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They're so admirable that they take a 5% cut of your donations to sites you visit and replace ads with their own. Call me crazy, but in no future can I imagine

by Sephr 8y ago

They're so admirable that they take a 5% cut of your donations to sites you visit and replace ads with their own. Call me crazy, but in no future can I imagine anyone willingly paying their browser vendor for anything. Brave isn't the future, it's yet another cash grab. The real future is fully-decentralized websites, and it doesn't require new browsers. Edit: Fixed inaccuracy pointed out by Brave developer

nohnce 8y ago
It seems to me that a lot of tech companies do slightly shady things under the guise of social progress and what not. It's the gateway to market share, then "dominance" to dictate whatever they want. While challenging Google is important, it's a good PR move nonetheless. Brave is also built on top of Chromium. What ramifications that might have I'm not sure.
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  Chromium is a tool; how you use it is up to you. Brave removes any parts that may phone-home to Google. At the end of the day though, Chromium is less important than the principles upon which the company is founded. With Brave vs Google, that's "Can't be evil" vs "Don't be evil". The difference is subtle, yet profound.
atomical 8y ago
The users are getting paid for browsing. Why wouldn't they want to be paid for browsing? They can use that to potentially pay for articles.
snaky 8y ago
Or maybe the future is regular users being annoyed by plain dumb advertising to stop clicking on them, bringing CTR down too much, and the industry finally try to use some information they got in a meaningful way and make advertising not that annoying and quite useful.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Unfortunately, unlikely. For one thing, the clickthroughs are certainly important, but advertising is also just impressions and brand recognition---even if somehow everyone magically stopped clicking on ads, companies like Coke and Pepsi would still pay top-dollar to remind you you're thirsty for sugar-water right now, and if you're reading websites or watching videos online instead of watching TV or reading a newspaper, that's where they'll do it. But additionally, a very, very small number of Internet users click on ads. And those clicks float the entire industry. I'm not super-excited about any solution that assumes a tiny minority of people stop doing a thing; statistically, it's unlikely to pan out that way.
dleslie 8y ago
Despite what the anti capitalists wish, the future is likely to be more cash grabs.
Filligree 8y ago
> The real future is fully-decentralized websites, and it doesn't require new browsers. Let's say I want to run a forum. Something equivalent to, hmm, https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/ https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/ How do I do that as a decentralized website?
- fixermark 8y ago
  Hypothetically, you could use something akin to Usenet's technical model (as that was a fully-decentralized message board collection). But that will have implications for latency of post updates, security, and complexity of maintaining the system.
  - munificent 8y ago
    > you could use something akin to Usenet's technical model (as that was a fully-decentralized message board collection). That was effectively funded by taxpayers by way of universities. Maybe the answer is public funding for online content, but we should be clear about it. This is an economic problem, not a technical one. Federation might slice the economic problem into smaller pieces, but they still need to be paid for.
    - mverwijs 8y ago
      The GP did ask a very technical question, without any requirement stated on profitability. The example used (Sufficient Velocity) does not appear to be profit-based either.
    - setr 8y ago
      Slice it down enough, and the average user can donate without much issue Slice it down even further, and it can simply be the cost of entry. In the same fashion that P2P sharing communities usually require that you make X gb of data available before you can join, or closed torrent communities require an even seed/leech ratio, your federated network can require that you allow upload and 10gb of hard drive space to use (or vary based on usage or something) Distribute the cost to the point that for any given person the cost is negligible is the ideal.
jonathansampson 8y ago
You're 100% incorrect; the ad blocker is on by default. And Brave doesn't show any ads by default. I would like to invite you to actually download the application before making such egregious claims. Also, consider reading my response to "replacing ads" here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17972072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17972072
- brettz 8y ago
  How is an adblock on by default going to save the internet? No one likes paywalls.
  - andirk 8y ago
    Content creators get paid via Basic Attention Token. Wow ppl reply without reading anything. BAT is all about attention. Pay attention!
    - brettz 8y ago
      I prefer not paying for content, which includes micro-transactions. I don't think I'm alone on that sentiment. If publishers won't get enough "BAT" through micro-transactions, the content will end up behind a paywall.
    - zormino 8y ago
      But what if I'm not interested in these particular digital tokens out of the pool of thousands? I get they have a dollar value associated with them, but I don't want them. I want exactly 0 of them. I want 0 pretend cash tokens of any kind. Why would the browser vendor get to decide this on my behalf?
stcredzero 8y ago
Call me crazy, but in no future can I imagine anyone willingly paying their browser vendor for freely-implemented adblocking. If the browser provides a value add through integration and support, then I could completely imagine that. Brave isn't the future, it's yet another cash grab. The real future is fully-decentralized websites, and it doesn't require new browsers. If we make it too hard to make a profit while protecting our privacy while it's too easy to make a profit by eliminating privacy, there's only one way that story can end.

by Sephr 8y ago

nohnce 8y ago

It seems to me that a lot of tech companies do slightly shady things under the guise of social progress and what not. It's the gateway to market share, then "dominance" to dictate whatever they want. While challenging Google is important, it's a good PR move nonetheless. Brave is also built on top of Chromium. What ramifications that might have I'm not sure.

jonathansampson 8y ago
Chromium is a tool; how you use it is up to you. Brave removes any parts that may phone-home to Google. At the end of the day though, Chromium is less important than the principles upon which the company is founded. With Brave vs Google, that's "Can't be evil" vs "Don't be evil". The difference is subtle, yet profound.

atomical 8y ago

The users are getting paid for browsing. Why wouldn't they want to be paid for browsing? They can use that to potentially pay for articles.

snaky 8y ago

Or maybe the future is regular users being annoyed by plain dumb advertising to stop clicking on them, bringing CTR down too much, and the industry finally try to use some information they got in a meaningful way and make advertising not that annoying and quite useful.

fixermark 8y ago
Unfortunately, unlikely. For one thing, the clickthroughs are certainly important, but advertising is also just impressions and brand recognition---even if somehow everyone magically stopped clicking on ads, companies like Coke and Pepsi would still pay top-dollar to remind you you're thirsty for sugar-water right now, and if you're reading websites or watching videos online instead of watching TV or reading a newspaper, that's where they'll do it. But additionally, a very, very small number of Internet users click on ads. And those clicks float the entire industry. I'm not super-excited about any solution that assumes a tiny minority of people stop doing a thing; statistically, it's unlikely to pan out that way.

dleslie 8y ago

Despite what the anti capitalists wish, the future is likely to be more cash grabs.

Filligree 8y ago

> The real future is fully-decentralized websites, and it doesn't require new browsers. Let's say I want to run a forum. Something equivalent to, hmm, https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/ https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/ How do I do that as a decentralized website?

fixermark 8y ago
Hypothetically, you could use something akin to Usenet's technical model (as that was a fully-decentralized message board collection). But that will have implications for latency of post updates, security, and complexity of maintaining the system.
- munificent 8y ago
  > you could use something akin to Usenet's technical model (as that was a fully-decentralized message board collection). That was effectively funded by taxpayers by way of universities. Maybe the answer is public funding for online content, but we should be clear about it. This is an economic problem, not a technical one. Federation might slice the economic problem into smaller pieces, but they still need to be paid for.
  - mverwijs 8y ago
    The GP did ask a very technical question, without any requirement stated on profitability. The example used (Sufficient Velocity) does not appear to be profit-based either.
  - setr 8y ago
    Slice it down enough, and the average user can donate without much issue Slice it down even further, and it can simply be the cost of entry. In the same fashion that P2P sharing communities usually require that you make X gb of data available before you can join, or closed torrent communities require an even seed/leech ratio, your federated network can require that you allow upload and 10gb of hard drive space to use (or vary based on usage or something) Distribute the cost to the point that for any given person the cost is negligible is the ideal.

jonathansampson 8y ago

You're 100% incorrect; the ad blocker is on by default. And Brave doesn't show any ads by default. I would like to invite you to actually download the application before making such egregious claims. Also, consider reading my response to "replacing ads" here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17972072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17972072

brettz 8y ago
How is an adblock on by default going to save the internet? No one likes paywalls.
- andirk 8y ago
  Content creators get paid via Basic Attention Token. Wow ppl reply without reading anything. BAT is all about attention. Pay attention!
  - brettz 8y ago
    I prefer not paying for content, which includes micro-transactions. I don't think I'm alone on that sentiment. If publishers won't get enough "BAT" through micro-transactions, the content will end up behind a paywall.
  - zormino 8y ago
    But what if I'm not interested in these particular digital tokens out of the pool of thousands? I get they have a dollar value associated with them, but I don't want them. I want exactly 0 of them. I want 0 pretend cash tokens of any kind. Why would the browser vendor get to decide this on my behalf?

stcredzero 8y ago

Call me crazy, but in no future can I imagine anyone willingly paying their browser vendor for freely-implemented adblocking. If the browser provides a value add through integration and support, then I could completely imagine that. Brave isn't the future, it's yet another cash grab. The real future is fully-decentralized websites, and it doesn't require new browsers. If we make it too hard to make a profit while protecting our privacy while it's too easy to make a profit by eliminating privacy, there's only one way that story can end.