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Ex-Mozillian Brendan Eich agrees that privacy is the battle for the future http://www.brave.com http://www.brave.com The question is - do you need to re-write

Ex-Mozillian Brendan Eich agrees that privacy is the battle for the future http://www.brave.com http://www.brave.com The question is - do you need to re-write the internet economy as Brave are trying to to achieve it, and not just block trackers? The third element is that governments are becoming addicted to the vast trove of information gathered - will they be willing to give that up if a technical/business model solution takes off. Interesting times.

catalogia 7y ago
I want no part of Brave's weird cryptoish scheme. I know the feature is opt-in, but I don't see the point in supporting an organization unable to find a source of revenue I find agreeable. Even something as simple and obnoxious as donation nagging, like Wikipedia, seems preferable to what Brave has proposed.
- prepend 7y ago
  It’s not perfect, but I like it better than the alternatives (selling user data, non profit). Technically the browser is nice, but there’s something nice about a for profit org whose incentives are aligned with mine. For now, I use a FireFox for similar reasons, but I like Brave’s mode for the web better than the “bad ad” model that google and Facebook push. I used to like Opera for similar reasons.
  - hvis 7y ago
    What could one find disgreeable in a company being a non-profit?
    - luckylion 7y ago
      In a "we depend on the biggest enemy of privacy for funding" kind of way?
      - hvis 7y ago
        Being a non-profit doesn't imply any of that. And nobody has ever demonstrated that this ostensible "dependence" has any adverse effects on Mozilla's policy.
        luckylion 7y ago
        It's hard to demonstrate anything if you don't have a control group and can't turn the thing in question on and off. Conflicts of interest are real, you don't need to demonstrate that they are, though it's not clear how much they sway Mozilla's decisions. And you're right, the non-profit-status doesn't imply that, they could just as well do the same as a commercial enterprise. It would be more obvious that way. Would Mozilla make the step to ship an adblocker with Firefox? It would certainly be what their users want (the most popular extension by far being uBlock Origin), but it would pretty much decrease their worth to Google to zero, hence kill the funding. And there's your conflict of interest.
        hvis 7y ago
        It's a difficult problem. Unless a majority-marketshare browser does that as well (and we know that Chrome certainly won't), a lot of websites might choose to block all Firefox users instead. And perhaps you and I know how to disable an ad blocker selectively. An average user might simply see problems with websites and uninstall Firefox as "not working", tanking its marketshare even more. So Google doesn't necessarily factor into that decision, really.
        luckylion 7y ago
        True, though I think that would be a short (and just!) war that would get us to a much better place: hiding the type of user agent you're using from the site means less finger printing opportunities. It very much could lead to the opposite too. "Oh hey, the web works when you're using Firefox". My mother has become a missionary (for adblockers, not firefox) since she's once witnessed how websites look on a friend's PC. She told her "I think your computer is broken", which lead to confusion & a presentation on my mother's PC... which lead to them calling me asking how to make her friend's PC do that too. It might, ironically, also be a great signal for Google's bots. I've never seen a quality site that tried to block me for using an adblock, and even "hey, please turn adblock on" is a strong signal for me that it's SEO content and I should go on looking for something else.
    - prepend 7y ago
      I am a big proponent for non-profit but I think they can be risky if they are dependent on donors, especially a few donors. Mozilla Foundation has google as it’s biggest revenue source [0], so if Google ever decides to change this it will cripple the org. I think this would be different if revenue came from many donors so this risk would be lower. I use FireFox and support Mozilla, but it’s challenging to donate to FireFox as Mozilla runs quite a few projects. Nobody is perfect, but non-profits have risks like any organization. [0] was yahoo for a while, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation
      - hvis 7y ago
        > if Google ever decides to change this it will cripple the org Not really. They do have a rainy-day fund, and they have experimented with partnering with other search providers in the past (such as Microsoft, or country-local search engines like Yandex). The main reason they still use Google is that the users prefer it. But if Google decides not to pay anymore, Mozilla will survive.
- Hnrobert42 7y ago
  Why do you dislike Brave’s scheme?
- ChrisClark 7y ago
  Brave is just trying a system of micropayments to support your most visited websites. To the end user, the crypto part can be invisible. The user just deposits something like $10/month from their credit card and spreads it across their favourite websites. They can do that and be completely ignorant that everything is running on ethereum. Which is really the way it should be in the end. Ethereum is just a hidden value transfer backend that saves a company money.
- codehalo 7y ago
  Do you have a problem with Mozilla's revenue from Google?
  - catalogia 7y ago
    Obviously.
TuringTest 7y ago
They will still have enough of it to get their dose - default setups, corporate apps, embedded devices everywhere. They just don't need to get ALL your online behavior as they do know by default.
simias 7y ago
You make it sound as if Brave does more than Firefox to provide an alternative to the Chrome quasi-monopoly. Let's not forget that Brave is a fork of Chromium in the first place which means that if you value competition Firefox is still a better bet, at least until Brave shows that they can maintain a deep fork of Chrome long term while resisting upstream changes they don't want and that's a very tall order. I do agree that changing the internet economy would be great though, but at this point I'm not entirely sure I trust Brave to do that. They clearly want a piece of the advertising cake under the guise of "disrupting" things, but should they end up being successful I'm not yet completely convinced that it'll change things fundamentally. I'm definitely curious to see if they manage to do it though, even if it ends up as a failed experiment it will have been an interesting one.
- DrScientist 7y ago
  Not saying Brave is the answer, but I think they have at least identified the right problem - ie If, for example, an effective adblocking browser takes off, huge amounts of revenue to content providers will disappear. So content providers will start to resist in the only way they can - by blocking people with adblockers. If you want to avoid either massive reduction of content, or the blocking of ad blockers, then you need to offer an alternative. As I said, whether Brave's model is the right alternative is an open question - but at least they are having a go.
  - stiray 7y ago
    Yes, I want massive reduction of content. I am sorry, but if you haven't noticed, internet is a giant, steaming pile of garbage. Amount of usable content is 1:10000 and the reason for this are ads - you earn money regardless what crap you sell. It is no longer about content but about watching ads.
    - DrScientist 7y ago
      I agree with much of that - but what I worry about is the perilous state of journalism - it is being hit by reduction in ad money resulting in less depth and more pandering to people with money. You could argue the garbage is the problem - taking ad money from better sources, however if you have a blanket ad block then there is no discrimination - the Brave model offers you a chance to discriminate but still use ad payment model. The alternative is to move to 'pay to view' models - the problem here is that then competes with free content that is free because it's paided propaganda.
101404 7y ago
I started using Brave recently, and so far I like it. The detailed per site settings to block stuff are great.

catalogia 7y ago

I want no part of Brave's weird cryptoish scheme. I know the feature is opt-in, but I don't see the point in supporting an organization unable to find a source of revenue I find agreeable. Even something as simple and obnoxious as donation nagging, like Wikipedia, seems preferable to what Brave has proposed.

prepend 7y ago
It’s not perfect, but I like it better than the alternatives (selling user data, non profit). Technically the browser is nice, but there’s something nice about a for profit org whose incentives are aligned with mine. For now, I use a FireFox for similar reasons, but I like Brave’s mode for the web better than the “bad ad” model that google and Facebook push. I used to like Opera for similar reasons.
- hvis 7y ago
  What could one find disgreeable in a company being a non-profit?
  - luckylion 7y ago
    In a "we depend on the biggest enemy of privacy for funding" kind of way?
    - hvis 7y ago
      Being a non-profit doesn't imply any of that. And nobody has ever demonstrated that this ostensible "dependence" has any adverse effects on Mozilla's policy.
      - luckylion 7y ago
        It's hard to demonstrate anything if you don't have a control group and can't turn the thing in question on and off. Conflicts of interest are real, you don't need to demonstrate that they are, though it's not clear how much they sway Mozilla's decisions. And you're right, the non-profit-status doesn't imply that, they could just as well do the same as a commercial enterprise. It would be more obvious that way. Would Mozilla make the step to ship an adblocker with Firefox? It would certainly be what their users want (the most popular extension by far being uBlock Origin), but it would pretty much decrease their worth to Google to zero, hence kill the funding. And there's your conflict of interest.
        hvis 7y ago
        It's a difficult problem. Unless a majority-marketshare browser does that as well (and we know that Chrome certainly won't), a lot of websites might choose to block all Firefox users instead. And perhaps you and I know how to disable an ad blocker selectively. An average user might simply see problems with websites and uninstall Firefox as "not working", tanking its marketshare even more. So Google doesn't necessarily factor into that decision, really.
        luckylion 7y ago
        True, though I think that would be a short (and just!) war that would get us to a much better place: hiding the type of user agent you're using from the site means less finger printing opportunities. It very much could lead to the opposite too. "Oh hey, the web works when you're using Firefox". My mother has become a missionary (for adblockers, not firefox) since she's once witnessed how websites look on a friend's PC. She told her "I think your computer is broken", which lead to confusion & a presentation on my mother's PC... which lead to them calling me asking how to make her friend's PC do that too. It might, ironically, also be a great signal for Google's bots. I've never seen a quality site that tried to block me for using an adblock, and even "hey, please turn adblock on" is a strong signal for me that it's SEO content and I should go on looking for something else.
  - prepend 7y ago
    I am a big proponent for non-profit but I think they can be risky if they are dependent on donors, especially a few donors. Mozilla Foundation has google as it’s biggest revenue source [0], so if Google ever decides to change this it will cripple the org. I think this would be different if revenue came from many donors so this risk would be lower. I use FireFox and support Mozilla, but it’s challenging to donate to FireFox as Mozilla runs quite a few projects. Nobody is perfect, but non-profits have risks like any organization. [0] was yahoo for a while, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation
    - hvis 7y ago
      > if Google ever decides to change this it will cripple the org Not really. They do have a rainy-day fund, and they have experimented with partnering with other search providers in the past (such as Microsoft, or country-local search engines like Yandex). The main reason they still use Google is that the users prefer it. But if Google decides not to pay anymore, Mozilla will survive.
Hnrobert42 7y ago
Why do you dislike Brave’s scheme?
ChrisClark 7y ago
Brave is just trying a system of micropayments to support your most visited websites. To the end user, the crypto part can be invisible. The user just deposits something like $10/month from their credit card and spreads it across their favourite websites. They can do that and be completely ignorant that everything is running on ethereum. Which is really the way it should be in the end. Ethereum is just a hidden value transfer backend that saves a company money.
codehalo 7y ago
Do you have a problem with Mozilla's revenue from Google?
- catalogia 7y ago
  Obviously.

TuringTest 7y ago

They will still have enough of it to get their dose - default setups, corporate apps, embedded devices everywhere. They just don't need to get ALL your online behavior as they do know by default.

simias 7y ago

You make it sound as if Brave does more than Firefox to provide an alternative to the Chrome quasi-monopoly. Let's not forget that Brave is a fork of Chromium in the first place which means that if you value competition Firefox is still a better bet, at least until Brave shows that they can maintain a deep fork of Chrome long term while resisting upstream changes they don't want and that's a very tall order. I do agree that changing the internet economy would be great though, but at this point I'm not entirely sure I trust Brave to do that. They clearly want a piece of the advertising cake under the guise of "disrupting" things, but should they end up being successful I'm not yet completely convinced that it'll change things fundamentally. I'm definitely curious to see if they manage to do it though, even if it ends up as a failed experiment it will have been an interesting one.

DrScientist 7y ago
Not saying Brave is the answer, but I think they have at least identified the right problem - ie If, for example, an effective adblocking browser takes off, huge amounts of revenue to content providers will disappear. So content providers will start to resist in the only way they can - by blocking people with adblockers. If you want to avoid either massive reduction of content, or the blocking of ad blockers, then you need to offer an alternative. As I said, whether Brave's model is the right alternative is an open question - but at least they are having a go.
- stiray 7y ago
  Yes, I want massive reduction of content. I am sorry, but if you haven't noticed, internet is a giant, steaming pile of garbage. Amount of usable content is 1:10000 and the reason for this are ads - you earn money regardless what crap you sell. It is no longer about content but about watching ads.
  - DrScientist 7y ago
    I agree with much of that - but what I worry about is the perilous state of journalism - it is being hit by reduction in ad money resulting in less depth and more pandering to people with money. You could argue the garbage is the problem - taking ad money from better sources, however if you have a blanket ad block then there is no discrimination - the Brave model offers you a chance to discriminate but still use ad payment model. The alternative is to move to 'pay to view' models - the problem here is that then competes with free content that is free because it's paided propaganda.

101404 7y ago

I started using Brave recently, and so far I like it. The detailed per site settings to block stuff are great.