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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 s

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.
    - BrendanEich 7y ago
      I never said that either. Don’t put words in my mouth. I said 3 of 4 top browsers are owned by or almost wholly dependent for revenue on huge ad businesses. That matters. You can see it in Apple’s ITP and prior third party cookie blocker, in Safari from 2003. Apple is not dependent on ads that need tracking.
      - kerkeslager 7y ago
        Okay, yes, it does matter that 3 of the 4 top browsers are dependent on ads for revenue. Where I'm confused is why you think that this is a defense of Brave, which is also dependent on ads for revenue.
        BrendanEich 7y ago
        Because as I diagrammed repeatedly, the problem is not “ads” as ritually impure funding model, but tracking. Safari and Brave block tracking. Edge and Firefox are late to this party and not yet blocking hard by default. It is not ads but tracking which creates perverse conflicts and hazards, including regulatory and ‘browsers as blind ad tech runtimes’ capture.
kerkeslager 7y ago
With regards to your link, that's very well-written and I agree with almost everything you said in that link. This is particularly important to remember: "The unfortunate consequence is that software vendors — including browser vendors — must not be blindly trusted. Not because such vendors don’t want to protect user privacy. Rather, because a law might force vendors to secretly violate their own principles and do things they don’t want to do." And that doesn't just apply to the NSA forcing you to backdoor your own software under threat of arrest. It also applies to major sources of funding forcing you to backdoor your own software under threat of defunding you. I want a browser made by people who would shut down their business rather than compromise users. And so far in this conversation, it doesn't even sound like you've considered that possibility or believe it could happen, so how can we trust that you'd do that?
- BrendanEich 7y ago
  I would shut down Brave rather than backdoor our open source. Can you imagine? Note: I'd do this on moral grounds, but even if I were some kind of toady to the state, I'm not stupid. The back door would be discovered and I'd be strictly worse off then. It wouldn't pay for the state actor, either.

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.
  - BrendanEich 7y ago
    I never said that either. Don’t put words in my mouth. I said 3 of 4 top browsers are owned by or almost wholly dependent for revenue on huge ad businesses. That matters. You can see it in Apple’s ITP and prior third party cookie blocker, in Safari from 2003. Apple is not dependent on ads that need tracking.
    - kerkeslager 7y ago
      Okay, yes, it does matter that 3 of the 4 top browsers are dependent on ads for revenue. Where I'm confused is why you think that this is a defense of Brave, which is also dependent on ads for revenue.
      - BrendanEich 7y ago
        Because as I diagrammed repeatedly, the problem is not “ads” as ritually impure funding model, but tracking. Safari and Brave block tracking. Edge and Firefox are late to this party and not yet blocking hard by default. It is not ads but tracking which creates perverse conflicts and hazards, including regulatory and ‘browsers as blind ad tech runtimes’ capture.

kerkeslager 7y ago

With regards to your link, that's very well-written and I agree with almost everything you said in that link. This is particularly important to remember: "The unfortunate consequence is that software vendors — including browser vendors — must not be blindly trusted. Not because such vendors don’t want to protect user privacy. Rather, because a law might force vendors to secretly violate their own principles and do things they don’t want to do." And that doesn't just apply to the NSA forcing you to backdoor your own software under threat of arrest. It also applies to major sources of funding forcing you to backdoor your own software under threat of defunding you. I want a browser made by people who would shut down their business rather than compromise users. And so far in this conversation, it doesn't even sound like you've considered that possibility or believe it could happen, so how can we trust that you'd do that?

BrendanEich 7y ago
I would shut down Brave rather than backdoor our open source. Can you imagine? Note: I'd do this on moral grounds, but even if I were some kind of toady to the state, I'm not stupid. The back door would be discovered and I'd be strictly worse off then. It wouldn't pay for the state actor, either.