What do I do?
Been blocking ads since I discovered it was possible in 1999, while on a shitty dialup and observing that banner ads loaded before the page itself. Back then I used a network level adblocker/firewall combo called AtGuard, which Symantec acquired later.
Then moved onto AdMuncher on Windows for the next 15 years or so. Now I use Pale Moon as my primary browser - unlike Firefox that pretends to care about privacy while doing the opposite, this one, forked from Firefox 24 and maintained independently, does not have a shred of telemetry or analytics or 3rd party Pocket like bullshit that requires 50 different 'hardening' about:config tweaks to remove.
uBlock Origin and eMatrix (a current fork of the discontinued uMatrix), both with an aggressive set of filter lists keep the web spanking clean for me.
On Android, I've always rooted my phone to install AdAway, as a next level now I use AppManager (get it from muntashirakon.github.io) to disable advertising/tracking components within apps, and Google Play Services itself. Youtube being a special case, I use ReVanced Extended.
Took some doing, but now I've managed to happily use whatever the corporate web throws up minus every piece of track advertising/analytics/tracking crap that they throw at me on either laptop or phone/tablet. Occasionally I look at the uBlock Origin logs and shudder to see all the crap that got blocked.
Tl;dr - I don't have to turn hermit and seek out indie websites exclusively when I'm able to extract exactly what I want from the mainstream web. Ultimately, your devices belong to you; you have to take back control over what gets sent to it.
On Android, I've always rooted my phone to install AdAway, as a next level now I use AppManager (get it from muntashirakon.github.io) to disable advertising/tracking components within apps, and Google Play Services itself. Youtube being a special case, I use ReVanced Extended. Took some doing, but now I've managed to happily use whatever the corporate web throws up minus every piece of track advertising/analytics/tracking crap that they throw at me on either laptop or phone/tablet. Occasionally I look at the uBlock Origin logs and shudder to see all the crap that got blocked.
Tl;dr - I don't have to turn hermit and seek out indie websites exclusively when I'm able to extract exactly what I want from the mainstream web. Ultimately, your devices belong to you; you have to take back control over what gets sent to it.