18 ms·

The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

303 points by Rudism 7y ago

azalemeth 7y ago
I never really looked into BAT and only use Brave on mobile (mostly then as its UI for its javascript switch is far better than dealing with uMatrix on firefox mobile). I had no idea that the whole thing is yet another altcoin IPO with excellent marketing. They really must be laughing all the way to the bank...
- animalnewbie 7y ago
  Fx mobile has umatrix?!?! /Runs to download
  - solnyshok 7y ago
    fx preview has uBlock
    - rudiv 7y ago
      Can't recommend it highly enough, the new engine is also a lot smoother.
    - boudin 7y ago
      The nightly build only for now
      - skrebbel 7y ago
        Huh? Fwiw I've run firefox mobile on Android with ublock origin for at least a year now.
        ccmcarey 7y ago
        I believe they're referring to the preview browser, not the current one. The preview is only starting to support extensions again.
        boudin 7y ago
        Yes, I should have precised. Web extensions are a work in progress in Firefox preview. Currently it is only supported in Firefox preview nightly and only ublock origin is available.
    - anoncake 7y ago
      Yes, it's the only supported "add-on", it's preinstalled and cannot be removed. It's like the people in charge don't even know what an add-on is.
      - tomstockmail 7y ago
        Click on it, click remove. I'm not 100% if I had to specifically install it from the add ons menu, but I believe I had to. Also this is Firefox Preview we're talking about - even if it wasn't able to be uninstalled it's software that's in testing!
  - lostmsu 7y ago
    Yes, you can install uMatrix, and it works normally. Writing from one.
- 101404 7y ago
  Same here. Since using Brave, I have JavaScript off by default and can easily enable it for specific sites. Makes most websites so much faster.
- naasking 7y ago
  > I had no idea that the whole thing is yet another altcoin IPO with excellent marketing. Excellent marketing and a useful product with widespread appeal. It's weird that you focus on the coin as if it was the primary goal. It's merely a means to an end, and one of the best real-world uses of cryptocurrency that I've seen.
  - asdkhadsj 7y ago
    Not to mention, if someone manages to make a useful product that benefits users and makes themselves money isn't that exactly what we want? Rarely do incentives align with consumers these days.
- plerpin 7y ago
  Excellent marketing, with an army of BAT bagholders willing to shill for the product pro bono.
  - jshevek 7y ago
    Do you know of any individuals to whom this would apply? Or is this just speculation? This comment reads to me like poisoning the well and presumption of motive.
    - chance_state 7y ago
      Is it so outlandish to you that someone would promote a cryptocurrency because they will personally benefit from its success? Crypto holders shilling for their flavor of coin is a meme at this point.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - jshevek 7y ago
        I deleted a response in which I assumed you posted the original comment. My apologies. Do you disagree that the original comment was poisoning the well?
        chance_state 7y ago
        I can't see it anymore because it's flagged and I don't remember exactly what it said. I thought it was more of an observation about how crypto folks are always promoting how great ____coin is.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't post insinuations of astroturfing without evidence. That's seriously against the rules here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
mattlondon 7y ago
Totally off-topic but I really liked the CSS/design for this site. Simple layout, nice choice of fonts, and a sensible and easy-to-read colour combination for this "wall of text" style presentation. Nice one.
- jackewiehose 7y ago
  Interesting... I find it absolutely terrible. White monospace font on a black background - no thanks. Without reader mode I wouldn't stay a second on such a page.
  - rectang 7y ago
    You're not alone. The book "Type and Layout" by Colin Wheildon describes a "readability" experiment measuring the impact of various typographical techniques on whether subjects comprehend a magazine article. Light text on black background performed abysmally. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1875750223 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1875750223 (Naturally I believe people who say white-on-black works for them, but I don't believe that preference is universal or should be a default if readability is an important criteria.)
    - e12e 7y ago
      Print and screen are not the same - as print is reflective, while screens are typically a light source. E-ink is closer to (low resolution, poor quality paper) print.
      - Marsymars 7y ago
        > E-ink is closer to (low resolution, poor quality paper) print. Was curious so I checked - high-end ereaders are 300 PPI, which tends to be the minimum PPI for good quality print.
        e12e 7y ago
        Granted, dpi and ppi aren't the same - but print would normally be more like 1200 dpi. Even low en laser printers are 600 dpi. So while you might print a 300 ppi image, you'd probably print it at much higher than 300 dpi. E-ink screens are in a kind of middleground - they certainly have lower contrast and resolution than movable type (depending a bit on paper quality, but compared to say printed books).
cryptica 7y ago
One of the problems with BAT is that ERC20 doesn't scale so as they get more users, they will need to cut back on the frequency of payments. Also, a lot of that value is absorbed by the Ethereum network as transaction fees (GAS).
- terhechte 7y ago
  Isn't that a temporary problem though? With ETH 2 launching probably by the end of the year?
  - latchkey 7y ago
    ETH2 phase 0 _may_ come at the end of the year. It will be many more years before ETH2 is live and trusted with real funds... enough to either absorb ETH1 or switch over to it. Heck, it may not happen at all. Amazing how this group mindset around ETH2 works.
    - cryptica 7y ago
      Agreed. I think most people don't realize how massive of a technical challenge it is to shard something as large and complex as the Ethereum blokchain without introducing critical security vulnerabilities. When you combine the complexity of the system, the constant need to try to maintain backwards compatibility and the sheer number of people involved in the project, you have every reason to be skeptical.
      - latchkey 7y ago
        I've also been following the progpow debate rather closely for the last 1.5 years. ProgPoW is supposed to be a simple PoW change to keep ETH1 asic resistant now that asics have been developed. This is a 2 year old codebase that has had a paid audit and tons of eyes on it. Just this week, someone discovered and announced an issue. While the fix is relatively trivial, the amazing thing is that it went unnoticed for so long. I can only imagine ETH2, which is a brand new codebase, whole new consensus model, using cutting edge research (zkSNARKS) and shaped like a rube goldberg machine, will be full of issues nobody has even dared to imagine. I couldn't imagine trusting billions of dollars of value to that literally over night.
wdjdkjwjeje 7y ago
Brave is brilliant at mobile design is what they're brilliant at. I find Chrome and Firefox on Android unusable because of how much better browsing with Brave feels. Firefox Lite and Microsoft Edge get closer to the pleasure of using Brave on mobile but neither comes close to matching it since Firefox lacks the reliability of Chromium browsers (I know, boo choosing browsers based on usefulness) and Edge has a fetish for bloated sub-menus.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  > Edge has a fetish for bloated sub-menus A Microsoft product with drop-downs inside of drop-downs? Say it ain't so. Brave does feel good, but it would be better if the spyglass at the bottom was "find in page" and not Search, since we have an omnibar.
  - wdjdkjwjeje 7y ago
    Honestly the top-side omni-bar is what I dislike about a lot of mobile browsers. It's nice for seeing the web page but, imo, all frequently used controls should be at the bottom of the screen. Firefox Lite actually has a really strong gui with a few caveats! None of the mobile browsers, including Brave, are perfect in terms of layout. But if Brave could steal the bottom gui from Firefox Lite or if Firefox Lite had Brave's 'just works' factor, I'd be pretty happy.
- dang 7y ago
  Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
being in the camp of "nothing ever good comes from adds", I've never considered Brave. A browser is a remote code execution engine for attacker-controlled content. Looking at their bounties on H1 https://hackerone.com/brave/hacktivity https://hackerone.com/brave/hacktivity they are still solving problems which Mozilla and Google have researched and extinguished long ago. I don't trust Brave to get the security right. Also Ethereum is a scam and doesn't scale but that's a whole other topic. As for their claims around paying content generators with their fake monopoly money, this article was absolutely on point.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  Brave is Chromium-based...it's literally a fork of the core source code for Chrome, so I don't think it would be any more insecure than that. And with Microsoft forking Chromium for Edge, Chromium should continue to get top-notch support on that front. Ethereum is not a scam. It has evolved a great deal over the past 6 years, and thanks to zero-knowledge proofs, ETH does scale now (up to 2300 transactions a second, without any need for further upgrades...see Loopring for an in-production implementation of this tech https://loopring.org/#/ https://loopring.org/#/), so you should update your knowledge on the subject. It's not fake money. It's getting paid to view ads. This is not even a new idea. I used to use an internet service back in the 90s that was free as long as they could spam me with ads (NetZero). Facebook and Google make hundreds of billions of dollars off of ads, do you really think there's no room in that to give back to consumers of ads some portion of the revenue? The only reason they don't is because their duopoly over internet advertising is pretty stable right now.
  - mjd 7y ago
    > It's not fake money. It's getting paid to view ads. It's getting paid with fake money to view ads.
    - staticvoidmaine 7y ago
      Given that it’s convertible into USD and other “real” currencies, how do you expect this line of reasoning to hold?
_rrnv 7y ago
The author discovered how capitalism works. Everything that has value, has it because there are people willing to pay for it, not necessarily because it has value or purpose. To use a tangible example instead of a virtual one - go read how diamonds have been pumped up by the mining-cutting cartels to be perceived as very valuable while in fact it's very hard to convert them to cash without a significant loss. PS. I've read recently that to move large money in times of crisis it's best to use diamonds, rubies etc. over gold or cryptocurrencies (cash is a non-starter, too much space). Well good luck with converting these stones back at purchase value. It boggles the mind that people can't see how much freedom 24 seed words give in times of crisis. You could move a billion dollars stashed in pages of a harlequin novel through every border & customs check and nobody would ever know. Try that with physical materials.
- pjc50 7y ago
  > how much freedom 24 seed words give in times of crisis. You could move a billion dollars stashed in pages of a harlequin novel through every border & customs check and nobody would ever know. Try that with physical materials. But there's a problem: you never moved the money at all. You need to bookend it with two transactions to move the real money in and out of the bitcoin system, which nearly always involves intersecting the controls of the real system. It's more like hawala banking. And can suffer 50% exchange rate swings in a very short time.
latchkey 7y ago
I've been clicking the desktop ad notifications like a madman. Earning BAT, then taking that BAT and converting it to an interest bearing stable coin token in DeFi (~8%). Some of the BAT I earn, I also convert into ETH so I can pay for gas, making my transactions 'free'. It has been a fun experiment in playing with this stuff, but it certainly isn't going to make me rich or anything.
- katsura 7y ago
  You don't have to click on them to earn tokens.
  - latchkey 7y ago
    Oh really? That's interesting... any documentation on this?
    - katsura 7y ago
      Yes, here: https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Brave-Ads-FAQ https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Bra... > In the initial Brave Ads release, users receive BAT for viewing the ad notifications. In future releases, users will be able to earn additional rewards for engagement events within the ad tabs. Brave does not reward users for clicking on the notifications. Brave’s position is that users should only click on ads that they have a genuine interest in engaging with.
      - latchkey 7y ago
        Sweet! You just saved me some clicking. Thanks!
- woutr_be 7y ago
  I thought you could only use the earned BAT to pay creators? Or has it changed?
  - 7y ago
Dahoon 7y ago
Brave is just like Adblock whitelists, just hidden behind tech most people won't understand. The end result is the same. A scam.
stronghands 7y ago
If you can have the same ad free experience without a token doesn’t that make the token redundant and in long term Occam principle dictates it won’t catch on.
- wffurr 7y ago
  Until content publishers go out of business or lock their content behind paywalls, and the "ad free experience" only has hobbyist blogs and amateurs. A lot of low rent internet chum would also disappear. So maybe that's a fair trade off, but it will also hurt your local newspaper pretty badly. Nobody has really come up with a good sustainable alternative to ad-funded content for a lot of publishers. Brave is one of many attempts at this, too bad it smells a lot like a crypto currency scam.
  - eitland 7y ago
    > but it will also hurt your local newspaper pretty badly. I already pay for my local newspaper (and most of their content is behind a paywall anyway).
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    > A lot of low rent internet chum would also disappear. So maybe that's a fair trade off, but it will also hurt your local newspaper pretty badly. Wow, we have _completely_ different understandings of the value of the Internet. To me, the (realized) promise of the Internet is not just an additional channel for established media, it's the decentralization of publishing in the first place. "Low rent internet chum" is a consequence of that, but IMO it's been far more than worth the tradeoff.
    - wffurr 7y ago
      Ad networks have been a key enabler of decentralized publishing. Anyone can sign up to an ad network and start getting paid for clicks. No traditional gatekeepers there. So I'm not sure where you get this idea that what I'm saying is in any way contradictory to what you said.
hiccuphippo 7y ago
What kind of information from the user does Brave hold and/or give to their ad publishers? And for how long? You are going from a situation where many ad networks receive pieces of information (ok, google 90% of the time) to a single ad network receiving 100% of information, which I don't think is good. Not to mention Brave becomes the gatekeeper of which content publishers receive BAT and I remember there was controversy over them banning someone's account because they didn't like the content. I'll stick with uBlock, thanks.
- 300bps 7y ago
  I agree. I actually switched to the new Chromium version of Edge with uBlock. I still have Brave on both my iPhone and desktop which is permanently set to block all scripts. I use that for sites with paywall pop ups.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  > I remember there was controversy over them banning someone's account because they didn't like the content. Source?
- songshuu 7y ago
  All your questions are answered here : https://brave.com/privacy/ https://brave.com/privacy/ tldr; Brave as a 'single ad network' does not end up 'receiving 100% of information' because the overwhelming majority of that data stays on your machine, where it belongs.
- BrendanEich 7y ago
  I hope you mean uBlock Origin!
cslarson 7y ago
Brave is indeed very fast and particularly on mobile it is useful that the ad blocker is built-in. Thigh I think for most normies the fact that no plug-in is needed is underrated. I haven't opted in to ads. They pop up as notifications on mobile and it is very annoying.
jsjddbbwj 7y ago
Am I the only one who uses brave with all bat stuff off? It's a fork of chromium that's up to date, completely open source, ad blocking and fingerprinting defeating built-in, reader mode, etc. Chrome but just better.
- fastball 7y ago
  Wait there is a reader mode?
  - jsjddbbwj 7y ago
    On mobile there is. Not sure about desktop
  - snazz 7y ago
    There’s a flag for a built in reader mode on Chromium. It’s not very good, but it does work.
  - jshevek 7y ago
    Here is how to enable reader mode in Brave: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22407265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22407265
- jineshshah36 7y ago
  Same
- zrobotics 7y ago
  I don't use it on desktop, but it's the best android browser I have used. For whatever reason, Firefox is a battery hog on my current phone, so I switched to brave. Although I agree with this article, the crypto model they have is scammy at best. I should really switch browsers on my phone; while brave works OK the fact that their revenue model is broken should signal that they will likely need to do something shady in the future. I never opted in to BAT simply because I figured that maybe 1% of the sites I visit would be opted in to the program. Plus, I'm not going back to watching ads.
_bparks_ 7y ago
The BAT stuff is dumb....I can’t wait to watch 30 mins of ads for 3 cents of a fake money no one wants.
- nwah1 7y ago
  Bingo. It's chromium, but with added crypto-"currency" nonsense. No thanks.
- zormino 7y ago
  It's literally taking other people's content, putting their own ads on it, and paying you fake money for the privalege. If I create content, I should be allowed to charge for it. I'm okay with people not wanting to pay or being worried about their security and disabling those ads. I am 1000% not okay with them stealing content to run their own ads. I don't want their fake money, they are essentially running a scam. They may as well just rehost other people's articles and videos with their own ads and skip the whole browser thing entirely, same scam different name. I don't care that a tonne bat shit has real monetary value. I don't want it. It's not legal tender, I'm not willing to accept it. I don't care that their fake internet tokens have monetary value. I don't want them. Brave is stealing from people and paying them in shit.
threepio 7y ago
Similar points to this critique, previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21776990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21776990
unnouinceput 7y ago
Quote: "You’re going to be browsing the web anyway; you’re going to be inundated with ads anyway;" Naaaah, Firefox with uBlock Origins and Privacy Badger makes sure I don't see ads, but thank you for trying.
- nunodonato 7y ago
  this. so much this. the web is so clean with firefox, everytime I read these kind of articles or people complaining I'm like "what are you talking about?"
  - 12bits 7y ago
    To the credit of the author they did mention "I personally use an aggressive battery of ad blocking techniques to eliminate them from my browser too"
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  Can a similar level of privacy be reached through extensions with Safari on iOS or Chrome on Mac?
  - mrtksn 7y ago
    Yes. I use safari on both, never see any ads and often get disappointed that I can’t be outraged when a post pops up about how we can see how FB/Google tracks us. On mac I use adGuard, in iOS I use Refine content blocker.
  - Marsymars 7y ago
    With Safari, no, iOS/macOS content blockers are significantly less powerful than uBlock Origin. With Chrome, yes, as long as it continues to support uBlock Origin and you don't count its built-in communication with Google.
  - lucasverra 7y ago
    i use nextdns.io to block at os level vpn. its free and they are partners of mozilla, so good enought for me. When I asked why should i trust them with my dns request they told me that i should not do it lightly.
jeffrallen 7y ago
...When it isn't crashing.
gitgud 7y ago
Maybe if instead of BAT, they could use a credit card payment or PayPal.... They've proven to scale very well too....
- mythrwy 7y ago
  Which can both suspend payments and tie up your money for {{ whatever_reason }} leaving the whole project dead. I think BAT was a good call. One of the few real use cases so far for a cryptocurrency.
- rtisdale 7y ago
  A major idea behind the software is that you can automatically tip websites or creators that you frequently consume. These amounts are pretty small. If PayPal or credit card were used (without prefunding things) you'd have most of that money eaten up by transaction costs. As others have mentioned, this does seem to be a "real" use for crypto currency to achieve microtransactions.
- 0-_-0 7y ago
  You can buy BAT tokens with credit cards or PayPal
almost_usual 7y ago
I’ve been using Brave for years and this blog post ironically convinced me to try BAT.
syllable_studio 7y ago
Hey there @rudism, I'm glad you found out about Brave, thanks for sharing about it! You should consider verifying yourself as a brave publisher so we can tip you on this platform that you're "not going to use any time soon" :) My brave browser tells me: " rudism.com: Not yet verified This creator has not yet signed up to receive contributions from Brave users. Any tips you send will remain in your wallet until they verify. "
sebow 7y ago
Firefox/Brave are not 'private' when you compare them to something like ungoogled chromium(With UB origin &umatrix) or other firefox variants. We're talking about privacy as the primary concern and not usability/features.
Angeo34 7y ago
The way Brave is doing it currently though makes it look worse than snake oil. Why would they advertise a fingerprinting if it actually makes your fingerprint more unique? Why would they advertise Tor although using it inside Brave makes you instantly unique??? If this wasn't the case I'd not have a problem with it. This way it just seems like a huge scam (which considering you can just use Firefox with some add-ons it probably is Mr. Brendan Eich)
- songshuu 7y ago
  I think you wholly misunderstand that the fingerprint is randomized on every restart of the browser. That is so much noise that it renders fingerprinting as a strategy utterly useless.
  - sombremesa 7y ago
    Most people don't restart their browsers as often as you might think (the modern trend is very much away from desktops). Especially on mobile, where things stick around in the background without your knowledge.
    - fastball 7y ago
      You can very easily hook into open/close events on any mobile OS – the concept of actually "restarting" the browser doesn't need to come into it.
  - Angeo34 7y ago
    You are aware being based on Chromium means you cannot fake many vectors? Even Tor browser isn't able to spoof e everything Chromium hardly can spoof 1% of what Tor/Firefox can. You will maybe have a randomized fingerprint but it doesn't matter if 99% of other fingerprinting vectors are Stoll left open. Just look at their github. They have fingerprinting bugs that are beyond uniquely identifying (fonts best example) which are open since years. It isn't solvable through Chromium which all of Brave knows yet they market this.
jl2718 7y ago
It’s been almost 30 years and I still don’t understand why browsers exist. Isolated client-server apps were always better. Except that app design now emulates the browser. Soon we’ll have wasm apps that look and feel like windows 1.0 and call it revolutionary.
- falcolas 7y ago
  Browsers were built to distribute information via web pages (not apps originally). They’ve evolved since then (in the name of distributing information and entertainment more efficiently), to the point where they can emulate a native app. Apps are deployed via the browser today for one simple reason - they’re everywhere, and you can write your app once an run it just about anywhere. It’s the promise of Java, realized.
- surround 7y ago
  I actually prefer web apps because browsers make it easy to view control what’s being sent over my network. Requests are decrypted in the browser and can be viewed in plaintext with the browser console. They can be blocked using tools such as uBlock Origin. Standalone client-server apps have full, unsandboxed control of your computer. It’s impossible to see the content of encrypted network requests, short of hacking into the app. See: Wacom’s drivers track the name of every application that you open: https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/05/wacom-drawing-tablets-track-name-of-every-application-you-open/ https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/05/wacom-drawing-tablets-tr...
  - jl2718 7y ago
    This is a good point, and I agree with you, but it seems there are better methods of isolation. Cell phones do this pretty well, and they are the dominant platform anyway, so I guess we're moving in that direction. I just wish I could use the UI features of a PC for all they offer beyond screen-based gestures.
    - surround 7y ago
      I suppose it’s less about isolation than about control. Phone apps are even more difficult to sniff.
sleavey 7y ago
I will not use Brave because I disagree with the legitimacy it gives to ads on the web. I want an ad-free web, or at least an ads-in-anything-like-their-current-form web. If that means the web is 1000x smaller than it currently is, then fine - most of the web today is total garbage anyway. I don't care about jobs supported by ads, because they're another form of 21st century bullshit job and we can invent some other forms of bullshit job to replace those lost to an ad-free web.
- fastball 7y ago
  Do you believe ads should not exist in the world period? How do you justify such a broad-spanning assertion?
  - sleavey 7y ago
    I did not say they should not necessarily exist, I said they should not exist in their current form. I also want to go back to the days where websites were a labour of love from individuals, not always for-profit enterprises. Ads right now are attention stealing, privacy invading monsters as a result of an arms race for users' notice. They actively harm users for profit. There are ways to advertise without harming users, and hence there is a way to make business work on the web. I will continue to block every ad I see and refuse to use websites that find ways to circumvent ad blockers until providers significantly change their behaviours.
    - jshevek 7y ago
      > Ads right now are attention stealing, privacy invading monsters as a result of an arms race for users' notice All true, and this is why I use Brave. Brave punishes privacy invading ads. If you opt in to BAT, Brave values attention and gives users control over how the attention value is spent.
      - sleavey 7y ago
        Don't get me wrong, I am not being a contrarian for the sake of it, and I'm willing to be proved wrong and would be happy to find out someone has solved this. I just can't see how - related to your point about Brave punishing privacy invading ads - forcing advertisers to behave can be done effectively. Do Brave hire an army of ad referees to check if they meet Brave's criteria for privacy invasion (I doubt it)? Does it only let through same-origin, static ads that are part of the HTML source of the site? That'd be great but I also doubt it. Do I have to trust Brave to curate the ads I am allowed to see? Because they're also profit driven and have investors to please and I would not give them my trust lightly either. I'd be interested to find out how Brave actually achieve privacy respecting and non-attention invading ads.
surround 7y ago
The reason why “the internet is broken” is because of ads. Ads incentivize tracking and clickbait. In the end, ad companies, such as Google and Faceboook, act in the interests of advertisers, not users. Brave is an ad company. On the other hand, companies which are supported by user donations act in the best interests of users. This includes websites such as Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. Brave does offer the option to make a “tip” to websites, but it’s hardly necessary to have Brave be the middleman for all user donations.
- fastball 7y ago
  You, uh, don't need Brave to be the middleman for all user donations. That's exactly why they built the whole thing on top of decentralized cryptocurrency.
  - surround 7y ago
    I’m not sure how decentralized BAT is when a single entity, Brave, controls it. Like the blog said, if you donate to a website that isn’t signed up on Brave’a program, Brave keeps the donation for itself.
    - fastball 7y ago
      I can send you BAT right now, which you can then immediately sell for fiat currency, without the involvement of anything related to Brave. Brave does not control BAT – it is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. Do they still own much of the BAT in circulation? Yes. But other than tanking the value of the BAT you own by selling all of theirs at once (a silly thing for them to do), there isn't much power they can exert.
      - surround 7y ago
        I suppose that’s the problem, then. Would another browser use BAT? No, because Brave already owns the majority of the Daddy-O dollars.
NelsonMinar 7y ago
I'm grateful to the author for the detailed analysis of the cryptocurrency part of the grift. Before I'd never got past the "Brave is taking ad revenue from publishers and keeping it for themseleves" part in any detail.
- ac29 7y ago
  All ad networks keep revenue for themselves, so in this regard they aren't any different than Google or Facebook providing the ads. But, they also give a cut to users, so unless Brave's cut + the user cut is less than the existing ad networks' take, that's less money for publishers.
  - NelsonMinar 7y ago
    What a facile turn you took there. Google and Facebook have agreements with the websites they place the ads on. They asked for those ads to be there. Brave did not.
    - ac29 7y ago
      I think I misunderstood your comment - you are right, Brave's status quo is that they keep all of the revenue from by replacing publishers ads (minus they amount they give to users). My point was that in theory, if: 1) advertisers were willing to pay Brave the same amount as they do existing advertisers, and 2) Brave took a similar cut as existing advertisers (including user payouts), and 3) Publishers were actually taking BAT from Brave Then there wouldn't be much of a financial difference in who was placing ads. #3 is obviously not the case currently, which seems to be the point you were making. To be 100% clear: I don't support what Brave is doing, have never used their products, and think their entire business model and its associated crypto-nonsense is at best a waste of time.
      - NelsonMinar 7y ago
        Fair enough. I think the concept of some alternate way of paying publishers is great. But that's not what Brave is doing. They're more like the AdBlocker Plus shakedown, where they deprive a site of their ad revenue and then say "well if you want some of that back you can have part of it back from us by showing the ads we want you to."
onyva 7y ago
“...its built-in advertising network and Ethereum-based crypto token exchange system.” I really don’t think that that’s a selling point. I really think most would think this is not a browser’s job. Also, not our job to help Eich displace Google. As users, this is not our concern at all.
- fastball 7y ago
  Integrating those things into the browser is for: 1. user privacy – the data for ads is processed in your browser and then only meta is sent to the ad network. Rather than the current system, where Google's/Facebook's ad network fingerprints your browser and then tries to track everything you do on the web. 2. convenience – you can have the browser automatically donate money to the people/websites you visit most without any payment processor middleman.
  - onyva 7y ago
    1.) I’m not gonna trust a company like Brave with anything personal. Why would I? 2.) We’ve got Mozilla doing a great job. Monetizing the internet is not a priority I care about and ads are not what I need my browser to optimize. Also there will always be the problem of Bernden Eich who gave money to take away people’s most basic right in California. I can’t support that.
    - fastball 7y ago
      1) Because it's open source so you don't need to trust them. 2) How is Mozilla facilitating that at all, much less doing a great job of it? 3) Brendan Eich co-founded Mozilla, so that's pretty funny given your point (2).
      - onyva 7y ago
        1) being open source doesn’t mean much in this context. 2) Mozilla’s stated goal and track record is user privacy. Brave’s is a Trojan horse for an alternative ad network. 3) we know who Eich is. Having co-founded Mozilla doesn’t make him a saint. The fact that his world view (expressed through real substantial action that has impact on people’s lives and happiness) is not compatible with what Mozilla stands for, is the reason why he’s not there anymore.
coleifer 7y ago
Brave shills everywhere these days. Sorry I'm not interested in this meme data harvesting "just give up" crap.
- jshevek 7y ago
  There is a lot of anti-Brave FUD, particularly on HN. It's good to see people pushing back against it in favor of a more rational treatment of the pros and cons of Brave.
decentralised 7y ago
I'm a big fan of Brave! Not only do I have a mostly ad-free web experience but it also saves me bandwidth and time. 22 hours saved in one year to be precise.
zelly 7y ago
Misleading title. I thought it was going to eschew the cryptocurrency stuff and focus on the fact that it's a just Chromium with some built-in privacy features, which is the only reason I use it.
divbzero 7y ago
> The idea that a single user browsing the web could have earned Brave anywhere near $25 in ad revenue is (coming from someone who worked in the ad industry for a couple years) completely absurd. Wait, is that what my attention is worth to the online ad industry? I would gladly pay <$25/month to not be tracked for ads. (Or, even better, enjoy that as a consumer right protected by law.)
- graeme 7y ago
  I think they're talking about an average user. Someone willing to pay not to get ads is probably worth more than $25.
  - divbzero 7y ago
    Fair point. I currently pay $0 for a decent ad blocker but my DNS is still unencrypted. I would not be surprised if my former ISP (Big Cable Co) found a way to track me that way, hopefully my current ISP (local utility) would not. Also suspect that data can leak through the ad blocker anyway via first-party requests.
untangle 7y ago
The article should be entitled "Brave Executive Team is Brilliant." Brilliant in two ways: (1) they are an ad company that has fairly successfully wrapped itself in a Klingon Cloaking Sheild made up of "open source" and "pro-privacy" atoms; and (2) they did an ICO at a perfect time (peak of hype with BC soaring) and ease of implementation (Etherium). It was so good (bad) that it brought a tear to my eye. Getting back to the article, I felt that the grade school "Daddy-O" interludes were unnecessary and distracting but I otherwise really liked it. And the illustrations were boss! In fact, I liked it so much that I wanted to buy the author a coffee. So I clicked the link and...I was taken to some startup payment service that made it a chore to pay $3, so I bailed. I thought that was ironic as that payment site reminded me of Brave. Intermediating a common transaction with useless clutter and therefore foiling it. So the Brave exec team and founders made a nice chunk of change and have perpetrated a ruse. But, luckily for users, they balanced Karma by producing a mighty-fine browser. Its capabilities rank it among the best.
cdrake 7y ago
https://brave.com/transparency/ https://brave.com/transparency/ To have a better idea of creators and advertisers volume. But hey Rudis is probably right. Everything should be free and no one should get paid for work. lets not even try to fix or attempt a different economic model. We're all so happy with the current one...
npv789 7y ago
at least i got something for what i do everyday (browsing)

303 points by Rudism 7y ago

I never really looked into BAT and only use Brave on mobile (mostly then as its UI for its javascript switch is far better than dealing with uMatrix on firefox mobile). I had no idea that the whole thing is yet another altcoin IPO with excellent marketing. They really must be laughing all the way to the bank...

animalnewbie 7y ago
Fx mobile has umatrix?!?! /Runs to download
- solnyshok 7y ago
  fx preview has uBlock
  - rudiv 7y ago
    Can't recommend it highly enough, the new engine is also a lot smoother.
  - boudin 7y ago
    The nightly build only for now
    - skrebbel 7y ago
      Huh? Fwiw I've run firefox mobile on Android with ublock origin for at least a year now.
      - ccmcarey 7y ago
        I believe they're referring to the preview browser, not the current one. The preview is only starting to support extensions again.
        boudin 7y ago
        Yes, I should have precised. Web extensions are a work in progress in Firefox preview. Currently it is only supported in Firefox preview nightly and only ublock origin is available.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    Yes, it's the only supported "add-on", it's preinstalled and cannot be removed. It's like the people in charge don't even know what an add-on is.
    - tomstockmail 7y ago
      Click on it, click remove. I'm not 100% if I had to specifically install it from the add ons menu, but I believe I had to. Also this is Firefox Preview we're talking about - even if it wasn't able to be uninstalled it's software that's in testing!
- lostmsu 7y ago
  Yes, you can install uMatrix, and it works normally. Writing from one.
101404 7y ago
Same here. Since using Brave, I have JavaScript off by default and can easily enable it for specific sites. Makes most websites so much faster.
naasking 7y ago
> I had no idea that the whole thing is yet another altcoin IPO with excellent marketing. Excellent marketing and a useful product with widespread appeal. It's weird that you focus on the coin as if it was the primary goal. It's merely a means to an end, and one of the best real-world uses of cryptocurrency that I've seen.
- asdkhadsj 7y ago
  Not to mention, if someone manages to make a useful product that benefits users and makes themselves money isn't that exactly what we want? Rarely do incentives align with consumers these days.
plerpin 7y ago
Excellent marketing, with an army of BAT bagholders willing to shill for the product pro bono.
- jshevek 7y ago
  Do you know of any individuals to whom this would apply? Or is this just speculation? This comment reads to me like poisoning the well and presumption of motive.
  - chance_state 7y ago
    Is it so outlandish to you that someone would promote a cryptocurrency because they will personally benefit from its success? Crypto holders shilling for their flavor of coin is a meme at this point.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - jshevek 7y ago
      I deleted a response in which I assumed you posted the original comment. My apologies. Do you disagree that the original comment was poisoning the well?
      - chance_state 7y ago
        I can't see it anymore because it's flagged and I don't remember exactly what it said. I thought it was more of an observation about how crypto folks are always promoting how great ____coin is.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post insinuations of astroturfing without evidence. That's seriously against the rules here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

mattlondon 7y ago

Totally off-topic but I really liked the CSS/design for this site. Simple layout, nice choice of fonts, and a sensible and easy-to-read colour combination for this "wall of text" style presentation. Nice one.

jackewiehose 7y ago
Interesting... I find it absolutely terrible. White monospace font on a black background - no thanks. Without reader mode I wouldn't stay a second on such a page.
- rectang 7y ago
  You're not alone. The book "Type and Layout" by Colin Wheildon describes a "readability" experiment measuring the impact of various typographical techniques on whether subjects comprehend a magazine article. Light text on black background performed abysmally. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1875750223 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1875750223 (Naturally I believe people who say white-on-black works for them, but I don't believe that preference is universal or should be a default if readability is an important criteria.)
  - e12e 7y ago
    Print and screen are not the same - as print is reflective, while screens are typically a light source. E-ink is closer to (low resolution, poor quality paper) print.
    - Marsymars 7y ago
      > E-ink is closer to (low resolution, poor quality paper) print. Was curious so I checked - high-end ereaders are 300 PPI, which tends to be the minimum PPI for good quality print.
      - e12e 7y ago
        Granted, dpi and ppi aren't the same - but print would normally be more like 1200 dpi. Even low en laser printers are 600 dpi. So while you might print a 300 ppi image, you'd probably print it at much higher than 300 dpi. E-ink screens are in a kind of middleground - they certainly have lower contrast and resolution than movable type (depending a bit on paper quality, but compared to say printed books).

cryptica 7y ago

One of the problems with BAT is that ERC20 doesn't scale so as they get more users, they will need to cut back on the frequency of payments. Also, a lot of that value is absorbed by the Ethereum network as transaction fees (GAS).

terhechte 7y ago
Isn't that a temporary problem though? With ETH 2 launching probably by the end of the year?
- latchkey 7y ago
  ETH2 phase 0 _may_ come at the end of the year. It will be many more years before ETH2 is live and trusted with real funds... enough to either absorb ETH1 or switch over to it. Heck, it may not happen at all. Amazing how this group mindset around ETH2 works.
  - cryptica 7y ago
    Agreed. I think most people don't realize how massive of a technical challenge it is to shard something as large and complex as the Ethereum blokchain without introducing critical security vulnerabilities. When you combine the complexity of the system, the constant need to try to maintain backwards compatibility and the sheer number of people involved in the project, you have every reason to be skeptical.
    - latchkey 7y ago
      I've also been following the progpow debate rather closely for the last 1.5 years. ProgPoW is supposed to be a simple PoW change to keep ETH1 asic resistant now that asics have been developed. This is a 2 year old codebase that has had a paid audit and tons of eyes on it. Just this week, someone discovered and announced an issue. While the fix is relatively trivial, the amazing thing is that it went unnoticed for so long. I can only imagine ETH2, which is a brand new codebase, whole new consensus model, using cutting edge research (zkSNARKS) and shaped like a rube goldberg machine, will be full of issues nobody has even dared to imagine. I couldn't imagine trusting billions of dollars of value to that literally over night.

wdjdkjwjeje 7y ago

Brave is brilliant at mobile design is what they're brilliant at. I find Chrome and Firefox on Android unusable because of how much better browsing with Brave feels. Firefox Lite and Microsoft Edge get closer to the pleasure of using Brave on mobile but neither comes close to matching it since Firefox lacks the reliability of Chromium browsers (I know, boo choosing browsers based on usefulness) and Edge has a fetish for bloated sub-menus.

huffmsa 7y ago
> Edge has a fetish for bloated sub-menus A Microsoft product with drop-downs inside of drop-downs? Say it ain't so. Brave does feel good, but it would be better if the spyglass at the bottom was "find in page" and not Search, since we have an omnibar.
- wdjdkjwjeje 7y ago
  Honestly the top-side omni-bar is what I dislike about a lot of mobile browsers. It's nice for seeing the web page but, imo, all frequently used controls should be at the bottom of the screen. Firefox Lite actually has a really strong gui with a few caveats! None of the mobile browsers, including Brave, are perfect in terms of layout. But if Brave could steal the bottom gui from Firefox Lite or if Firefox Lite had Brave's 'just works' factor, I'd be pretty happy.
dang 7y ago
Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

DyslexicAtheist 7y ago

being in the camp of "nothing ever good comes from adds", I've never considered Brave. A browser is a remote code execution engine for attacker-controlled content. Looking at their bounties on H1 https://hackerone.com/brave/hacktivity https://hackerone.com/brave/hacktivity they are still solving problems which Mozilla and Google have researched and extinguished long ago. I don't trust Brave to get the security right. Also Ethereum is a scam and doesn't scale but that's a whole other topic. As for their claims around paying content generators with their fake monopoly money, this article was absolutely on point.

chrisco255 7y ago
Brave is Chromium-based...it's literally a fork of the core source code for Chrome, so I don't think it would be any more insecure than that. And with Microsoft forking Chromium for Edge, Chromium should continue to get top-notch support on that front. Ethereum is not a scam. It has evolved a great deal over the past 6 years, and thanks to zero-knowledge proofs, ETH does scale now (up to 2300 transactions a second, without any need for further upgrades...see Loopring for an in-production implementation of this tech https://loopring.org/#/ https://loopring.org/#/), so you should update your knowledge on the subject. It's not fake money. It's getting paid to view ads. This is not even a new idea. I used to use an internet service back in the 90s that was free as long as they could spam me with ads (NetZero). Facebook and Google make hundreds of billions of dollars off of ads, do you really think there's no room in that to give back to consumers of ads some portion of the revenue? The only reason they don't is because their duopoly over internet advertising is pretty stable right now.
- mjd 7y ago
  > It's not fake money. It's getting paid to view ads. It's getting paid with fake money to view ads.
  - staticvoidmaine 7y ago
    Given that it’s convertible into USD and other “real” currencies, how do you expect this line of reasoning to hold?

_rrnv 7y ago

The author discovered how capitalism works. Everything that has value, has it because there are people willing to pay for it, not necessarily because it has value or purpose. To use a tangible example instead of a virtual one - go read how diamonds have been pumped up by the mining-cutting cartels to be perceived as very valuable while in fact it's very hard to convert them to cash without a significant loss. PS. I've read recently that to move large money in times of crisis it's best to use diamonds, rubies etc. over gold or cryptocurrencies (cash is a non-starter, too much space). Well good luck with converting these stones back at purchase value. It boggles the mind that people can't see how much freedom 24 seed words give in times of crisis. You could move a billion dollars stashed in pages of a harlequin novel through every border & customs check and nobody would ever know. Try that with physical materials.

pjc50 7y ago
> how much freedom 24 seed words give in times of crisis. You could move a billion dollars stashed in pages of a harlequin novel through every border & customs check and nobody would ever know. Try that with physical materials. But there's a problem: you never moved the money at all. You need to bookend it with two transactions to move the real money in and out of the bitcoin system, which nearly always involves intersecting the controls of the real system. It's more like hawala banking. And can suffer 50% exchange rate swings in a very short time.

latchkey 7y ago

I've been clicking the desktop ad notifications like a madman. Earning BAT, then taking that BAT and converting it to an interest bearing stable coin token in DeFi (~8%). Some of the BAT I earn, I also convert into ETH so I can pay for gas, making my transactions 'free'. It has been a fun experiment in playing with this stuff, but it certainly isn't going to make me rich or anything.

katsura 7y ago
You don't have to click on them to earn tokens.
- latchkey 7y ago
  Oh really? That's interesting... any documentation on this?
  - katsura 7y ago
    Yes, here: https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Brave-Ads-FAQ https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Bra... > In the initial Brave Ads release, users receive BAT for viewing the ad notifications. In future releases, users will be able to earn additional rewards for engagement events within the ad tabs. Brave does not reward users for clicking on the notifications. Brave’s position is that users should only click on ads that they have a genuine interest in engaging with.
    - latchkey 7y ago
      Sweet! You just saved me some clicking. Thanks!
woutr_be 7y ago
I thought you could only use the earned BAT to pay creators? Or has it changed?
- 7y ago

Dahoon 7y ago

Brave is just like Adblock whitelists, just hidden behind tech most people won't understand. The end result is the same. A scam.

stronghands 7y ago

If you can have the same ad free experience without a token doesn’t that make the token redundant and in long term Occam principle dictates it won’t catch on.

wffurr 7y ago
Until content publishers go out of business or lock their content behind paywalls, and the "ad free experience" only has hobbyist blogs and amateurs. A lot of low rent internet chum would also disappear. So maybe that's a fair trade off, but it will also hurt your local newspaper pretty badly. Nobody has really come up with a good sustainable alternative to ad-funded content for a lot of publishers. Brave is one of many attempts at this, too bad it smells a lot like a crypto currency scam.
- eitland 7y ago
  > but it will also hurt your local newspaper pretty badly. I already pay for my local newspaper (and most of their content is behind a paywall anyway).
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  > A lot of low rent internet chum would also disappear. So maybe that's a fair trade off, but it will also hurt your local newspaper pretty badly. Wow, we have _completely_ different understandings of the value of the Internet. To me, the (realized) promise of the Internet is not just an additional channel for established media, it's the decentralization of publishing in the first place. "Low rent internet chum" is a consequence of that, but IMO it's been far more than worth the tradeoff.
  - wffurr 7y ago
    Ad networks have been a key enabler of decentralized publishing. Anyone can sign up to an ad network and start getting paid for clicks. No traditional gatekeepers there. So I'm not sure where you get this idea that what I'm saying is in any way contradictory to what you said.

hiccuphippo 7y ago

What kind of information from the user does Brave hold and/or give to their ad publishers? And for how long? You are going from a situation where many ad networks receive pieces of information (ok, google 90% of the time) to a single ad network receiving 100% of information, which I don't think is good. Not to mention Brave becomes the gatekeeper of which content publishers receive BAT and I remember there was controversy over them banning someone's account because they didn't like the content. I'll stick with uBlock, thanks.

300bps 7y ago
I agree. I actually switched to the new Chromium version of Edge with uBlock. I still have Brave on both my iPhone and desktop which is permanently set to block all scripts. I use that for sites with paywall pop ups.
im3w1l 7y ago
> I remember there was controversy over them banning someone's account because they didn't like the content. Source?
songshuu 7y ago
All your questions are answered here : https://brave.com/privacy/ https://brave.com/privacy/ tldr; Brave as a 'single ad network' does not end up 'receiving 100% of information' because the overwhelming majority of that data stays on your machine, where it belongs.
BrendanEich 7y ago
I hope you mean uBlock Origin!

cslarson 7y ago

Brave is indeed very fast and particularly on mobile it is useful that the ad blocker is built-in. Thigh I think for most normies the fact that no plug-in is needed is underrated. I haven't opted in to ads. They pop up as notifications on mobile and it is very annoying.

jsjddbbwj 7y ago

Am I the only one who uses brave with all bat stuff off? It's a fork of chromium that's up to date, completely open source, ad blocking and fingerprinting defeating built-in, reader mode, etc. Chrome but just better.

fastball 7y ago
Wait there is a reader mode?
- jsjddbbwj 7y ago
  On mobile there is. Not sure about desktop
- snazz 7y ago
  There’s a flag for a built in reader mode on Chromium. It’s not very good, but it does work.
- jshevek 7y ago
  Here is how to enable reader mode in Brave: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22407265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22407265
jineshshah36 7y ago
Same
zrobotics 7y ago
I don't use it on desktop, but it's the best android browser I have used. For whatever reason, Firefox is a battery hog on my current phone, so I switched to brave. Although I agree with this article, the crypto model they have is scammy at best. I should really switch browsers on my phone; while brave works OK the fact that their revenue model is broken should signal that they will likely need to do something shady in the future. I never opted in to BAT simply because I figured that maybe 1% of the sites I visit would be opted in to the program. Plus, I'm not going back to watching ads.

_bparks_ 7y ago

The BAT stuff is dumb....I can’t wait to watch 30 mins of ads for 3 cents of a fake money no one wants.

nwah1 7y ago
Bingo. It's chromium, but with added crypto-"currency" nonsense. No thanks.
zormino 7y ago
It's literally taking other people's content, putting their own ads on it, and paying you fake money for the privalege. If I create content, I should be allowed to charge for it. I'm okay with people not wanting to pay or being worried about their security and disabling those ads. I am 1000% not okay with them stealing content to run their own ads. I don't want their fake money, they are essentially running a scam. They may as well just rehost other people's articles and videos with their own ads and skip the whole browser thing entirely, same scam different name. I don't care that a tonne bat shit has real monetary value. I don't want it. It's not legal tender, I'm not willing to accept it. I don't care that their fake internet tokens have monetary value. I don't want them. Brave is stealing from people and paying them in shit.

threepio 7y ago

Similar points to this critique, previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21776990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21776990

unnouinceput 7y ago

Quote: "You’re going to be browsing the web anyway; you’re going to be inundated with ads anyway;" Naaaah, Firefox with uBlock Origins and Privacy Badger makes sure I don't see ads, but thank you for trying.

nunodonato 7y ago
this. so much this. the web is so clean with firefox, everytime I read these kind of articles or people complaining I'm like "what are you talking about?"
- 12bits 7y ago
  To the credit of the author they did mention "I personally use an aggressive battery of ad blocking techniques to eliminate them from my browser too"
MuffinFlavored 7y ago
Can a similar level of privacy be reached through extensions with Safari on iOS or Chrome on Mac?
- mrtksn 7y ago
  Yes. I use safari on both, never see any ads and often get disappointed that I can’t be outraged when a post pops up about how we can see how FB/Google tracks us. On mac I use adGuard, in iOS I use Refine content blocker.
- Marsymars 7y ago
  With Safari, no, iOS/macOS content blockers are significantly less powerful than uBlock Origin. With Chrome, yes, as long as it continues to support uBlock Origin and you don't count its built-in communication with Google.
- lucasverra 7y ago
  i use nextdns.io to block at os level vpn. its free and they are partners of mozilla, so good enought for me. When I asked why should i trust them with my dns request they told me that i should not do it lightly.

jeffrallen 7y ago

...When it isn't crashing.

gitgud 7y ago

Maybe if instead of BAT, they could use a credit card payment or PayPal.... They've proven to scale very well too....

mythrwy 7y ago
Which can both suspend payments and tie up your money for {{ whatever_reason }} leaving the whole project dead. I think BAT was a good call. One of the few real use cases so far for a cryptocurrency.
rtisdale 7y ago
A major idea behind the software is that you can automatically tip websites or creators that you frequently consume. These amounts are pretty small. If PayPal or credit card were used (without prefunding things) you'd have most of that money eaten up by transaction costs. As others have mentioned, this does seem to be a "real" use for crypto currency to achieve microtransactions.
0-_-0 7y ago
You can buy BAT tokens with credit cards or PayPal

almost_usual 7y ago

I’ve been using Brave for years and this blog post ironically convinced me to try BAT.

syllable_studio 7y ago

Hey there @rudism, I'm glad you found out about Brave, thanks for sharing about it! You should consider verifying yourself as a brave publisher so we can tip you on this platform that you're "not going to use any time soon" :) My brave browser tells me: " rudism.com: Not yet verified This creator has not yet signed up to receive contributions from Brave users. Any tips you send will remain in your wallet until they verify. "

sebow 7y ago

Firefox/Brave are not 'private' when you compare them to something like ungoogled chromium(With UB origin &umatrix) or other firefox variants. We're talking about privacy as the primary concern and not usability/features.

Angeo34 7y ago

The way Brave is doing it currently though makes it look worse than snake oil. Why would they advertise a fingerprinting if it actually makes your fingerprint more unique? Why would they advertise Tor although using it inside Brave makes you instantly unique??? If this wasn't the case I'd not have a problem with it. This way it just seems like a huge scam (which considering you can just use Firefox with some add-ons it probably is Mr. Brendan Eich)

songshuu 7y ago
I think you wholly misunderstand that the fingerprint is randomized on every restart of the browser. That is so much noise that it renders fingerprinting as a strategy utterly useless.
- sombremesa 7y ago
  Most people don't restart their browsers as often as you might think (the modern trend is very much away from desktops). Especially on mobile, where things stick around in the background without your knowledge.
  - fastball 7y ago
    You can very easily hook into open/close events on any mobile OS – the concept of actually "restarting" the browser doesn't need to come into it.
- Angeo34 7y ago
  You are aware being based on Chromium means you cannot fake many vectors? Even Tor browser isn't able to spoof e everything Chromium hardly can spoof 1% of what Tor/Firefox can. You will maybe have a randomized fingerprint but it doesn't matter if 99% of other fingerprinting vectors are Stoll left open. Just look at their github. They have fingerprinting bugs that are beyond uniquely identifying (fonts best example) which are open since years. It isn't solvable through Chromium which all of Brave knows yet they market this.

jl2718 7y ago

It’s been almost 30 years and I still don’t understand why browsers exist. Isolated client-server apps were always better. Except that app design now emulates the browser. Soon we’ll have wasm apps that look and feel like windows 1.0 and call it revolutionary.

falcolas 7y ago
Browsers were built to distribute information via web pages (not apps originally). They’ve evolved since then (in the name of distributing information and entertainment more efficiently), to the point where they can emulate a native app. Apps are deployed via the browser today for one simple reason - they’re everywhere, and you can write your app once an run it just about anywhere. It’s the promise of Java, realized.
surround 7y ago
I actually prefer web apps because browsers make it easy to view control what’s being sent over my network. Requests are decrypted in the browser and can be viewed in plaintext with the browser console. They can be blocked using tools such as uBlock Origin. Standalone client-server apps have full, unsandboxed control of your computer. It’s impossible to see the content of encrypted network requests, short of hacking into the app. See: Wacom’s drivers track the name of every application that you open: https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/05/wacom-drawing-tablets-track-name-of-every-application-you-open/ https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/05/wacom-drawing-tablets-tr...
- jl2718 7y ago
  This is a good point, and I agree with you, but it seems there are better methods of isolation. Cell phones do this pretty well, and they are the dominant platform anyway, so I guess we're moving in that direction. I just wish I could use the UI features of a PC for all they offer beyond screen-based gestures.
  - surround 7y ago
    I suppose it’s less about isolation than about control. Phone apps are even more difficult to sniff.

sleavey 7y ago

I will not use Brave because I disagree with the legitimacy it gives to ads on the web. I want an ad-free web, or at least an ads-in-anything-like-their-current-form web. If that means the web is 1000x smaller than it currently is, then fine - most of the web today is total garbage anyway. I don't care about jobs supported by ads, because they're another form of 21st century bullshit job and we can invent some other forms of bullshit job to replace those lost to an ad-free web.

fastball 7y ago
Do you believe ads should not exist in the world period? How do you justify such a broad-spanning assertion?
- sleavey 7y ago
  I did not say they should not necessarily exist, I said they should not exist in their current form. I also want to go back to the days where websites were a labour of love from individuals, not always for-profit enterprises. Ads right now are attention stealing, privacy invading monsters as a result of an arms race for users' notice. They actively harm users for profit. There are ways to advertise without harming users, and hence there is a way to make business work on the web. I will continue to block every ad I see and refuse to use websites that find ways to circumvent ad blockers until providers significantly change their behaviours.
  - jshevek 7y ago
    > Ads right now are attention stealing, privacy invading monsters as a result of an arms race for users' notice All true, and this is why I use Brave. Brave punishes privacy invading ads. If you opt in to BAT, Brave values attention and gives users control over how the attention value is spent.
    - sleavey 7y ago
      Don't get me wrong, I am not being a contrarian for the sake of it, and I'm willing to be proved wrong and would be happy to find out someone has solved this. I just can't see how - related to your point about Brave punishing privacy invading ads - forcing advertisers to behave can be done effectively. Do Brave hire an army of ad referees to check if they meet Brave's criteria for privacy invasion (I doubt it)? Does it only let through same-origin, static ads that are part of the HTML source of the site? That'd be great but I also doubt it. Do I have to trust Brave to curate the ads I am allowed to see? Because they're also profit driven and have investors to please and I would not give them my trust lightly either. I'd be interested to find out how Brave actually achieve privacy respecting and non-attention invading ads.

surround 7y ago

The reason why “the internet is broken” is because of ads. Ads incentivize tracking and clickbait. In the end, ad companies, such as Google and Faceboook, act in the interests of advertisers, not users. Brave is an ad company. On the other hand, companies which are supported by user donations act in the best interests of users. This includes websites such as Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. Brave does offer the option to make a “tip” to websites, but it’s hardly necessary to have Brave be the middleman for all user donations.

fastball 7y ago
You, uh, don't need Brave to be the middleman for all user donations. That's exactly why they built the whole thing on top of decentralized cryptocurrency.
- surround 7y ago
  I’m not sure how decentralized BAT is when a single entity, Brave, controls it. Like the blog said, if you donate to a website that isn’t signed up on Brave’a program, Brave keeps the donation for itself.
  - fastball 7y ago
    I can send you BAT right now, which you can then immediately sell for fiat currency, without the involvement of anything related to Brave. Brave does not control BAT – it is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. Do they still own much of the BAT in circulation? Yes. But other than tanking the value of the BAT you own by selling all of theirs at once (a silly thing for them to do), there isn't much power they can exert.
    - surround 7y ago
      I suppose that’s the problem, then. Would another browser use BAT? No, because Brave already owns the majority of the Daddy-O dollars.

NelsonMinar 7y ago

I'm grateful to the author for the detailed analysis of the cryptocurrency part of the grift. Before I'd never got past the "Brave is taking ad revenue from publishers and keeping it for themseleves" part in any detail.

ac29 7y ago
All ad networks keep revenue for themselves, so in this regard they aren't any different than Google or Facebook providing the ads. But, they also give a cut to users, so unless Brave's cut + the user cut is less than the existing ad networks' take, that's less money for publishers.
- NelsonMinar 7y ago
  What a facile turn you took there. Google and Facebook have agreements with the websites they place the ads on. They asked for those ads to be there. Brave did not.
  - ac29 7y ago
    I think I misunderstood your comment - you are right, Brave's status quo is that they keep all of the revenue from by replacing publishers ads (minus they amount they give to users). My point was that in theory, if: 1) advertisers were willing to pay Brave the same amount as they do existing advertisers, and 2) Brave took a similar cut as existing advertisers (including user payouts), and 3) Publishers were actually taking BAT from Brave Then there wouldn't be much of a financial difference in who was placing ads. #3 is obviously not the case currently, which seems to be the point you were making. To be 100% clear: I don't support what Brave is doing, have never used their products, and think their entire business model and its associated crypto-nonsense is at best a waste of time.
    - NelsonMinar 7y ago
      Fair enough. I think the concept of some alternate way of paying publishers is great. But that's not what Brave is doing. They're more like the AdBlocker Plus shakedown, where they deprive a site of their ad revenue and then say "well if you want some of that back you can have part of it back from us by showing the ads we want you to."

onyva 7y ago

“...its built-in advertising network and Ethereum-based crypto token exchange system.” I really don’t think that that’s a selling point. I really think most would think this is not a browser’s job. Also, not our job to help Eich displace Google. As users, this is not our concern at all.

fastball 7y ago
Integrating those things into the browser is for: 1. user privacy – the data for ads is processed in your browser and then only meta is sent to the ad network. Rather than the current system, where Google's/Facebook's ad network fingerprints your browser and then tries to track everything you do on the web. 2. convenience – you can have the browser automatically donate money to the people/websites you visit most without any payment processor middleman.
- onyva 7y ago
  1.) I’m not gonna trust a company like Brave with anything personal. Why would I? 2.) We’ve got Mozilla doing a great job. Monetizing the internet is not a priority I care about and ads are not what I need my browser to optimize. Also there will always be the problem of Bernden Eich who gave money to take away people’s most basic right in California. I can’t support that.
  - fastball 7y ago
    1) Because it's open source so you don't need to trust them. 2) How is Mozilla facilitating that at all, much less doing a great job of it? 3) Brendan Eich co-founded Mozilla, so that's pretty funny given your point (2).
    - onyva 7y ago
      1) being open source doesn’t mean much in this context. 2) Mozilla’s stated goal and track record is user privacy. Brave’s is a Trojan horse for an alternative ad network. 3) we know who Eich is. Having co-founded Mozilla doesn’t make him a saint. The fact that his world view (expressed through real substantial action that has impact on people’s lives and happiness) is not compatible with what Mozilla stands for, is the reason why he’s not there anymore.

coleifer 7y ago

Brave shills everywhere these days. Sorry I'm not interested in this meme data harvesting "just give up" crap.

jshevek 7y ago
There is a lot of anti-Brave FUD, particularly on HN. It's good to see people pushing back against it in favor of a more rational treatment of the pros and cons of Brave.

decentralised 7y ago

I'm a big fan of Brave! Not only do I have a mostly ad-free web experience but it also saves me bandwidth and time. 22 hours saved in one year to be precise.

zelly 7y ago

Misleading title. I thought it was going to eschew the cryptocurrency stuff and focus on the fact that it's a just Chromium with some built-in privacy features, which is the only reason I use it.

divbzero 7y ago

> The idea that a single user browsing the web could have earned Brave anywhere near $25 in ad revenue is (coming from someone who worked in the ad industry for a couple years) completely absurd. Wait, is that what my attention is worth to the online ad industry? I would gladly pay <$25/month to not be tracked for ads. (Or, even better, enjoy that as a consumer right protected by law.)

graeme 7y ago
I think they're talking about an average user. Someone willing to pay not to get ads is probably worth more than $25.
- divbzero 7y ago
  Fair point. I currently pay $0 for a decent ad blocker but my DNS is still unencrypted. I would not be surprised if my former ISP (Big Cable Co) found a way to track me that way, hopefully my current ISP (local utility) would not. Also suspect that data can leak through the ad blocker anyway via first-party requests.

untangle 7y ago

The article should be entitled "Brave Executive Team is Brilliant." Brilliant in two ways: (1) they are an ad company that has fairly successfully wrapped itself in a Klingon Cloaking Sheild made up of "open source" and "pro-privacy" atoms; and (2) they did an ICO at a perfect time (peak of hype with BC soaring) and ease of implementation (Etherium). It was so good (bad) that it brought a tear to my eye. Getting back to the article, I felt that the grade school "Daddy-O" interludes were unnecessary and distracting but I otherwise really liked it. And the illustrations were boss! In fact, I liked it so much that I wanted to buy the author a coffee. So I clicked the link and...I was taken to some startup payment service that made it a chore to pay $3, so I bailed. I thought that was ironic as that payment site reminded me of Brave. Intermediating a common transaction with useless clutter and therefore foiling it. So the Brave exec team and founders made a nice chunk of change and have perpetrated a ruse. But, luckily for users, they balanced Karma by producing a mighty-fine browser. Its capabilities rank it among the best.

cdrake 7y ago

https://brave.com/transparency/ https://brave.com/transparency/ To have a better idea of creators and advertisers volume. But hey Rudis is probably right. Everything should be free and no one should get paid for work. lets not even try to fix or attempt a different economic model. We're all so happy with the current one...

npv789 7y ago

at least i got something for what i do everyday (browsing)