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As a privacy-minded, ethically-motivated technologist I support Brave for their strong position on privacy - a position in which they are peerless amongst other

As a privacy-minded, ethically-motivated technologist I support Brave for their strong position on privacy - a position in which they are peerless amongst other browser vendors. I am always open to changing my mind, yet when I see the same untruths mustered to poison-the-well ('swapping ads with their own' - not true) I wonder why the same dishonest and distorted talking points come up instead of any valid criticisms. What you call 'cryptocurrency nonsense' is a model that potentially threatens to overturn Google's ad model, and with it the current ad-tech ecosystem. That obviously means there's a huge number of high-stakes players who are very keen for this particular model not to 'take' in the online world, and so we see the same untruths constantly amplified. Brave must be doing something right, and even if there's a purist's position which says their model is not the holy grail, I'd prefer innovation and disrupted business models over a continuation of the current ad-tech status quo.

andreareina 7y ago
> 'swapping ads with their own' - not true Only by the strictest definition of swap. They block ads and show ads from their own ad network, which they collect revenue on. That the Brave ads don't appear in the same place as the blocked ads doesn't impact the ethics of it.
- jshevek 7y ago
  In what way is it unethical for a company who is providing me a valuable service to also give me the opportunity to opt-in to seeing ads to support that service? And in what way is it unethical for that same company to provide the service, which I desire, of blocking ads that I've already decided I don't want to see, because the people serving me those ads are violating my privacy? Many people seem fixated on trying to frame this in the most disparaging way possible, which distracts from the reality of what is actually happening here.
- sfj 7y ago
  That's just half the story, though. They share the revenue with you which you can either keep for yourself or, manually or automatically, tip the sites you visit in the form of a cryptocurrency token.
- justsee 7y ago
  Very happy to engage in an ethical debate on this one. This line about 'swapping ads with their own' has been an attempt to imply in the reader's mind that Brave was / is nefariously replacing actual ads with their own, which is not true. The truth is Brave blocks all ads by default, and nothing more. Do you believe it's ethical for a user agent to block ads, or that it's unethical and a form of theft? I'm with gorhill of uBlock on this [1]: That said, it's important to note that using a blocker is NOT theft. Don't fall for this creepy idea. The ultimate logical consequence of blocking = theft is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy. Separate to this, Brave has a rewards system users can choose to enable which can show OS-level notifications of advertiser content in a privacy-respecting way. The ethics around this are clear: * if a user wishes to opt-out of an insecure, fraudulent and privacy-harming ad-tech ecosystem for content on the open web that is their right * if that same user wants to opt-in to a privacy-respecting alternative ad model which operates in a very different way, that's also their right Attempting to claim the combination of these optional user choices is 'ad swapping' in a nefarious, unethical sense is simply dishonest. A more accurate phrase considering the individual user choices involved might be 'model swapping'. As a user I deliberately choose to swap the current ad-tech model with a new, innovative model. That model may have to evolve, but from a technical and human perspective appears to be much better than the current status quo. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy
  - jshevek 7y ago
    Thank you for taking the time to explain this in a careful and thorough manner. You are absolutely correct to say: > Attempting to claim the combination of these optional user choices is 'ad swapping' in a nefarious, unethical sense is simply dishonest. ... (For the benefit of anyone else on mobile who finds HN's quotation style unpleasant, here is the gorhill quote: "That said, it's important to note that using a blocker is NOT theft. Don't fall for this creepy idea. The ultimate logical consequence of blocking = theft is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy. ")
    - Stratoscope 7y ago
      > For the benefit of anyone else on mobile who finds HN's quotation style unpleasant... Code blocks are definitely not HN's quotation style and not recommended for quotes. They are often used for that purpose by mistake. It is an understandable mistake considering the lack of formatting options here. A common quotation style that works on all devices is what I used above, a leading '>' followed by the quoted text enclosed in asterisks, like this (with code formatting here to show the special characters): > *For the benefit...* > *Blank line between paragraphs*
kissickas 7y ago
I'm uninformed. By what metric is Brave better than Firefox on privacy? I did some quick research and could only find clearly biased (and poorly-written) sources making that claim.
- panny 7y ago
  https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/25/study-finds-brave-to-be-the-most-private-browser/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/25/study-finds-brave-to-be-th...
  - kissickas 7y ago
    Ah thanks, by default. From what I gather from the study, if you disable telemetry and don't use Google/Yahoo in the search bar, you're good to go.
  - eh78ssxv2f 7y ago
    I'm still confused by this study. If the brave browser is not contacting the backend, how does it fetch the latest ad block sets or the native ads? It seems like the browser has to contact its own servers to do any of these things.
    - naasking 7y ago
      Ads are not enabled by default. And when they are, they do not transmit information that can be used to identify the user.
      - eh78ssxv2f 7y ago
        How is the user's IP address hidden from the servers?
        naasking 7y ago
        https://brave.com/tor-tabs-beta/ https://brave.com/tor-tabs-beta/
moksly 7y ago
Doesn’t the public ledger track you and every site you’ve visited?

andreareina 7y ago

> 'swapping ads with their own' - not true Only by the strictest definition of swap. They block ads and show ads from their own ad network, which they collect revenue on. That the Brave ads don't appear in the same place as the blocked ads doesn't impact the ethics of it.

jshevek 7y ago
In what way is it unethical for a company who is providing me a valuable service to also give me the opportunity to opt-in to seeing ads to support that service? And in what way is it unethical for that same company to provide the service, which I desire, of blocking ads that I've already decided I don't want to see, because the people serving me those ads are violating my privacy? Many people seem fixated on trying to frame this in the most disparaging way possible, which distracts from the reality of what is actually happening here.
sfj 7y ago
That's just half the story, though. They share the revenue with you which you can either keep for yourself or, manually or automatically, tip the sites you visit in the form of a cryptocurrency token.
justsee 7y ago
Very happy to engage in an ethical debate on this one. This line about 'swapping ads with their own' has been an attempt to imply in the reader's mind that Brave was / is nefariously replacing actual ads with their own, which is not true. The truth is Brave blocks all ads by default, and nothing more. Do you believe it's ethical for a user agent to block ads, or that it's unethical and a form of theft? I'm with gorhill of uBlock on this [1]: That said, it's important to note that using a blocker is NOT theft. Don't fall for this creepy idea. The ultimate logical consequence of blocking = theft is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy. Separate to this, Brave has a rewards system users can choose to enable which can show OS-level notifications of advertiser content in a privacy-respecting way. The ethics around this are clear: * if a user wishes to opt-out of an insecure, fraudulent and privacy-harming ad-tech ecosystem for content on the open web that is their right * if that same user wants to opt-in to a privacy-respecting alternative ad model which operates in a very different way, that's also their right Attempting to claim the combination of these optional user choices is 'ad swapping' in a nefarious, unethical sense is simply dishonest. A more accurate phrase considering the individual user choices involved might be 'model swapping'. As a user I deliberately choose to swap the current ad-tech model with a new, innovative model. That model may have to evolve, but from a technical and human perspective appears to be much better than the current status quo. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy
- jshevek 7y ago
  Thank you for taking the time to explain this in a careful and thorough manner. You are absolutely correct to say: > Attempting to claim the combination of these optional user choices is 'ad swapping' in a nefarious, unethical sense is simply dishonest. ... (For the benefit of anyone else on mobile who finds HN's quotation style unpleasant, here is the gorhill quote: "That said, it's important to note that using a blocker is NOT theft. Don't fall for this creepy idea. The ultimate logical consequence of blocking = theft is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy. ")
  - Stratoscope 7y ago
    > For the benefit of anyone else on mobile who finds HN's quotation style unpleasant... Code blocks are definitely not HN's quotation style and not recommended for quotes. They are often used for that purpose by mistake. It is an understandable mistake considering the lack of formatting options here. A common quotation style that works on all devices is what I used above, a leading '>' followed by the quoted text enclosed in asterisks, like this (with code formatting here to show the special characters): > *For the benefit...* > *Blank line between paragraphs*

kissickas 7y ago

I'm uninformed. By what metric is Brave better than Firefox on privacy? I did some quick research and could only find clearly biased (and poorly-written) sources making that claim.

panny 7y ago
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/25/study-finds-brave-to-be-the-most-private-browser/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/25/study-finds-brave-to-be-th...
- kissickas 7y ago
  Ah thanks, by default. From what I gather from the study, if you disable telemetry and don't use Google/Yahoo in the search bar, you're good to go.
- eh78ssxv2f 7y ago
  I'm still confused by this study. If the brave browser is not contacting the backend, how does it fetch the latest ad block sets or the native ads? It seems like the browser has to contact its own servers to do any of these things.
  - naasking 7y ago
    Ads are not enabled by default. And when they are, they do not transmit information that can be used to identify the user.
    - eh78ssxv2f 7y ago
      How is the user's IP address hidden from the servers?
      - naasking 7y ago
        https://brave.com/tor-tabs-beta/ https://brave.com/tor-tabs-beta/

moksly 7y ago

Doesn’t the public ledger track you and every site you’ve visited?