I had found the answer at Why is Chromium bypassing /etc/hosts and dnsmasq? but it's outdated and instructions on its answers aren't working anymore.
I have a local BIND DNS server, where I have lots of domains blocked. It works on everything, except Chrome.
I understand Chrome has its own caches, claiming to be meant to speed up page loads, but clearly these caches bypassing the DNS server settings doesn't aim at speed, but in bypassing ads blocks.
Settings > Advanced > Privacy > Preload pages for faster browsing and searching has always been disabled here. chrome://net-internals/#dns > chear host cache also didn't work.
