5 ms·

Does brave still suck up money from people even when the site owner hasn't set up brave payments?

by snek 7y ago

dymk 7y ago
And not just that, they’ve moved/are moving to a model of displaying their own ads instead, which are invariably for some scammy crypto-of-the-day which even FB and Google ban from their ad platforms
- jonathansampson 7y ago
  Sorry, I'm not sure what you're referring to. Brave has 2 ad-models (one still in the works). First, the User Model. In this model, user's must first opt-in to participate. If/when they do, advertisements are shown (at a user-controllable rate) as OS notifications. When a notification is shown, 70% of the revenue is deposited into the user's wallet. The second model is the Publisher Model; this is in the works now. Under this model, Publishers will be able to opt-in the system as well, and have ads displayed on their pages. Under this model, publishers receive 70%, and the user receives 15%. But both models require consent before any ads are displayed.
  - dymk 7y ago
    We'll see how long that lasts once the VC money runs out. Blocking ads and displaying your own certainly is an "ad replacement" model though, and websites that don't want to participate have no choice.
    - jonathansampson 7y ago
      Ads are being blocked, already, on hundreds of millions of devices. Brave users are usually former users of ad-blocking extensions in Chrome and Firefox. As such, these users were beyond the advertising system, far out of reach of Advertisers or Publishers. Brave changes this. Brave brings security and privacy minded folks back into the system by offering a better deal for all parties. Users get paid without giving up data, Advertisers get better value for their spend. And Publishers don't have to weigh their sites down with third-party scripts to monetize content.
    - BrendanEich 7y ago
      We're not doing ad replacement. We will not without publisher as partner. Anyone saying otherwise is repeating a falsehood.
  - admax88q 7y ago
    They're saying that the quality of the ads shown are terrible.
    - jonathansampson 7y ago
      The types of ads shown by early participants is skewed toward blockchain and security topics. For many users, this is not very interesting. But the inventory changes and diversifies with time. We're seeing this happen today, already. The machine-learning model within the browser will also adapt over time, getting smarter and more attuned to your interests and habits. Quality will increase with Time and Inventory. We're seeing positive trends here, as more and more diverse advertisers are lining up to join the platform.
      - NoodleIncident 7y ago
        > some scammy crypto-of-the-day which even FB and Google ban The comment you first replied to said that the ads were so bad and scammy that they shouldn't be shown to anyone, not that they were poorly targeted. You're free to disagree with what they said, but it's weird to respond as if they'd said something else entirely that you already agree with.
        buboard 7y ago
        he mentioned that they were crypto ads. Most crypto related companies are not scams, yet fb and google and reddit ban them to appease government officials. Frankly , with fb & google having monopolised the space its not surprising that brave is picking up their leftovers. There are not many ways to solve this chicken and egg problem
- songshuu 7y ago
  That's simply false. They don't do ad replacement. You have to volunteer yourself to receive ads and they come in like system notifications, not anywhere near the content.
  - basch 7y ago
    thats a bit of semantics. if they block someone elses ads, and display their own ads they are still replacing what a persons attention is drawn to, even if it is an overlay instead of injected into the page. (its literally called an attention token, diverting attention to a new target.) should they be allowed to create an ad driven piece of software? absolutely? but if that software is an ad blocking browser, its creating a new interesting gray area.
    - lukemulks 7y ago
      (Brave employee here) We block 3rd party ads and tracking, that collect user data, often without their knowledge or consent. Brave Ads are disabled by default, to ensure that no one sees ads that is not interested in viewing ads. This provides a benefit to advertisers as well, as they currently dump a lot of money into a dumpster fire, and are basically tasked with measuring how many of the pixels appeared on the screen for a certain amount of time. Brands don't know if people that viewed the ad were interested in advertising. People get shotgunned with ads. We're approaching this differently. We've introduced advertising that is private by default, with a new approach to measuring and accounting for ad event confirmations through our ad confirmation protocol. We have some information regarding the confirmation protocol here, for those interested. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-privacy-model-for-ad-confirmations https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-pri... Aside from providing advertising that's private by default, our ad platform includes people in the process, by rewarding them for their attention (70% of the rev share for the ads viewed). People can then contribute those tokens to publishers and creators (like Wikipedia), or hold the tokens. In the future, people will be able to redeem tokens for gift cards, premium content, etc. We'll be introducing additional ad units in the future for publishers, with a cleaner deal and better rev share than they currently receive (publishers will receive 70% of the revenue, people will receive 15%, Brave will receive 15%). If we were just replacing publisher ads with other ads from the existing ad ecosystem, I'd understand and agree with the sentiment. That said, we're bringing new methods for ad delivery, accounting and matching to the market, all designed to function without leaking your information from your device. Hope this helps.
jonathansampson 7y ago
Not at all. If you have contributions/tips earmarked for a property that is not verified, those rest in your wallet for up to 90 days. If, during that period, the property becomes verified, the tokens are transferred. Otherwise, after the 90-day period, the tokens are released back within the wallet to be used elsewhere.
- sedatk 7y ago
  Are the tokens released back to the original payer or a pool account?
vorticalbox 7y ago
Yes, BATs stay in your wallet until they become verified
chance_state 7y ago
I think the answer is "not anymore" based on what's in their FAQ. > Publishers must verify ownership of their properties with Brave in order to receive contributions from Brave users. If a publisher has not verified ownership, then a user’s contributions will be held in reserve inside the browser for 90 days. The browser routinely updates an internal list of all verified publishers to determine whether a property can receive contributions. At the end of the 90 day period, any contributions marked for unverified publishers will be released back to the wallet. No funds leave the browser except to go to verified creators. > Previous versions of the Brave desktop browser worked differently. Until version 0.58.21, released on January 11, 2019, browsers with Brave Rewards enabled would contribute BAT to content creators whether or not they had verified. Brave would then hold contributed funds for those publishers in escrow until they’d verified. https://brave.com/faq/ https://brave.com/faq/
- snek 7y ago
  I'm glad to hear it
pushcx 7y ago
No, but they still haven't shown remorse for claiming those payments were held in escrow when in fact Brave held the payments, and planned to take them after 90 days. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736743
- javagram 7y ago
  Your link doesn’t match your text. You say they “planned” to take funds but when I followed the link, I found a TOS that allowed them to take a portion of the funds, or redistribute all of the funds back to end users without taking any, and a post from a Brave employee saying they never took any for themselves
  - pushcx 7y ago
    I see why you read it that way, but I can't read it so charitably after they claimed payments were held in escrow when they weren't. I don't believe this program was live 90 days before the uproar, so I don't give much credit for them not taking the donations.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    Ah, you're right, it's okay to take my money as long as you tell me you're going to take my money beforehand in a TOS that nobody reads. Caveat emptor!
  - sedatk 7y ago
    So the money I thought that I had donated to a content creator goes to some random people instead and that's somehow okay?

Does brave still suck up money from people even when the site owner hasn't set up brave payments?

by snek 7y ago

Does brave still suck up money from people even when the site owner hasn't set up brave payments?

dymk 7y ago

And not just that, they’ve moved/are moving to a model of displaying their own ads instead, which are invariably for some scammy crypto-of-the-day which even FB and Google ban from their ad platforms

jonathansampson 7y ago
Sorry, I'm not sure what you're referring to. Brave has 2 ad-models (one still in the works). First, the User Model. In this model, user's must first opt-in to participate. If/when they do, advertisements are shown (at a user-controllable rate) as OS notifications. When a notification is shown, 70% of the revenue is deposited into the user's wallet. The second model is the Publisher Model; this is in the works now. Under this model, Publishers will be able to opt-in the system as well, and have ads displayed on their pages. Under this model, publishers receive 70%, and the user receives 15%. But both models require consent before any ads are displayed.
- dymk 7y ago
  We'll see how long that lasts once the VC money runs out. Blocking ads and displaying your own certainly is an "ad replacement" model though, and websites that don't want to participate have no choice.
  - jonathansampson 7y ago
    Ads are being blocked, already, on hundreds of millions of devices. Brave users are usually former users of ad-blocking extensions in Chrome and Firefox. As such, these users were beyond the advertising system, far out of reach of Advertisers or Publishers. Brave changes this. Brave brings security and privacy minded folks back into the system by offering a better deal for all parties. Users get paid without giving up data, Advertisers get better value for their spend. And Publishers don't have to weigh their sites down with third-party scripts to monetize content.
  - BrendanEich 7y ago
    We're not doing ad replacement. We will not without publisher as partner. Anyone saying otherwise is repeating a falsehood.
- admax88q 7y ago
  They're saying that the quality of the ads shown are terrible.
  - jonathansampson 7y ago
    The types of ads shown by early participants is skewed toward blockchain and security topics. For many users, this is not very interesting. But the inventory changes and diversifies with time. We're seeing this happen today, already. The machine-learning model within the browser will also adapt over time, getting smarter and more attuned to your interests and habits. Quality will increase with Time and Inventory. We're seeing positive trends here, as more and more diverse advertisers are lining up to join the platform.
    - NoodleIncident 7y ago
      > some scammy crypto-of-the-day which even FB and Google ban The comment you first replied to said that the ads were so bad and scammy that they shouldn't be shown to anyone, not that they were poorly targeted. You're free to disagree with what they said, but it's weird to respond as if they'd said something else entirely that you already agree with.
      - buboard 7y ago
        he mentioned that they were crypto ads. Most crypto related companies are not scams, yet fb and google and reddit ban them to appease government officials. Frankly , with fb & google having monopolised the space its not surprising that brave is picking up their leftovers. There are not many ways to solve this chicken and egg problem
songshuu 7y ago
That's simply false. They don't do ad replacement. You have to volunteer yourself to receive ads and they come in like system notifications, not anywhere near the content.
- basch 7y ago
  thats a bit of semantics. if they block someone elses ads, and display their own ads they are still replacing what a persons attention is drawn to, even if it is an overlay instead of injected into the page. (its literally called an attention token, diverting attention to a new target.) should they be allowed to create an ad driven piece of software? absolutely? but if that software is an ad blocking browser, its creating a new interesting gray area.
  - lukemulks 7y ago
    (Brave employee here) We block 3rd party ads and tracking, that collect user data, often without their knowledge or consent. Brave Ads are disabled by default, to ensure that no one sees ads that is not interested in viewing ads. This provides a benefit to advertisers as well, as they currently dump a lot of money into a dumpster fire, and are basically tasked with measuring how many of the pixels appeared on the screen for a certain amount of time. Brands don't know if people that viewed the ad were interested in advertising. People get shotgunned with ads. We're approaching this differently. We've introduced advertising that is private by default, with a new approach to measuring and accounting for ad event confirmations through our ad confirmation protocol. We have some information regarding the confirmation protocol here, for those interested. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-privacy-model-for-ad-confirmations https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-pri... Aside from providing advertising that's private by default, our ad platform includes people in the process, by rewarding them for their attention (70% of the rev share for the ads viewed). People can then contribute those tokens to publishers and creators (like Wikipedia), or hold the tokens. In the future, people will be able to redeem tokens for gift cards, premium content, etc. We'll be introducing additional ad units in the future for publishers, with a cleaner deal and better rev share than they currently receive (publishers will receive 70% of the revenue, people will receive 15%, Brave will receive 15%). If we were just replacing publisher ads with other ads from the existing ad ecosystem, I'd understand and agree with the sentiment. That said, we're bringing new methods for ad delivery, accounting and matching to the market, all designed to function without leaking your information from your device. Hope this helps.

jonathansampson 7y ago

Not at all. If you have contributions/tips earmarked for a property that is not verified, those rest in your wallet for up to 90 days. If, during that period, the property becomes verified, the tokens are transferred. Otherwise, after the 90-day period, the tokens are released back within the wallet to be used elsewhere.

sedatk 7y ago
Are the tokens released back to the original payer or a pool account?

vorticalbox 7y ago

Yes, BATs stay in your wallet until they become verified

chance_state 7y ago

I think the answer is "not anymore" based on what's in their FAQ. > Publishers must verify ownership of their properties with Brave in order to receive contributions from Brave users. If a publisher has not verified ownership, then a user’s contributions will be held in reserve inside the browser for 90 days. The browser routinely updates an internal list of all verified publishers to determine whether a property can receive contributions. At the end of the 90 day period, any contributions marked for unverified publishers will be released back to the wallet. No funds leave the browser except to go to verified creators. > Previous versions of the Brave desktop browser worked differently. Until version 0.58.21, released on January 11, 2019, browsers with Brave Rewards enabled would contribute BAT to content creators whether or not they had verified. Brave would then hold contributed funds for those publishers in escrow until they’d verified. https://brave.com/faq/ https://brave.com/faq/

snek 7y ago
I'm glad to hear it

pushcx 7y ago

No, but they still haven't shown remorse for claiming those payments were held in escrow when in fact Brave held the payments, and planned to take them after 90 days. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736743

javagram 7y ago
Your link doesn’t match your text. You say they “planned” to take funds but when I followed the link, I found a TOS that allowed them to take a portion of the funds, or redistribute all of the funds back to end users without taking any, and a post from a Brave employee saying they never took any for themselves
- pushcx 7y ago
  I see why you read it that way, but I can't read it so charitably after they claimed payments were held in escrow when they weren't. I don't believe this program was live 90 days before the uproar, so I don't give much credit for them not taking the donations.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  Ah, you're right, it's okay to take my money as long as you tell me you're going to take my money beforehand in a TOS that nobody reads. Caveat emptor!
- sedatk 7y ago
  So the money I thought that I had donated to a content creator goes to some random people instead and that's somehow okay?