this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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I ordered a Raspberry Pi 5 so I have a Pi 3 that’s about to be redundant. I haven’t used Pi-Hole so I was thinking it’d be good for that but I’m curious if there’s any downsides for users. Are sites blocked if you dont whitelist them? That sort of thing.

Basically, I’m not worried about me having issues but I’m worried about a maintenance headache if friends and family can’t access things.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Lots of downsides which proponents forget to mention.

  1. My wife clicks ads. I know, I couldn’t believe it either. Being unable to click ads made her sad, so I had to bypass all her devices.

  2. Many sites, including social media, are rendered inoperable. Either because their domains are black listed by a filter, or because the site refuses to load/render without being able to serve ads. Ad blockers have a similar issue, but it’s much worse with pihole.

  3. Lots of critical services rely on telemetry to operate. Office applications, operating systems, your TV, your phone. When they can’t access their telemetry servers, exception handling ranges from graceful to catastrophic. That is, many devices and applications will cease to function. You’ll spend a lot of time tracking down the apps, devices, processes, and IPs you need to whitelist. This is a HUGE PITA, and an ongoing process. Server IPs change, as do the number of servers required for operation.