Why is pihole 5.3.1 FTL v5.8 list shrinking?

General
1

When I installed 5.7 pilhole had 78,000 on its default block list.

When I updated to newest version my list shrank to 76,000 (lost 2,000)

I would think if anything list would get larger not smaller. Are companies starting to complain their ads are being blocked and petition for pihole developers to take their domains off the list?

Why else would it shrink by 2000?

2

The update triggered an update of the adlists. It is likely that the missing domains have been removed since the last gravity update (Sunday). List content is not in the realm of Pi-hole, but the list maintainers.

3

Oh? Well so why do they bother to put in a default list? Thats all I use because I figured you guys might know whats best vs lists that are my unknowns or maybe block too much stuff.

Someone is maintaining it or it would not have shrunk at all. Do you know why they would take the time to remove 2000 from the new default list?

I don't know what is a good alternative list. It seems to work pretty good just was thinking if they shrink it 2000 per update it might get pretty low. I am sure there is a good reason I just don't know it.
I was just thinking if I had an ad company and saw pihole was blocking me I might have one of my associates try to get my companies adds taken off that default list. I use to game with the guy that made that AD Trap Box, he said they did not like his block box. It was like pihole before pihole.

4

We don't. We suggest a list that is used very widely across the adblocking community enjoying a high reputation. We suggest it only to give users something to use right after the initial installation without having to invest any more work in researching other lists.

I should mention that I use this particular list since the very first days of Pi-hole and am completely satisfied with the results I obtain. I have no need to millions of blocked domains it seems.

This actually happens. And I find it not surprising at all. However, we always respond with the exact same text to these mails:

Pi-hole does not maintain or curate any blocklists. These are maintained and curated by independent parties, and we have no control of or input to the content of those lists. Furthermore, we have no influence on which lists are picked by users.

You can contact the maintainers of those lists if you believe that your domains are included in error.

And you can even verify yourself this is true:

  1. The adlist that is suggested in the beginning is GitHub - StevenBlack/hosts: 🔒 Consolidating and extending hosts files from several well-curated sources. Optionally pick extensions for porn, social media, and other categories. and indeed maintained by an independent party.
  2. Pi-hole is not doing any other nasty things like whitelisting domains for you.

Other projects may be doing such things because they know what is "good for you" (or, rather, their own pocket). It is very important for us to make this clear. Pi-hole is not only an adblocker, given you are using the right lists, it also blocks trackers.

5

I appreciate the input and clarification. Thanks!

I'm too lazy to research all the blocklists. The default one seems to not interfere with general browsing in a negative way. Im hesitant on opening the can O block list worms. Too much of a good things sometimes causes headaches in blocking too much. I'll stick with the list it offered when i installed it (I don't even know what it was called I did it so fast)
Appreciate all the good work with it and helping guys like me with questions you have heard 100 times. Thanks again!
Smart move to offload the lists so they cant pester you to remove stuff. I wonder how often the block list maintainers get called or emailed. Wonder if they ever offer them cash to pull a block, I would bet yes.

6

In my case there were 300.000 less domains listed then before.
checking the logs it suggest that domains are combined now instead of added separately.
So I assume, duplicate are removed now.

7

No, they are not. Pi-hole keeps all domains and the corresponding adlist ID to offer the ability to disable indivisible lists for individual clients. Removing the duplicates would remove this ability.

8

I did a new gravity update the check the exact message, and it says this

[i] Number of gravity domains: 1032951 (943637 unique domains)

where it looks like previously "1032951" would be shown, while now "943637" is shown.
nut sure. But I really think this is the case

9

From what version did you update? The last change regarding the gravity process was a few versions back. Also see the output of the gravity run if it complains about invalid domains.

10

I updated from 5.7. So the last version.

11

I have 4 piehole servers some on VMs and some on rasberry pi4s. None are over 100,00. 76,000 is current gravity. I did a fresh install with 5.7 then pinhole up to the latest. Using default lists.

[i] Neutrino emissions detected...
  [✓] Pulling blocklist source list into range

  [✓] Preparing new gravity database
  [i] Using libz compression

  [i] Target: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts)
  [✓] Status: Retrieval successful
  [i] **Analyzed 76471 domains**
  [i] List stayed unchanged

  [✓] Storing downloaded domains in new gravity database
  [✓] Building tree
  [✓] Swapping databases
  [i] **Number of gravity domains: 76471 (76471 unique domains)**
  [i] Number of exact blacklisted domains: 0
  [i] Number of regex blacklist filters: 0
  [i] Number of exact whitelisted domains: 1
  [i] Number of regex whitelist filters: 0
  [✓] Cleaning up stray matter

  [✓] DNS service is listening
     [✓] UDP (IPv4)
     [✓] TCP (IPv4)
     [✓] UDP (IPv6)
     [✓] TCP (IPv6)

  [✓] Pi-hole blocking is enabled
12

This perfectly matches my Pi-hole at home. I do get the exact same number of

13

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