I honestly think mobile ads in free games and other apps are some of the lowest quality piles of garbage I’ve ever had the misfortune to see, and they are constant. How did we get to this point? Where they are so horribly unbearable and yet so commonplace?
Haven’t seen an ad in ages :)
There’s simply no “free” stuff out there, unless it’s specifically released as free/open source.
If you’re on Android, AdAware and Lucky Patcher are quite effective in filtering/killing most ads though.
There’s also DNS based ad blocking for any device that lets you adjust the internet settings.
is lucky patcher still alive?
Yep, working nicely and receiving regular updates. Many apps can’t be patched to bypass the payment anymore since they authenticate via Google servers, but at least you can patch out the ad server paths. Haven’t had any total failure yet.
Yup! Droidify (f-droid) first, and Google Play only if it’s a corporate app, or I’m really desperate.
I’d say 80% of my regularly used apps are FOSS.
The modern day mobile ad slop was the breaking point for me with ads, adblock is required now for viewing any website with ads.
I have a pihole.
Every time I go out onto LTE I experience the shittery that the rest of the world lives with every day. It is brutal. I have no idea how people do it.
It’s funny, even sync for lemmy I never use it outside because it also has huge shitty ads. But on my network all is nice and clean!
Investigate tailscale, run your phone’s internet thru your pihole when you’re out and about, or set your phone’s dns to dns.adguard-dns.com. No-one should have to live with that crap.
You can also host a VPN server with your pihole so you don’t get ads on LTE either.
Yea I’ve considered that but I’m afraid of opening up anything on my local network to the outside. I’m not sure I’m technical enough to risk accidentally opening something that’s a vector for attacks. I’m ok with everything only accessible from 192 I’m not out enough for it to matter too much.
By continuing to use the same services that keep pumping ads into your face. How else?
Android - Blockada.
Subscription instead of one time payment is a massive “fuck off” from me
I’ve only ever used the free version. V5
I use personaldnsfilter which has been good for general system wide adblocking, but I avoid apps with ads these days.
Try AdGuard DNS, it’s free and only takes a few minutes to set up, no account needed - you just modify your phone’s DNS settings (there’s also an app instead). Sometimes it doesn’t block everything, like any DNS blocker including Blockada, but gets most things.
And they even have DNS profiles for most devices. I’ve been running some form of AdGuard for nearly a decade. On the rare occasion I do see an ad, it’s quite surprising.
Alternatively if you have a raspberry pi, pi hole. Also blocks all mobile ads and does it network wide.
I’d love to, I have a pi 3 lying about.
Unfortunately it will also block the free TV streaming box we have and Mrs won’t be able to watch Poirot and I’ll get murdered myself
You can set up a regular dns on that device, or you can white list the domains that the stealing box uses. Join the revolution, it’s actually quite nice!
Websites too, journalism pages in particular have become just ridiculous.
A nearly full screen ad after every 1-3 (short) paragraphs is just bullshit.
It’s 2024. How do you not have ad blockers everywhere?
It’s 2024 and you still don’t understand how advertising in mobile games works? Wow.
Amusingly condescending reply for someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
4 month old account with a net negative reputation overall…
👌 Mr condescending
DNS adblockers are pretty effective in apps from my experience
Pihole for the win 🥳🎉
As I commented earlier, pi hole and all DNS solutions will cause the game action itself to fail. As I understand only a faked response to the ad would work.
This doesn’t have to be correct. If the game cannot resolve the ad URL it won’t get a stream of course you could implement a check for that but who tf is gonna do that. Right. Noone. You would have to build in the ads or use some other domains not on the blocklist to still give the user ads. And if it’s an online only game that displays ads you would have to resort to distributing them via your own domain but after all this is not likely to happen at all! So yeah. Could happen is just very very very unlikely
I have definitely played a few mobile games where airplane mode would just instantly give you a freemium ad reward when the connection failed. It’s not common, and you probably won’t run into it on anything with a multiplayer backend, but it does happen.
Nearly all of them do. You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.
I’m pretty sure I know what I am talking about I manage my own homelab and know this kind of stuff. sure I am not an expert but I still have experience in it. But your argument that nearly “all” of them have is just wrong. There are exceptions of course however not all Devs practically target a group that have a network wide DNS blocker installed. The amount of users would probably be way less than 1%.
Every game I’ve used utilizing the play framework detects if the ad was served. They will not grant the reward or complete the action. Unless there is a tool that fakes the response from Google’s ad network the game action will fail. I’m guessing you are just talking about not getting ads, which yes, is easy and trivial.
Blocking ads is specifically what @EleventhHour@lemmy.world mentioned in their post, so yes, that’s what they’re talking about.
You are correct that freemium ad rewards typically don’t function if you prevent the ad content from loading. That’s a small subset of mobile ads that wasn’t brought up prior though. I believe the downvotes are largely a combination of your attitude when replying and your misidentification of the topic at hand.
You mean you don’t want to play a match 3 game that will make you cum in 30 seconds, guaranteed.
@Philharmonic3 A lot of mobile game ads sought to become weird slop because it would get people talking. I remember years ago when everyone was joking about a game called Mafia City, where the ad would show a L1 Goon beating up people on the street to become a L100 Boss. Now every mobile game ad wants to be the next big meme, or at least an appearance on those Vinesauce segments
