How many Ads are too many?
So about 18-19 months ago, I installed a network wide ad blocker at home and the software I chose tracks some metrics out of the box - for the last 90 days total DNS queries served, total blocked etc.
~2 months after the installation, tweaking the blocklists, I noticed about <20% of my DNS requests being blocked, which was high, but being new to the bulk ad blocking world, thought was "normal".I keep an eye on these numbers and about ~10 months ago noticed that nearly ~25% of my requests were being blocked. That was a good 6 points higher in just 8 months.
Well now, I am at 32%+ requests blocked by my filters, which haven't changed since the initial tweaking. In 18 months, that is a solid 40% increase in the number of ads and trackers blocked that is part of my internet usage.
My internet usage over the last 90+ days hasn't changed much - ~500 GB / month, except 2 new Windows devices since February.
And it isn't a coincidence that the top 2 blocked domains belong to Microsoft, making up ~30% of the blocked requests. But merely 5 domains make up 50% of the blocked traffic. (side note: How do you spell oligopoly? Does it go 'm...o...n...'?)


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