Three prevalent themes in the discussion
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Quad9 is praised as a specialist, trusted public‑DNS provider – many commenters agree that outsourcing to Quad9 makes sense because it avoids duplicating effort and leverages its expertise.
pbhjpbhj: “Running a privacy-focused public DNS service is a highly specialized undertaking, and the Quad9 Foundation is the undisputed leader in the field. Rather than duplicating their efforts to achieve only part of what they do, we're putting those resources toward financially supporting Quad9 instead.”
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Concern over Quad9’s compliance with court‑ordered blocking and the broader censorship implications – users note that Quad9 must block domains in France/Italy following legal injunctions, raising fears about VPN/Tor blocking and the centralisation of DNS control.
assumed_throwaw: “Unfortunately, Quad9 is censoring some domains in Europe (notably in France and Italy) following injunctions issued by rights holders.”
loup-vaillant: “Seriously, what the fuck? So you're supposed to block VPNs as well? What's next, Tor exit nodes?” -
Preference for self‑hosted or alternative DNS solutions that give full control (ad‑blocking, privacy, circumvention of censorship) – several participants advocate running Pi‑hole, AdGuard Home, Unbound, NextDNS, or similar services locally or as upstream providers.
LetsGetTechnicl: “I've been loving the Pihole setup I just set up. It uses Quad9 as the upstream provider and then I do all the blocking myself.”
ripdog: “I run Adguard Home on my router… Trivial to self-host, and gives you full control of blocking.”
drnick1: “I have been running my own recursive DNS with Unbound for years… I filter ads and trackers using an aggressive blacklist.”