3 ms·

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.
    - BrendanEich 7y ago
      > This is a perfect solution fallacy. No Sir -- not from me, anywhere in anything I ever wrote. Browsers are imperfect. For one thing they have 0days. Brave is imperfect too. Before we correspond more, please tell me how you took my big-picture realpolitik point about western ad powers acquiring or otherwise getting control over 3 of 4 top browsers as having anything to do with perfect vs. good?
      - kerkeslager 7y ago
        It's pointing at other browsers and saying, "Look, they're not perfect either, so it's okay for Brave to not be perfect". Sure, that's true, but it's no excuse for Brave not aiming for perfection.

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.
  - BrendanEich 7y ago
    > This is a perfect solution fallacy. No Sir -- not from me, anywhere in anything I ever wrote. Browsers are imperfect. For one thing they have 0days. Brave is imperfect too. Before we correspond more, please tell me how you took my big-picture realpolitik point about western ad powers acquiring or otherwise getting control over 3 of 4 top browsers as having anything to do with perfect vs. good?
    - kerkeslager 7y ago
      It's pointing at other browsers and saying, "Look, they're not perfect either, so it's okay for Brave to not be perfect". Sure, that's true, but it's no excuse for Brave not aiming for perfection.