6 ms·

Newspapers slam ex-Mozilla CEO's new ad-blocking browser

37 points by randomname2 11y ago

mtgx 11y ago
Brendan Eich just can't seem to catch a break.
- callahad 11y ago
  To the contrary, articles like these are one hell of a break in terms of exposure for Brave.
  - jusben1369 11y ago
    That is certainly true.
eveningcoffee 11y ago
I must say that I have nothing against ads in general, but I am fiercely against the ads that are predatory in their nature. This includes the ads that rely on the network of global surveillance of every web user actions in the Internet, this includes the ads what main indention is to disrupt and control the main flow of the user who perceives the Internet mainly as the reading medium, and obviously everything that is clearly malicious including direct malware attacks through the ad systems to the more subtle malicious attempts to market products or services that are attacking users sexual, financial or emotional integrity.
- epoch1970 11y ago
  What kind of ads aren't "predatory in their nature"? The only kind I can think of is uncompensated word-of-mouth recommendations based on prior good experiences. But I don't really consider that "advertising", as it isn't the beneficiary itself causing this promotion to happen.
  - eveningcoffee 11y ago
    I think there is a sense of truth in what you are saying, but I think that is not completely black and white. For example honest product advertisements can be described as non-predatory. I also think that magazine ads are an order of less predatory compared to the TV ads because you are not forced to perceive them. Google ads many years ago without all reaching Google Analyse and other Google whole web tracking projects were at least two orders less predatory than Google ads today.
J_Darnley 11y ago
Cry me a river. Publishers and ad companies deserve everything they're getting and more.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  In their current guise I couldn't agree more. They created a corrupt model that serves them at the expense of the users and then act aggrieved when the users retaliate.
r0muald 11y ago
It's very odd that a letter written in purely legalese terms receives a reply that is mainly hand-waving and pointless in the remarks that are made (as if all the details given by Brave/Eich weren't already known). Doesn't strike me as particularly brilliant, but IANAL etc. I also wonder how long until Brendan Eich is just "Brendan Eich" and not "Mozilla former CEO". I can't imagine Mozilla is very happy with being associated with a competitor, especially in a situation like this.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  Its a fact that he was the former CEO of Mozilla, regardless of what you think of his or Mozilla's actions. How can they stop him from correctly representing his past?
- atomical 11y ago
  I don't imagine Eich was very happy when he was crucified over his personal beliefs.
mikegioia 11y ago
The argument against ad-blocking is that the content-creators don't get paid for their content. But, honest question: who cares!? If you push out content and you can't make money on it without ads, then that content didn't need to be created in the first place. The argument then devolves to "there won't be any good content" but I'll _gladly_ roll the dice on that world to see what we're left with. Ads, to me, represent a monetization strategy rooted in "I did something, and you're looking at, so I deserve to get paid" but that makes no sense. The disconnect here is the presumption that the content has any value to begin with. I think what scares traditional content-creators is the idea that the vast majority of content has no inherent value.
- Gargoyle 11y ago
  >I think what scares traditional content-creators is the idea that the vast majority of content has no inherent value. So you agree to stop consuming it?
  - mikegioia 11y ago
    I have absolutely no problem not consuming it. I would bet most people consume things not because they want to, but because it's there and easy. Ask your friends this: would they still read NYT articles if they had to pay 25 cents every time they landed on a new article? Any barrier to entry for the vast majority of people would have a profound impact on what they consume. Charge people 50 cents for a plastic bag at the bodega and they'll say they don't need the bag. Give it to them for free by default and they'll take 2!
    - Gargoyle 11y ago
      There's nothing stopping you from not consuming content you feel has no value. So stop. If you truly feel it has no value, which I doubt.
  - lackbeard 11y ago
    That's not how the internet works. If they make something accessible over http, I'm free to consume it however I can.
askyourmother 11y ago
Businesses who expose their users to malware and harm via infected ads they choose not to screen or vet in-house, complain when those same users take steps to protect themselves. Maybe we need to change the terminology: "I use a browser condom to prevent ad STDs from the various glory hole, sorry, glorious content, sites I frequent".
- makomk 11y ago
  I hate to break it to you, but Brave has a nice big Limitation of Liability section in their terms of use that completely exempts them from liability for any malicious ads they might insert into web pages.
jusben1369 11y ago
Is his business model any different to me selling my own dish, intercepting Dishtv/satellite streams, redirecting it to my users and inserting my own ads in place of the ones already being shown?
- haneefmubarak 11y ago
  Actually, yeah, it is. A better analogy is TVs. For years, everyone has been hooking up their own TVs (browsers) to their service (internet) and have had to watch and listen to really noisy, distracting ads that subtract from their experience (web ads that track, reduce performance, and are really distracting). Recently, some people came up with interceptor boxes and DVRs (extensions) that let you either silence and block out ads or record what you want to watch and play it back while skipping ads. Many people loved this and started actively using them. Now someone came up with a new TV (Eich's browser) that automatically removes ads and replaces them with quieter, less distracting ads. That's all it is. Until today, I didn't know that Brave was available on other platforms, since I only use it on Android (it replaced an app I was previously using, link bubble). I gotta admit it's pretty decent, although it's unlikely that I'll be using it to replace my usual desktop combo of Google Chrome + uBlock Origin.
- woah 11y ago
  It's like a TV set with a mute button.
RandomSeeded 11y ago
What I don't understand is how Brave expects to gain a userbase. It's a Chromium fork with an ad-blocking/replacing scheme. If a user wanted to install an adblocker, why wouldn't they simply install an adblocker which removes all ads instead of an entirely separate browser which still has ads that some third party has deemed acceptable? It's not like the Brave scheme has any moral high ground here to appeal to; it's not a unique scheme and when others have tried it it generally wasn't received well[0]. I simply can't come up with a way in which Brave wins market share. [0] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/why-comcasts-javascript-ad-injections-threaten-security-net-neutrality/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/why-comcasts-java...
- lackbeard 11y ago
  Aren't they paying users a cut of the ad revenue?
  - reustle 11y ago
    Do you think advertisers are going to be that interested in paying the people looking at their ads? I just don't see how that will work in the long run.
    - lackbeard 11y ago
      From what I understand, advertisers aren't paying the users of Brave. Brave is paying the users. Advertisers pay Brave (just as they would pay any other ad network, I guess?) Brave then slices that money up giving a % to the content publisher, a % to the user, and keeping a % for themselves.
      - reustle 11y ago
        Yeah, but if advertisers pay Brave knowing Brave pays viewers, then the advertisers know they are paying users at the end of the day.
- makomk 11y ago
uw_rob 11y ago
It seems that most people in the comments haven't actually read the article as the complaint seems to not be about ad-blocking but about the browser replacing ads with its own. What would the argument for this being OK be? Also as an aside, it seems insane to me that people are comparing the ad-blocking to having others decide what you can and cannot read, and that it is somehow a violation of advertisers freedom.
- lackbeard 11y ago
  > What would the argument for this being OK be? It's saddening that this is even a question in anyone's mind. Is it okay to use Lynx? curl? Is it okay to save what I downloaded with curl?
  - uw_rob 11y ago
    Of course that is ok! I believe you have the right to choose how things are displayed for you. I however think it is morally dubious for a browser to remove ads from a site to just replace it with its own.
- Lazare 11y ago
  > What would the argument for this being OK be? What would be the argument that it's not okay? To me your argument is like saying that it's okay to buy a book and draw on the cover with a green pen, but not okay to draw on the cover with a red pen. If I bought the book, I can modify it how I want; the colour of ink I use shouldn't matter.
  - uw_rob 11y ago
    I think the user should have the right to choose what, and how, content is displayed. With that being said, I think it is morally dubious for a browser to inject ads. Regardless of the privacy concerns, I don't think anyone should profit at the direct costs of others. I think your physical comparison fails as it tries to equate a right to something that is moral. And sometimes they are different.
bhickey 11y ago
I'd like to see a copyright attorney weigh in on the NAA's claims. There seems to be an analogy between what Brave is doing and ClearPlay/CleanFlicks. ClearPlay offers filters based on tagging offensive frames in films. Congress amended copyright law to bless this as lawful.
joesmo 11y ago
Using Brave is almost as dumb as not using an ad blocker at all from a security perspective unless Eich has a plan to 100% eliminate malware, something I'd be extremely sceptical about. I don't see how his malware is going to be different from the regular malware in ads currently. Now where is the full list of newspapers because I'm interested in actively avoiding their content due to this obviously political (and extremely disgusting and greedy) move.
- woah 11y ago
  Pretty easy. Strip all script tags from ad markup.
  - joesmo 11y ago
    Unfortunately, that won't even get rid of all XSS or Javascript, so it won't work.
simeonf 11y ago
From the response https://www.brave.com/blogpost_4.html https://www.brave.com/blogpost_4.html > Brave is not, as the NAA asserts, “replac[ing] publishers' ads on the publishers' own websites and mobile applications with Brave's own advertising.” We do not tamper with any first-party publisher content, including native ads that do not use third-party tracking. Is this a refutation or an evasion? Does Brave replace 3rdparty tracking ads? I fired up brave and visited a few sites - I don't see any ads at all...
NelsonMinar 11y ago
The headline and post title are misleading. Brave is not an ad-blocking browser. It is an ad-replacing browser. Blocking ads is useful and ethical. Replacing ads to capture revenue is bad and unethical.
- woah 11y ago
  It's my right to do whatever I want with the bytes I download over http. Do you disagree?
  - NelsonMinar 11y ago
    I agree. But I think it is unethical to build a business around convincing consumers to replace a content producers' revenue with its own.
michael_h 11y ago
> It is the rich and self-righteous, who want to tell everyone else what they can and cannot read and watch and hear That is a rich vein of irony
davidf18 11y ago
The advertisings must change their business model. They should follow the models used by content providers on Cable. I pay Verizon an enormous amount of money each month for the "pipe" as do others pay high fees for cellular phone providers. The content providers should get a portion of the excessively high amount of money I pay to Verizon to pay for their content.
strooper 11y ago
In the world of multi billion dollar ad industry literally controlling the contents in www, it is truly brave effort, or blackmailing based monetization. Remember Ad block plus whiltelisting ads after getting paid?

37 points by randomname2 11y ago

mtgx 11y ago

Brendan Eich just can't seem to catch a break.

callahad 11y ago
To the contrary, articles like these are one hell of a break in terms of exposure for Brave.
- jusben1369 11y ago
  That is certainly true.

eveningcoffee 11y ago

I must say that I have nothing against ads in general, but I am fiercely against the ads that are predatory in their nature. This includes the ads that rely on the network of global surveillance of every web user actions in the Internet, this includes the ads what main indention is to disrupt and control the main flow of the user who perceives the Internet mainly as the reading medium, and obviously everything that is clearly malicious including direct malware attacks through the ad systems to the more subtle malicious attempts to market products or services that are attacking users sexual, financial or emotional integrity.

epoch1970 11y ago
What kind of ads aren't "predatory in their nature"? The only kind I can think of is uncompensated word-of-mouth recommendations based on prior good experiences. But I don't really consider that "advertising", as it isn't the beneficiary itself causing this promotion to happen.
- eveningcoffee 11y ago
  I think there is a sense of truth in what you are saying, but I think that is not completely black and white. For example honest product advertisements can be described as non-predatory. I also think that magazine ads are an order of less predatory compared to the TV ads because you are not forced to perceive them. Google ads many years ago without all reaching Google Analyse and other Google whole web tracking projects were at least two orders less predatory than Google ads today.

J_Darnley 11y ago

Cry me a river. Publishers and ad companies deserve everything they're getting and more.

noir_lord 11y ago
In their current guise I couldn't agree more. They created a corrupt model that serves them at the expense of the users and then act aggrieved when the users retaliate.

r0muald 11y ago

It's very odd that a letter written in purely legalese terms receives a reply that is mainly hand-waving and pointless in the remarks that are made (as if all the details given by Brave/Eich weren't already known). Doesn't strike me as particularly brilliant, but IANAL etc. I also wonder how long until Brendan Eich is just "Brendan Eich" and not "Mozilla former CEO". I can't imagine Mozilla is very happy with being associated with a competitor, especially in a situation like this.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
Its a fact that he was the former CEO of Mozilla, regardless of what you think of his or Mozilla's actions. How can they stop him from correctly representing his past?
atomical 11y ago
I don't imagine Eich was very happy when he was crucified over his personal beliefs.

mikegioia 11y ago

The argument against ad-blocking is that the content-creators don't get paid for their content. But, honest question: who cares!? If you push out content and you can't make money on it without ads, then that content didn't need to be created in the first place. The argument then devolves to "there won't be any good content" but I'll _gladly_ roll the dice on that world to see what we're left with. Ads, to me, represent a monetization strategy rooted in "I did something, and you're looking at, so I deserve to get paid" but that makes no sense. The disconnect here is the presumption that the content has any value to begin with. I think what scares traditional content-creators is the idea that the vast majority of content has no inherent value.

Gargoyle 11y ago
>I think what scares traditional content-creators is the idea that the vast majority of content has no inherent value. So you agree to stop consuming it?
- mikegioia 11y ago
  I have absolutely no problem not consuming it. I would bet most people consume things not because they want to, but because it's there and easy. Ask your friends this: would they still read NYT articles if they had to pay 25 cents every time they landed on a new article? Any barrier to entry for the vast majority of people would have a profound impact on what they consume. Charge people 50 cents for a plastic bag at the bodega and they'll say they don't need the bag. Give it to them for free by default and they'll take 2!
  - Gargoyle 11y ago
    There's nothing stopping you from not consuming content you feel has no value. So stop. If you truly feel it has no value, which I doubt.
- lackbeard 11y ago
  That's not how the internet works. If they make something accessible over http, I'm free to consume it however I can.

askyourmother 11y ago

Businesses who expose their users to malware and harm via infected ads they choose not to screen or vet in-house, complain when those same users take steps to protect themselves. Maybe we need to change the terminology: "I use a browser condom to prevent ad STDs from the various glory hole, sorry, glorious content, sites I frequent".

makomk 11y ago
I hate to break it to you, but Brave has a nice big Limitation of Liability section in their terms of use that completely exempts them from liability for any malicious ads they might insert into web pages.

jusben1369 11y ago

Is his business model any different to me selling my own dish, intercepting Dishtv/satellite streams, redirecting it to my users and inserting my own ads in place of the ones already being shown?

haneefmubarak 11y ago
Actually, yeah, it is. A better analogy is TVs. For years, everyone has been hooking up their own TVs (browsers) to their service (internet) and have had to watch and listen to really noisy, distracting ads that subtract from their experience (web ads that track, reduce performance, and are really distracting). Recently, some people came up with interceptor boxes and DVRs (extensions) that let you either silence and block out ads or record what you want to watch and play it back while skipping ads. Many people loved this and started actively using them. Now someone came up with a new TV (Eich's browser) that automatically removes ads and replaces them with quieter, less distracting ads. That's all it is. Until today, I didn't know that Brave was available on other platforms, since I only use it on Android (it replaced an app I was previously using, link bubble). I gotta admit it's pretty decent, although it's unlikely that I'll be using it to replace my usual desktop combo of Google Chrome + uBlock Origin.
woah 11y ago
It's like a TV set with a mute button.

RandomSeeded 11y ago

What I don't understand is how Brave expects to gain a userbase. It's a Chromium fork with an ad-blocking/replacing scheme. If a user wanted to install an adblocker, why wouldn't they simply install an adblocker which removes all ads instead of an entirely separate browser which still has ads that some third party has deemed acceptable? It's not like the Brave scheme has any moral high ground here to appeal to; it's not a unique scheme and when others have tried it it generally wasn't received well[0]. I simply can't come up with a way in which Brave wins market share. [0] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/why-comcasts-javascript-ad-injections-threaten-security-net-neutrality/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/why-comcasts-java...

lackbeard 11y ago
Aren't they paying users a cut of the ad revenue?
- reustle 11y ago
  Do you think advertisers are going to be that interested in paying the people looking at their ads? I just don't see how that will work in the long run.
  - lackbeard 11y ago
    From what I understand, advertisers aren't paying the users of Brave. Brave is paying the users. Advertisers pay Brave (just as they would pay any other ad network, I guess?) Brave then slices that money up giving a % to the content publisher, a % to the user, and keeping a % for themselves.
    - reustle 11y ago
      Yeah, but if advertisers pay Brave knowing Brave pays viewers, then the advertisers know they are paying users at the end of the day.
makomk 11y ago

uw_rob 11y ago

It seems that most people in the comments haven't actually read the article as the complaint seems to not be about ad-blocking but about the browser replacing ads with its own. What would the argument for this being OK be? Also as an aside, it seems insane to me that people are comparing the ad-blocking to having others decide what you can and cannot read, and that it is somehow a violation of advertisers freedom.

lackbeard 11y ago
> What would the argument for this being OK be? It's saddening that this is even a question in anyone's mind. Is it okay to use Lynx? curl? Is it okay to save what I downloaded with curl?
- uw_rob 11y ago
  Of course that is ok! I believe you have the right to choose how things are displayed for you. I however think it is morally dubious for a browser to remove ads from a site to just replace it with its own.
Lazare 11y ago
> What would the argument for this being OK be? What would be the argument that it's not okay? To me your argument is like saying that it's okay to buy a book and draw on the cover with a green pen, but not okay to draw on the cover with a red pen. If I bought the book, I can modify it how I want; the colour of ink I use shouldn't matter.
- uw_rob 11y ago
  I think the user should have the right to choose what, and how, content is displayed. With that being said, I think it is morally dubious for a browser to inject ads. Regardless of the privacy concerns, I don't think anyone should profit at the direct costs of others. I think your physical comparison fails as it tries to equate a right to something that is moral. And sometimes they are different.

bhickey 11y ago

I'd like to see a copyright attorney weigh in on the NAA's claims. There seems to be an analogy between what Brave is doing and ClearPlay/CleanFlicks. ClearPlay offers filters based on tagging offensive frames in films. Congress amended copyright law to bless this as lawful.

joesmo 11y ago

Using Brave is almost as dumb as not using an ad blocker at all from a security perspective unless Eich has a plan to 100% eliminate malware, something I'd be extremely sceptical about. I don't see how his malware is going to be different from the regular malware in ads currently. Now where is the full list of newspapers because I'm interested in actively avoiding their content due to this obviously political (and extremely disgusting and greedy) move.

woah 11y ago
Pretty easy. Strip all script tags from ad markup.
- joesmo 11y ago
  Unfortunately, that won't even get rid of all XSS or Javascript, so it won't work.

simeonf 11y ago

From the response https://www.brave.com/blogpost_4.html https://www.brave.com/blogpost_4.html > Brave is not, as the NAA asserts, “replac[ing] publishers' ads on the publishers' own websites and mobile applications with Brave's own advertising.” We do not tamper with any first-party publisher content, including native ads that do not use third-party tracking. Is this a refutation or an evasion? Does Brave replace 3rdparty tracking ads? I fired up brave and visited a few sites - I don't see any ads at all...

NelsonMinar 11y ago

The headline and post title are misleading. Brave is not an ad-blocking browser. It is an ad-replacing browser. Blocking ads is useful and ethical. Replacing ads to capture revenue is bad and unethical.

woah 11y ago
It's my right to do whatever I want with the bytes I download over http. Do you disagree?
- NelsonMinar 11y ago
  I agree. But I think it is unethical to build a business around convincing consumers to replace a content producers' revenue with its own.

michael_h 11y ago

> It is the rich and self-righteous, who want to tell everyone else what they can and cannot read and watch and hear That is a rich vein of irony

davidf18 11y ago

The advertisings must change their business model. They should follow the models used by content providers on Cable. I pay Verizon an enormous amount of money each month for the "pipe" as do others pay high fees for cellular phone providers. The content providers should get a portion of the excessively high amount of money I pay to Verizon to pay for their content.

strooper 11y ago

In the world of multi billion dollar ad industry literally controlling the contents in www, it is truly brave effort, or blackmailing based monetization. Remember Ad block plus whiltelisting ads after getting paid?