Computer Help and Support

... 'uBlock Origin' with Firefox. I have some issues with Firefox, and I know some folks are dead set against it, but it's my default browser, both on Linux and Windows, and also on my Android phone. Chrome, the default browser on Android, will not let you install any extensions or add-ons.

Using 'uBlock Origin', I rarely see ads, even on youtube. On the rare occasion when it temporarily fails (usually closing and restarting Firefox fixes it), I am stunned by the landscape I see ... exactly what you describe -- ad on top of ad. There's literally just about no room for any content at all.

Sometimes I wish I didn't remember what the internet was like when I first got on in the late 1980s. This was pre-World Wide Web, when all the sites were academic sites and you had multiple (more or less) reliable resources available through Gopher, Veronica, Jughead, etc, etc. You got on by using telnet to access university computers. In the early days of the WWW, the browser (LYNX) was entirely text-based. Everything started going downhill fast when they figured out how to embed images and video ... javascript sealed the deal, and here we are.

Anyhow, uBlock Origin is working now, and it's maintained 24/7. We'll see how long that lasts.