blacklist VS whitelist

Enable most of the default ones, use DNS filtering. I use Cloudflare DNS. And for some third-party filters you can load, I recommend Steven Black hosts, OISD blocklists, Developer Dan hosts and AnudeepND Blacklist.

It was definitely worth buying adguard for me + it supported ios and macos which i use as well. As for as blocking - both blokada/adguard provides default list, based on what you want in addition you can add blocklist source to those apps. Example - https://github.com/anudeepND/blacklist/blob/master/facebook.txt

Your list needs to be updated regularly. Like /u/Rendered_Pixels said, it can't magically sniff out ads, so you'll need to keep your list of blacklisted domains up-to-date. With a little bit of scripting, you can automate this process by pulling from a curated list like this one.

I know there are several hosts files out there with lists of domains to block (such as https://github.com/anudeepND/blacklist or https://github.com/notracking/hosts-blocklists), but I'm looking for something different.

I don't know if it's related, but a few weeks ago I installed this https://github.com/anudeepND/whitelist For a while I didn't notice anything strange. Then a few days ago I noticed the same as you: -2 Domains on Adlists.

There is a list of most commonly whitelisted domains by Anudeep but looks like it has not been updated in a year. Wondering if there is another? Wondering if Anudeep's still fine to use

GitHub - anudeepND/whitelist

You mean scripting a PiHole setup? For whitelist, there is this: https://github.com/anudeepND/whitelist