intelligencer really think they will attract subscribers across the country who would choose them over the New York Times, say, for news and analysis of the world or Washington? How many of these papers simply rewrite and post press releases and wire stories? So their only source of extra readers is their coverage of local events. For that, they are competing with TV channels less motivated to plaster us with pop-up ads since they can stream their ads inline with the content. I think I’d rather watch a 10-second ad in the video window, usually made by professional writers and actors, than deal with a site unreadable due to pop-ups.
What I would really like too is to disable video (and audio) until I say play.
Pihole
Crude but surprisingly effective.
Who was it on this site that once compared sites that wanted you to disable your ad blocker with prostitutes that don’t want you to wear a condom?