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Brave – A private, secure and fast browser

210 points by wewake 8y ago

hazz99 8y ago
What are the benefits of using Brave instead of Firefox?
- radicaldreamer 8y ago
  The built in ad-blocking is more performant, it’s based on chromium, so compatibility with some marginal sites. Other than that they’re pretty comparable. Brave has some crypto-related compensation scheme for websites but it’s completely opt-in and optional.
- spooneybarger 8y ago
  I've looked at using brave instead of Firefox because I'd install fewer extensions to get what I want in terms of ad blocking and privacy. Fewer extensions is a regular goal of mine. That said, Brave isn't quite there yet for me on the desktop but based on the roadmap, I'll be checking it out again in a few months. In the meantime, Brave is my primary mobile browser.
  - superflyguy 8y ago
    How about Firefox Focus?
    - spooneybarger 8y ago
      It was a little too limited for me. I have 3 sites I visit regularly and have tabs open for each makes my workflow a little easier. I liked focus and the DDG browser but settled on brave as the best for fit for me. I don't love any of them but brave works best for the limited way I use my phone. I do check in on the DDG and focus browsers every 3 months or so to see if I want to switch.
- marichards 8y ago
  Brave decided to protect users by default from privacy concerns, it may not be perfect, I'm going to give it a go and see. Firefox offers various privacy features (check about:config), but they're opt-in and typically have a bar to entry for users to be willing to change settings and know what they will do. Mozilla might claim to care about privacy, but by not clamping down on third party content and referers, it left most of its userbase in the position of having their privacy invaded by default when using their product. If you care about privacy you fix that, they didn't.
- Markoff 8y ago
  pull down to refresh much smoother scrolling
terhechte 8y ago
Is Brave always based on the latest version of Firefox? Or did it branch of at some point in the past?
- Daedren 8y ago
  Brave is Chromium based
  - DavideNL 8y ago
    Note that only "Brave Beta" is Chromium based (and "Brave Dev").
    - codehalo 8y ago
      Brave was always based on chromium. The UI was based on Muon, but the upcoming 1.0 release switched the UI back to Chromium.
  - jonathansampson 8y ago
    We are indeed based on Chromium, but differ from Chrome in many ways. Here's a little information to expound on that: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
- manojlds 8y ago
  Brave is based on Chromium.
  - roryisok 8y ago
    Actually last time I checked Brave was an electron app so technically based on Chromium but also running in Chromium.
    - lwf 8y ago
      Brave moved away from that to Muon[1], which (IIRC) was originally very close to Electron, but now[2] actually is just a minorly-patched version of upstream Chromium. They've since moved from Muon to Chromium for the browser chrome[3]. [1]: https://github.com/brave/muon/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/brave/muon/blob/master/README.md [2]: https://github.com/brave/muon/blob/master/docs/tutorial/moving-from-electron.md#ref1 https://github.com/brave/muon/blob/master/docs/tutorial/movi... [3]: https://brave.com/development-plans-for-upcoming-release/ https://brave.com/development-plans-for-upcoming-release/
jhabdas 8y ago
A little awkward to see this here given Brave is becoming fairly mainstream. You want to lock down the tools you rely on to lock you down.
- grezql 8y ago
  Dont know what you definition of mainstream is but it certainly is not known to the common people.
  - octosphere 8y ago
    The link to brave.com has been around for a while in various incarnations on Hackernews. Interestingly OP didn't trim the /index/ part of the URL so the main URL has another chance to be part of the frontpage. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Brave.com&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Brave.com&sort=byDate&dateRang...
    - wewake 8y ago
      > Interestingly OP didn't trim the /index/ part of the URL so the main URL has another chance to be part of the frontpage. Wasn't intentional at all.
herf 8y ago
I use pinch to zoom all the time, but Brave (and Firefox) don't seem to implement it (please?)
- majewsky 8y ago
  Firefox for Android supports pinch-to-zoom, but only on certain sites (maybe it's disabled by a certain setting of `<meta name="viewport">`). EDIT: Tried just now. Pinch-to-zoom works fine on HN.
  - superflyguy 8y ago
    Settings/accessibility/always enable zoom.
    - Filligree 8y ago
      Why is disabling it even possible?
      - diggan 8y ago
        Applications might want to implement their own pinch-to-zoom. I can imagine that Google Maps in mobile browsers does that, otherwise you'll just see upscaled images instead of the application fetching new, higher resolution tiles.
      - floatboth 8y ago
        You can't pinch to zoom the UI of native Android/iOS apps. Makes sense that web apps with "native-like look" might want to behave similarly.
        kwhitefoot 8y ago
        It's my device, I should be allowed to pinch to zoom, etc., regardless of what the website or app wants.
- _hyn3 8y ago
mswift42 8y ago
The first time I heard of Brave, I thought Oh cool, a privacy focused, chromium based browser. But I must say I'm honestly appalled by its parasitic business model. Content creators are strong armed into becoming verified publishers, while users have to trust Brave that their data is handled properly and carefully.
- spooneybarger 8y ago
  I have to trust every browser making to do the right thing with my data. Often, they don't. What's the alternative to Brave's model? I personally will keep using Firefox with an adblocker and publishers will get nothing.
  - xrd 8y ago
    https://blog.teddyhyde.com/2017/10/11/take-back-your-blog-just-sprinkle-notifications-and-cryptocurrency https://blog.teddyhyde.com/2017/10/11/take-back-your-blog-ju...
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  Why I never use it. I will always stick to Firefox. Firefox has yet to irritate me. A few plugins here or there is not as awful as most of what Google does. Besides if I REALLY wanted to I could run one of the GPL forks of Firefox. They may be dated after a while but they work usually. Edit: I meant to say GNU forks like IceWeasel and GNU IceCat which are licensed as GPL usually. There's other forks too. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranded_by_Debian#Iceweasel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranded_by_... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat
  - sleavey 8y ago
    Firefox isn't GPL?
    - glibgil 8y ago
      Why would there be a Mozilla Public License if not to be used for Firefox?
andreygrehov 8y ago
When I use Chrome, what does Google do with my data?
- mda 8y ago
  They actually explain what exactly is stored and what it is used for. You can see and control it as well. But on hacker news and this is an unpopular opinion.
  - robin_reala 8y ago
    True, but you can’t stop them collecting it (at least as far as I can see).
    - mda 8y ago
      You can for almost all of it. Don't sign in, or disable all kind of personalization and storage from your account settings. You can alao delete all your history, forever.
      - brandnewlow 8y ago
        The problem with this approach is it feels like there are teams of smart people at Google with all of these "outs" in a shared doc and a timeline to slowly close them off one by one. There's no way to "win" in the longrun against that.
- kbob 8y ago
  https://stratechery.com/2018/data-factories/ https://stratechery.com/2018/data-factories/
the_other_guy 8y ago
Brave, DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi, etc... are examples of the parasitic products that are trying to make use of the current privacy paranoia to earn a very tiny market share while they aren't any different from the big players. They only look innocent because they are small not because they are different.
- prepend 8y ago
  How do you think these products are parasitic? And how do you think they add the same as Chrome? I’m not familiar with Vivaldi, but DDG has a different business model because it’s self imposed limitations on user data that has privacy sensitivity. And Brave is quite different as it eschews ads altogether and rather uses its Basic Attention Token for users to directly find sites and take a cut [0]. This method requires no user data and is really different that Chrome that requires extensive user personal data to maintain its desired profit margins. [0] https://brave.com/faq-payments/#what-is-brave-payments https://brave.com/faq-payments/#what-is-brave-payments
- Bayart 8y ago
  I don't think Vivaldi markets to privacy-obsessed users, and it's quite different from anything out there.
- StevePerkins 8y ago
  You can make a thin argument about Brave being parasitic. Blocking ads, but allowing people to opt-in to ads for which Brave takes a cut. But I don't even see any argument at all for bringing DuckDuckGo or Vivaldi into the discussion. * DDG is a search engine that doesn't track its users. It kinda sorta emulates Google's look-and-feel, but so does Bing and Wolfram Alpha and search.yahoo.com and everyone else. * Vivaldi is yet another Chromium-based browser, for the microscopic niche of Opera fans who feel that Opera "went mainstream". If it's parasitic to base a browser on Chromium, then Chrome itself is a parasite for forking off KDE's WebKit. Are you arguing that using privacy concerns as a marketing tool, to compete for a slice of Google's monopoly, makes one a "parasite"? Because not only is that a poor argument in the abstract, it doesn't even apply as Vivaldi doesn't really promote itself on privacy grounds.
- 8y ago
znpy 8y ago
Brave on mobile us the best browser out there.
highace 8y ago
I know Brave has their own arguably evil agenda, but their Android browser right now is simply amazing. It blocks all ads and trackers, without needing to set up VPNs or proxys or companion apps that mess with your settings and don't always work. If you prefer Chrome over Firefox on your Android then for ad-free browsing it can't be beat.
- mattlondon 8y ago
  +1 On android it is essentially identical to Chrome in every way apart from the Brave icon next to the address bar that controls the blocking. I really like it. I tried the desktop version though and did not like the look and feel of the UI - tabs under the address bar etc. Felt like it was a slavish copy of Safari and I did not like it. Much prefer Firefox on desktop. I have also learnt of Brave's plans to replace a sites ads with its own ads which I do not like. Will move off of Brave on mobile when Firefox is workable on android (last time I tried it was awful, clunky and slow on android).
  - matthberg 8y ago
    I've been using Firefox on mobile and have no issues with it. I'd try it out again now, with quantum under the hood it's purring along smoothly for me. Also (to anyone who doesn't know) you can install Firefox addons on Firefox mobile, so uBlock Origin works (can personally confirm it) to block ads.
    - Sytten 8y ago
      I have a low budget smartphone and its simply not usable. I switched to firefox focus which runs very smoothly, but it has its disadvantages too.
      - BrendanEich 8y ago
        Interested in whether Brave works well for you. Also phone details if you can share. Thanks.
xaduha 8y ago
I'd rather use Opera.
the_clarence 8y ago
Still no tabs on the side?
sinuhe69 8y ago
Brave claims to be 2-8 times faster than Chrome & Firefox on popular news sites. If Brave is based on Chromium, no ways it can be twice faster than Chrome. If it based on a new developed browser kit, it’s too fantastic to be true. It’s already a respectable performance if a new browser kit can come close to the unicorn browsers like Chrome & Firefox (Quantum). The whole thing is too fishy for my taste.
- sleavey 8y ago
  I guess they're comparing stock Brave (which blocks ads and trackers by default) to stock Chrome / Firefox (which don't - well, Firefox does block some trackers now). Blocking ads categorically improves page load time.
  - johntash 8y ago
    I agree. I'd like to see a comparison of stock Brave vs Chrome/Firefox with UBO or some other adblocking extensions configured. Otherwise, I could say links is a superior browser because it loads pages even faster than Brave.
- deleted 8y ago
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- deleted 8y ago
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- nostrademons 8y ago
  It's faster because it neither loads nor displays the ads, which are a huge portion of the page weight. In my subjective experience using Brave, I'd say 3-4x is about right. BTW, the rampant inefficiency and bugginess of ads is what prompted me to install first AdBlock and then Brave in the first place. I have no problem with viewing ads or supporting content publishers; I do have a problem when the sheer weight of all the ads and trackers they include on their page means I'm waiting 10+ seconds for the page to load and there's a good chance of it locking up entirely. If the damn ad networks would just follow best practices regarding efficient & robust JS serving I wouldn't block them, but they don't, so I do.
androidgirl 8y ago
I want to like Brave, but I just can't get past the planned ads, the crypto stuff, how memory intensive chromium is, and, well, I really like Firefox. My browser is for reading docs, for JS/WASM development, and the occasional Gmail or HN visit, so maybe I'm not their target market.
- codezero 8y ago
  What is “the crypto stuff”?
  - wewake 8y ago
    Brave has introduced BAT (Basic Attention Token), a token for a decentralized ad exchange. Give their interesting white paper [0] a read. [0] https://basicattentiontoken.org/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePaper-4.pdf https://basicattentiontoken.org/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePape...
    - codezero 8y ago
      Thanks for the info, I’ll check it out!
- BrendanEich 8y ago
  Anything above baseline blocking, protection against fingerprinting, etc., is optional and must remain so or our core users would bolt. So please feel welcome to use in default mode. BTW, chromium bloat rep in part comes from Chrome not blocking ads and tracking well. Extensions must use JS and so use more memory. Brave uses C++ in the network threads of the browser process.
  - 18pfsmt 8y ago
    Are these C++-based browser improvements being made public? Is this a library?
    - BrendanEich 8y ago
unrealchild 8y ago
i have lot count of the number of browser projects that positioned themselves as an alternative to XYZ existing product. not saying it doesn’t happen (chrome) just that there are often several attempts made that rise and fall quickly. adding cryptocurrency may be an interesting spin...but in the end it’s just a spin and the core loop is not much different. best of luck to them!
runn1ng 8y ago
Do they still have the stupid ICO token for advertisments? Or did they get rid of that
IvanK_net 8y ago
The Brave browser loads pages faster, because it completely ignores the web standards (i.e. it does not show you what the author wanted you to see). Precisely, it does not load and display some elements, which it considers to be ads (or at least that is what they want us to believe). If the page author writes <body id="ads"> ... , normal browsers will show you the content of the <body>, while Brave will show you nothing (in 0.001 seconds) :D Personally, I think that using browsers, which add / remove / rewrite (i.e. censor) the web content for you, is quite dangerous. If it rewrites the Google Search results once in a while, or rewrites some part of the news, you would not even notice.
dbielik 8y ago
> This app has access to: Device & app history Allows the app to view one or more of: information about activity on the device, which apps are running, browsing history and bookmarks Why is this required?
- gruez 8y ago
  presumably for bookmarks importing
  - BrendanEich 8y ago
    Yes. We are looking into better ways to roll but it's hard on Android because of course-grained permissions; also you can't have a high-power importer put the imported stuff in a place the main app can use, as far as I know. Apps are not allowed by store rules to "interfere" with one another. :-/
    - allenbrunson 8y ago
      hey Brendan, I can see you're getting a lot of negative feedback here, so as a hopefully countervailing force: this was the thread that finally got me to try Brave on my iPad, iPhone, and mac. I like it so far! I never thought I'd use any ad blockers, purely on moral grounds. But so many sites have gotten completely unusable in the last year or so: half a dozen auto-playing videos, some of which follow you around the page, text that won't stop flying around the screen long enough for you to read it, etc. It's starting to seem like there is no other choice. If I used it for nothing else, Brave is a whole lot better than Safari on iOS for blocking unnecessary crap. You really shouldn't get into it with trolls, though. You've had quite a few comments in the last day or so that ended up flagged dead. Not a good look for a CEO.
      - BrendanEich 8y ago
        Negative? This thread is nothing in terms of negative feedback, and just by counting handles (not counting comments, esp. the now dead ones -- btw that flagged subthread was a net win too), I see way more positive than negative. Questions are never negative and all good if not loaded/trick. Anti-ads or anti-token politics, not so much -- but part of the package deal. The ohmygodel comments were quite good and I'm grateful for them - hope to connect by email. Thanks for trying Brave!
emersonrsantos 8y ago
There’s adaway for Android (needs root) that downloads, merges and replace /etc/hosts with your favorite hosts blacklists, working system wide and not consuming extra battery: https://adaway.org https://adaway.org
unstuckdev 8y ago
I respect the CEO's right to keep details of his opinions on other people's rights to himself. Unfortunately, the appearance of his Prop 8 donation makes me not want to send money his way. There are plenty of browsers out there.
BrendanEich 8y ago
Users banding together to send crypto anonymously toward their favorite sites and creators is not "parasitic" -- you and your browser are the host, already colonized by tracking scripts for ads if you don't use a no-compromises blocker such as uBO. Users' right to block is well supported by web standards and case law. Adding a separate, direct to creator funding option is not parasitism, it is found money for creators. To see someone here call our opt-in (meaning that each user consents without duress) anonymous micro-contributions and (coming up fast) private ads model layered on top such a name tells me that person has confused host and parasite, or is working for one of the parasites. It was never a given that your browser should become a blind and passive servant to surveillance super-companies either wholly or partly dependent on ads, but such companies did capture arguably 3 of the top 4 browsers. Now is the time for users to push back, whether by Brave if you like it, a blocker such as uBO on a browser that doesn't track you by default (perhaps when "logged in"; whatever), or another method that works for you. I hope those who have not yet will give Brave a try. https://brave.com/download-dev https://brave.com/download-dev for the chromium-extensions-ready new version.
- mswift42 8y ago
  > Users banding together to send crypto anonymously toward their favorite sites and creators is not "parasitic" True, but replacing ads you don't get compensated for with ads you do, is.
  - andrewmutz 8y ago
    I don’t know Brave well enough: what ads does Brave insert?
    - BrendanEich 8y ago
      We do not insert any ads. In 2016 we proposed that Brave, a browser, could allow users and publishers to get better revenue through a private ad model that does not entail any tracking or user data in the clear on servers. We ran some placeholder ads to show the concept off. These are disabled now. This caused a reaction. The letter we got (I mentioned it in my last comment) from a publisher group asserted that the publishers own copyright and trademark on third-party ads on their sites. This was comical in view of malware getting on the New York Times, BBC Online, AOL and other sites the month before (March 2016). Publishers do not own (c) or (tm) on any ads they don't create, of course -- certainly not on so-called third party ads, especially malware. Or they'd be liable. Anyway, baseline Brave is just a top-speed (better than using JS in extension code) blocker by default. All token options are optional, users and (if involved) publishers choose.
mping 8y ago
Installed brave on Linux, the autocomplete is sluggishly slow which I guess is due to history search but makes it completely unusable. There's an open issue for that, but I wished they didn't market it with such a critical bug.
jiveturkey 8y ago
i had a similar idea. a local client that scrapes (ahem, reads) forum sites and formats the content in a consistent way. with much more powerful UI. like tapatalk, but actually good. oh, and it removes site ads and inserts it’s own. then it holds the forums hostage to get into its own ads model.
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  Brave doesn't insert ads onto publisher sites without publisher consent. We have a parallel digital advertising component (opt-in) which leverages machine-learning on your device to match ads, and pay you as much as 70% of the ad revenue. This model is faster, safer, and more beneficial to everybody involved.
- kodablah 8y ago
  I am going to build something similar to your first part, essentially a client-side proxy backed by a headless browser that serves up your favorite sites' content sans crap. To your second part, I won't be doing any of that ad replacement (consent or not, just like I don't with my Chromium-based browser with native ad blocking).
dxhdr 8y ago
Block current ad tech and replace it with their own. Where does Brave hope to be in 10 years? Controlling the internet ad marketplace via their BAT token platform. Once the initial creators have earned their take and lost their will the platform values will be slowly (rapidly?) eroded and we'll be right back where we are today. How is this appealing?
agrippanux 8y ago
I want to like Brave, but dealbreaker for me is I'm on Linux and 1Password X extension isn't supported.
- spooneybarger 8y ago
  The beta builds support all chrome extensions.
crag 8y ago
Mac version coming? I use AdGuard now, on Mac. But I'd like this on Mac as well. Safari I won't touch.
- cfitz 8y ago
  Just downloaded this on High Sierra (10.13.6) and having no problems so far. Did you see their downloads page [1]? [1]: https://brave.com/download/ https://brave.com/download/
owly 8y ago
Firefox and Firefox Focus are awesome on mobile. Can even block web fonts. I don’t see the point in supporting brave.
- auslander 8y ago
  Focus app even contains a iOS Content Blocker which you can enable in Safari. Now you have Safari with adblocker.
pcunite 8y ago
If anyone from Brave is here, I look forward to customizing the install location on Windows. I need to install to a secure area, not my user directory. I look forward to giving it a good test when I can.
ohmygodel 8y ago
I support Brave's vision for the Web, but it currently seems to represent a step backwards for privacy. Making payments to providers essentially involves sending your Web browsing history to Brave. The FAQ states that "we do not know which BAT wallet is associated with the lists of sites that you choose to support". I believe that is false. I think it works like this: (1) Brave Browser submits its transactions to a Brave server to exchange a BAT for an Anonize ballot (anonize.org), (2) each ballot has the name of a site you visited randomly added by the browser with probability proportional to the frequency of site visits, and (3) the ballots are sent to a Brave server. Key here is that the token and ballot submissions are sent directly (e.g. not through a proxy or Tor). In addition, I believe the ballots may be submitted as a batch (i.e. at one point in time). Therefore, it is easy for Brave to see your votes for your visited websites, all coming at once, all from your IP address. That IP address may well be the same one used to exchange the BAT for ballots as well. There are additional problems regarding visits to unusual and identifying websites that I feel like Brave hasn't begun to consider, either. Suppose that every and only time that Brave receives a ballot for your personal website, they also receive a ballot for some unpopular and sensitive website. They can then conclude that the owner of the website also visits that sensitive site. These problems must be addressed before Brave can be considered seriously by privacy-conscious users.
- BrendanEich 8y ago
  No history sent to Brave - did you assume this, or read it somewhere? We use ANONIZE2 based on https://anonize.org/ https://anonize.org/ to blind ourselves to your history. Can’t be evil > Don’t be evil. We see only zero-knowledge proofs that say how many votes go to sites or YouTube or Twitch accounts. These proofs do not link to user id or to ine another (so no fingerprint by clustering). They go over an IP address masking service to our accounting server, while your monthly budget goes in a single token transaction. Note Google and other ad tech powers do track your history. Logging into Chrome even gives your history over for ad targeting. Blendle, Flattrplus, other such services also see your history. But we do not.
  - ohmygodel 8y ago
    I understand that Anonize is used for anonymous ballots. I understand that Brave used to submit its ballots via a single-hop proxy. My understanding is now that Brave no longer uses this proxy, which wasn't a good solution anyway because the proxy sees the user's entire set of ballots (aka browsing history). Thus Brave is now given all the ballots directly from the user, and thereby learns the user's browsing history. I do agree that other browsers and services also track users around the Web. Eliminating that is a goal that I support and that I think Brave does as well. I think that it is failing to achieve that goal. Either you don't realize the technical reality of your solution, or you are being misleading.
threatofrain 8y ago
For iOS, how does Brave compare to using content blockers, such as Firefox Focus?
mkeyhani 8y ago
I really like the idea behind Brave. However, I think a fundamental issue arises if you are going to pay people to see ads: What if someone forks Brave, and creates a browser which blocks all Brave ads, while pretending to click on them? Neither of the two solutions I can think of are pleasant ones: you either need to somehow verify that that ads are viewed by a human (i.e. CAPTCHAs), or use DRM-like mechanisms to hide a token in Brave’s brinary, so that only “honest” browsers can get paid.
- BrendanEich 8y ago
  Any network with grants or revshares of tokens or other units of account that might exchange to money, and humans in the loop, will have fraud. Blockchain cannot stop it and has really nothing to offer yet on this front -- reputation on chain is a hope, some say a vain dream. What Brave offers that's far better than today's joke of an antifraud system for ads is as follows: 1/ integrity-checked open source native code, which cannot be fooled by other JS on page; 2/ looking at all the sensors, even the ones without web APIs, to check humanity. (1) requires SGX or ARM equivalent, widespread on mobile. JS by contrast cannot be sure of anything unless the antifraud script knows it runs first, and publishers cannot guarantee this in general or easily. (2) is a material advantage over JS, which has only some but not all sensor APIs. For more on the joke of antifraud adtech today, please see https://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/state-of-digital-ad-fraud-q2-2018/ https://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/state-of-digital-ad-... and https://twitter.com/acfou's https://twitter.com/acfou's other work.
jazoom 8y ago
Does brave sync bookmarks and passwords between desktop and mobile yet? I don't get why this is such a low priority for new browser vendors.
mdimec4 8y ago
In the face of youtube demonetizing vidos, which advartising companies don't like, this is in theory much more Democratic system.
stevenicr 8y ago
Just need to say that I really appreciate different people taking different approaches to ad security and privacy enhancement. I have so distressed by the amount of malware that has been infecting people's networks from mainstream sites it scares the dickens out of me. The privacy things also really disturbs me. I don't mind seeing an ad and you getting paid for it when I read the latest changes to the HPV guidance from the FDA for example, but I don't want multiple evil places like "addthis" "add-to-'any" and the likes to be creating some kind of profile and selling it. The newspaper ads did not tell others that I read the "whatever article" in the paper. I also can not stand moving ads. SO many really good articles are ruined by animated gifs/mp4s jumping for attention. It saddens me, and likely the authors of really good long form articles, I think from the Atlantic and NYTImes recently I was taken out of the feeling and captivating moments of articles to look at the moving distractions next to them many times. This not only made articles take twice as long to read, but made them much less impactful, and harder to remember. These are some of the reasons I posted a while back (http://www.ideasandwritings.com/2016/adblock-into-fairblock/ http://www.ideasandwritings.com/2016/adblock-into-fairblock/ ) the desire to have an ad-blocker with some 2 way communication so I could have settings that block all third party ads, and moving ads, but would gladly accept static self served ads from sites that had reasonable privacy policies. I would take it further and offer up some extra data points to those ads the were guaranteed secure so you could make more money and "i could get awesome ads relative to me" - I imagine many others would be happy to offer city, sex, and age for example, if privacy was controlled by "reputable publisher on list here" for example. For these reasons I seriously applaud this project. It's not perfect, but it seems to be the closest to what I wrote about some time ago - and I think it's a huge jump in the right direction. I applaud all the attempts, ad blockers, micro payments, different models for payments and attention - lets try everything and find what works for different people. So glad to see publishers jumping on board to get some ad revenue from those who would choose to block privacy stealing, possible malware sending ads. Now if we can fine tune it a bit more I'd love to see some back and forth discussion between my browser and the ad server. (no alcohol ads, yes to tech, static only please, male, etc) Heck I might actually click and buy to support more if the ads get better, not just more attention stealing which seems to be the race to the outrageous that clickbait and such is going. Maybe this will start to force some changes.

210 points by wewake 8y ago

hazz99 8y ago

What are the benefits of using Brave instead of Firefox?

radicaldreamer 8y ago
The built in ad-blocking is more performant, it’s based on chromium, so compatibility with some marginal sites. Other than that they’re pretty comparable. Brave has some crypto-related compensation scheme for websites but it’s completely opt-in and optional.
spooneybarger 8y ago
I've looked at using brave instead of Firefox because I'd install fewer extensions to get what I want in terms of ad blocking and privacy. Fewer extensions is a regular goal of mine. That said, Brave isn't quite there yet for me on the desktop but based on the roadmap, I'll be checking it out again in a few months. In the meantime, Brave is my primary mobile browser.
- superflyguy 8y ago
  How about Firefox Focus?
  - spooneybarger 8y ago
    It was a little too limited for me. I have 3 sites I visit regularly and have tabs open for each makes my workflow a little easier. I liked focus and the DDG browser but settled on brave as the best for fit for me. I don't love any of them but brave works best for the limited way I use my phone. I do check in on the DDG and focus browsers every 3 months or so to see if I want to switch.
marichards 8y ago
Brave decided to protect users by default from privacy concerns, it may not be perfect, I'm going to give it a go and see. Firefox offers various privacy features (check about:config), but they're opt-in and typically have a bar to entry for users to be willing to change settings and know what they will do. Mozilla might claim to care about privacy, but by not clamping down on third party content and referers, it left most of its userbase in the position of having their privacy invaded by default when using their product. If you care about privacy you fix that, they didn't.
Markoff 8y ago
pull down to refresh much smoother scrolling

terhechte 8y ago

Is Brave always based on the latest version of Firefox? Or did it branch of at some point in the past?

Daedren 8y ago
Brave is Chromium based
- DavideNL 8y ago
  Note that only "Brave Beta" is Chromium based (and "Brave Dev").
  - codehalo 8y ago
    Brave was always based on chromium. The UI was based on Muon, but the upcoming 1.0 release switched the UI back to Chromium.
- jonathansampson 8y ago
  We are indeed based on Chromium, but differ from Chrome in many ways. Here's a little information to expound on that: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
manojlds 8y ago
Brave is based on Chromium.
- roryisok 8y ago
  Actually last time I checked Brave was an electron app so technically based on Chromium but also running in Chromium.
  - lwf 8y ago
    Brave moved away from that to Muon[1], which (IIRC) was originally very close to Electron, but now[2] actually is just a minorly-patched version of upstream Chromium. They've since moved from Muon to Chromium for the browser chrome[3]. [1]: https://github.com/brave/muon/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/brave/muon/blob/master/README.md [2]: https://github.com/brave/muon/blob/master/docs/tutorial/moving-from-electron.md#ref1 https://github.com/brave/muon/blob/master/docs/tutorial/movi... [3]: https://brave.com/development-plans-for-upcoming-release/ https://brave.com/development-plans-for-upcoming-release/

jhabdas 8y ago

A little awkward to see this here given Brave is becoming fairly mainstream. You want to lock down the tools you rely on to lock you down.

grezql 8y ago
Dont know what you definition of mainstream is but it certainly is not known to the common people.
- octosphere 8y ago
  The link to brave.com has been around for a while in various incarnations on Hackernews. Interestingly OP didn't trim the /index/ part of the URL so the main URL has another chance to be part of the frontpage. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Brave.com&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Brave.com&sort=byDate&dateRang...
  - wewake 8y ago
    > Interestingly OP didn't trim the /index/ part of the URL so the main URL has another chance to be part of the frontpage. Wasn't intentional at all.

herf 8y ago

I use pinch to zoom all the time, but Brave (and Firefox) don't seem to implement it (please?)

majewsky 8y ago
Firefox for Android supports pinch-to-zoom, but only on certain sites (maybe it's disabled by a certain setting of `<meta name="viewport">`). EDIT: Tried just now. Pinch-to-zoom works fine on HN.
- superflyguy 8y ago
  Settings/accessibility/always enable zoom.
  - Filligree 8y ago
    Why is disabling it even possible?
    - diggan 8y ago
      Applications might want to implement their own pinch-to-zoom. I can imagine that Google Maps in mobile browsers does that, otherwise you'll just see upscaled images instead of the application fetching new, higher resolution tiles.
    - floatboth 8y ago
      You can't pinch to zoom the UI of native Android/iOS apps. Makes sense that web apps with "native-like look" might want to behave similarly.
      - kwhitefoot 8y ago
        It's my device, I should be allowed to pinch to zoom, etc., regardless of what the website or app wants.
_hyn3 8y ago

mswift42 8y ago

The first time I heard of Brave, I thought Oh cool, a privacy focused, chromium based browser. But I must say I'm honestly appalled by its parasitic business model. Content creators are strong armed into becoming verified publishers, while users have to trust Brave that their data is handled properly and carefully.

spooneybarger 8y ago
I have to trust every browser making to do the right thing with my data. Often, they don't. What's the alternative to Brave's model? I personally will keep using Firefox with an adblocker and publishers will get nothing.
- xrd 8y ago
  https://blog.teddyhyde.com/2017/10/11/take-back-your-blog-just-sprinkle-notifications-and-cryptocurrency https://blog.teddyhyde.com/2017/10/11/take-back-your-blog-ju...
giancarlostoro 8y ago
Why I never use it. I will always stick to Firefox. Firefox has yet to irritate me. A few plugins here or there is not as awful as most of what Google does. Besides if I REALLY wanted to I could run one of the GPL forks of Firefox. They may be dated after a while but they work usually. Edit: I meant to say GNU forks like IceWeasel and GNU IceCat which are licensed as GPL usually. There's other forks too. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranded_by_Debian#Iceweasel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranded_by_... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat
- sleavey 8y ago
  Firefox isn't GPL?
  - glibgil 8y ago
    Why would there be a Mozilla Public License if not to be used for Firefox?

andreygrehov 8y ago

When I use Chrome, what does Google do with my data?

mda 8y ago
They actually explain what exactly is stored and what it is used for. You can see and control it as well. But on hacker news and this is an unpopular opinion.
- robin_reala 8y ago
  True, but you can’t stop them collecting it (at least as far as I can see).
  - mda 8y ago
    You can for almost all of it. Don't sign in, or disable all kind of personalization and storage from your account settings. You can alao delete all your history, forever.
    - brandnewlow 8y ago
      The problem with this approach is it feels like there are teams of smart people at Google with all of these "outs" in a shared doc and a timeline to slowly close them off one by one. There's no way to "win" in the longrun against that.
kbob 8y ago
https://stratechery.com/2018/data-factories/ https://stratechery.com/2018/data-factories/

the_other_guy 8y ago

Brave, DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi, etc... are examples of the parasitic products that are trying to make use of the current privacy paranoia to earn a very tiny market share while they aren't any different from the big players. They only look innocent because they are small not because they are different.

prepend 8y ago
How do you think these products are parasitic? And how do you think they add the same as Chrome? I’m not familiar with Vivaldi, but DDG has a different business model because it’s self imposed limitations on user data that has privacy sensitivity. And Brave is quite different as it eschews ads altogether and rather uses its Basic Attention Token for users to directly find sites and take a cut [0]. This method requires no user data and is really different that Chrome that requires extensive user personal data to maintain its desired profit margins. [0] https://brave.com/faq-payments/#what-is-brave-payments https://brave.com/faq-payments/#what-is-brave-payments
Bayart 8y ago
I don't think Vivaldi markets to privacy-obsessed users, and it's quite different from anything out there.
StevePerkins 8y ago
You can make a thin argument about Brave being parasitic. Blocking ads, but allowing people to opt-in to ads for which Brave takes a cut. But I don't even see any argument at all for bringing DuckDuckGo or Vivaldi into the discussion. * DDG is a search engine that doesn't track its users. It kinda sorta emulates Google's look-and-feel, but so does Bing and Wolfram Alpha and search.yahoo.com and everyone else. * Vivaldi is yet another Chromium-based browser, for the microscopic niche of Opera fans who feel that Opera "went mainstream". If it's parasitic to base a browser on Chromium, then Chrome itself is a parasite for forking off KDE's WebKit. Are you arguing that using privacy concerns as a marketing tool, to compete for a slice of Google's monopoly, makes one a "parasite"? Because not only is that a poor argument in the abstract, it doesn't even apply as Vivaldi doesn't really promote itself on privacy grounds.
8y ago

znpy 8y ago

Brave on mobile us the best browser out there.

highace 8y ago

I know Brave has their own arguably evil agenda, but their Android browser right now is simply amazing. It blocks all ads and trackers, without needing to set up VPNs or proxys or companion apps that mess with your settings and don't always work. If you prefer Chrome over Firefox on your Android then for ad-free browsing it can't be beat.

mattlondon 8y ago
+1 On android it is essentially identical to Chrome in every way apart from the Brave icon next to the address bar that controls the blocking. I really like it. I tried the desktop version though and did not like the look and feel of the UI - tabs under the address bar etc. Felt like it was a slavish copy of Safari and I did not like it. Much prefer Firefox on desktop. I have also learnt of Brave's plans to replace a sites ads with its own ads which I do not like. Will move off of Brave on mobile when Firefox is workable on android (last time I tried it was awful, clunky and slow on android).
- matthberg 8y ago
  I've been using Firefox on mobile and have no issues with it. I'd try it out again now, with quantum under the hood it's purring along smoothly for me. Also (to anyone who doesn't know) you can install Firefox addons on Firefox mobile, so uBlock Origin works (can personally confirm it) to block ads.
  - Sytten 8y ago
    I have a low budget smartphone and its simply not usable. I switched to firefox focus which runs very smoothly, but it has its disadvantages too.
    - BrendanEich 8y ago
      Interested in whether Brave works well for you. Also phone details if you can share. Thanks.

xaduha 8y ago

I'd rather use Opera.

the_clarence 8y ago

Still no tabs on the side?

sinuhe69 8y ago

Brave claims to be 2-8 times faster than Chrome & Firefox on popular news sites. If Brave is based on Chromium, no ways it can be twice faster than Chrome. If it based on a new developed browser kit, it’s too fantastic to be true. It’s already a respectable performance if a new browser kit can come close to the unicorn browsers like Chrome & Firefox (Quantum). The whole thing is too fishy for my taste.

sleavey 8y ago
I guess they're comparing stock Brave (which blocks ads and trackers by default) to stock Chrome / Firefox (which don't - well, Firefox does block some trackers now). Blocking ads categorically improves page load time.
- johntash 8y ago
  I agree. I'd like to see a comparison of stock Brave vs Chrome/Firefox with UBO or some other adblocking extensions configured. Otherwise, I could say links is a superior browser because it loads pages even faster than Brave.
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nostrademons 8y ago
It's faster because it neither loads nor displays the ads, which are a huge portion of the page weight. In my subjective experience using Brave, I'd say 3-4x is about right. BTW, the rampant inefficiency and bugginess of ads is what prompted me to install first AdBlock and then Brave in the first place. I have no problem with viewing ads or supporting content publishers; I do have a problem when the sheer weight of all the ads and trackers they include on their page means I'm waiting 10+ seconds for the page to load and there's a good chance of it locking up entirely. If the damn ad networks would just follow best practices regarding efficient & robust JS serving I wouldn't block them, but they don't, so I do.

androidgirl 8y ago

I want to like Brave, but I just can't get past the planned ads, the crypto stuff, how memory intensive chromium is, and, well, I really like Firefox. My browser is for reading docs, for JS/WASM development, and the occasional Gmail or HN visit, so maybe I'm not their target market.

codezero 8y ago
What is “the crypto stuff”?
- wewake 8y ago
  Brave has introduced BAT (Basic Attention Token), a token for a decentralized ad exchange. Give their interesting white paper [0] a read. [0] https://basicattentiontoken.org/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePaper-4.pdf https://basicattentiontoken.org/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePape...
  - codezero 8y ago
    Thanks for the info, I’ll check it out!
BrendanEich 8y ago
Anything above baseline blocking, protection against fingerprinting, etc., is optional and must remain so or our core users would bolt. So please feel welcome to use in default mode. BTW, chromium bloat rep in part comes from Chrome not blocking ads and tracking well. Extensions must use JS and so use more memory. Brave uses C++ in the network threads of the browser process.
- 18pfsmt 8y ago
  Are these C++-based browser improvements being made public? Is this a library?
  - BrendanEich 8y ago

unrealchild 8y ago

i have lot count of the number of browser projects that positioned themselves as an alternative to XYZ existing product. not saying it doesn’t happen (chrome) just that there are often several attempts made that rise and fall quickly. adding cryptocurrency may be an interesting spin...but in the end it’s just a spin and the core loop is not much different. best of luck to them!

runn1ng 8y ago

Do they still have the stupid ICO token for advertisments? Or did they get rid of that

IvanK_net 8y ago

The Brave browser loads pages faster, because it completely ignores the web standards (i.e. it does not show you what the author wanted you to see). Precisely, it does not load and display some elements, which it considers to be ads (or at least that is what they want us to believe). If the page author writes <body id="ads"> ... , normal browsers will show you the content of the <body>, while Brave will show you nothing (in 0.001 seconds) :D Personally, I think that using browsers, which add / remove / rewrite (i.e. censor) the web content for you, is quite dangerous. If it rewrites the Google Search results once in a while, or rewrites some part of the news, you would not even notice.

dbielik 8y ago

> This app has access to: Device & app history Allows the app to view one or more of: information about activity on the device, which apps are running, browsing history and bookmarks Why is this required?

gruez 8y ago
presumably for bookmarks importing
- BrendanEich 8y ago
  Yes. We are looking into better ways to roll but it's hard on Android because of course-grained permissions; also you can't have a high-power importer put the imported stuff in a place the main app can use, as far as I know. Apps are not allowed by store rules to "interfere" with one another. :-/
  - allenbrunson 8y ago
    hey Brendan, I can see you're getting a lot of negative feedback here, so as a hopefully countervailing force: this was the thread that finally got me to try Brave on my iPad, iPhone, and mac. I like it so far! I never thought I'd use any ad blockers, purely on moral grounds. But so many sites have gotten completely unusable in the last year or so: half a dozen auto-playing videos, some of which follow you around the page, text that won't stop flying around the screen long enough for you to read it, etc. It's starting to seem like there is no other choice. If I used it for nothing else, Brave is a whole lot better than Safari on iOS for blocking unnecessary crap. You really shouldn't get into it with trolls, though. You've had quite a few comments in the last day or so that ended up flagged dead. Not a good look for a CEO.
    - BrendanEich 8y ago
      Negative? This thread is nothing in terms of negative feedback, and just by counting handles (not counting comments, esp. the now dead ones -- btw that flagged subthread was a net win too), I see way more positive than negative. Questions are never negative and all good if not loaded/trick. Anti-ads or anti-token politics, not so much -- but part of the package deal. The ohmygodel comments were quite good and I'm grateful for them - hope to connect by email. Thanks for trying Brave!

emersonrsantos 8y ago

There’s adaway for Android (needs root) that downloads, merges and replace /etc/hosts with your favorite hosts blacklists, working system wide and not consuming extra battery: https://adaway.org https://adaway.org

unstuckdev 8y ago

I respect the CEO's right to keep details of his opinions on other people's rights to himself. Unfortunately, the appearance of his Prop 8 donation makes me not want to send money his way. There are plenty of browsers out there.

BrendanEich 8y ago

Users banding together to send crypto anonymously toward their favorite sites and creators is not "parasitic" -- you and your browser are the host, already colonized by tracking scripts for ads if you don't use a no-compromises blocker such as uBO. Users' right to block is well supported by web standards and case law. Adding a separate, direct to creator funding option is not parasitism, it is found money for creators. To see someone here call our opt-in (meaning that each user consents without duress) anonymous micro-contributions and (coming up fast) private ads model layered on top such a name tells me that person has confused host and parasite, or is working for one of the parasites. It was never a given that your browser should become a blind and passive servant to surveillance super-companies either wholly or partly dependent on ads, but such companies did capture arguably 3 of the top 4 browsers. Now is the time for users to push back, whether by Brave if you like it, a blocker such as uBO on a browser that doesn't track you by default (perhaps when "logged in"; whatever), or another method that works for you. I hope those who have not yet will give Brave a try. https://brave.com/download-dev https://brave.com/download-dev for the chromium-extensions-ready new version.

mswift42 8y ago
> Users banding together to send crypto anonymously toward their favorite sites and creators is not "parasitic" True, but replacing ads you don't get compensated for with ads you do, is.
- andrewmutz 8y ago
  I don’t know Brave well enough: what ads does Brave insert?
  - BrendanEich 8y ago
    We do not insert any ads. In 2016 we proposed that Brave, a browser, could allow users and publishers to get better revenue through a private ad model that does not entail any tracking or user data in the clear on servers. We ran some placeholder ads to show the concept off. These are disabled now. This caused a reaction. The letter we got (I mentioned it in my last comment) from a publisher group asserted that the publishers own copyright and trademark on third-party ads on their sites. This was comical in view of malware getting on the New York Times, BBC Online, AOL and other sites the month before (March 2016). Publishers do not own (c) or (tm) on any ads they don't create, of course -- certainly not on so-called third party ads, especially malware. Or they'd be liable. Anyway, baseline Brave is just a top-speed (better than using JS in extension code) blocker by default. All token options are optional, users and (if involved) publishers choose.

mping 8y ago

Installed brave on Linux, the autocomplete is sluggishly slow which I guess is due to history search but makes it completely unusable. There's an open issue for that, but I wished they didn't market it with such a critical bug.

jiveturkey 8y ago

i had a similar idea. a local client that scrapes (ahem, reads) forum sites and formats the content in a consistent way. with much more powerful UI. like tapatalk, but actually good. oh, and it removes site ads and inserts it’s own. then it holds the forums hostage to get into its own ads model.

jonathansampson 8y ago
Brave doesn't insert ads onto publisher sites without publisher consent. We have a parallel digital advertising component (opt-in) which leverages machine-learning on your device to match ads, and pay you as much as 70% of the ad revenue. This model is faster, safer, and more beneficial to everybody involved.
kodablah 8y ago
I am going to build something similar to your first part, essentially a client-side proxy backed by a headless browser that serves up your favorite sites' content sans crap. To your second part, I won't be doing any of that ad replacement (consent or not, just like I don't with my Chromium-based browser with native ad blocking).

dxhdr 8y ago

Block current ad tech and replace it with their own. Where does Brave hope to be in 10 years? Controlling the internet ad marketplace via their BAT token platform. Once the initial creators have earned their take and lost their will the platform values will be slowly (rapidly?) eroded and we'll be right back where we are today. How is this appealing?

agrippanux 8y ago

I want to like Brave, but dealbreaker for me is I'm on Linux and 1Password X extension isn't supported.

spooneybarger 8y ago
The beta builds support all chrome extensions.

crag 8y ago

Mac version coming? I use AdGuard now, on Mac. But I'd like this on Mac as well. Safari I won't touch.

cfitz 8y ago
Just downloaded this on High Sierra (10.13.6) and having no problems so far. Did you see their downloads page [1]? [1]: https://brave.com/download/ https://brave.com/download/

owly 8y ago

Firefox and Firefox Focus are awesome on mobile. Can even block web fonts. I don’t see the point in supporting brave.

auslander 8y ago
Focus app even contains a iOS Content Blocker which you can enable in Safari. Now you have Safari with adblocker.

pcunite 8y ago

If anyone from Brave is here, I look forward to customizing the install location on Windows. I need to install to a secure area, not my user directory. I look forward to giving it a good test when I can.

ohmygodel 8y ago

I support Brave's vision for the Web, but it currently seems to represent a step backwards for privacy. Making payments to providers essentially involves sending your Web browsing history to Brave. The FAQ states that "we do not know which BAT wallet is associated with the lists of sites that you choose to support". I believe that is false. I think it works like this: (1) Brave Browser submits its transactions to a Brave server to exchange a BAT for an Anonize ballot (anonize.org), (2) each ballot has the name of a site you visited randomly added by the browser with probability proportional to the frequency of site visits, and (3) the ballots are sent to a Brave server. Key here is that the token and ballot submissions are sent directly (e.g. not through a proxy or Tor). In addition, I believe the ballots may be submitted as a batch (i.e. at one point in time). Therefore, it is easy for Brave to see your votes for your visited websites, all coming at once, all from your IP address. That IP address may well be the same one used to exchange the BAT for ballots as well. There are additional problems regarding visits to unusual and identifying websites that I feel like Brave hasn't begun to consider, either. Suppose that every and only time that Brave receives a ballot for your personal website, they also receive a ballot for some unpopular and sensitive website. They can then conclude that the owner of the website also visits that sensitive site. These problems must be addressed before Brave can be considered seriously by privacy-conscious users.

BrendanEich 8y ago
No history sent to Brave - did you assume this, or read it somewhere? We use ANONIZE2 based on https://anonize.org/ https://anonize.org/ to blind ourselves to your history. Can’t be evil > Don’t be evil. We see only zero-knowledge proofs that say how many votes go to sites or YouTube or Twitch accounts. These proofs do not link to user id or to ine another (so no fingerprint by clustering). They go over an IP address masking service to our accounting server, while your monthly budget goes in a single token transaction. Note Google and other ad tech powers do track your history. Logging into Chrome even gives your history over for ad targeting. Blendle, Flattrplus, other such services also see your history. But we do not.
- ohmygodel 8y ago
  I understand that Anonize is used for anonymous ballots. I understand that Brave used to submit its ballots via a single-hop proxy. My understanding is now that Brave no longer uses this proxy, which wasn't a good solution anyway because the proxy sees the user's entire set of ballots (aka browsing history). Thus Brave is now given all the ballots directly from the user, and thereby learns the user's browsing history. I do agree that other browsers and services also track users around the Web. Eliminating that is a goal that I support and that I think Brave does as well. I think that it is failing to achieve that goal. Either you don't realize the technical reality of your solution, or you are being misleading.

threatofrain 8y ago

For iOS, how does Brave compare to using content blockers, such as Firefox Focus?

mkeyhani 8y ago

I really like the idea behind Brave. However, I think a fundamental issue arises if you are going to pay people to see ads: What if someone forks Brave, and creates a browser which blocks all Brave ads, while pretending to click on them? Neither of the two solutions I can think of are pleasant ones: you either need to somehow verify that that ads are viewed by a human (i.e. CAPTCHAs), or use DRM-like mechanisms to hide a token in Brave’s brinary, so that only “honest” browsers can get paid.

BrendanEich 8y ago
Any network with grants or revshares of tokens or other units of account that might exchange to money, and humans in the loop, will have fraud. Blockchain cannot stop it and has really nothing to offer yet on this front -- reputation on chain is a hope, some say a vain dream. What Brave offers that's far better than today's joke of an antifraud system for ads is as follows: 1/ integrity-checked open source native code, which cannot be fooled by other JS on page; 2/ looking at all the sensors, even the ones without web APIs, to check humanity. (1) requires SGX or ARM equivalent, widespread on mobile. JS by contrast cannot be sure of anything unless the antifraud script knows it runs first, and publishers cannot guarantee this in general or easily. (2) is a material advantage over JS, which has only some but not all sensor APIs. For more on the joke of antifraud adtech today, please see https://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/state-of-digital-ad-fraud-q2-2018/ https://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/state-of-digital-ad-... and https://twitter.com/acfou's https://twitter.com/acfou's other work.

jazoom 8y ago

Does brave sync bookmarks and passwords between desktop and mobile yet? I don't get why this is such a low priority for new browser vendors.

mdimec4 8y ago

In the face of youtube demonetizing vidos, which advartising companies don't like, this is in theory much more Democratic system.

stevenicr 8y ago

Just need to say that I really appreciate different people taking different approaches to ad security and privacy enhancement. I have so distressed by the amount of malware that has been infecting people's networks from mainstream sites it scares the dickens out of me. The privacy things also really disturbs me. I don't mind seeing an ad and you getting paid for it when I read the latest changes to the HPV guidance from the FDA for example, but I don't want multiple evil places like "addthis" "add-to-'any" and the likes to be creating some kind of profile and selling it. The newspaper ads did not tell others that I read the "whatever article" in the paper. I also can not stand moving ads. SO many really good articles are ruined by animated gifs/mp4s jumping for attention. It saddens me, and likely the authors of really good long form articles, I think from the Atlantic and NYTImes recently I was taken out of the feeling and captivating moments of articles to look at the moving distractions next to them many times. This not only made articles take twice as long to read, but made them much less impactful, and harder to remember. These are some of the reasons I posted a while back (http://www.ideasandwritings.com/2016/adblock-into-fairblock/ http://www.ideasandwritings.com/2016/adblock-into-fairblock/ ) the desire to have an ad-blocker with some 2 way communication so I could have settings that block all third party ads, and moving ads, but would gladly accept static self served ads from sites that had reasonable privacy policies. I would take it further and offer up some extra data points to those ads the were guaranteed secure so you could make more money and "i could get awesome ads relative to me" - I imagine many others would be happy to offer city, sex, and age for example, if privacy was controlled by "reputable publisher on list here" for example. For these reasons I seriously applaud this project. It's not perfect, but it seems to be the closest to what I wrote about some time ago - and I think it's a huge jump in the right direction. I applaud all the attempts, ad blockers, micro payments, different models for payments and attention - lets try everything and find what works for different people. So glad to see publishers jumping on board to get some ad revenue from those who would choose to block privacy stealing, possible malware sending ads. Now if we can fine tune it a bit more I'd love to see some back and forth discussion between my browser and the ad server. (no alcohol ads, yes to tech, static only please, male, etc) Heck I might actually click and buy to support more if the ads get better, not just more attention stealing which seems to be the race to the outrageous that clickbait and such is going. Maybe this will start to force some changes.