The ads come from an ad network where there is very little visibility into what’s going to be displayed in your app. And bad people also keep managing to get their ads published even though the ad network doesn’t allow them
And it all ties into the whole targeted advertising, where they also make sure very few people get the bad ad, and tries to target people they think may be more susceptible to these kinds of tactics. Depending on the amount of interactivity allowed, the ad can even display two different things if it deems you too savvy to fall for it.
It’s basically unescapable unless you only use apps without ads, or pay for the ad-free versions.
The whole advertising industry is sketchy, more news at 10.
Pi-hole blocks ads served by these networks just fine. Never seen an ad in Boost for Lemmy or for Reddit, though I tend to use Jerboa now that I’ve gotten used to it while I was waiting for Boost for Lemmy to release.
DNS based adblocking like Pihole or Adguard limits you to receiving advertising hosted by the app provider (youtube for example) which is usually better curated than third party advertising networks and less commonly found at all.
To be truly effective you must also block DoH and DoT. The first can only be done with endpoint lists, since it is https.
Maybe in comming years, but I’ve never encountered an ad served explicitly through DoH/DoT. It’s certainly possible, just not actually in use yet.
You can also setup DoH front and back ends for pihole so traffic entering and leaving it is encrypted. When/if it becomes necessary I’ll probably look into https packet inspection using custom Root certs to force clients to use my local DoH services and block other traffic, or look into inspecting the SNI to apply blocking there; but again its just not needed yet and may not be for a long time. We’ll see. I’m sure the pihole/Adguard teams are also investigating solutions.
Hey, could you elaborate or send some lecture? I have the upstream quad9 DoH address in adguard. It’s supposed to better encrypt my traffic right? Never saw any ads or strange DNS requests.
Never heard about ads being inject though DoH or DoT, or did I misunderstood your comment?
Theoretically an app could use a custom DoH endpoint to retrieve ads instead of the standard dns provided by the system. As this uses purely https without a preceding dns request, pihole/adguard would fail to block it; but it’s just not something currently employed.
Yep, also the ads don’t get initialized at all if the user buys the ad-free version (going to top all in the Lemmy Boost community should bring up the post about it). It’s relatively cheap and the dev is very active with bugs and requests. The dev is developing for the Fediverse and I’m happy to support that (as well as devs for Sync, Connect, Lemmy, etc.)
I like Boost and paid for ad-Free, but a lot of other clients should work for your needs. While they might not be privacy focussed, many are open source so you can check what is going on.
My preference goes
- Boost (not FOSS, one time payment to remove ads)
- Connect (not FOSS, ad free)
- Eternity (FOSS & ad free)
I uninstalled the other ones and haven’t kept up with them. There may be better ones out there, these are the ones I’m keeping up with
Dns adblocking blocks these 100%
Jerboa (FOSS. Play Store + F-Droid)
Voyager (FOSS. Play Store + F-Droid + PWA + iOS App Store)
Thunder (FOSS. Play Store + IzzyOnDroid + iOS App Store)
Eternity (FOSS. Play Store + F-Droid)
edit: formatting
10/10 for Voyager, with a shout-out to Eternity too!
Eternity is great and there’s a work in progress to add multicommunity support.
Also just like Infinity enabling amoled theme makes it look a whole lot more modern.
The only thing it is missing for me is community search. It is great! Also the most customizable of the bunch in my opinion
Jerboa’s great
I need to do another round of trying everything. Currently using Liftoff and happy with it, but I should check out the alternatives anyway.
As a user of RedReader since launch a decade+ ago, I dig Thunder. Simple, no bullshit, logical settings.
Jerboa. It lacks some features, but it’s the official app and it’s also pretty minimalistic with its material you UI. Other than that Thunder is pretty good. They’re both FOSS.
I used Thunder at first but it would crash frequently. Why? I don’t know. It’d just stop working. Very frustrating because it is otherwise very good.
Switched to Jerboa after a couple of weeks and it’s been great.
Your lemmy app has ads???
Eternity.
PREACH, after using infinity for reddit for years this is the only app that I can ever be comfortable with. It’s genuinely amazing, thank you to the person who ported it.
This is the right answer
As always, use free software. Look for Lemmy clients in F-Droid. Voyager is a good one.
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radiowaves are free, radio sets aren’t.
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It might be greed or to offset their server costs. Or both.
I start with whatever is on F-Droid, and narrow it down from there.
Jerboa was the only option there until recently. I see Voyager and Eternity are there now. I’ll have to give them a try.
Voyager is currently many versions ahead of the one listed on F-Droid. It is still usable but you may want to get the latest version from GitHub.
If new versions don’t make it to F-Droid, they might as well not exist for me. There are only a couple of apps that I find important enough that I’ll spend time manually building/pulling/installing, and a Lemmy reader isn’t one of them. Thanks for the tip, though.
Have you considered using https://github.com/imranr98/obtainium You give it the repository of the app and it will handle checking for new versions and updating them
Part of what I value in F-Droid is the additional layer in the build/release process, because it makes tampering more likely to be detected.
It’s still nice to know a tool like obtanium exists, though. Thanks for the link.
This is exactly the reason why I don’t like F-Droid as a way to get apps. You’ll have to trust an additional party when getting your apps, and updates are often a couple days behind. I prefer to get it straight from the developer’s GitHub or Coderberg or whatever.
You’ll have to trust an additional party when getting your apps, and updates are often a couple days behind.
I know how it works, and in this case, that’s fine with me.
F-Droid has an excellent track record; better than many developers have. And I’m not addicted to having the latest versions of everything on the day they’re released. In fact, not immediately jumping on the latest versions has saved me from nasty bugs more than once.
Part of what I value in F-Droid is the additional layer in the build/release process, because it makes tampering more likely to be detected.
Barely and not really. “F-Droid can’t ensure the apps are safe. You still need to trust the upstream developers. We only do some basic check.” https://forum.f-droid.org/t/is-it-as-safe-as-it-is-from-fdroid-official-repo/15956/2
N + 1 > N
N + X - Y ? N
Except now you’re adding an additional party to trust (the -Y). So it could still be considered less secure than N.
thunder is awesome too
Eternity FTW
I’m not sure why people insist on F-Droid, considering the F-Droid Security Issues.
I use it because, contrary to what that scare piece you linked would have the reader believe, it’s better for my needs than the alternatives.
(I’m no stranger to software development and security, by the way. I understand the pros and cons.)
that scare piece you linked would have the reader believe
So an indepth and critical analysis of something is now a “scare piece?” Ok.
This is why ad blockers should always be used. Small devs don’t have relationships with advertisers or control over what ad networks will do.
Or you can pay once and be done with them. I think the price of a burger is not a big ask for something you use every day.
I do both.
Even the FBI recommends ad blockers for security.
I use Connect for lemmy, it’s really great and ad-free.
I’ve tried all the other popular apps, and keep coming back to Connect.
The main features that pull me back are profile-specific settings so I can set up different accounts without having to reconfigure everything every time I switch instances, and the ability to customize post card quick actions, specifically the Mark As Read quick button combined with the persistent Hide All Read toggle. It’s just so convenient, I keep coming back even though it deletes my account info every time it logs me out.Connect rarely makes it on these lists, but I think it’s fantastic.
Eternity is great! free, no ads, and no lag while scrolling. it also supports swipe to go back from posts.
I’m so used to navigating in Eternity at this point that all other apps seem clunky and unintuitive
same
I am using Voyager & Eternity and both have no ads.
I use eternity chase its Foss and easily available in the fdroid store
And they are free
Same with Connect.
Voyager
It’s a FOSS privacy respecting Lemmy client.
It’s available on Android and IOS
You can also try it as a PWA: https://vger.app
Another one URL I use: https://wefwef.app/
The OG
Sync Pro (paid) Jerboa (free)
Sync pro is an absolute ripoff.
I had it for reddit and I’m not buying it again
Use foss apps
Thanks for the warning, switching to Jerboa.
