Raspberry Pi As an Ad Blocking Access Point

coop0030 writes "Adafruit has a new tutorial that will show you how to use your Raspberry Pi as a WiFi access point that blocks ads by default for any devices using it. This is really neat in that it would work for your Android or iOS device, your Xbox 360, TiVo, laptop, and more without needing to customize any of those devices other than to use your Raspberry Pi as the access point for WiFi. Using an ad-blocker can be useful for conserving bandwidth, helping out low-power devices, or for keeping your sanity while browsing the web!"

Cue the usual "debate" ...

[jc42]

... in which one faction points out that ads are funding much of the (commercial) Web, and if you suppress them, you won't have all that Free Content. Meanwhile another fraction is pointing out the huge waste of bandwidth and human time soaked up by all those annoying ads. And yet another faction takes the "Can't we all just get along" approach, by suggesting that the commercial folks should make their ads less annoying so that people don't suppress them.

Yeah, we've heard it all before, we'll hear it all again, and nothing much will change.

Router

[MrEricSir]

Why do you need a RasPi for this? Why not do this in the router itself and save a little bit of power?

Re:Cue the usual "debate" ...

[CanHasDIY]

... in which one faction points out that ads are funding much of the (commercial) Web, and if you suppress them, you won't have all that Free Content. Meanwhile another fraction is pointing out the huge waste of bandwidth and human time soaked up by all those annoying ads. And yet another faction takes the "Can't we all just get along" approach, by suggesting that the commercial folks should make their ads less annoying so that people don't suppress them.

Screw annoyance, my ISP charges by the bit! If that's how it's going to be, then you're damn skippy I want more control over what bits get sent down my pipe.

If the advertisers want to bitch, they should bitch to Comcast/Mediacon/whoever.

Re:Annoying isn't the problem

[elashish14]

Those sites can easily control the ad content before it's served, simply by hosting the advertising content themselves. If they did this, they probably wouldn't get picked up by my Ghostery filters, and they better not unnecessarily use javascript either (99.999% of the web which is written in javascript doesn't need to be). And of course, I block third-party cookies and wipe all other cookies at restart.

Web hosters have decided to use third-party advertisers for convenience. Ease of blocking the content is the price of said convenience.