5 ms·

So users need to use their "Brave" browser? What do they gain from this, apart from earning "BAT"s that seems to only allow access to premium features on that b

by jypepin 10y ago

So users need to use their "Brave" browser? What do they gain from this, apart from earning "BAT"s that seems to only allow access to premium features on that browser? Also, what happens to actual real ads? Are they blocked and replaces by their own ads by the browser?

sushisource 10y ago
Yeah. This seems a bit nonsense. The browser "blocks trackers"... while also tracking you. Smells like bullshit to me. As far as I can tell the main selling point is it's using the current buzzword that makes everyone get all hot and bothered: "blockchain"
- news_to_me 10y ago
  Tracking is important for delivering "relevant" ads, which many people would prefer. The real issue is that the different ad networks spew their trackers across the web, without respect for users' privacy or user experience. I don't really think Brave's solution here is fully-baked, but the idea of replacing all those third-party trackers with one that's on-device and (presumably) I can have some degree of control over sounds like a step in the right direction.
  - vkou 10y ago
    > Tracking is important for delivering "relevant" ads, which many people would prefer. I know that advertisers prefer this, but I'm not quite convinced that most users do. The most polarizing example of this is, of course, remarketing.
    - news_to_me 10y ago
      I think it seems plausible. If any users get value out of advertising (and I think they do), then more relevant ones would have more value for them. That said, if advertisers simply respected "do not track", we could see for ourselves how true that is.
      - vkou 10y ago
        What value do users get out of brand advertising (The staple of much-loathed display ads)? What difference does it make to me, that I see a bunch of ads for Coke, versus Pepsi? Surely, I'm well aware that sugary drinks exist. The ad isn't notifying me of a particular sale, or a discount. All it does, is remind me that sugar water exists, and that I should buy their brand of sugar water. This is hardly a gain for me, or society. It's certainly a gain for Coke...
        news_to_me 10y ago
        Well ok, brand advertising is one kind of ad, which is probably less useful for people. I still think there's a marginal benefit though, to having highly recognizable brands around. I don't really like ads either, all I'm saying is that it's simplistic to say ads have zero value to people. If that were true there would be no reason to advertise anyway.
        vkou 10y ago
        Brand advertising tends to be among the most obnoxious kind of advertising. (And I'm not even mentioning the 'Your computer has a virus/One Weird Trick To Shrink Your Belly' scams.) There is a benefit to certain highly recognized brands. Dyson makes great vacuums (Or, it used to - now people only think it does.) Toyota makes reliable vehicles. Coke vs Pepsi, though? It's sugar water. It's a commodity, with no differentiation in quality. It is quite literally, up to personal preference. > I'm saying is that it's simplistic to say ads have zero value to people. There are plenty of reasons to engage in zero-sum, or even negative-sum activities. Even if advertising as a whole adds value (Which I think is too close to call), a very large part of it does not.
Spoom 10y ago
Also, what happens to actual real ads? Are they blocked and replaces by their own ads by the browser? Essentially yes[1], which is why I'll never be onboard with Brave or any solutions that rely on it. 1. https://brave.com/about_ad_replacement.html https://brave.com/about_ad_replacement.html
- news_to_me 10y ago
  I don't see what's wrong with this. Ads suck, but people need to make money for the content they produce. I don't see anyone complaining about ads in physical newspapers or magazines (even though they can be pretty substantial) – the difference is that ads on the web track you, slow down your pages, and can be insecure. The real solution is to find a reasonable compromise that balances everyone's interest, and that's what Brave is trying to do.
  - marssaxman 10y ago
    people need to make money for the content they produce No, not really; people just need to make a living somehow. It's convenient when that can happen as a result of creative activity, but the vast majority of people producing content do so because they want to, not because they are getting paid for it.
mthoms 10y ago
What I understood: the ad-matching algorithms and click-stream tracking takes place only on the client side. And since it's open source you could theoretically verify that none of this data is leaking. >Also, what happens to actual real ads? Are they blocked and replaces by their own ads by the browser? Not sure. Ideally, the content provider is on-board with the scheme and will be compensated by "tokens" (which have monetary value) based on Ethereum. It's all actually quite clever, but faces obvious "chicken-and-egg" problems.
BrendanEich 10y ago
In the white paper and website, we talk about opt-in for anything that does local M/L on your local data (which his the data already computed on-device by all browsers today). (From replies to your comment I feel the need to add: The first thing to do before jumping to "Everyone is stupid except me" (H. Simpson) is read carefully and consider what is proposed on its face. ;-) Baseline Brave doesn't do anything with ads except block third party trackers and ads. We offer opt-in fingerprinting protection and script blocking too, and we will work to enable fingerprint defense by default. This baseline won't change, it's the starting condition for opt-in methods which users may choose to help support sites. The first and cleanest opt-in method is already in Brave on laptop/desktop. Go to Preferences / Payments to fund a wallet so you can auto-micro-donate to your top sites as calculated locally (no remote tracking) over 30 days of uptime. At the end of the 30 day period, using VPN for IP address masking and a ZKP based on https://anonize.org/ https://anonize.org/, Brave sends zero-knowlege proof "votes" for the candidate sites you browsed. You can adjust or turn off any sites you don't wish to support. We're building on this beta "Brave Payments" system to efface bitcoin from users' view, and eventually from publishers. But right now publishers who have money due to them can come and get it by verifying they own their domain (akin to the ACME challenge-response protocol pioneered by LetsEncrypt), at https://publishers.brave.com/ https://publishers.brave.com/. We don't expect donors to make up for lost ad revenue at scale, which is why we are working on basicattentiontoken.org and an opt-in client component to mine your data on-device, no signals out. Note your data includes you queries to search engines -- these belong to you and they form hot intent signals from you should benefit materially, and not just in quality of results -- in all economics based on search plus browsing. Brave is all auditable open source, all non-baseline browser options are opt-in. Sorry, gotta repeat given the tendency to miss or misstate this. The opt-in M/L component can predict a set of keywords to match against an offer and ad catalog downloaded to each opted-in user's device. That catalog has only edge-cache URLs with small keyword sets per URL. Upon finding the best match at the best time, you'll get an offer or ad. We are planning to let you choose several channels: fullscreen video, chatbot on a messaging app, even one per day email (some people prefer this). Only with publishers who partner with us and want to see how this system can work on their third party ad slots in which we block ads will we, with user opt-in as well as publisher, see if we can fill empty space. Instead of shotgunning thousands of websites to try to reach users who are poorly tracked by today's cookies, user-ids on mobile, and fingerprinting, we believe a private promotion system can show much better performance in all dimensions (opt-in user happiness, data and battery use, conversion for ad buyers, yield for ad space sellers if they are in the loop). As Joe Marchese (TrueX, now Fox -- Joe encourages his staff to install and use adblockers) has pointed out, today's digital ad system wastes money and loses users by spray-and-pray tactics, instead of finding the right place and time to give you marketing information you might actually want. Again and I'll stop repeating it, this is all only if you opt in. But, if you do, then you get a revenue share in BATs. Brave's cut will be same or smaller, that's a brand promise. If the ad places in a channel you control (fullscreen video, chatbot, email), the bulk of the revenue will go to you. Anyway, that's what we are building. All BAT-certified apps (BAT is for more than Brave, e.g., other browsers, "readers", games, messaging apps), will have to conform to rules we are prototyping in Brave. Conformance will be built into the cryptographic protocols, plus rate-limits and other defenses, so cheating and fraud will be very hard. More on this over time as we launch BAT and build out the full prototype in Brave.

by jypepin 10y ago

sushisource 10y ago

Yeah. This seems a bit nonsense. The browser "blocks trackers"... while also tracking you. Smells like bullshit to me. As far as I can tell the main selling point is it's using the current buzzword that makes everyone get all hot and bothered: "blockchain"

news_to_me 10y ago
Tracking is important for delivering "relevant" ads, which many people would prefer. The real issue is that the different ad networks spew their trackers across the web, without respect for users' privacy or user experience. I don't really think Brave's solution here is fully-baked, but the idea of replacing all those third-party trackers with one that's on-device and (presumably) I can have some degree of control over sounds like a step in the right direction.
- vkou 10y ago
  > Tracking is important for delivering "relevant" ads, which many people would prefer. I know that advertisers prefer this, but I'm not quite convinced that most users do. The most polarizing example of this is, of course, remarketing.
  - news_to_me 10y ago
    I think it seems plausible. If any users get value out of advertising (and I think they do), then more relevant ones would have more value for them. That said, if advertisers simply respected "do not track", we could see for ourselves how true that is.
    - vkou 10y ago
      What value do users get out of brand advertising (The staple of much-loathed display ads)? What difference does it make to me, that I see a bunch of ads for Coke, versus Pepsi? Surely, I'm well aware that sugary drinks exist. The ad isn't notifying me of a particular sale, or a discount. All it does, is remind me that sugar water exists, and that I should buy their brand of sugar water. This is hardly a gain for me, or society. It's certainly a gain for Coke...
      - news_to_me 10y ago
        Well ok, brand advertising is one kind of ad, which is probably less useful for people. I still think there's a marginal benefit though, to having highly recognizable brands around. I don't really like ads either, all I'm saying is that it's simplistic to say ads have zero value to people. If that were true there would be no reason to advertise anyway.
        vkou 10y ago
        Brand advertising tends to be among the most obnoxious kind of advertising. (And I'm not even mentioning the 'Your computer has a virus/One Weird Trick To Shrink Your Belly' scams.) There is a benefit to certain highly recognized brands. Dyson makes great vacuums (Or, it used to - now people only think it does.) Toyota makes reliable vehicles. Coke vs Pepsi, though? It's sugar water. It's a commodity, with no differentiation in quality. It is quite literally, up to personal preference. > I'm saying is that it's simplistic to say ads have zero value to people. There are plenty of reasons to engage in zero-sum, or even negative-sum activities. Even if advertising as a whole adds value (Which I think is too close to call), a very large part of it does not.

Spoom 10y ago

Also, what happens to actual real ads? Are they blocked and replaces by their own ads by the browser? Essentially yes[1], which is why I'll never be onboard with Brave or any solutions that rely on it. 1. https://brave.com/about_ad_replacement.html https://brave.com/about_ad_replacement.html

news_to_me 10y ago
I don't see what's wrong with this. Ads suck, but people need to make money for the content they produce. I don't see anyone complaining about ads in physical newspapers or magazines (even though they can be pretty substantial) – the difference is that ads on the web track you, slow down your pages, and can be insecure. The real solution is to find a reasonable compromise that balances everyone's interest, and that's what Brave is trying to do.
- marssaxman 10y ago
  people need to make money for the content they produce No, not really; people just need to make a living somehow. It's convenient when that can happen as a result of creative activity, but the vast majority of people producing content do so because they want to, not because they are getting paid for it.

mthoms 10y ago

What I understood: the ad-matching algorithms and click-stream tracking takes place only on the client side. And since it's open source you could theoretically verify that none of this data is leaking. >Also, what happens to actual real ads? Are they blocked and replaces by their own ads by the browser? Not sure. Ideally, the content provider is on-board with the scheme and will be compensated by "tokens" (which have monetary value) based on Ethereum. It's all actually quite clever, but faces obvious "chicken-and-egg" problems.

BrendanEich 10y ago

In the white paper and website, we talk about opt-in for anything that does local M/L on your local data (which his the data already computed on-device by all browsers today). (From replies to your comment I feel the need to add: The first thing to do before jumping to "Everyone is stupid except me" (H. Simpson) is read carefully and consider what is proposed on its face. ;-) Baseline Brave doesn't do anything with ads except block third party trackers and ads. We offer opt-in fingerprinting protection and script blocking too, and we will work to enable fingerprint defense by default. This baseline won't change, it's the starting condition for opt-in methods which users may choose to help support sites. The first and cleanest opt-in method is already in Brave on laptop/desktop. Go to Preferences / Payments to fund a wallet so you can auto-micro-donate to your top sites as calculated locally (no remote tracking) over 30 days of uptime. At the end of the 30 day period, using VPN for IP address masking and a ZKP based on https://anonize.org/ https://anonize.org/, Brave sends zero-knowlege proof "votes" for the candidate sites you browsed. You can adjust or turn off any sites you don't wish to support. We're building on this beta "Brave Payments" system to efface bitcoin from users' view, and eventually from publishers. But right now publishers who have money due to them can come and get it by verifying they own their domain (akin to the ACME challenge-response protocol pioneered by LetsEncrypt), at https://publishers.brave.com/ https://publishers.brave.com/. We don't expect donors to make up for lost ad revenue at scale, which is why we are working on basicattentiontoken.org and an opt-in client component to mine your data on-device, no signals out. Note your data includes you queries to search engines -- these belong to you and they form hot intent signals from you should benefit materially, and not just in quality of results -- in all economics based on search plus browsing. Brave is all auditable open source, all non-baseline browser options are opt-in. Sorry, gotta repeat given the tendency to miss or misstate this. The opt-in M/L component can predict a set of keywords to match against an offer and ad catalog downloaded to each opted-in user's device. That catalog has only edge-cache URLs with small keyword sets per URL. Upon finding the best match at the best time, you'll get an offer or ad. We are planning to let you choose several channels: fullscreen video, chatbot on a messaging app, even one per day email (some people prefer this). Only with publishers who partner with us and want to see how this system can work on their third party ad slots in which we block ads will we, with user opt-in as well as publisher, see if we can fill empty space. Instead of shotgunning thousands of websites to try to reach users who are poorly tracked by today's cookies, user-ids on mobile, and fingerprinting, we believe a private promotion system can show much better performance in all dimensions (opt-in user happiness, data and battery use, conversion for ad buyers, yield for ad space sellers if they are in the loop). As Joe Marchese (TrueX, now Fox -- Joe encourages his staff to install and use adblockers) has pointed out, today's digital ad system wastes money and loses users by spray-and-pray tactics, instead of finding the right place and time to give you marketing information you might actually want. Again and I'll stop repeating it, this is all only if you opt in. But, if you do, then you get a revenue share in BATs. Brave's cut will be same or smaller, that's a brand promise. If the ad places in a channel you control (fullscreen video, chatbot, email), the bulk of the revenue will go to you. Anyway, that's what we are building. All BAT-certified apps (BAT is for more than Brave, e.g., other browsers, "readers", games, messaging apps), will have to conform to rules we are prototyping in Brave. Conformance will be built into the cryptographic protocols, plus rate-limits and other defenses, so cheating and fraud will be very hard. More on this over time as we launch BAT and build out the full prototype in Brave.