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I would never opt-in to ads even if there was some upside. That's like asking if I'd like to see billboards on a beautiful drive through Colorado and in return

by vesche 7y ago

I would never opt-in to ads even if there was some upside. That's like asking if I'd like to see billboards on a beautiful drive through Colorado and in return you'll throw some change in my center console. I'll just take the beautiful drive and you can keep the cash. > The machine-learning bits study your browsing habits in a private, non-leaky manner. I think everyone's been around the internet long enough to know that nothing is private forever and everything has leaks. Relevant: https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/1045091640480804864 https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/1045091640480804864

kerkeslager 7y ago
> I would never opt-in to ads even if there was some upside. That's like asking if I'd like to see billboards on a beautiful drive through Colorado and in return you'll throw some change in my center console. I'll just take the beautiful drive and you can keep the cash. This, and the fact that Brave has decided to get in bed with advertisers at all seriously undermines their credibility.
- BrendanEich 7y ago
  Only if you assume we enable tracking for Brave Ads. But we do not. Please look deeper, otherwise you're just writing false stuff based on assumptions.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    No, nothing in my post is false. I knew how your ad model works when I wrote that post. You're in bed with advertisers because you're taking money from them and providing them a service. Look, I don't have anything against you personally. I'm sure you're a good, kind person with pure intentions. But tracking or not, advertising is not the way to fund a browser that serves users. You'll always be beholden to advertisers for your cash flow, and you're always going to be making choices between prioritizing users or prioritizing your income. Sometimes the choices will seem minor and it won't be clear which direction to go, and you'll compromise and the focus on users will be eroded. And at some point the choice might be between screwing over users and shutting the doors of your company due to lack of funding or something else. Historically, some people have chosen users[1] but most have chosen to stay open. I hope you prove me wrong, I really do. But you'll excuse my skepticism at this point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit
    - BrendanEich 7y ago
      You did not justify “in bed with” or even define it usefully. My reply said we don’t track, and if you know about us, you also know we give the larger revenue share to the user. And ads are opt in per user, so “in bed with” better fits our relationship with our users. Any browser requires high trust, but most of the bigs have not stopped tracking, as they have been built or coopted by ad companies. Who is in bed with whom? On Lavabit, you are changing the threat model from ad businesses to national security agencies, but I will play along. Read https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ and think it through. If we tried cheating our users to help advertisers somehow, we would be found out and roasted into a crisp on all media by our lead users.
      - kerkeslager 7y ago
        > You did not justify “in bed with” or even define it usefully. My reply said we don’t track, and if you know about us, you also know we give the larger revenue share to the user. And ads are opt in per user, so “in bed with” better fits our relationship with our users. You said in your other post to me: "Ad spend last year was over $100M in the US alone, ~$300M globally. Heading toward $1T globally. Users subscribing or paying out of goodwill won't cover this if we block it all and corner the market." So you're saying that most of your funding comes from advertisers, not from users. By the design of your business model you've chosen to be more in bed with advertisers than with users. What I quoted also implies that you had to do that, because you couldn't get the funding you wanted otherwise. But I'm saying you never have to do anything. You chose this business model, not because it served users, but because it makes you money. I'm sure your intentions are good, that you think that having that money will allow you to serve users. But I'm saying that conflicts of interest this fundamental rarely play out as intended. > Any browser requires high trust, but most of the bigs have not stopped tracking, as they have been built or coopted by ad companies. Who is in bed with whom? This is a perfect solution fallacy. I totally agree that there's no major browser that hasn't been coopted by advertisers to some extent (except maybe GNU Icecat). This is a big criticism I have of Mozilla, for example, but at least they admit there's a problem and try to take steps to prevent it--although I'll reiterate: they're not enough as far as I am concerned. So far, in this thread, you have yet to even admit that there is a problem, which means you can't possibly take steps to mitigate it.
jonathansampson 7y ago
Your beautiful drive through Colorado requires quite a bit of maintenance and financial support. Somebody has to pay for that. With Brave, Advertisers can pay for it (without getting hold of your data) by way of users. Alternatively, you may choose to "fund the roads" yourself by depositing your own tokens into Brave's wallet—that too is possible. Brave aims to sustain the roads that grant you access to that scenery. For some users, they are able to pay a bit out of pocket (depositing their own tokens). For others, they can take advantage of a private advertising system that finds relevant ads, while paying the user 70%. This allows users to passively support the roads, if you will. Unlike billboards down the side of the highway (which, I agree, aren't pleasant to see), only the users who wish to see ads are shown ads. And they always determine how many are shown (which is not the case with billboards). Brave Ads are tuned over time, too. As a user engages the app, the ads will become more and more relevant (unlike billboards). All that said, the default experience is (and will remain) an ad-free experience. To your Krebs citation, he is absolutely correct. Give your data to somebody, and it's likely they'll lose it, leak it, or sell it. That's why Brave avoids your data as best we can. Brave Ads takes place _on your machine_, where your data naturally lives. You don't entrust us or anybody else with it. I hope this helps!
- throwaway13000 7y ago
  >>Your beautiful drive through Colorado requires quite a bit of maintenance and financial support. Somebody has to pay for that. With Brave, Advertisers can pay for it (without getting hold of your data) by way of users. Alternatively, you may choose to "fund the roads" yourself by depositing your own tokens into Brave's wallet—that too is possible. Well, a lot of internet was built by people who want to share for sharing sake. Then companies figured there was money and so they started lining up those highways. Now, people do not have a decent way of knowing which highways have no ads. The equivalent is that people do not have a search engine which will send me only to sites which have no ads. Google has been spammed to death for every imaginable keyword. Every recommendation engine only shows based on eye balls. If all these ad supported publishers die, we would have a much better internet where we can read genuine content, not some marketing based stuff. Hint: Look at the non ad supported Hacker news!

by vesche 7y ago

kerkeslager 7y ago

> I would never opt-in to ads even if there was some upside. That's like asking if I'd like to see billboards on a beautiful drive through Colorado and in return you'll throw some change in my center console. I'll just take the beautiful drive and you can keep the cash. This, and the fact that Brave has decided to get in bed with advertisers at all seriously undermines their credibility.

BrendanEich 7y ago
Only if you assume we enable tracking for Brave Ads. But we do not. Please look deeper, otherwise you're just writing false stuff based on assumptions.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  No, nothing in my post is false. I knew how your ad model works when I wrote that post. You're in bed with advertisers because you're taking money from them and providing them a service. Look, I don't have anything against you personally. I'm sure you're a good, kind person with pure intentions. But tracking or not, advertising is not the way to fund a browser that serves users. You'll always be beholden to advertisers for your cash flow, and you're always going to be making choices between prioritizing users or prioritizing your income. Sometimes the choices will seem minor and it won't be clear which direction to go, and you'll compromise and the focus on users will be eroded. And at some point the choice might be between screwing over users and shutting the doors of your company due to lack of funding or something else. Historically, some people have chosen users[1] but most have chosen to stay open. I hope you prove me wrong, I really do. But you'll excuse my skepticism at this point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit
  - BrendanEich 7y ago
    You did not justify “in bed with” or even define it usefully. My reply said we don’t track, and if you know about us, you also know we give the larger revenue share to the user. And ads are opt in per user, so “in bed with” better fits our relationship with our users. Any browser requires high trust, but most of the bigs have not stopped tracking, as they have been built or coopted by ad companies. Who is in bed with whom? On Lavabit, you are changing the threat model from ad businesses to national security agencies, but I will play along. Read https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ and think it through. If we tried cheating our users to help advertisers somehow, we would be found out and roasted into a crisp on all media by our lead users.
    - kerkeslager 7y ago
      > You did not justify “in bed with” or even define it usefully. My reply said we don’t track, and if you know about us, you also know we give the larger revenue share to the user. And ads are opt in per user, so “in bed with” better fits our relationship with our users. You said in your other post to me: "Ad spend last year was over $100M in the US alone, ~$300M globally. Heading toward $1T globally. Users subscribing or paying out of goodwill won't cover this if we block it all and corner the market." So you're saying that most of your funding comes from advertisers, not from users. By the design of your business model you've chosen to be more in bed with advertisers than with users. What I quoted also implies that you had to do that, because you couldn't get the funding you wanted otherwise. But I'm saying you never have to do anything. You chose this business model, not because it served users, but because it makes you money. I'm sure your intentions are good, that you think that having that money will allow you to serve users. But I'm saying that conflicts of interest this fundamental rarely play out as intended. > Any browser requires high trust, but most of the bigs have not stopped tracking, as they have been built or coopted by ad companies. Who is in bed with whom? This is a perfect solution fallacy. I totally agree that there's no major browser that hasn't been coopted by advertisers to some extent (except maybe GNU Icecat). This is a big criticism I have of Mozilla, for example, but at least they admit there's a problem and try to take steps to prevent it--although I'll reiterate: they're not enough as far as I am concerned. So far, in this thread, you have yet to even admit that there is a problem, which means you can't possibly take steps to mitigate it.

jonathansampson 7y ago

Your beautiful drive through Colorado requires quite a bit of maintenance and financial support. Somebody has to pay for that. With Brave, Advertisers can pay for it (without getting hold of your data) by way of users. Alternatively, you may choose to "fund the roads" yourself by depositing your own tokens into Brave's wallet—that too is possible. Brave aims to sustain the roads that grant you access to that scenery. For some users, they are able to pay a bit out of pocket (depositing their own tokens). For others, they can take advantage of a private advertising system that finds relevant ads, while paying the user 70%. This allows users to passively support the roads, if you will. Unlike billboards down the side of the highway (which, I agree, aren't pleasant to see), only the users who wish to see ads are shown ads. And they always determine how many are shown (which is not the case with billboards). Brave Ads are tuned over time, too. As a user engages the app, the ads will become more and more relevant (unlike billboards). All that said, the default experience is (and will remain) an ad-free experience. To your Krebs citation, he is absolutely correct. Give your data to somebody, and it's likely they'll lose it, leak it, or sell it. That's why Brave avoids your data as best we can. Brave Ads takes place _on your machine_, where your data naturally lives. You don't entrust us or anybody else with it. I hope this helps!

throwaway13000 7y ago
>>Your beautiful drive through Colorado requires quite a bit of maintenance and financial support. Somebody has to pay for that. With Brave, Advertisers can pay for it (without getting hold of your data) by way of users. Alternatively, you may choose to "fund the roads" yourself by depositing your own tokens into Brave's wallet—that too is possible. Well, a lot of internet was built by people who want to share for sharing sake. Then companies figured there was money and so they started lining up those highways. Now, people do not have a decent way of knowing which highways have no ads. The equivalent is that people do not have a search engine which will send me only to sites which have no ads. Google has been spammed to death for every imaginable keyword. Every recommendation engine only shows based on eye balls. If all these ad supported publishers die, we would have a much better internet where we can read genuine content, not some marketing based stuff. Hint: Look at the non ad supported Hacker news!