You use a firewall on the device to block requests to the ad server. Most apps will keep working fine. Then all it takes is an OS that lets you revoke permissions on sensitive data without the app knowing.

Ad networks can easily work around this, either by requiring publishers to proxy their requests or by having lots of domain names and proxies, which can be dirt cheap. You can't block requests as fast as ad networks can add domains and ips.

Sometimes I wonder what keeps ad networks from becoming more aggressive. Wonder what keeps them from breaking the content and force users to disable ad blocking. Because I know it can be done.

It's probably because publishers don't want to piss users off. Or maybe it's because on mobile most clicks come from Facebook or Twitter or other apps using web views that don't do ad blocking.

Google hosts YouTube and the ads for YouTube on the same domain with obfuscated paths, so that won't work. About all you can do if you want to use the app is pay for premium or use something like Vanced which unlocks the premium features without paying.

The main reason content blocking works is because anyone can introspect webpages and the source is available for modification. When things become byte-compiled it gets exponentially harder, if not impossible.

Works less well on mobile, which is what most people use these days.

Many websites indeed pester us to download their mobile app but I have yet to find one that forces me to? Do they actually exist?

Reddit forces you to download the app now. You can scroll like 2-4 pages worth of content and then it'll pop up asking you to open in app.

On every page you navigate to from within the website you'll first get a pop up asking to choose between browser and reddit app.

I'm using old.reddit.com and wasn't aware they started doing this. Reddit is turning into a dumpster fire, it's bad enough I have to use the old UI so that it doesn't burn a hole in the cpu.

Forget the CPU usage, I only use the old UI because it's better/ I find it more usable.

Or maybe I'm just getting old :D

It's both.

The new UI is terrible and barely useable. But Gen-Z is used to barely useable UX. (looking at you, Snapchat)

I wont disagree there, it's not useable. I wonder what possessed them into believing any of this was a good idea.

The new UI increases the similarity between posts and ads, making you more likely to mistakingly click on an ad.

the new UI is so uncomfortable to use, I don't like how bloated websites are becoming, but usually I can cope with it. Reddit's is just bad. It's buggy, it's inconsistent, and its resource-intensive.

> I'm using old.reddit.com

Heyo that's awesome! I feel ten years younger.

It's worth noting that Reddit has a vibrant community of excellent third party apps, none of which display Reddit ads.

Which means Reddit is almost certainly going to break all of them, eventually.

> On every page you navigate to from within the website you'll first get a pop up asking to choose between browser and reddit app.

There's a user setting for this, somewhere. I found it once. It's default on but once you un-check it you no longer see the app nags. It's great. And terrible they hid it like that.

--edit-- Or there was, damned if I can find it now.

Reddit outside of old.reddit.com is a dumpster fire. I specially dislike those JS loading icons on mobile, it's just so slow...

You can turn off the prompting for the app in the top-right menu. You don't even need to log in for that.

If I’m ever on YouTube or Reddit I always set request desktop site to always in Safari on iOS.

Yelp! Try clicking "read more" on any review in a mobile browser and see what happens.

You can get around that by selecting "View desktop site" on your mobile browser.

So don't use yelp

This would be a more attractive option if it didn't amount to 'cede yet another part of the Internet to Google'.

Reminds me of when Microsoft took over. Many of their competitors destroyed themselves in the 80s and 90s.

In my final year of university during the late 90s, we'd have different companies come in to do presentations on what they do and why we should work for them. Microsoft did a two hour presentation on how great of a place Microsoft is to work at. About a month later Sun came in and did a two hour presentation on how much Microsoft sucks and how stupid you'd have to be to go work there. We learned almost nothing about Sun from their presentation. After that I really started noticing just how much Sun allowed their business decisions to be guided by antagonizing Microsoft rather than providing products and services to their customers. I wasn't surprised at all by their eventual failure.

Instagram. Can't read messages unless you use the app.

Snapchat is of course app only.

That was true for a while but they added this feature some time ago.

https://www.instagram.com/direct/inbox/

I tried to use imgur on mobile to upload a random image today but couldn't［FireFox］

Using FF on my desktop worked fine.

That is the ultimate end of every free image hosting service.

Being able to work on Firefox but not their own app?

I think they're referring to the Imgur mobile website, which no longer allows uploads, requiring you to download the Imgur app.

Quora

> Just look at how many websites pester you to download their mobile app or even block content unless you access from the app.

Users should respond by creating an open source replacement for the official app. Surely there's a way to fool the server into thinking it's talking to the official app.

The problem here is that these companies can abuse the DMCA to get the app outlawed and pulled from the major app stores. In fact, Apple already doesn't allow you to publish any app that interacts with any reasonably big third-party service or device without the explicit approval of the service (that's how alternative YouTube clients disappeared on iOS), even for devices such as smart light bulbs that are explicitly designed to be controlled via the local network without any authentication: https://community.lifx.com/t/app-store-rejection-permission-...

Apple devices aren't free computer systems. Apple owns the devices, not the users. They gave up their freedom when they bought a computer that doesn't give them the keys to the system. They have little choice other than to accept whatever conditions the big corporations impose on them.

Thankfully, iOS does not represent all systems out there. Android systems allow installation of apps from any source and PCs traditionally have no limitations on which programs can be executed by the user. Better alternatives to these abusive "official" apps should be a selling point for these free systems. A perfect example of adversarial interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interopera...

Crypto is too good, unless you have a jail broken phone

Sustaining your point: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/think-twice-when-installing-m...

Android + Magisk + AdAway

I use BlockAda, It functions like a VPN which can be annoying if you use a VPN a lot but otherwise it is a simple on off switch for people who aren't very savvy with their phones.

It's Blokada. It's Polish for "blockade".

Or use Firefox Preview and uBlock Origin.

Yeah but that doesn’t block in-app ads

Honest question, but which apps are both required (don't work in-browser) and don't serve ads from their own network (Youtube, Facebook)?

Add DNS66 from the fdroid store and you are set

I mean, won't there always be alternatives to this bullshit?