Jack recently posted here so I assume he's using an iPhone. You can't use a hostfile on an iPhone - unless you jailbreak it. It may be possible to erase the ads after displaying them with a bookmarklet; I've done it, but it's hard to set up.

I just looked at the adverts on an iPhone, an iPad - both with Safari - and my usual 9" Android tablet with Firefox tracking protection disabled. There were far more adverts on the iPhone and they occupied relatively more space which, combined with the tiny font of the site text, is very inconvenient.

FreddyHeadey wrote: After the twelfth post I get about fifty lines of blank space before the next post.

I see that gap on both tablets but on iPhone it's full of references other Mudcat threads interspersed with big adverts. I don't think that's being done correctly by Google.

I suspect the google scripts adapt to the fact that it is a phone and generate ads which would be proportionate to a mobile site - which Mudcat isn't. But I'm guessing. In a way the problem isn't the adverts it's the website, which doesn't adapt to small screens. I don't often read Mudcat on my phone but when I do I increase the font size of the posts to make it readable without zooming. But you can't do that on an iPhone with Safari.