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ESPHole Ad Blocker

Using the web can be incredibly distracting, or even outright dangerous thanks to ever-present advertisments and trackers. In this EFF article by friend-of-the-Fruit Cory Doctorow, the problem and solution are spelled out thusly:

As the online world has grown more concentrated, with more and more power in fewer and fewer hands, it’s become increasingly difficult for Web publishers to resist advertisers’ insistence on obnoxious tracking ads.

But Internet users have never been willing to accept take-it-or-leave-it as the last word in technological self-determination. Adblockers are the new pop-up blockers, a way for users to do what publishers can’t or won’t do: demand a better deal from advertisers. When you visit a site, the deal on offer is, “Let us and everyone we do business with track you in every way possible or get lost” and users who install adblockers push back. An adblocker is a way of replying to advertisers and publishers with a loud-and-clear “How about nah?”

One solution is to say ‘nah’ with a Rapsberry Pi-based PiHole — these work great, and are very fully featured, but can be a bit involved to set up, and we’re currently in the middle of an RPi shortage.

Here we offer a simpler, more readily available solution, the ESP32-S2-based ESPHole ad blocker, based on this terrific project by rubfi.

Our version has been customized for the TFT Feather ESP32-S2, so that you can see relevant info about connection, IP address, and the satisfying Nahs! count.”

Link to article