15 ms·

Brave Passes 10M Monthly Active Users, Sees 19% Growth Since 1.0 Launch

384 points by yarapavan 7y ago

etxm 7y ago
Does anyone know if the mobile version is a wrapper around safari?
- gilrain 7y ago
  Yes, because that is the only possibility.
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    On iOS, you mean?
  - sneak 7y ago
    Safari is not WebKit.
- etxm 7y ago
  Sorry, meant WebKit on iOS.
petre 7y ago
I use it currently but do not care about rewards and other nonsense features, just about ads getting blocked.
- MrZander 7y ago
  Same, I couldn't get used to Firefox, it just felt too slow, even the new version. Brave feels just like Chrome, but with less Google. I love it.
  - techntoke 7y ago
    That is why I use Chromium. There is a lot you can configure with Chrome policies as well.
    - bcoates 7y ago
      As far as I can tell, recent builds of Chromium have broken Google login in ways that not-chrome-at-all browsers still work? I have to log into my gmail in incognito now or it just 500s when the site tries to eat my browser.
      - EthanHeilman 7y ago
        Yep this is why I switched from Chromium to Brave. Chromium started autologging me into gmail accounts.
        techntoke 7y ago
        There is an option/preference/policy to disable it.
        EthanHeilman 7y ago
        The final straw for me was when I had it turned off and the latest chromium released turned it back on.
        throwaway_0007 7y ago
        That's such a dark pattern. I remember having my Keep notes uploaded to Google servers because they turned the sync back on after an update.
      - techntoke 7y ago
        Haven't experienced this at all. Have you filed a bug report or been able to replicate on multiple computers?
- qxnqd 7y ago
  Same. For me it combines the best of Chrome (speed) with the best of Firefox (privacy). In fact I'd argue it's like having "privacy.resistfingerprinting" on, but without as many sites breaking.
- thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
  This was the weirdest part of my experience trying Brave–it doesn't block all ads. So for me moving from Firefox to Brave presented more ads to me. I couldn't find any documentation on how to actually block all ads similar to uBlock Origin.
  - fastball 7y ago
    I can't think of any ads that Brave hasn't blocked for me. In fact, more often than not the issue is that Brave is blocking too much and breaks some sites. Ironically, this includes the identity verification service (Netverify) used by their wallet partner (Uphold).
    - thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
      Reddit.
      - brandnewlow 7y ago
        Brave blocks 3rd party ads, i.e. ads served off-site. Reddit is one of the few sites to make the effort to host all their ad tech themselves.
        thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
        Ehh... Is Brave who decides what ads I will see? Switching to a privacy-centric browser and seeing more ads was unexpected for myself and I would guess other as well.
        brandnewlow 7y ago
        In this case yes, Brave's POV is that ads that are hosted and powered by the publisher you chose to read are in fact OK. Brave isn't anti-ads so much as it's anti-cross site tracking and ad serving.
        7y ago
- babuskov 7y ago
  To counter all those throwaway accounts created to praise Brave, I have to say that I have no intention to use it because it's based on Chromium. Single-culture is bad even if your intentions are good. I never used Chrome either and have lived through ups and downs of Mozilla since 2002 when I ditched IE6. I wish Firefox tech was easier to integrate into other browsers, so that we could have a more balanced ecosystem.
  - alwillis 7y ago
    When the SDK is released [1], there's no reason why a plugin to support BAT couldn't be implemented. [1]: https://www.cnet.com/news/braves-privacy-focused-ads-to-spread-beyond-startups-own-browser/ https://www.cnet.com/news/braves-privacy-focused-ads-to-spre...
  - adtac 7y ago
    I don't want to accuse anyone of astroturfing, but the comments in this thread seem to be eerily positive and very marketing-y. Maybe it's my skepticism of everything crypto-related being incredibly biased one way or another.
    - alwillis 7y ago
      Disclaimer: I’ve been using/testing Brave for the last few years. I've seen it evolve from what was basically a proof of concept running in Electron to what it is today. I believe if you care to do some research, you'll see that the Brave team has put in the work to be taken seriously. I get why people are skeptical, especially in this day and age. But the concept for Brave and disrupting the surveillance capitalism known as ad tech goes back to 2013; Brave is not a johnny-come-lately thing[1]. This was started by Brendan Eich, the same guy who created JavaScipt and who started Mozilla which gave us Firefox; it's not like he's someone who doesn't understand how this stuff works. [1]: https://basicattentiontoken.org/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-zero/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-ze...
      - natmaka 7y ago
        Every potentially unpleasant Brave feature is easy to disable (and often by-default disabled). Is is very good at ad-filtering, snappy and responsive, stable, can be audited (opensource)... and the underlying ways to provide for creators/publishers (and also people liking/needing advertising) are clever and disruptive. Brave is worth a try. I'm not paid for this (and there is no 'conflict of interest').
napoleoncomplex 7y ago
Any details from verified creators or Brave directly regarding revenue? Even if it's tiny right now, it would be great to hear some data from anyone giving it a real go.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  They did an AMA recently on Reddit where they go into the payment positives in detail, of course they skipped the negatives like they are playing ads on your desktop outside of the page. https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7l4033/transcript_of_ama_with_brendan_eich_ceo_of_brave/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7l4033/transcri...
  - fastball 7y ago
    You can opt out of the notification ads.
    - Karunamon 7y ago
      You have to opt in to the notification ads in the first place.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    Yeah, last time I tried to switch to Brave the desktop ads really skeeved me out. It's a shame. They should know that their target segment of users would be particularly offended by those.
- Deimorz 7y ago
  I have it set up on Tildes (https://tildes.net https://tildes.net) so that I can receive BAT from Brave users, but haven't really put any particular emphasis on it. So far the site's account has a balance of 258 BAT, which should be worth about $50 USD right now. The "Brave Creators" interface is so bare-bones that I can't figure out what kind of rate that's come in at though. It says that 60.50 of it is from the "Current Period", but I don't know what that means. Trying to set up the process to actually be able to withdraw the BAT has been annoying and has gotten hung up at multiple points with no indication of how long it'll take until it moves forward. At this point I don't even really think of it as money that I have, because I have no idea how many more steps I need to go through to be able to convert it to actual money, what that process will involve, or how many more fees will be taken on the way.
adamqureshi 7y ago
Tor browser works for me.
_bxg1 7y ago
I think Brave's potentially most important (and least certain) contribution to the world is its automatic micro-payments system. It's genuinely innovative and the only viable alternative that anyone has proposed to ads-based funding for smaller sites. It's also, by nature, incredibly hard to bootstrap. But I really hope it gets real traction and ends up standardized and/or copied by other browsers.
- sp332 7y ago
  I mean to be fair, there were lots of other such micropayments systems. And some of them are even still running, with very low volume.
  - prophesi 7y ago
    What examples do you have? So far I can think of Steem coin and Dogecoin. The former has the vendor lock-in issue, and the latter has no standardized automation of tipping.
    - sp332 7y ago
      Flattr was probably the most famous. It's still running, last I checked anyway. Readability.com tried something like that as well - remove ads from a site and pay the site owner directly instead. Site owners got very angry about this and it stopped that pretty quickly.
      - BlueTemplar 7y ago
        Flattr has recently added recurring subscriptions, though the browser extension obviously still works. (Not sure if the insert-in-website buttons still do ? They were pretty much killed off anyway after Twitter denied them API access 7 years ago...)
  - alwillis 7y ago
    Sure, but Brave and BAT are as painless as it gets: • you get a grant of BAT to pay content creators on the web, YouTube, Twitter, etc. when you sign up • Brave can (optionally) automatically allocates BAT to the content creators you visit the most based on the amount of time you spend on their sites • you can opt-in if you wish to see ads related to things you're interested in and get paid in BAT • for BAT you earn, you have the option to pay content creators or cashout to fiat (dollars, euros, yen, etc.) Right now, Uphold is the gateway between earnings in BAT and fiat, but they're also working on integrating with Coinbase as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/cqjv7a/native_crypto_wallet_appears_in_brave_nightly/exdhe0g https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/cqjv7a/native_c...
tomaszs 7y ago
Brave will be the next browser. No doubt about it. It is made by a genius.
- techntoke 7y ago
  Which genius is that? The one who doesn't believe in same sex marriage or the one who created the biggest spying component in any web browser?
- baal80spam 7y ago
  I hope you are correct as it deserves to be.
ganstyles 7y ago
I've been using it for a bit and really enjoying it. Mobile version anyways. Only downside is it doesn't seem to be able to autofill all my information for forms, so I switch back to chrome when I'm making a purchase on my phone or something like that.
- Elof 7y ago
  I exported all of my chrome settings and loaded them into brave. Easy to do and all my things are working as expected.
  - buboard 7y ago
    oh cool. last version i checked i could not import my passwords
    - Elof 7y ago
      Might still be the case. I use 1Password. It’s easy to upload passwords from chrome to 1Password fwiw
sam0x17 7y ago
Been using it for a month. Have made a little over $2. Loving the BAT stuff. Also loving profile switching which for some reason I never used in Chrome but now use in brave like mad because I have several clients with separate gsuite / google cloud platform environments.
- degenerate 7y ago
  Does profile switching work similar to Firefox's Multi-Account Containers? Or can you only be "viewing" one profile at a time?
  - erredois 7y ago
    On Firefox you can have multiple containers on a single window. On brave each profile has its own window.
    - OJFord 7y ago
      That's actually how I wish FF containers worked. (As it is, I haven't gotten into using them.)
      - zelly 7y ago
        about:profiles
    - qxnqd 7y ago
      I don't think they can be compared. Brave profiles (well, Chrome profiles) are basically different browsers. They share nothing. They can have different settings, they can run a different set of addons, etc.
      - sam0x17 7y ago
        And that is why I love it
      - buboard 7y ago
aloukissas 7y ago
Brave is the best thing to have happened on the web for a long time. I've used it since it was in early beta, really happy how far along it's gone.
buboard 7y ago
pity that firefox is not innovating as much
- noxer 7y ago
  They teamed up with Coil which sets on an open standard named ILP. We don't need more walled gardening. All relevant Browsers support it alredy. W3C is behind ILP. Doesn't need it's own Token. Supports Fiat an Crypto.
  - buboard 7y ago
    oh cool. when should we expect to see it in firefox?
    - noxer 7y ago
      You can get it at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/coil/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/coil/ However you need to register at coil.com to actually donate to content creators. If you are a content creator and you want to enable Webmonetization on your site you need to add a Web Monetization Meta Tag to your HTML <head> an probably register at coil.com too (assuming you want to use coil as payment provider.)
      - buboard 7y ago
        well this seems like a 'pay to access' platform which is not what i want. Plus the chances of me convincing users to install an extension, and also pay are very slim. with brave i can at least receive a reward for users downloading the browser and i dont need to paywall my content
        noxer 7y ago
        You need to read into it more. Pay to access is possible but optional. Creator can do however they like. Installing an extension is required but of course not the final solution. The idea is that browser come with ILP enabled by default in the future. Anyway I convincing users to install a browser is any better. >and also pay are very slim. Just like with Brave its only a fraction of user who use it. Adoption takes time. The good thing is you can make your website web monetized and people who don't use it will not notice at all. >and i dont need to paywall my content As said above you don't need to do this at all.
Etheryte 7y ago
Given there's very clear monetary incentive for the company to hype their own product, and that these stats can't be externally verified [1], this is essentially just snake oil. Personally, if anything, I find the constant forced hype across media and social media to be a red flag. If your product was really both good and honest, you wouldn't need to try to force it down people's throats. [1] https://community.brave.com/t/why-doesnt-brave-market-share-show-up-on-market-share-tracking-sites/75063/2 https://community.brave.com/t/why-doesnt-brave-market-share-...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- icandoit 7y ago
  >If your product was really both good and honest, you wouldn't need to try to force it down people's throats. You do if bad products are spending more ad dollars than you. Being good isn't enough to capture the market.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  You could say this about almost every product out there. How is brave any different?
- wiggler00m 7y ago
  (good + hype) > good
- seibelj 7y ago
  This is the most unintentionally hilarious comment ever posted on HN. “Any good product would never need to post about themselves.” Welcome to tech startups? I guess?
pcdoodle 7y ago
It's a great browser, I love that tor is integrated and 1 click away.
etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
It would be cool to use https://www.orchid.com/ https://www.orchid.com/ (when it's ready) with the Brave browser. Tokens all the way down!
dross 7y ago
I installed it on my personal laptop due to constant crashes with chrome that debug logging didn't help to solve. Brave suffered similarly so I stuck with Chrome. I do extension development so when I saw that they used the same store I was pleasantly surprised. I couldn't test my extension behaviour though, because the app it enhances was having issues. I'll give it a go on the PC I'm using for work(family) until I upgrade. Free BAT!
jayess 7y ago
I recently switched to an iPhone from android. Brave seems like the only browser that allows me to block ads without some sort of external plug-in app. I miss having ublock on iOS. But brave seems to do the trick for me and its place.
- nashashmi 7y ago
  Braves filter is much more granularized. Cookies get blocked. Specific scripts get blocked. I love it. But it's webkit and I like Firefox.
  - jayess 7y ago
    Same here. I'd love ad blocking on firefox in ios but it doesn't seem to be an option.
- rhexs 7y ago
  Only reason I haven't switched to brave on iOS (for that free ad cash) is that using the back gesture seems to always reload the previous page, whereas I don't think that occurs in Safari. I suppose the other reason is that it's mostly the same thing due to iOS restrictions, but I do like Brave.
- jayess 7y ago
  HN has become a bizzaroland where I get downvoted for voicing support for an app.
- randie63 7y ago
  You have to try Kiwi Browser. It has build in ad blocker (need to be enabled in settings first) and a real dark mode for websites. And bottom UI.
  - iteratorloopmap 7y ago
    Not even open source. But it tries to mislead people into thinking it is open source. Stay away from it.
hellofunk 7y ago
I wish it was easier to get a constant sync between devices for bookmarks, but other than that, happy user here.
- swozey 7y ago
  Yeah, I enjoy using it but I use 4 different devices throughout the day and not having sync and the clunkiness of its sync (sometimes it doesnt work at all for me on my home network between desktop/laptop) actually pushed me back over to Firefox yesterday when I got a new laptop. I also finally got sick of the ads popping up as system notifications, which are far more distracting to me than regular ads, so I disabled that.
erentz 7y ago
One of the serious criticisms against Brave was that they were collecting payments for sites and creators that had not signed up and who did not want to sign up. That is they were charging for other people’s content, that they don’t own, under the guise that the money went to those creators when it didn’t and wouldn’t. Seemed a pretty serious criticism to me. Has this changed?
- fuu_dev 7y ago
  There where actually 2 critiques and their practice would count as fraud in a lot of countries. #1 Money was re-distributed if donated and not claimed -> its not frozen infinite. #2 There was no way to opt out -> its now opt in iirc Besides that there are other critique points. #1 Brave is controlling the add economy. They do this by blocking adds and offering their opt in add service(and gain 30% of the add revenue) #2 Brave is using its own crypto currency to have full control over the money flow. What additionally lowers their credibility is that they put false advertisement on their website. This makes me wounder whats the incent to use brave.
  - buboard 7y ago
    > This makes me wounder whats the incent to use brave. with adblockers and google sucking more and more of the advertising pie websites are looking elsewhere for monetization
  - judge2020 7y ago
    By the way, it's just "ad", short for advertisement.
  - Karunamon 7y ago
    I don't quite follow #2. BAT is an ERC20 token like any other and can be quite easily transacted outisde of the browser and outside of Brave's control.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
robsinatra 7y ago
That is bullshit. Unless a trusted third party verifies this claim, it must be considered marketing lies and manipulation to encourage bandwagoning.
aclelland 7y ago
I've looked at verify a site that I control through Brave to start earning some BAT tokens but I'm really not to keen to have to also give PII (government photo and a selfie) to their only payment processor Upstart. I'm not familiar at all with this company and I'd really rather not go giving them data just to earn revenue on my site that Brave has taken away by blocking ads. Could someone who's more familiar with Upstart assuage my concerns? Are they legit, have they got a good track record?
- buboard 7y ago
  all crypto exchanges require such documentation, or worse. you can keep the BAT there or perhaps transfer it to another exchange to exchange for another crypto. but always, regulatiosn and stuff
  - dessant 7y ago
    They require PII because they can, not because they are legally required. To accept cryptocurrencies and allow people to withdraw them into a wallet, you do not need to verify their identity, unless the tokens are exchanged to fiat on the platform. There are companies that are more established and popular than Brave which do not ask you to hold your ID next to your face and take a selfie in order to withdraw donations to a cryptocurrency wallet.
    - buboard 7y ago
      i havent tried them all but afaik, the ones that are in US or EU and which allow fiat <-> crypto transactions do
      - dessant 7y ago
        Of course, but Brave should allow creators to withdraw their tokens, without converting it to fiat. Not even users can withdraw their tokens without submitting an ID, let alone creators: https://cryptobriefing.com/brave-cash-out-bat/ https://cryptobriefing.com/brave-cash-out-bat/ It's actually worse than PayPal, where you can receive and withdraw money up to a certain amount a year without submitting an ID.
kentf 7y ago
Would be curious on how much their Joe Rogan is responsible for their Q4 spike.
- buboard 7y ago
  he s advertising brave?
Angeo34 7y ago
Please more fake accounts praising Brave. Whoever uses this shit should seriously rethink themselves
- zaroth 7y ago
  You’ve posted a comment like this at least two times now, that I can find. Please don’t accuse posters of being fake on HN. If you have actual data indicating a genuine issue, please email the mods directly.
Angeo34 7y ago
So many fake accounts here just wow. HN should genuinely ban Brave posts
- netfl0 7y ago
  How are you determining this?
caiocaiocaio 7y ago
Remember how there used to be pro-gay fried chicken and anti-gay fried chicken? Now we've got an anti-gay web browser. Amazing how the market provides. What's next? An anti-Jew web browser? An anti-black web browser? The only thing I can say for sure is that the next radicalized web browser will also feature blockchain.
- procinct 7y ago
  Am I missing something? Why is Brave considered anti gay?
  - distances 7y ago
    Because Brave's CEO is Brendan Eich. Fair or not, this is exactly what I think every time I read about Brave, and truth be told, also the reason I haven't tried it out.
    - qxnqd 7y ago
      Don't forget to disable Javascript on your browser too.
      - distances 7y ago
        Not sure if you replied on a wrong comment, but I do have JavaScript disabled by default with uMatrix.
        buboard 7y ago
        i think they re referring to the fact that Eich created Javascript too
        distances 7y ago
        Right, I see.
  - 7y ago
anaganisk 7y ago
As long as brave android and brave browser doesn't natively support YubiKey 2FA its a no no from me bruh.
im3w1l 7y ago
I recently wanted to play an online game, but hardware acceleration on Firefox on Linux doesn't work very well (Firefox on Windows is fine though - I've used the exact same hardware to play on Windows and it was butter-smooth), so I wanted to get a Chromium-based browser for that usecase. Ended up picking Brave, and it's worked well for that. Still using Firefox as my daily driver.
anirudh24seven 7y ago
I have been using Brave on macOS for more than 3 years now. I used Brave on Android for a while and I am currently using Brave on iOS as my daily driver. I don't use their BAT system or anything associated with that. I like their default vanilla experience and the fact that I can install Chrome plugins on Brave. I still use uBlock origin on top of their default blockers. I use the built-in Tor experience time-to-time as well. To me, Brave is what Firefox should have been. Good UI, good defaults, fast enough, support for Chrome plugins, etc. I am slightly concerned about their future direction though (if they enforce the BAT system down users' throats).
BlueTemplar 7y ago
I might have been interested, but Chrome-based is out of the question, and I'd prefer to avoid any ties to advertising too - and it's not like other options aren't available...
- 1_player 7y ago
  AFAIK it is based on Ungoogled Chromium
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    "Ungoogled Chromium" seems like an oxymoron ?
glofish 7y ago
Looks like it has a builtin Tor based browsing model. Not just private window (incognito) mode, but Tor based incognito in addition. (been using it for an hour now, it is kind of neat)
feross 7y ago
Pro-tip: Brave has built in torrent support. You can visit any .torrent or magnet link and it will load up directly in the browser, no external program needed! Click this link from Brave: https://webtorrent.io/torrents/big-buck-bunny.torrent https://webtorrent.io/torrents/big-buck-bunny.torrent (Creative Commons licensed) Disclaimer: I integrated my WebTorrent library into Brave. Sharing this tip because not enough people know about this feature!
- mping 7y ago
  Thanks for your work in webtorrent!
- bufferoverflow 7y ago
  Wow, that's nuts! I just pasted a magnet link into the address bar, and it started playing the movie. magnet:?xt=urn:btih:02cd53257b68fac90489850be10691df7c42e45a&dn=The+Terminator+%281984%29+1080p+BrRip+x264+-+YIFY&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969&ix=0
onyva 7y ago
Love the innocent “received very positive press reviews” It remember being force to read about Brave in any article about the web, especially when the click bait title actually mentioned its competition. Untrustworthy, and not just In their business model.
kylehotchkiss 7y ago
> As part of the Brave 1.0 launch, Brave Rewards is now available on Brave for iOS, which contributed to the app’s 27% growth in the past month. I'm a happy Brave user but the "Rewards" are a gimmick. I've made a dollar a month at best for clicking their amazon/intel/VPN ads. But the actual browser serves its purpose well as a well supported and actively developed de-Google'd chrome with pretty good ad blocker baked in.
Yuval_Halevi 7y ago
Brave is one of my favorite browsers (I'm using it right now) X5 better than Chrom x100 better than IE
throwaway_0007 7y ago
Wow. Actual user oriented and ground breaking innovations. This is the future. And it's beautiful. I'm impressed. Mozilla now looks like a dying swamp.
loh 7y ago
I've been using Brave for a while, maybe a couple of years. Its default ad blocking doesn't work 100% of the time, so I've installed uBlock Origin. I don't use the BAT functionality at all, but I think one of the main advantages to Brave (and likely any Chromium-based browser) is that you get all of the same fast, consistent rendering, plus all of the same Chrome extensions will work without any extra effort.
fouc 7y ago
Are there any sites that are only accessible with Brave? Like a site that has popups with "You are unable to view content without Brave browser" ? To make it work, brave would need to support something extra besides html/js that other browsers don't support.
CTOSian 7y ago
Interesting browser, but dear devs we are not in 90s -just a pc for net-browsing at home - and I am talking about the lack of sync of extensions/bookmarks.

384 points by yarapavan 7y ago

etxm 7y ago

Does anyone know if the mobile version is a wrapper around safari?

gilrain 7y ago
Yes, because that is the only possibility.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  On iOS, you mean?
- sneak 7y ago
  Safari is not WebKit.
etxm 7y ago
Sorry, meant WebKit on iOS.

petre 7y ago

I use it currently but do not care about rewards and other nonsense features, just about ads getting blocked.

MrZander 7y ago
Same, I couldn't get used to Firefox, it just felt too slow, even the new version. Brave feels just like Chrome, but with less Google. I love it.
- techntoke 7y ago
  That is why I use Chromium. There is a lot you can configure with Chrome policies as well.
  - bcoates 7y ago
    As far as I can tell, recent builds of Chromium have broken Google login in ways that not-chrome-at-all browsers still work? I have to log into my gmail in incognito now or it just 500s when the site tries to eat my browser.
    - EthanHeilman 7y ago
      Yep this is why I switched from Chromium to Brave. Chromium started autologging me into gmail accounts.
      - techntoke 7y ago
        There is an option/preference/policy to disable it.
        EthanHeilman 7y ago
        The final straw for me was when I had it turned off and the latest chromium released turned it back on.
        throwaway_0007 7y ago
        That's such a dark pattern. I remember having my Keep notes uploaded to Google servers because they turned the sync back on after an update.
    - techntoke 7y ago
      Haven't experienced this at all. Have you filed a bug report or been able to replicate on multiple computers?
qxnqd 7y ago
Same. For me it combines the best of Chrome (speed) with the best of Firefox (privacy). In fact I'd argue it's like having "privacy.resistfingerprinting" on, but without as many sites breaking.
thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
This was the weirdest part of my experience trying Brave–it doesn't block all ads. So for me moving from Firefox to Brave presented more ads to me. I couldn't find any documentation on how to actually block all ads similar to uBlock Origin.
- fastball 7y ago
  I can't think of any ads that Brave hasn't blocked for me. In fact, more often than not the issue is that Brave is blocking too much and breaks some sites. Ironically, this includes the identity verification service (Netverify) used by their wallet partner (Uphold).
  - thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
    Reddit.
    - brandnewlow 7y ago
      Brave blocks 3rd party ads, i.e. ads served off-site. Reddit is one of the few sites to make the effort to host all their ad tech themselves.
      - thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
        Ehh... Is Brave who decides what ads I will see? Switching to a privacy-centric browser and seeing more ads was unexpected for myself and I would guess other as well.
        brandnewlow 7y ago
        In this case yes, Brave's POV is that ads that are hosted and powered by the publisher you chose to read are in fact OK. Brave isn't anti-ads so much as it's anti-cross site tracking and ad serving.
        7y ago
babuskov 7y ago
To counter all those throwaway accounts created to praise Brave, I have to say that I have no intention to use it because it's based on Chromium. Single-culture is bad even if your intentions are good. I never used Chrome either and have lived through ups and downs of Mozilla since 2002 when I ditched IE6. I wish Firefox tech was easier to integrate into other browsers, so that we could have a more balanced ecosystem.
- alwillis 7y ago
  When the SDK is released [1], there's no reason why a plugin to support BAT couldn't be implemented. [1]: https://www.cnet.com/news/braves-privacy-focused-ads-to-spread-beyond-startups-own-browser/ https://www.cnet.com/news/braves-privacy-focused-ads-to-spre...
- adtac 7y ago
  I don't want to accuse anyone of astroturfing, but the comments in this thread seem to be eerily positive and very marketing-y. Maybe it's my skepticism of everything crypto-related being incredibly biased one way or another.
  - alwillis 7y ago
    Disclaimer: I’ve been using/testing Brave for the last few years. I've seen it evolve from what was basically a proof of concept running in Electron to what it is today. I believe if you care to do some research, you'll see that the Brave team has put in the work to be taken seriously. I get why people are skeptical, especially in this day and age. But the concept for Brave and disrupting the surveillance capitalism known as ad tech goes back to 2013; Brave is not a johnny-come-lately thing[1]. This was started by Brendan Eich, the same guy who created JavaScipt and who started Mozilla which gave us Firefox; it's not like he's someone who doesn't understand how this stuff works. [1]: https://basicattentiontoken.org/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-zero/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-ze...
    - natmaka 7y ago
      Every potentially unpleasant Brave feature is easy to disable (and often by-default disabled). Is is very good at ad-filtering, snappy and responsive, stable, can be audited (opensource)... and the underlying ways to provide for creators/publishers (and also people liking/needing advertising) are clever and disruptive. Brave is worth a try. I'm not paid for this (and there is no 'conflict of interest').

napoleoncomplex 7y ago

Any details from verified creators or Brave directly regarding revenue? Even if it's tiny right now, it would be great to hear some data from anyone giving it a real go.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
They did an AMA recently on Reddit where they go into the payment positives in detail, of course they skipped the negatives like they are playing ads on your desktop outside of the page. https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7l4033/transcript_of_ama_with_brendan_eich_ceo_of_brave/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7l4033/transcri...
- fastball 7y ago
  You can opt out of the notification ads.
  - Karunamon 7y ago
    You have to opt in to the notification ads in the first place.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Yeah, last time I tried to switch to Brave the desktop ads really skeeved me out. It's a shame. They should know that their target segment of users would be particularly offended by those.
Deimorz 7y ago
I have it set up on Tildes (https://tildes.net https://tildes.net) so that I can receive BAT from Brave users, but haven't really put any particular emphasis on it. So far the site's account has a balance of 258 BAT, which should be worth about $50 USD right now. The "Brave Creators" interface is so bare-bones that I can't figure out what kind of rate that's come in at though. It says that 60.50 of it is from the "Current Period", but I don't know what that means. Trying to set up the process to actually be able to withdraw the BAT has been annoying and has gotten hung up at multiple points with no indication of how long it'll take until it moves forward. At this point I don't even really think of it as money that I have, because I have no idea how many more steps I need to go through to be able to convert it to actual money, what that process will involve, or how many more fees will be taken on the way.

adamqureshi 7y ago

Tor browser works for me.

_bxg1 7y ago

I think Brave's potentially most important (and least certain) contribution to the world is its automatic micro-payments system. It's genuinely innovative and the only viable alternative that anyone has proposed to ads-based funding for smaller sites. It's also, by nature, incredibly hard to bootstrap. But I really hope it gets real traction and ends up standardized and/or copied by other browsers.

sp332 7y ago
I mean to be fair, there were lots of other such micropayments systems. And some of them are even still running, with very low volume.
- prophesi 7y ago
  What examples do you have? So far I can think of Steem coin and Dogecoin. The former has the vendor lock-in issue, and the latter has no standardized automation of tipping.
  - sp332 7y ago
    Flattr was probably the most famous. It's still running, last I checked anyway. Readability.com tried something like that as well - remove ads from a site and pay the site owner directly instead. Site owners got very angry about this and it stopped that pretty quickly.
    - BlueTemplar 7y ago
      Flattr has recently added recurring subscriptions, though the browser extension obviously still works. (Not sure if the insert-in-website buttons still do ? They were pretty much killed off anyway after Twitter denied them API access 7 years ago...)
- alwillis 7y ago
  Sure, but Brave and BAT are as painless as it gets: • you get a grant of BAT to pay content creators on the web, YouTube, Twitter, etc. when you sign up • Brave can (optionally) automatically allocates BAT to the content creators you visit the most based on the amount of time you spend on their sites • you can opt-in if you wish to see ads related to things you're interested in and get paid in BAT • for BAT you earn, you have the option to pay content creators or cashout to fiat (dollars, euros, yen, etc.) Right now, Uphold is the gateway between earnings in BAT and fiat, but they're also working on integrating with Coinbase as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/cqjv7a/native_crypto_wallet_appears_in_brave_nightly/exdhe0g https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/cqjv7a/native_c...

tomaszs 7y ago

Brave will be the next browser. No doubt about it. It is made by a genius.

techntoke 7y ago
Which genius is that? The one who doesn't believe in same sex marriage or the one who created the biggest spying component in any web browser?
baal80spam 7y ago
I hope you are correct as it deserves to be.

ganstyles 7y ago

I've been using it for a bit and really enjoying it. Mobile version anyways. Only downside is it doesn't seem to be able to autofill all my information for forms, so I switch back to chrome when I'm making a purchase on my phone or something like that.

Elof 7y ago
I exported all of my chrome settings and loaded them into brave. Easy to do and all my things are working as expected.
- buboard 7y ago
  oh cool. last version i checked i could not import my passwords
  - Elof 7y ago
    Might still be the case. I use 1Password. It’s easy to upload passwords from chrome to 1Password fwiw

sam0x17 7y ago

Been using it for a month. Have made a little over $2. Loving the BAT stuff. Also loving profile switching which for some reason I never used in Chrome but now use in brave like mad because I have several clients with separate gsuite / google cloud platform environments.

degenerate 7y ago
Does profile switching work similar to Firefox's Multi-Account Containers? Or can you only be "viewing" one profile at a time?
- erredois 7y ago
  On Firefox you can have multiple containers on a single window. On brave each profile has its own window.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    That's actually how I wish FF containers worked. (As it is, I haven't gotten into using them.)
    - zelly 7y ago
      about:profiles
  - qxnqd 7y ago
    I don't think they can be compared. Brave profiles (well, Chrome profiles) are basically different browsers. They share nothing. They can have different settings, they can run a different set of addons, etc.
    - sam0x17 7y ago
      And that is why I love it
    - buboard 7y ago

aloukissas 7y ago

Brave is the best thing to have happened on the web for a long time. I've used it since it was in early beta, really happy how far along it's gone.

buboard 7y ago

pity that firefox is not innovating as much

noxer 7y ago
They teamed up with Coil which sets on an open standard named ILP. We don't need more walled gardening. All relevant Browsers support it alredy. W3C is behind ILP. Doesn't need it's own Token. Supports Fiat an Crypto.
- buboard 7y ago
  oh cool. when should we expect to see it in firefox?
  - noxer 7y ago
    You can get it at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/coil/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/coil/ However you need to register at coil.com to actually donate to content creators. If you are a content creator and you want to enable Webmonetization on your site you need to add a Web Monetization Meta Tag to your HTML <head> an probably register at coil.com too (assuming you want to use coil as payment provider.)
    - buboard 7y ago
      well this seems like a 'pay to access' platform which is not what i want. Plus the chances of me convincing users to install an extension, and also pay are very slim. with brave i can at least receive a reward for users downloading the browser and i dont need to paywall my content
      - noxer 7y ago
        You need to read into it more. Pay to access is possible but optional. Creator can do however they like. Installing an extension is required but of course not the final solution. The idea is that browser come with ILP enabled by default in the future. Anyway I convincing users to install a browser is any better. >and also pay are very slim. Just like with Brave its only a fraction of user who use it. Adoption takes time. The good thing is you can make your website web monetized and people who don't use it will not notice at all. >and i dont need to paywall my content As said above you don't need to do this at all.

Etheryte 7y ago

Given there's very clear monetary incentive for the company to hype their own product, and that these stats can't be externally verified [1], this is essentially just snake oil. Personally, if anything, I find the constant forced hype across media and social media to be a red flag. If your product was really both good and honest, you wouldn't need to try to force it down people's throats. [1] https://community.brave.com/t/why-doesnt-brave-market-share-show-up-on-market-share-tracking-sites/75063/2 https://community.brave.com/t/why-doesnt-brave-market-share-...

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
icandoit 7y ago
>If your product was really both good and honest, you wouldn't need to try to force it down people's throats. You do if bad products are spending more ad dollars than you. Being good isn't enough to capture the market.
jjeaff 7y ago
You could say this about almost every product out there. How is brave any different?
wiggler00m 7y ago
(good + hype) > good
seibelj 7y ago
This is the most unintentionally hilarious comment ever posted on HN. “Any good product would never need to post about themselves.” Welcome to tech startups? I guess?

pcdoodle 7y ago

It's a great browser, I love that tor is integrated and 1 click away.

etaioinshrdlu 7y ago

It would be cool to use https://www.orchid.com/ https://www.orchid.com/ (when it's ready) with the Brave browser. Tokens all the way down!

dross 7y ago

I installed it on my personal laptop due to constant crashes with chrome that debug logging didn't help to solve. Brave suffered similarly so I stuck with Chrome. I do extension development so when I saw that they used the same store I was pleasantly surprised. I couldn't test my extension behaviour though, because the app it enhances was having issues. I'll give it a go on the PC I'm using for work(family) until I upgrade. Free BAT!

jayess 7y ago

I recently switched to an iPhone from android. Brave seems like the only browser that allows me to block ads without some sort of external plug-in app. I miss having ublock on iOS. But brave seems to do the trick for me and its place.

nashashmi 7y ago
Braves filter is much more granularized. Cookies get blocked. Specific scripts get blocked. I love it. But it's webkit and I like Firefox.
- jayess 7y ago
  Same here. I'd love ad blocking on firefox in ios but it doesn't seem to be an option.
rhexs 7y ago
Only reason I haven't switched to brave on iOS (for that free ad cash) is that using the back gesture seems to always reload the previous page, whereas I don't think that occurs in Safari. I suppose the other reason is that it's mostly the same thing due to iOS restrictions, but I do like Brave.
jayess 7y ago
HN has become a bizzaroland where I get downvoted for voicing support for an app.
randie63 7y ago
You have to try Kiwi Browser. It has build in ad blocker (need to be enabled in settings first) and a real dark mode for websites. And bottom UI.
- iteratorloopmap 7y ago
  Not even open source. But it tries to mislead people into thinking it is open source. Stay away from it.

hellofunk 7y ago

I wish it was easier to get a constant sync between devices for bookmarks, but other than that, happy user here.

swozey 7y ago
Yeah, I enjoy using it but I use 4 different devices throughout the day and not having sync and the clunkiness of its sync (sometimes it doesnt work at all for me on my home network between desktop/laptop) actually pushed me back over to Firefox yesterday when I got a new laptop. I also finally got sick of the ads popping up as system notifications, which are far more distracting to me than regular ads, so I disabled that.

erentz 7y ago

One of the serious criticisms against Brave was that they were collecting payments for sites and creators that had not signed up and who did not want to sign up. That is they were charging for other people’s content, that they don’t own, under the guise that the money went to those creators when it didn’t and wouldn’t. Seemed a pretty serious criticism to me. Has this changed?

fuu_dev 7y ago
There where actually 2 critiques and their practice would count as fraud in a lot of countries. #1 Money was re-distributed if donated and not claimed -> its not frozen infinite. #2 There was no way to opt out -> its now opt in iirc Besides that there are other critique points. #1 Brave is controlling the add economy. They do this by blocking adds and offering their opt in add service(and gain 30% of the add revenue) #2 Brave is using its own crypto currency to have full control over the money flow. What additionally lowers their credibility is that they put false advertisement on their website. This makes me wounder whats the incent to use brave.
- buboard 7y ago
  > This makes me wounder whats the incent to use brave. with adblockers and google sucking more and more of the advertising pie websites are looking elsewhere for monetization
- judge2020 7y ago
  By the way, it's just "ad", short for advertisement.
- Karunamon 7y ago
  I don't quite follow #2. BAT is an ERC20 token like any other and can be quite easily transacted outisde of the browser and outside of Brave's control.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

robsinatra 7y ago

That is bullshit. Unless a trusted third party verifies this claim, it must be considered marketing lies and manipulation to encourage bandwagoning.

aclelland 7y ago

I've looked at verify a site that I control through Brave to start earning some BAT tokens but I'm really not to keen to have to also give PII (government photo and a selfie) to their only payment processor Upstart. I'm not familiar at all with this company and I'd really rather not go giving them data just to earn revenue on my site that Brave has taken away by blocking ads. Could someone who's more familiar with Upstart assuage my concerns? Are they legit, have they got a good track record?

buboard 7y ago
all crypto exchanges require such documentation, or worse. you can keep the BAT there or perhaps transfer it to another exchange to exchange for another crypto. but always, regulatiosn and stuff
- dessant 7y ago
  They require PII because they can, not because they are legally required. To accept cryptocurrencies and allow people to withdraw them into a wallet, you do not need to verify their identity, unless the tokens are exchanged to fiat on the platform. There are companies that are more established and popular than Brave which do not ask you to hold your ID next to your face and take a selfie in order to withdraw donations to a cryptocurrency wallet.
  - buboard 7y ago
    i havent tried them all but afaik, the ones that are in US or EU and which allow fiat <-> crypto transactions do
    - dessant 7y ago
      Of course, but Brave should allow creators to withdraw their tokens, without converting it to fiat. Not even users can withdraw their tokens without submitting an ID, let alone creators: https://cryptobriefing.com/brave-cash-out-bat/ https://cryptobriefing.com/brave-cash-out-bat/ It's actually worse than PayPal, where you can receive and withdraw money up to a certain amount a year without submitting an ID.

kentf 7y ago

Would be curious on how much their Joe Rogan is responsible for their Q4 spike.

buboard 7y ago
he s advertising brave?

Angeo34 7y ago

Please more fake accounts praising Brave. Whoever uses this shit should seriously rethink themselves

zaroth 7y ago
You’ve posted a comment like this at least two times now, that I can find. Please don’t accuse posters of being fake on HN. If you have actual data indicating a genuine issue, please email the mods directly.

Angeo34 7y ago

So many fake accounts here just wow. HN should genuinely ban Brave posts

netfl0 7y ago
How are you determining this?

caiocaiocaio 7y ago

Remember how there used to be pro-gay fried chicken and anti-gay fried chicken? Now we've got an anti-gay web browser. Amazing how the market provides. What's next? An anti-Jew web browser? An anti-black web browser? The only thing I can say for sure is that the next radicalized web browser will also feature blockchain.

procinct 7y ago
Am I missing something? Why is Brave considered anti gay?
- distances 7y ago
  Because Brave's CEO is Brendan Eich. Fair or not, this is exactly what I think every time I read about Brave, and truth be told, also the reason I haven't tried it out.
  - qxnqd 7y ago
    Don't forget to disable Javascript on your browser too.
    - distances 7y ago
      Not sure if you replied on a wrong comment, but I do have JavaScript disabled by default with uMatrix.
      - buboard 7y ago
        i think they re referring to the fact that Eich created Javascript too
        distances 7y ago
        Right, I see.
- 7y ago

anaganisk 7y ago

As long as brave android and brave browser doesn't natively support YubiKey 2FA its a no no from me bruh.

im3w1l 7y ago

I recently wanted to play an online game, but hardware acceleration on Firefox on Linux doesn't work very well (Firefox on Windows is fine though - I've used the exact same hardware to play on Windows and it was butter-smooth), so I wanted to get a Chromium-based browser for that usecase. Ended up picking Brave, and it's worked well for that. Still using Firefox as my daily driver.

anirudh24seven 7y ago

I have been using Brave on macOS for more than 3 years now. I used Brave on Android for a while and I am currently using Brave on iOS as my daily driver. I don't use their BAT system or anything associated with that. I like their default vanilla experience and the fact that I can install Chrome plugins on Brave. I still use uBlock origin on top of their default blockers. I use the built-in Tor experience time-to-time as well. To me, Brave is what Firefox should have been. Good UI, good defaults, fast enough, support for Chrome plugins, etc. I am slightly concerned about their future direction though (if they enforce the BAT system down users' throats).

BlueTemplar 7y ago

I might have been interested, but Chrome-based is out of the question, and I'd prefer to avoid any ties to advertising too - and it's not like other options aren't available...

1_player 7y ago
AFAIK it is based on Ungoogled Chromium
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  "Ungoogled Chromium" seems like an oxymoron ?

glofish 7y ago

Looks like it has a builtin Tor based browsing model. Not just private window (incognito) mode, but Tor based incognito in addition. (been using it for an hour now, it is kind of neat)

feross 7y ago

Pro-tip: Brave has built in torrent support. You can visit any .torrent or magnet link and it will load up directly in the browser, no external program needed! Click this link from Brave: https://webtorrent.io/torrents/big-buck-bunny.torrent https://webtorrent.io/torrents/big-buck-bunny.torrent (Creative Commons licensed) Disclaimer: I integrated my WebTorrent library into Brave. Sharing this tip because not enough people know about this feature!

mping 7y ago
Thanks for your work in webtorrent!
bufferoverflow 7y ago
Wow, that's nuts! I just pasted a magnet link into the address bar, and it started playing the movie. magnet:?xt=urn:btih:02cd53257b68fac90489850be10691df7c42e45a&dn=The+Terminator+%281984%29+1080p+BrRip+x264+-+YIFY&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers-paradise.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969&ix=0

onyva 7y ago

Love the innocent “received very positive press reviews” It remember being force to read about Brave in any article about the web, especially when the click bait title actually mentioned its competition. Untrustworthy, and not just In their business model.

kylehotchkiss 7y ago

> As part of the Brave 1.0 launch, Brave Rewards is now available on Brave for iOS, which contributed to the app’s 27% growth in the past month. I'm a happy Brave user but the "Rewards" are a gimmick. I've made a dollar a month at best for clicking their amazon/intel/VPN ads. But the actual browser serves its purpose well as a well supported and actively developed de-Google'd chrome with pretty good ad blocker baked in.

Yuval_Halevi 7y ago

Brave is one of my favorite browsers (I'm using it right now) X5 better than Chrom x100 better than IE

throwaway_0007 7y ago

Wow. Actual user oriented and ground breaking innovations. This is the future. And it's beautiful. I'm impressed. Mozilla now looks like a dying swamp.

loh 7y ago

I've been using Brave for a while, maybe a couple of years. Its default ad blocking doesn't work 100% of the time, so I've installed uBlock Origin. I don't use the BAT functionality at all, but I think one of the main advantages to Brave (and likely any Chromium-based browser) is that you get all of the same fast, consistent rendering, plus all of the same Chrome extensions will work without any extra effort.

fouc 7y ago

Are there any sites that are only accessible with Brave? Like a site that has popups with "You are unable to view content without Brave browser" ? To make it work, brave would need to support something extra besides html/js that other browsers don't support.

CTOSian 7y ago

Interesting browser, but dear devs we are not in 90s -just a pc for net-browsing at home - and I am talking about the lack of sync of extensions/bookmarks.