There is a clear and definite trend of taking DNS out of the user's control, see all the hype with DNS over HTTPS etc etc.
Firefox is working on using DoH (opt-in at the beginning, but who knows) from "select" providers.
Chrome has a similar switch, surely.
Same with Android 9, opt-in DoH, but maybe it'll become opt-out or no-opt in the future.
In the name of privacy and security of course, but with the totally unintended side effect of users unable to dodge ads via DNS/hosts. Interesting, no?
The argument you are making is a huge stretch.. Cloudflare is one of the bigger driving forces for DoH and they have nothing to do with ad revenue. Claiming that DoH is some sneaky way to get rid of things like pi-hole is just ridiculous.
DoH in itself is not sneaky, no more than ping is.
The push to centralise DNS resolution in the hands of a few questionable actors is and this is what is happening.
Cloudflare for example would absolutely love to know what you're up to all day; and because they can now correlate data from their "omnipresent" WAF with the data from 1.1.1.1 they could get some interesting information... And believe you me, they're not sending it to /dev/null.
I'm all for assuming the people who work there are good eggs with the best intentions, but Cloudflare, Inc. is a U.S. company. As I understand the U.S. legal landscape with regards to data and privacy protection, they could be forced to lie at a moment's notice and not talk about it.
So far as I know there is no legal way for the US to make a company lie about its activities. That is the basis of warrant canaries, which have not been tested in court yet. You can find cloudflares https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency/.
They could be forced to not talk about something via a gag order.
I'm not claiming their lying or doing anything internally that is different. There is just nothing stopping the change from happening, now that the possibility exists
Firefox is working on using DoH (opt-in at the beginning, but who knows) from "select" providers. Chrome has a similar switch, surely. Same with Android 9, opt-in DoH, but maybe it'll become opt-out or no-opt in the future.
In the name of privacy and security of course, but with the totally unintended side effect of users unable to dodge ads via DNS/hosts. Interesting, no?