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Brave's an open-source, privacy-respecting browser with a digital wallet baked in. The microtransaction opportunities that are opened up by having such a low-f

Brave's an open-source, privacy-respecting browser with a digital wallet baked in. The microtransaction opportunities that are opened up by having such a low-friction economic layer native to the browser is what's particularly interesting about Brave. Even the criticisms of Brave's microtransaction potential are encouraging, because they're usually unserious, rely on hand-waving references to previous weak and incomparable attempts and appear to emanate from accounts that have an agenda beyond good-faith technical / behavioural evaluation. I understand the need to incorporate an optional ad network within it, and already see that it's a far superior model compared to the current ad-tech ecosystem that it can and should replace. It remains to be seen whether it can get commercial traction but considering how quickly and deeply the mood has shifted against Google / Facebook / the current ad-tech ecosystem you'd have to say there has been no better time to trial a new approach to funding content on the web.

manigandham 7y ago
Microtransactions are about user behavior, not tech. We had a low-friction experience with a browser extension and that's been possible for several years. Convincing people to value content, judge the price, and spend their own money is the real challenge. And if people aren't spending their own money then it's just an ad network in the browser to replace an ad network on the page. Not revolutionary and open to all the same concerns of ads today. 99% of people don't notice "privacy", they care about intrusiveness and annoying experiences. That's what's visible so having an ad is the same effect for them regardless of how it's delivered. If you want to judge my perspective then read this first [1]. It's great to have alternatives and I'm as interested as you to see how this experiment works out. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19593812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19593812
- justsee 7y ago
  Microtransactions are about user behaviour and tech. Your exploratory attempts with a browser plugin do not sound comparable to what Brave is attempting. Attempting to dismiss Brave by begging the question isn't convincing: "Brave won't succeed and isn't revolutionary if we assume the revolutionary bits won't succeed." Claiming - after your initial uninformed and dismissive commentary - to now be an honest and good-faith participant is curious. Innovating on a new utility-scale ad / content model in a multi-sided market with a new browser relying on a new cryptoeconomic infrastructure which if successful threatens huge, well-funded industry participants is certainly a challenge. But the Brave team are pretty peerless when looking at the needed skillset, the moment in time for an industry-wide shift seems to be here and the mix of incentives: battery life, speed, memory, privacy, user growth pool tokens for donations, future content payment options, on-device learning model, zero-knowledge proof privacy, cross-device syncing etc are very compelling.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    Unlike you I use my real name here. I'm honest, straightforward, informed, and will state whatever commentary I want, backed up with over a decade of experience in advertising and tech. Skip the personal jabs and put up an actual argument. >> Microtransactions are about user behaviour and tech. Cool. As I said, the tech part is easy and has been solved plenty of times before. What's the solution to user behavior? Brave doesn't have one. >> Innovating on a new utility-scale ad / content model in a multi-sided market with a new browser relying on a new cryptoeconomic infrastructure These are buzzwords. Nobody cares. I analyze based on the fundamental principles: An ad network is not new. Microtransactions are not new. Combining them is not new. Brave claims ads are overrun by middlemen and yet is a just another middleman. BAT is useless in the real world where advertisers and publishers are, and exchanging crypto for currency is more taxes and middlemen. Brave claims to stop fraud but has no counter. Measuring attention accurately is an unsolved problem and only made harder when it's decentralized and hackable. Ad fraud isn't because of opacity in adtech, it's because of a lack of consequences, something Brave again has no answer for. If you want to claim you're revolutionary but yet have no new business model, no plan on changing user behavior, and use buzzword-laden descriptions, then yes there's a high chance it's not going to work. Of course anything can happen and I welcome it if it's successful, but I really don't care either way.
    - justsee 7y ago
      You're a competitor heavily invested in the current ad-tech ecosystem casting shade on a competitive model by relying on a bunch of mischaracterisations and false assertions. Knowing this and re-reading your contributions (and particularly this last one) suggests there's no useful debate to be had here.
      - manigandham 7y ago
        That's not an argument. Yet again you post from an anonymous account about my personal character instead of debating the actual points raised. You're also incorrect because I don't compete with Brave and have no vested interest in adtech. I actually spent time and money on regulation and our marketing SaaS works the same regardless of environment. Almost all of your comments on this page consist of you telling other people that they are mischaracterizing while offering no clear arguments of your own.
- hakfoo 7y ago
  Fundamentally, microtransactions will never work because they make browsing a stack of decisions. It doesn't matter how small the price and seamless the infrastructure, it's still a cost you have to make a conscious decision about. Would you pay one satoshi to load this comment? The model that could work would be a large network with a single-sign-on ad-free subscription. Charge $20 per month and slice it to the participating sites based on analytics. This works because it's about eliminating customer risk and burden. * A large network helps to reduce the "what if I do't read a lot of articles from this publisher every month?" risk. * Going for an ad-free subscription instead of a paywall subscription reduces the risk of commitment if you can't preview the content. * A flat monthly fee removes the risk of "what if I get sucked down a rabbit hole and read 500 stories instead of 10 this month" and the burden of having to decide if you're willing to pay for any one individual article.
  - justsee 7y ago
    I don't think anyone would argue that a content payment architecture that demands a user endlessly make a stack of decisions isn't doomed to fail. But that's a criticism of a specific implementation of microtransactions. In a future Brave / BAT world where a variety of microtransaction experiments can play out, I'd imagine a bunch of un/successful experiments that then start to gain wider adoption depending on the industry / publisher. Maybe the transaction is just for specific goods, like ebooks, higher quality video feeds etc, or maybe it's a time spent cost with a standardized market rate up to a maximum amount which reflects a weekly / monthly unlimited subscription. Attention-based microtransactions are much more feasible with something like BAT + Brave (with its on-device machine-learning model). Maybe even with everything planned it still fails, but as the experiments haven't even started it'll be interesting to see what, if anything takes.

manigandham 7y ago

Microtransactions are about user behavior, not tech. We had a low-friction experience with a browser extension and that's been possible for several years. Convincing people to value content, judge the price, and spend their own money is the real challenge. And if people aren't spending their own money then it's just an ad network in the browser to replace an ad network on the page. Not revolutionary and open to all the same concerns of ads today. 99% of people don't notice "privacy", they care about intrusiveness and annoying experiences. That's what's visible so having an ad is the same effect for them regardless of how it's delivered. If you want to judge my perspective then read this first [1]. It's great to have alternatives and I'm as interested as you to see how this experiment works out. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19593812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19593812

justsee 7y ago
Microtransactions are about user behaviour and tech. Your exploratory attempts with a browser plugin do not sound comparable to what Brave is attempting. Attempting to dismiss Brave by begging the question isn't convincing: "Brave won't succeed and isn't revolutionary if we assume the revolutionary bits won't succeed." Claiming - after your initial uninformed and dismissive commentary - to now be an honest and good-faith participant is curious. Innovating on a new utility-scale ad / content model in a multi-sided market with a new browser relying on a new cryptoeconomic infrastructure which if successful threatens huge, well-funded industry participants is certainly a challenge. But the Brave team are pretty peerless when looking at the needed skillset, the moment in time for an industry-wide shift seems to be here and the mix of incentives: battery life, speed, memory, privacy, user growth pool tokens for donations, future content payment options, on-device learning model, zero-knowledge proof privacy, cross-device syncing etc are very compelling.
- manigandham 7y ago
  Unlike you I use my real name here. I'm honest, straightforward, informed, and will state whatever commentary I want, backed up with over a decade of experience in advertising and tech. Skip the personal jabs and put up an actual argument. >> Microtransactions are about user behaviour and tech. Cool. As I said, the tech part is easy and has been solved plenty of times before. What's the solution to user behavior? Brave doesn't have one. >> Innovating on a new utility-scale ad / content model in a multi-sided market with a new browser relying on a new cryptoeconomic infrastructure These are buzzwords. Nobody cares. I analyze based on the fundamental principles: An ad network is not new. Microtransactions are not new. Combining them is not new. Brave claims ads are overrun by middlemen and yet is a just another middleman. BAT is useless in the real world where advertisers and publishers are, and exchanging crypto for currency is more taxes and middlemen. Brave claims to stop fraud but has no counter. Measuring attention accurately is an unsolved problem and only made harder when it's decentralized and hackable. Ad fraud isn't because of opacity in adtech, it's because of a lack of consequences, something Brave again has no answer for. If you want to claim you're revolutionary but yet have no new business model, no plan on changing user behavior, and use buzzword-laden descriptions, then yes there's a high chance it's not going to work. Of course anything can happen and I welcome it if it's successful, but I really don't care either way.
  - justsee 7y ago
    You're a competitor heavily invested in the current ad-tech ecosystem casting shade on a competitive model by relying on a bunch of mischaracterisations and false assertions. Knowing this and re-reading your contributions (and particularly this last one) suggests there's no useful debate to be had here.
    - manigandham 7y ago
      That's not an argument. Yet again you post from an anonymous account about my personal character instead of debating the actual points raised. You're also incorrect because I don't compete with Brave and have no vested interest in adtech. I actually spent time and money on regulation and our marketing SaaS works the same regardless of environment. Almost all of your comments on this page consist of you telling other people that they are mischaracterizing while offering no clear arguments of your own.
hakfoo 7y ago
Fundamentally, microtransactions will never work because they make browsing a stack of decisions. It doesn't matter how small the price and seamless the infrastructure, it's still a cost you have to make a conscious decision about. Would you pay one satoshi to load this comment? The model that could work would be a large network with a single-sign-on ad-free subscription. Charge $20 per month and slice it to the participating sites based on analytics. This works because it's about eliminating customer risk and burden. * A large network helps to reduce the "what if I do't read a lot of articles from this publisher every month?" risk. * Going for an ad-free subscription instead of a paywall subscription reduces the risk of commitment if you can't preview the content. * A flat monthly fee removes the risk of "what if I get sucked down a rabbit hole and read 500 stories instead of 10 this month" and the burden of having to decide if you're willing to pay for any one individual article.
- justsee 7y ago
  I don't think anyone would argue that a content payment architecture that demands a user endlessly make a stack of decisions isn't doomed to fail. But that's a criticism of a specific implementation of microtransactions. In a future Brave / BAT world where a variety of microtransaction experiments can play out, I'd imagine a bunch of un/successful experiments that then start to gain wider adoption depending on the industry / publisher. Maybe the transaction is just for specific goods, like ebooks, higher quality video feeds etc, or maybe it's a time spent cost with a standardized market rate up to a maximum amount which reflects a weekly / monthly unlimited subscription. Attention-based microtransactions are much more feasible with something like BAT + Brave (with its on-device machine-learning model). Maybe even with everything planned it still fails, but as the experiments haven't even started it'll be interesting to see what, if anything takes.