SOLVED - Use Pi-hole to slow down Facebook

General
1

Hi, first and foremost, THANK YOU ALL FOR PIHOLE, this is an amazing project that is making my entire family safer and giving us also faster internet speed!

Now, there are a couple of websites I'd like to disincentivize - namely Facebook - what's the best way to to slow down Facebook traffic via the DNS/PIHOLE?

Doing this via qos in the router is not an option for me unfortunately.

One thing I thought is to specify a specific DNS server for all Facebook domains (yes, i have this list) and this server would be hosted on the raspberry pi too (say 127.0.0.1:1153), and do something very simple like "sleep 10; resolve via 127.0.0.1:53;".

Would really appreciate your wisdom here to achieve this goal via pihole.

Thank you!

Ray

2

You can block Facebook completely, and problem solved.

4

Slowing it down is the objective. Not blocking it - thank you very much, I look forward to hearing from you.

Ray

5

Read how DNS works and from there you will know that it is not possible with DNS..

6

Sorry, intentionally slowing down queries isn't possible.

Pi-hole is a DNS blocker.
It can either block a given domain or allow it, and its designed to do that as fast as possible, so you may not notice that additional filtering effort at all.

In addition, slowing down may not have the desired effect as you imagine it.
Depending on the TTL of a given domain, a client would only need to request DNS resolution for that domain every once in a while. Exemplary TTLs are 300 seconds for facebook.com, and for api.facebook.com, www.facebook.com or graph.facebook.com that would be 3600 seconds.
A client will happily chat with a machine at the answered IP until that TTL expires before it sends a new DNS request. So for a given 3600 seconds, your slow down would be in effect only once an hour at most.

2 Likes
7

If you using PF sense as your router / firewall you can control the speeds on a per client basis.

8

The 'best way' is to only allow one device to access Facebook.

You can, usually, manually configure a device to bypass Pi-hole by configuring it to any other DNS.

Then, only use that device for Facebook. All other devices should use pi-hole and sink the domain.

You want control? Dedicate one device.

Why, in the world, you want Facebook is beyond me, but, if you insist: use your, dedicated device, and then turn it off until you want that, IMNSHO, psychopathic company access to your data on a single device and use it for nothing more:
nothing else. Zip, zero, nothing else. If need be, reset it to default.
No searches, nothing...

And, again, turn it off when not using it.

9

Please elaborate.

Unless you mean Facebook will still get all your data, but it is retarded by PF sense: takes an extra hour?

10
11

This makes full sense now. Thank you!

I'll look into other ways to slow down the social media traffic, ie desincentivize their use.

Thank you all!

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