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I'd like to respond, as a developer on the Brave project. We don't simply replace ads with other ads. The entire ad landscape has been co-opted by those who aim

I'd like to respond, as a developer on the Brave project. We don't simply replace ads with other ads. The entire ad landscape has been co-opted by those who aim to collect as much data about you as is possible. Over 600 million devices were running some form of ad-blocking software in 2017, and that was an increase of 30% from the year prior. This number keeps growing, year over year. Something has to be done. Users who come to Brave are already blocking ads. They understand the risk involved in letting third-party software collect information about them, their person, their browsing habits, and more. Further, the risk of drive-by downloads is on the rise (or the growing popularity of crypto-jacking). Brave blocks ads and trackers for safety and privacy reasons. But we are not so naive to miss the impact this has on well-meaning publishers. This is why we created the User Growth Pool, and the Brave Payments system. Every month we pour hundreds of thousands of dollars back into the pockets of content creators by way of BAT (Basic Attention Token) grants, distributed freely to users of the Brave browser. But grants won't last forever, something sustainable has be erected in place of the incumbent digital advertising system. This is where Brave Ads comings into play. For users who opt in, Brave can deliver better quality ads, without the risk of personal data leakage. We do this by using local machine-learning to understand the user better, and making local decisions as to which ads should or should not be shown, and when (the user controls all of this). Furthermore, the user gets 70% of the ad revenue for browser-private ads. When you consider the amount of money lost to digital ad fraud each year (over $20,000,000,000 I believe), you can see how the Brave system would lead to a much better, and more sustainable future for the web. We're not simply replacing ads. We're rescuing an industry.

britch 8y ago
I'm curious, do you have any evidence that most people are installing ad blockers as a privacy measure? I don't have any hard evidence, but I imagine most people block ads because they don't want to have to scroll past a bunch of banners and videos to read the article they want to read. Certainly there are many people who are concerned about privacy, but I don' think that's what's driving the popularity of ad blockers. At least personally I have always viewed ad blockers like DVRs for the web.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  I install ad blockers because I don't want to get auto redirected to a porn site which some unscrupulous ad vendors make possible. I tried going blocker free at work for 6 months. uBO got installed the day I was sent to a porn site by malicious JavaScript after clicking on an innocuous link. Google won't address the JavaScript problem with their ad network so I cut them off.
  - faag36 8y ago
    The Internet for people who don't know about ad blockers must be a horrible place, it's no wonder everybody started using apps for everything.
    - dest 8y ago
      Aren't apps also crippled by ads?
      - bduerst 8y ago
        Yes. Apps are a step backwards because they are in a much less user-controlled space. App adoption is more correlated with mobile platform adoption as opposed to demand for ad blocking.
      - faag36 8y ago
        Some have ads, but they are definitely not crippled by ads and malware.
      - etse 8y ago
        Not nearly as much as mobile web.
    - baud147258 8y ago
      Not that horrible. I don't use an adblock at work, even if what I'm browsing is limited to the register and HN with the linked pages and it's usable.
  - 8y ago
s73v3r_ 8y ago
In all that, I noticed you weren't giving the publishers any kind of choice in the matter.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  They get the same deal they offer consumers: take it or leave it.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Consumers are choosing to go to those websites. Publishers are not choosing to serve their content through Brave.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      Their situations seem pretty similar to me. "Take it or leave it" for the little human doesn't translate to "choose among these options or leave it" for the big corporation. They can read headers. They're also running javascript in the browser itself, so we'll see something like those pathetic "please turn off your ad blocker" messages soon enough... No one deserves to stay in business. If the model doesn't work, find one that does.
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  Not sure what you mean, publishers are already suffering as a result of bad-actors parasitically attaching themselves to the incumbent digital advertising network. Brave is offering publishers a solution to their dying revenue streams. First, by way of monthly grants (we give $500k/mo to publishers right now), and secondly through a better advertising model. Note, publisher ads is not presently an option; we're testing user-private ads, which are ads shown in a private tab, not owned by any website.
Fiahil 8y ago
Maybe we, the people, don't want you to rescue this industry. Maybe the "digital ad fraud" they're screaming is the sign they belong rightfully in the void we're trying to bury them. We've seen enough shit from the ad industry, and it's time to leave them behind as humanity progress and improve.
- jeremy7600 8y ago
  Clearly, they haven't gotten the message.
- Cyclone_ 8y ago
  It's not just the ad industry, publishers need some form of revenue in order to do what they do.
  - drb91 8y ago
    So what are the alternatives to ads? They’re going to continue to die until there’s a real alternative.
    - Cyclone_ 8y ago
      Brave offers micropayments for content.
      - jonathansampson 8y ago
        Indeed! Subscription models work for some, but not for most. This adds friction to the user. Now they have to manage different accounts, monitor their monthly spending for each, and more. With Brave Payments, the user needs only to fund their wallet with BAT, and browse the web. By default, each property will receive a portion of the user's monthly allotment, relative to the amount of attention to user spent on that property's domain. If a user has chosen to give $10 worth of BAT to 5 sites, and one of them received 80% of the user's attention, then that site will get $8 worth of BAT. The rest of the sites will get the remainder, pro rata. Brave goes a step further though, and issues BAT grants monthly to users. So users don't need to fund their wallets to participate. Soon, users will be able to fund their wallet by opting into Brave Ads.
brettz 8y ago
If it's about privacy then why not just block trackers and allow ads? It seems like a page from Eyeo's playbook, another company trying to insert itself as a middleman for advertising.
- komali2 8y ago
  Someone can correct me if wrong but I believe tracking can be as simple as monitoring the IP address doing a GET for even a static ad image, which you then save with information such as the referer header to track a person across the internet.
  - jonathansampson 8y ago
    It can. Which is why Brave modifies the referer header, and has integrated support for Private Tabs with Tor (for users who wish to go even deeper into the shadows). Not to mention, by cutting out third-party ads and trackers, you greatly reduce the size of your footprint. The first-party may attempt some degree of tracking, but it would pale in comparison to what presently exists online.
lasmellslikepee 8y ago
TL;DR: Brave lied about blocking 3rd party JS and I no longer trust them. The main reason I don't use Brave anymore is because I don't trust the Brave team to be transparent about what they're doing. I remember switching to Brave a year or two ago really rooting for them and the model they were positing. I though that blocking third-party JavaScript by default was a great idea - no more Firefox plugins! Well, I soon realized that Brave did not block all third-party JS and instead let "whitelisted"(by whom?) JS through. When I asked one of the Brave team members why this was so and informed them that I found this practice misleading at best I was given a song-and-dance about "rescuing the industry" instead of a technical explanation for the issue at hand(blocking third-party JS essentially didn't work). I can't be bothered to use a browser who's developers can't be bothered to be honest about the feature set and how they work.
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  Brave doesn't promise to block all third-party scripting; that isn't necessarily a bad thing. If we were to block all third-party scripts, the web as a whole would largely crumble. Instead, we are judicious about which scripts we block, and which ones are harmless. As for transparency, we couldn't be more open. Take it from me, an ex-Microsoft engineer, Brave is an open book. We talk about features before they're shipped, our source is open to all (github.com/brave/browser-laptop, github.com/brave/brave-browser, github.com/brave/browser-core, etc.), and we regularly host AMAs. The openness of this company still, to this day, gives me wonderful culture shock. With regards to your conversation with one of the Brave team members, do you have a link? I'd love to gather context and establish a frame of reference. The only white lists we have in brave are for ua-strings and siteHacks. For some websites, we'll identify ourselves as "Brave". To all others, we identify as Chrome. This is for many reasons (which I'm happen to discuss if you're interested), but this is the first white list. The second "white list" would be our siteHacks.js file. This file contains special logic to repair sites which are broken as a result of ad/tracker blocking. But again, this isn't letting flagged scripting through to the user, this is laying our own custom logic on top of an otherwise broken experience. I hope this explanation helps shed some light on the matter. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please do not hesitate to reach out. Again, we're open and eager to share.
ariwilson 8y ago
- Why does the publisher not get a say about how their content is paid for? - Do you have evidence that users care more about ads privacy than intrusiveness?
akerro 8y ago
Whether your reasons are ideological or economical, I support your work and project. I have µblock, privacy badger and container on firefox, but Shield enabled on Brave and I opt-ed in for Brave payments and Brave ads.
downandout 8y ago
We do this by using local machine-learning to understand the user better, and making local decisions as to which ads should or should not be shown I pitched almost this same idea to Netscape in 1997. I managed to get a physical meeting with a fairly high level person, but was essentially laughed out the door. It’s interesting that you have a pool of users that have embraced this idea. Netscape - at the time the world’s dominant browser company - thought users would see this as too invasive. The quote I remember was “we just went through a shit storm over the rising use of cookies...this would be that x10”.
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  As you may or may not know, we have a handful of Netscape alumni working on the Brave project today :) Glad to meet another hacker from the original browser wars! One thing that gives our users great comfort is the fact that this is an optional component. As it's baseline, Brave blocks ads and trackers. If you don't want to see them, you stick with the default, out of the box experience. But advertising is what keeps the web open and free-to-low-cost for the masses. Walled gardens and paid subscriptions ad a high degree of friction to the industry; to much friction and you'll melt the system. Ads are a better route, for now. But ads, as we have come to know them online, are suffering greatly. Brave's model gives the user the power to decide whether or not they participate, and to what degree. As for client-side machine learning, I suspect users today will understand the benefits better than we would have 20 years ago. In fact, Tim Cook praised the iPhone and Apple Watch for utilizing similar features (using similar terminology). Another difference between users today and users in the early-to-mid 90's is the lived experience. In the 90's, as a Netscape user myself, I had little concern about invasive ads and trackers. Sure, we had web bugs, but not anywhere on the scale of what we have today. Today, our attention is being harvested for the profit of others. This limited commodity is being sold around every corner, and everybody but me is getting a cut. With Brave Ads, users who opt-in to the new experience will make as much as 70% of the ad revenue (70% goes to ad-slot owner, which is the user in the case of browser-private ads). Now, you're able to enjoy the benefits of high-quality ads, the liberty of being private and secure online, and a portion of the revenues themselves. I'd love to know more about what you pitched, from a historical perspective. I always love an inside story :)
jordigh 8y ago
> This number keeps growing, year over year. Something has to be done. Yeah, find some other way to make money than ads. Whenever you tell me that I have to watch ads for the good of capitalism, I feel a horrible contradiction in my gut. I don't want ads at all. It's like everyone has wasps and needs their wasps to get into my car and some businesses promise me that their wasps aren't so bad, so can I please roll down my windows so a few wasps get through? Honest, these are good wasps. You won't mind these wasps too much. People don't want ads. Ads are inherently adversarial. They interrupt, they manipulate, they intrude, they try to provoke a need in you that you didn't have before you watched the ad. The conversation has to be about how do we do better than ads, not how do we do better ads.
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  All sensible points. But you're missing some key points about the Brave Ads proposal. For starters, it's entirely optional. If you don't want ads, you don't get ads. You must opt into this system to see any ads. Secondly, for those who opt in, they decide how often they'll see an ad. And unlike annoying interstitial ads and more, Brave Ads begin outside of the browser as a system notification. If you wish to see the ad, click the toast. If you don't, simply dismiss or ignore it. As for the desire to see ads, many users (myself included) don't mind this. In fact, I enjoy high-quality ads that don't require me to give up personal information. I'd love to know about a sale at my favorite store, gift ideas for my wife's birthday, and more. The problem is, to get this today, I have to hand over too much to Google and Facebook. Unacceptable. With Brave's on-device machine-learning, you hand over nothing. Ads are proposed to your device, and your device choosing what you might like to see. And you, as always, remain in complete control. Should you decide to see an ad, you'll even get paid for your attention (70% of the revenue in user-private cases). But the baseline is always the same; if you don't wish to see Brave Ads, Brave won't show you Brave Ads. That's our promise to you.
- CobrastanJorji 8y ago
  Let's say bees. "I see the problem is bees in your car. We would like to solve this by filling your car with different, quieter bees. In exchange for this, we are willing to give you some of the honey."
quotemstr 8y ago
So you're replacing ads with other ads, and you have reasons. Everyone who makes money has reasons why his profit is in reality some kind of selfless social good. It's what it takes to reconcile human psychology with capitalism. You're still replacing ads with other ads.
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  This is like scoffing at dialysis as nothing more than replacing blood with blood. The system is suffering at the hands of innumerable bad-actors who commit fraud, abuse, and more. Users and Publishers alike are both suffering. The users have already responded en masse with the explosive growth of ad and tracker blocking software. We acknowledge the necessity for this move, as the industry has become overrun with parasites. But we also recognize that bloodletting isn't the solution; bleeding the publishers of their revenue isn't the solution. Brave introduced Brave Payments as a means of supporting content creators. We're staking users with $500k/mo to support their favorite sites. But this isn't a short-term solution while we work on the long-term solution of reforming digital advertising.
- jancsika 8y ago
  > So you're replacing ads with other ads, and you have reasons. If a website owner changes from an ad supported website to reading ad copy in a podcast, your same criticism would apply. Yet: * by changing from ads to ads they get rid of entire classes of bugs: cryptominers, drive-by malware, click-jacking, etc. Perpetuating a capitalist system by requiring users to take undue risks to support my content != perpetuating a capitalist system without making users take those risks. * by changing from ads to ads, I get rid of an entire class of privacy-invasions for my audience. Perpetuating a capitalist system while making users leak enormous amounts of data to who knows where != an perpetuating a capitalist system without making users do that. There are probably other points to make. But that's enough to assert that ads != ads in your comment. Halting.
- barber5 8y ago
  This is a fair point under some ways of looking at the problem. It could be that advertising is just nasty no matter how it is implemented, and thus any system that uses advertising will be tainted. I'm sympathetic to that analysis and am constantly trying to flesh it out. With that said, what jonathansampson is proposing mitigates at least one harm of advertising: ubiquitous tracking which violates privacy. They're trying to replace ads with ads that don't require tracking by third parties. There's actually a whole area of research on this that's pretty fascinating called privacy preserving advertising. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/serving-ads-from-localhost-for-performance-privacy-and-profit/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/serving... https://crypto.stanford.edu/adnostic/ https://crypto.stanford.edu/adnostic/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/privad-practical-privacy-in-online-advertising/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/privad-... https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6234417/ https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6234417/
1qaz2wsx 8y ago
Isn't Brave using the blink engine from Chrome - which was funded by Google based on the ad revenues? The BAT grant is just Brave burning VC money to get some market share and eventually some pie of the Adtech eco-system? Also, not sure how ad fraud is relevant here or how Brave will prevent it?
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  Yes, Brave is using the Blink engine (via Chromium). Chromium is an open source project with many contributors (including Google). Google uses this as part of their larger strategy involving ads and trackers, no doubt. But at the end of the day, it's a tool for displaying websites. To what ends you use it is dependent upon your end goal. Google used to tell everybody "Don't be evil" was at the core of their being; Brave says "Can't be evil". This is a stark difference-Google maintains the capacity to do harm, whereas Brave precludes it. The Basic Attention Token User Growth Pool was created during our Token Sale in 2017; not from VC funds. Ad Fraud is relevant because it claims more and more digital advertising dollars each year. Estimate today put it over 20 billion. By reducing middle-men, clearing up reporting, and more, there is less revenue lost, and therefore more revenue for creators and users alike. By moving ad-matching and more into the Browser, we make it much harder to defraud the system. Further, this system rests solely in the user's domain; you control what is shown and with what frequency.
  - humbledrone 8y ago
    I actually think that pushing ad matching to the browser will make ad fraud substantially easier, since you will collect less of the data that you could use to detect and block it. It also opens you up to entirely new forms of abuse, such as giving the end user the power to e.g. choose only the highest CPM ads to maximize their revenue share. Should be fascinating to see how you deal with these factors.
drb91 8y ago
Do you have any alternatives planned for monetization of ads? I would highly prefer to simply pay the content provider itself.
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  We're experimenting with that model today; users can simply purchase BAT from someplace like Uphold, and give it to the sites they visit most. For users who don't necessarily have the funds to purchase BAT, safe, private ads offers an option to learn BAT (which can, in turn, be given to their favorite sites).
buboard 8y ago
For the average user, i believe problem #1 is the ads themselves when they are obnoxious and annoying. Plain ads, even when super-targeted are not that annoying i think. Apart from rare cases when the ad touches something sensitive (which the user should be have been able to block in the 1st place). What does Brave do to reduce the "annoying" factor of ads? If your system becomes popular, you are going to have a lot of obnoxious ads in the system. I hope brave is able to make a dent in this system - alternatives and competitoin are always welcome.
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  There's a great deal of focus being given to solving the "annoying ads" problem today. Sadly, these are considering only the aesthetics. Ads are permitted to track and harvest users and data as long as they do so quietly. See https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/943267178396160000 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/94326717839616000... for a fun short story ;) We're currently testing user-private ads right now; these originate as signals outside of the browser (system-level prompts). If the user engages the notification, a private tab is opened and the advertisement is shown. In the future, we'll be testing publisher-ads (but only with publisher consent). We'll have more information to share in the future on how quality will be handled. Please keep following official channels for further developments.
techntoke 8y ago
Wasn't Brave created by the person who created JavaScript (the biggest privacy/security issue in browsers) and donated money to support Prop 8 in California? Not exactly a trustworthy brand if you ask me. https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-brendan-eich-comes-under-fire-from-mozilla-employees-upon-ceo-appointment/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-br...
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  Privacy and security issues predate the creation of JavaScript. Web Bugs (beacons, tracking pixels, etc) popped into existence with in 1993 after cookies and third-party images began to flourish on the web. JavaScript came along in 94/95 to breath life into the web. It's an amoral tool; what matters more is the hand that wields it. Sadly, many have chosen to do some pretty terrible things with it. But many more have chosen to do some pretty terrific things with it. Brendan created JavaScript, helped it to grow strong, and is now here to combat the abuse we see online by those who have chosen to do harm with it. You're watching the arch of redemption unfold before your very eyes ;)
mcbits 8y ago
> Furthermore, the user gets 70% of the ad revenue for browser-private ads. I've installed and tried Brave a few times for this specific reason that I keep reading about, but I've never figured out how to receive these kickbacks from enabling and viewing ads. Was I just not looking close enough, or is this still a beta/planned feature?
nubela 8y ago
> We do this by using local machine-learning to understand the user better, and making local decisions as to which ads should or should not be shown, and when (the user controls all of this) You realise that's what every ad-revenue driven company says right?
- barber5 8y ago
  I think what he's saying is that they do the inferences from localhost, more or less (see e.g. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/serving-ads-from-localhost-for-performance-privacy-and-profit/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/serving...) There are a number of proposed systems under the rubric of "privacy preserving advertising systems" and they are very different than what ad-revenue driven companies are doing today and similar to what he is proposing above.
- yoklov 8y ago
  I don't think most ad-revenue driven companies claim that these things are done locally, which seems key.
- a_imho 8y ago
  My thoughts exactly. I really hoped there was something I missed about Brave, but it seems they are worse than I thought. Not just position itself as the middleman to take a cut from ad revenue, but trying to profile the users as well? All this with a PR crap of rescuing an industry. Call me old fashioned, but I would prefer my browser displaying documents.
Endy 8y ago
> We're not simply replacing ads. We're rescuing an industry. This stinks of meaningless PR copy. You're rescuing an industry most people would like to see gone. If you want to do good, move away from Google-created products, and focus on the benefit for the common person, not for an industry.
pmcgrathm 8y ago
"For users who opt in, Brave can deliver better quality ads, without the risk of personal data leakage. We do this by using local machine-learning to understand the user better, and making local decisions as to which ads should or should not be shown, and when (the user controls all of this). Furthermore, the user gets 70% of the ad revenue for browser-private ads." Sorry. This is just wrong. You don't nor never will have the volume of data that the major ad platforms have collected for 15+ years. You don't have the pure analytical power of these companies in compute capacity. You will not serve better ads by disabling third party retargeting platforms. There are many positive ways to spin an obvious blockchain-craze inspired endeavor, and I applaud the Brave team for blazing a trail, but you are calling out all the wrong value propositions. Fraud is not as big of a deal as you state it is. It is not a problem for the primary ad networks to which the lions share of the ad revenues goes to in the first place. Companies like WhiteOps and Moat already do a great job of fraud detection when an advertiser is not buying from one of the popular and safer exchanges. I applaud your conviction, but the problem with advertising is not solved by attempting to de-throne Google and Facebook.

britch 8y ago

I'm curious, do you have any evidence that most people are installing ad blockers as a privacy measure? I don't have any hard evidence, but I imagine most people block ads because they don't want to have to scroll past a bunch of banners and videos to read the article they want to read. Certainly there are many people who are concerned about privacy, but I don' think that's what's driving the popularity of ad blockers. At least personally I have always viewed ad blockers like DVRs for the web.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
I install ad blockers because I don't want to get auto redirected to a porn site which some unscrupulous ad vendors make possible. I tried going blocker free at work for 6 months. uBO got installed the day I was sent to a porn site by malicious JavaScript after clicking on an innocuous link. Google won't address the JavaScript problem with their ad network so I cut them off.
- faag36 8y ago
  The Internet for people who don't know about ad blockers must be a horrible place, it's no wonder everybody started using apps for everything.
  - dest 8y ago
    Aren't apps also crippled by ads?
    - bduerst 8y ago
      Yes. Apps are a step backwards because they are in a much less user-controlled space. App adoption is more correlated with mobile platform adoption as opposed to demand for ad blocking.
    - faag36 8y ago
      Some have ads, but they are definitely not crippled by ads and malware.
    - etse 8y ago
      Not nearly as much as mobile web.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    Not that horrible. I don't use an adblock at work, even if what I'm browsing is limited to the register and HN with the linked pages and it's usable.
- 8y ago

s73v3r_ 8y ago

In all that, I noticed you weren't giving the publishers any kind of choice in the matter.

jessaustin 8y ago
They get the same deal they offer consumers: take it or leave it.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Consumers are choosing to go to those websites. Publishers are not choosing to serve their content through Brave.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Their situations seem pretty similar to me. "Take it or leave it" for the little human doesn't translate to "choose among these options or leave it" for the big corporation. They can read headers. They're also running javascript in the browser itself, so we'll see something like those pathetic "please turn off your ad blocker" messages soon enough... No one deserves to stay in business. If the model doesn't work, find one that does.
jonathansampson 8y ago
Not sure what you mean, publishers are already suffering as a result of bad-actors parasitically attaching themselves to the incumbent digital advertising network. Brave is offering publishers a solution to their dying revenue streams. First, by way of monthly grants (we give $500k/mo to publishers right now), and secondly through a better advertising model. Note, publisher ads is not presently an option; we're testing user-private ads, which are ads shown in a private tab, not owned by any website.

Fiahil 8y ago

Maybe we, the people, don't want you to rescue this industry. Maybe the "digital ad fraud" they're screaming is the sign they belong rightfully in the void we're trying to bury them. We've seen enough shit from the ad industry, and it's time to leave them behind as humanity progress and improve.

jeremy7600 8y ago
Clearly, they haven't gotten the message.
Cyclone_ 8y ago
It's not just the ad industry, publishers need some form of revenue in order to do what they do.
- drb91 8y ago
  So what are the alternatives to ads? They’re going to continue to die until there’s a real alternative.
  - Cyclone_ 8y ago
    Brave offers micropayments for content.
    - jonathansampson 8y ago
      Indeed! Subscription models work for some, but not for most. This adds friction to the user. Now they have to manage different accounts, monitor their monthly spending for each, and more. With Brave Payments, the user needs only to fund their wallet with BAT, and browse the web. By default, each property will receive a portion of the user's monthly allotment, relative to the amount of attention to user spent on that property's domain. If a user has chosen to give $10 worth of BAT to 5 sites, and one of them received 80% of the user's attention, then that site will get $8 worth of BAT. The rest of the sites will get the remainder, pro rata. Brave goes a step further though, and issues BAT grants monthly to users. So users don't need to fund their wallets to participate. Soon, users will be able to fund their wallet by opting into Brave Ads.

brettz 8y ago

If it's about privacy then why not just block trackers and allow ads? It seems like a page from Eyeo's playbook, another company trying to insert itself as a middleman for advertising.

komali2 8y ago
Someone can correct me if wrong but I believe tracking can be as simple as monitoring the IP address doing a GET for even a static ad image, which you then save with information such as the referer header to track a person across the internet.
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  It can. Which is why Brave modifies the referer header, and has integrated support for Private Tabs with Tor (for users who wish to go even deeper into the shadows). Not to mention, by cutting out third-party ads and trackers, you greatly reduce the size of your footprint. The first-party may attempt some degree of tracking, but it would pale in comparison to what presently exists online.

lasmellslikepee 8y ago

TL;DR: Brave lied about blocking 3rd party JS and I no longer trust them. The main reason I don't use Brave anymore is because I don't trust the Brave team to be transparent about what they're doing. I remember switching to Brave a year or two ago really rooting for them and the model they were positing. I though that blocking third-party JavaScript by default was a great idea - no more Firefox plugins! Well, I soon realized that Brave did not block all third-party JS and instead let "whitelisted"(by whom?) JS through. When I asked one of the Brave team members why this was so and informed them that I found this practice misleading at best I was given a song-and-dance about "rescuing the industry" instead of a technical explanation for the issue at hand(blocking third-party JS essentially didn't work). I can't be bothered to use a browser who's developers can't be bothered to be honest about the feature set and how they work.

jonathansampson 8y ago
Brave doesn't promise to block all third-party scripting; that isn't necessarily a bad thing. If we were to block all third-party scripts, the web as a whole would largely crumble. Instead, we are judicious about which scripts we block, and which ones are harmless. As for transparency, we couldn't be more open. Take it from me, an ex-Microsoft engineer, Brave is an open book. We talk about features before they're shipped, our source is open to all (github.com/brave/browser-laptop, github.com/brave/brave-browser, github.com/brave/browser-core, etc.), and we regularly host AMAs. The openness of this company still, to this day, gives me wonderful culture shock. With regards to your conversation with one of the Brave team members, do you have a link? I'd love to gather context and establish a frame of reference. The only white lists we have in brave are for ua-strings and siteHacks. For some websites, we'll identify ourselves as "Brave". To all others, we identify as Chrome. This is for many reasons (which I'm happen to discuss if you're interested), but this is the first white list. The second "white list" would be our siteHacks.js file. This file contains special logic to repair sites which are broken as a result of ad/tracker blocking. But again, this isn't letting flagged scripting through to the user, this is laying our own custom logic on top of an otherwise broken experience. I hope this explanation helps shed some light on the matter. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please do not hesitate to reach out. Again, we're open and eager to share.

ariwilson 8y ago

- Why does the publisher not get a say about how their content is paid for? - Do you have evidence that users care more about ads privacy than intrusiveness?

akerro 8y ago

Whether your reasons are ideological or economical, I support your work and project. I have µblock, privacy badger and container on firefox, but Shield enabled on Brave and I opt-ed in for Brave payments and Brave ads.

downandout 8y ago

We do this by using local machine-learning to understand the user better, and making local decisions as to which ads should or should not be shown I pitched almost this same idea to Netscape in 1997. I managed to get a physical meeting with a fairly high level person, but was essentially laughed out the door. It’s interesting that you have a pool of users that have embraced this idea. Netscape - at the time the world’s dominant browser company - thought users would see this as too invasive. The quote I remember was “we just went through a shit storm over the rising use of cookies...this would be that x10”.

jonathansampson 8y ago
As you may or may not know, we have a handful of Netscape alumni working on the Brave project today :) Glad to meet another hacker from the original browser wars! One thing that gives our users great comfort is the fact that this is an optional component. As it's baseline, Brave blocks ads and trackers. If you don't want to see them, you stick with the default, out of the box experience. But advertising is what keeps the web open and free-to-low-cost for the masses. Walled gardens and paid subscriptions ad a high degree of friction to the industry; to much friction and you'll melt the system. Ads are a better route, for now. But ads, as we have come to know them online, are suffering greatly. Brave's model gives the user the power to decide whether or not they participate, and to what degree. As for client-side machine learning, I suspect users today will understand the benefits better than we would have 20 years ago. In fact, Tim Cook praised the iPhone and Apple Watch for utilizing similar features (using similar terminology). Another difference between users today and users in the early-to-mid 90's is the lived experience. In the 90's, as a Netscape user myself, I had little concern about invasive ads and trackers. Sure, we had web bugs, but not anywhere on the scale of what we have today. Today, our attention is being harvested for the profit of others. This limited commodity is being sold around every corner, and everybody but me is getting a cut. With Brave Ads, users who opt-in to the new experience will make as much as 70% of the ad revenue (70% goes to ad-slot owner, which is the user in the case of browser-private ads). Now, you're able to enjoy the benefits of high-quality ads, the liberty of being private and secure online, and a portion of the revenues themselves. I'd love to know more about what you pitched, from a historical perspective. I always love an inside story :)

jordigh 8y ago

> This number keeps growing, year over year. Something has to be done. Yeah, find some other way to make money than ads. Whenever you tell me that I have to watch ads for the good of capitalism, I feel a horrible contradiction in my gut. I don't want ads at all. It's like everyone has wasps and needs their wasps to get into my car and some businesses promise me that their wasps aren't so bad, so can I please roll down my windows so a few wasps get through? Honest, these are good wasps. You won't mind these wasps too much. People don't want ads. Ads are inherently adversarial. They interrupt, they manipulate, they intrude, they try to provoke a need in you that you didn't have before you watched the ad. The conversation has to be about how do we do better than ads, not how do we do better ads.

jonathansampson 8y ago
All sensible points. But you're missing some key points about the Brave Ads proposal. For starters, it's entirely optional. If you don't want ads, you don't get ads. You must opt into this system to see any ads. Secondly, for those who opt in, they decide how often they'll see an ad. And unlike annoying interstitial ads and more, Brave Ads begin outside of the browser as a system notification. If you wish to see the ad, click the toast. If you don't, simply dismiss or ignore it. As for the desire to see ads, many users (myself included) don't mind this. In fact, I enjoy high-quality ads that don't require me to give up personal information. I'd love to know about a sale at my favorite store, gift ideas for my wife's birthday, and more. The problem is, to get this today, I have to hand over too much to Google and Facebook. Unacceptable. With Brave's on-device machine-learning, you hand over nothing. Ads are proposed to your device, and your device choosing what you might like to see. And you, as always, remain in complete control. Should you decide to see an ad, you'll even get paid for your attention (70% of the revenue in user-private cases). But the baseline is always the same; if you don't wish to see Brave Ads, Brave won't show you Brave Ads. That's our promise to you.
CobrastanJorji 8y ago
Let's say bees. "I see the problem is bees in your car. We would like to solve this by filling your car with different, quieter bees. In exchange for this, we are willing to give you some of the honey."

quotemstr 8y ago

So you're replacing ads with other ads, and you have reasons. Everyone who makes money has reasons why his profit is in reality some kind of selfless social good. It's what it takes to reconcile human psychology with capitalism. You're still replacing ads with other ads.

jonathansampson 8y ago
This is like scoffing at dialysis as nothing more than replacing blood with blood. The system is suffering at the hands of innumerable bad-actors who commit fraud, abuse, and more. Users and Publishers alike are both suffering. The users have already responded en masse with the explosive growth of ad and tracker blocking software. We acknowledge the necessity for this move, as the industry has become overrun with parasites. But we also recognize that bloodletting isn't the solution; bleeding the publishers of their revenue isn't the solution. Brave introduced Brave Payments as a means of supporting content creators. We're staking users with $500k/mo to support their favorite sites. But this isn't a short-term solution while we work on the long-term solution of reforming digital advertising.
jancsika 8y ago
> So you're replacing ads with other ads, and you have reasons. If a website owner changes from an ad supported website to reading ad copy in a podcast, your same criticism would apply. Yet: * by changing from ads to ads they get rid of entire classes of bugs: cryptominers, drive-by malware, click-jacking, etc. Perpetuating a capitalist system by requiring users to take undue risks to support my content != perpetuating a capitalist system without making users take those risks. * by changing from ads to ads, I get rid of an entire class of privacy-invasions for my audience. Perpetuating a capitalist system while making users leak enormous amounts of data to who knows where != an perpetuating a capitalist system without making users do that. There are probably other points to make. But that's enough to assert that ads != ads in your comment. Halting.
barber5 8y ago
This is a fair point under some ways of looking at the problem. It could be that advertising is just nasty no matter how it is implemented, and thus any system that uses advertising will be tainted. I'm sympathetic to that analysis and am constantly trying to flesh it out. With that said, what jonathansampson is proposing mitigates at least one harm of advertising: ubiquitous tracking which violates privacy. They're trying to replace ads with ads that don't require tracking by third parties. There's actually a whole area of research on this that's pretty fascinating called privacy preserving advertising. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/serving-ads-from-localhost-for-performance-privacy-and-profit/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/serving... https://crypto.stanford.edu/adnostic/ https://crypto.stanford.edu/adnostic/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/privad-practical-privacy-in-online-advertising/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/privad-... https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6234417/ https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6234417/

1qaz2wsx 8y ago

Isn't Brave using the blink engine from Chrome - which was funded by Google based on the ad revenues? The BAT grant is just Brave burning VC money to get some market share and eventually some pie of the Adtech eco-system? Also, not sure how ad fraud is relevant here or how Brave will prevent it?

jonathansampson 8y ago
Yes, Brave is using the Blink engine (via Chromium). Chromium is an open source project with many contributors (including Google). Google uses this as part of their larger strategy involving ads and trackers, no doubt. But at the end of the day, it's a tool for displaying websites. To what ends you use it is dependent upon your end goal. Google used to tell everybody "Don't be evil" was at the core of their being; Brave says "Can't be evil". This is a stark difference-Google maintains the capacity to do harm, whereas Brave precludes it. The Basic Attention Token User Growth Pool was created during our Token Sale in 2017; not from VC funds. Ad Fraud is relevant because it claims more and more digital advertising dollars each year. Estimate today put it over 20 billion. By reducing middle-men, clearing up reporting, and more, there is less revenue lost, and therefore more revenue for creators and users alike. By moving ad-matching and more into the Browser, we make it much harder to defraud the system. Further, this system rests solely in the user's domain; you control what is shown and with what frequency.
- humbledrone 8y ago
  I actually think that pushing ad matching to the browser will make ad fraud substantially easier, since you will collect less of the data that you could use to detect and block it. It also opens you up to entirely new forms of abuse, such as giving the end user the power to e.g. choose only the highest CPM ads to maximize their revenue share. Should be fascinating to see how you deal with these factors.

drb91 8y ago

Do you have any alternatives planned for monetization of ads? I would highly prefer to simply pay the content provider itself.

jonathansampson 8y ago
We're experimenting with that model today; users can simply purchase BAT from someplace like Uphold, and give it to the sites they visit most. For users who don't necessarily have the funds to purchase BAT, safe, private ads offers an option to learn BAT (which can, in turn, be given to their favorite sites).

buboard 8y ago

For the average user, i believe problem #1 is the ads themselves when they are obnoxious and annoying. Plain ads, even when super-targeted are not that annoying i think. Apart from rare cases when the ad touches something sensitive (which the user should be have been able to block in the 1st place). What does Brave do to reduce the "annoying" factor of ads? If your system becomes popular, you are going to have a lot of obnoxious ads in the system. I hope brave is able to make a dent in this system - alternatives and competitoin are always welcome.

jonathansampson 8y ago
There's a great deal of focus being given to solving the "annoying ads" problem today. Sadly, these are considering only the aesthetics. Ads are permitted to track and harvest users and data as long as they do so quietly. See https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/943267178396160000 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/94326717839616000... for a fun short story ;) We're currently testing user-private ads right now; these originate as signals outside of the browser (system-level prompts). If the user engages the notification, a private tab is opened and the advertisement is shown. In the future, we'll be testing publisher-ads (but only with publisher consent). We'll have more information to share in the future on how quality will be handled. Please keep following official channels for further developments.

techntoke 8y ago

Wasn't Brave created by the person who created JavaScript (the biggest privacy/security issue in browsers) and donated money to support Prop 8 in California? Not exactly a trustworthy brand if you ask me. https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-brendan-eich-comes-under-fire-from-mozilla-employees-upon-ceo-appointment/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-br...

jonathansampson 8y ago
Privacy and security issues predate the creation of JavaScript. Web Bugs (beacons, tracking pixels, etc) popped into existence with in 1993 after cookies and third-party images began to flourish on the web. JavaScript came along in 94/95 to breath life into the web. It's an amoral tool; what matters more is the hand that wields it. Sadly, many have chosen to do some pretty terrible things with it. But many more have chosen to do some pretty terrific things with it. Brendan created JavaScript, helped it to grow strong, and is now here to combat the abuse we see online by those who have chosen to do harm with it. You're watching the arch of redemption unfold before your very eyes ;)

mcbits 8y ago

> Furthermore, the user gets 70% of the ad revenue for browser-private ads. I've installed and tried Brave a few times for this specific reason that I keep reading about, but I've never figured out how to receive these kickbacks from enabling and viewing ads. Was I just not looking close enough, or is this still a beta/planned feature?

nubela 8y ago

> We do this by using local machine-learning to understand the user better, and making local decisions as to which ads should or should not be shown, and when (the user controls all of this) You realise that's what every ad-revenue driven company says right?

barber5 8y ago
I think what he's saying is that they do the inferences from localhost, more or less (see e.g. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/serving-ads-from-localhost-for-performance-privacy-and-profit/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/serving...) There are a number of proposed systems under the rubric of "privacy preserving advertising systems" and they are very different than what ad-revenue driven companies are doing today and similar to what he is proposing above.
yoklov 8y ago
I don't think most ad-revenue driven companies claim that these things are done locally, which seems key.
a_imho 8y ago
My thoughts exactly. I really hoped there was something I missed about Brave, but it seems they are worse than I thought. Not just position itself as the middleman to take a cut from ad revenue, but trying to profile the users as well? All this with a PR crap of rescuing an industry. Call me old fashioned, but I would prefer my browser displaying documents.

Endy 8y ago

> We're not simply replacing ads. We're rescuing an industry. This stinks of meaningless PR copy. You're rescuing an industry most people would like to see gone. If you want to do good, move away from Google-created products, and focus on the benefit for the common person, not for an industry.

pmcgrathm 8y ago

"For users who opt in, Brave can deliver better quality ads, without the risk of personal data leakage. We do this by using local machine-learning to understand the user better, and making local decisions as to which ads should or should not be shown, and when (the user controls all of this). Furthermore, the user gets 70% of the ad revenue for browser-private ads." Sorry. This is just wrong. You don't nor never will have the volume of data that the major ad platforms have collected for 15+ years. You don't have the pure analytical power of these companies in compute capacity. You will not serve better ads by disabling third party retargeting platforms. There are many positive ways to spin an obvious blockchain-craze inspired endeavor, and I applaud the Brave team for blazing a trail, but you are calling out all the wrong value propositions. Fraud is not as big of a deal as you state it is. It is not a problem for the primary ad networks to which the lions share of the ad revenues goes to in the first place. Companies like WhiteOps and Moat already do a great job of fraud detection when an advertiser is not buying from one of the popular and safer exchanges. I applaud your conviction, but the problem with advertising is not solved by attempting to de-throne Google and Facebook.