11 ms·

I'm surprised people are surprised by this. Brave have said from the beginning that this is how their business model works. What I'm even more surprised about i

I'm surprised people are surprised by this. Brave have said from the beginning that this is how their business model works. What I'm even more surprised about is that Brave has gotten any traction at all, as there is really no reason to use it instead of a normal browser with regular ad blockers.

Shank 6y ago
> Brave have said from the beginning that this is how their business model works. This sounded like a pretty surprising claim. I looked at the terms of use (https://brave.com/terms-of-use/ https://brave.com/terms-of-use/) and the privacy policy for the browser (https://brave.com/privacy/ https://brave.com/privacy/) and I wasn't able to find any reference to the notion of automatically inserting affiliate or referral links. Do you have a more specific source on this? I'm really curious about when and how this has been communicated. I'm not trying to accuse you of anything, I just want to make sure I'm understanding the situation correctly.
- toyg 6y ago
  The substance of their business model has always been "we fight advertisers because money should flow to websites through us". They changed actual terms a few times when called up on their tactics being shady, but that's always been the end goal. In that framework, hijacking referral links is par for the course. I don't blame them - a man's gotta eat, and they're not doing anything illegal or dangerous - but I've always found very curious that some people actually believe using Brave might be an "ethical" choice. It just isn't, it's simply a better mousetrap.
  - SahAssar 6y ago
    > they're not doing anything illegal or dangerous The words "dishonest" and "rent-seeking" come to mind. Also, it seems that using affiliate links without disclosure might actually be illegal.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      That’s exactly how I feel about it. I’ve never doubted the legality, some pretty shocking things can be defended in TOS, but it just feels dishonest and scammy.
    - bootlooped 6y ago
      I would be surprised if inserting affiliate links in this manner wasn't against the TOS of the site. It's not adding value for the site if Brave is just front-running people who have already decided to go there.
      - plerpin 6y ago
        Brave and Binance have a preexisting business relationship. Brave uses its own crypto funny-money and I think they even integrated a Binance-monitoring widget into the browser.
        davidgerard 6y ago
        This is how much Binance stuff is already built into Brave: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/search?q=binance&unscoped_q=binance https://github.com/brave/brave-core/search?q=binance&unscope...
        plerpin 6y ago
        Yikessssssssssssssssssssssssssss
    - onyva 6y ago
      Brave is really not solving any problem. People that truly want ads removed so they don’t get tracked or bothered, should simply install Firefox. It’s a brilliant browser regardless, and being developed and supported by a non for profit with a proven track record is what makes it trustworthy. Brave can’t compete with that and Eich is not somebody anyone should rally behind in respect to ethical choices, or moral example. His personal choices to support legislation that will deny basic human rights from the LGBTQ community is a BIG clue.
  - _eht 6y ago
    You can believe it, they are really good at advertising and marketing. They know the arena very well. Ad Ops is their biggest dept, if I had to guess. Everything they do is intentional with an end goal of getting a market share of the ad industry. It’s huge. They want a piece of it, and you’re right, who can blame them.
    - fredsanford 6y ago
      Vivaldi works too... https://vivaldi.com/download/ https://vivaldi.com/download/
noxer 6y ago
Collecting sh*tcoins is a reason for a lot of the crypto people. Also many many people put brave download ref links all other their web-presents to generate revenue. Even people who do not use it and openly admit that, still gladly collect the bucks form other downloading it. The whole ref thing is the classic ponzi and it always works for a while because people do whatever you want if the work/reward ratio is good.
- _eht 6y ago
  To your point, they are collecting contributions for URLs that are not signed up on the platform. When I heard this I checked a few of my publishing URLs and sure enough they are accumulating ETH/BAT without me doing anything.
  - notwhereyouare 6y ago
    I know a while back, Tom Scott got pretty annoyed with them for collecting money for him without telling people that he wasn’t on their system
flarex 6y ago
You can get paid for using the browser by being shown replacement non-targeted ads. Although it's a trivial amount.
- trickldwn8nxjf 6y ago
  Ah, the cornerstone of trickle down economics! “If you buy into the idea I’m super important, lift me up unreasonably, I’ll pay you back pennies on the dollar!”
  - jerf 6y ago
    It's more profound than that; as I've pointed out on HN a few times, despite what you may think, advertisers don't make that much from you. The problem with the whole "pay people to watch ads" or "share the ad profits with people" plan is that there isn't anywhere near enough money in advertising to make it worth while. We're collectively selling out our social media for an outrage factory, our entire news industry for clickbait, our privacy for everything we do online, and all the second-order effects of all that and more for on the order of $50/year. I worked out the numbers for Facebook once: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19459604#19462402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19459604#19462402 Aggregated across all of humanity it's worth it to spending millions of dollars to pick up a few more fractions of a penny per person, but if you try to "share the wealth" it just isn't nearly enough.
    - kyuudou 6y ago
      Perhaps such platforms aren't necessarily about selling advertising. Gold mine for big data analytics though!
      - jerf 6y ago
        The numbers I made come from basic division on the money made by Facebook. No matter how they make it, unless they're completely hiding it from Wall Street, my numbers account for it.
josephcsible 6y ago
Does anyone use Brave on the desktop? I thought Brave was only relevant on mobile, since mobile Chrome doesn't support extensions, and for some reason unknown to me people don't want to just use Firefox there.
- FillardMillmore 6y ago
  Unless something's changed recently, Brave mobile doesn't support extensions either.
  - istjohn 6y ago
    No, but Brave has adblocking built in.
    - smhmd 6y ago
      Kiwi Browser does support extensions. It's what I use.
  - doasifoo 6y ago
    Brave starting this month will support extensions on mobile. https://www.xda-developers.com/brave-browser-android-dev-would-add-extension-support-2020/ https://www.xda-developers.com/brave-browser-android-dev-wou... https://twitter.com/SergZh_/status/1262885174590791682 https://twitter.com/SergZh_/status/1262885174590791682
    - FillardMillmore 6y ago
      Good info, thanks for the links.
- leppr 6y ago
  > for some reason unknown to me people don't want to just use Firefox there. Initial loading of webpages on Android Firefox is very slow compared to Chromium browsers.
mmcru 6y ago
I use it on iOS because its an easy solution for ad-blocking. Is there a good ad-blocker for Safari on iOS?
- lyonlim 6y ago
  I use Ad Guard and it works!
- olliej 6y ago
  I use 1blocker but its a paid one - there are a bunch of free ones as well but I got bored working out which ones were scammy and 1blocker (at the point in time I started using it) seemed not to be scammy.
- chrisjarvis 6y ago
  I use 1Blocker on iOS and MacOS safari, which is great but costs 5$ a year. There is no full port of uBlock to safari at this time.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I used to use 1blocker, but switched to Wipr after 1blocker started charging yearly or whatever. Also, firefox focus is a free ad blocker on iOS.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    I'm a huge fan of 1Blocker and I'm glad they charge $5 a year and it's someone's full time lifestyle company. I've had a few content blocking apps on iOS and they've all been abandoned (or worse sold to ad companies). 1Blocker so far has stuck around and stayed high quality.
- trickldwn8nxjf 6y ago
  Ad Block fast is open source & no $ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-fast/id1032930802 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-fast/id1032930802
- ztjio 6y ago
atombender 6y ago
I use Brave because it's a "degoogled" Chrome. Having good blocking built in is a plus. Being able to use Chrome extensions is also a plus. I've tried Firefox many times over the years, and only recently has it gotten to a point where it's fast and nice enough on macOS. There are still corners of the app I dislike (it doesn't always feel like a native app, for example), but this may be a reason to finally switch.
- alistproducer2 6y ago
  Same here but edge is offering the same on desktop so im switching. For mobile, brave is my daily driver.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Check out vivaldi. Edge will have various phone home random messages to Microsoft to let them know what you're doing.
    - alistproducer2 6y ago
      Interesting. Ill have to update pihole to put a stop to that
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Vivaldi is another Chromium based browser, although it's closed source. Firefox was getting much better for a while right after the Quantum release, but recently it has fallen way behind.
  - agotterer 6y ago
    I came here to suggest Vivaldi. I’ve been using it for nearly two years as my primary browser. It’s not perfect, but no browser is. However, it’s the only browser I’ve found that treats It’s users like an adult and lets them setup the browser the way they want.
Borish_Johnson 6y ago
What a stupid comment, wow.
_bxg1 6y ago
Its goal was to create a sustainable alternative to ads, not just block them. I haven't been keeping up with it so I don't know how successful that's been, but it's a noble task that nobody else is really working on.
- basch 6y ago
  Ill go a step further, with a likely very unpopular opinion. I think they should leave this feature in the browser, and make it one of the opt in options along with viewing ads. If I like the product, I may not have a problem supporting them with affiliate link rewrites, if it funds technical development and engineering.
- manigandham 6y ago
  Plenty of people and dozens of companies have worked on similar things and continue to this day. Brave is not an alternative to ads. They are just an ad network that replaces the ads on the page with their own, and then splits some of the money with you instead of sending it all to the publisher.
chippy 6y ago
> I'm surprised people are surprised by this I am thinking of creating a website with two lists of comment threads - the first to collate all the times users say "why are people surprised" at something which is surprising but which has some people already in the know and the second to collate comments about downvoting "why the downvotes", "not sure why you are being downvoted" etc What other phrases do we use that we can add? I was thinking of also "free speech doesnt apply to private companies"
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jabirali 6y ago
I think the main benefit is precisely that it comes with blocking of ads and trackers by default. I use Firefox myself (mostly because I love Container Tabs), but usually recommend Brave to less techy people as it requires zero post-install configuration.

Shank 6y ago

> Brave have said from the beginning that this is how their business model works. This sounded like a pretty surprising claim. I looked at the terms of use (https://brave.com/terms-of-use/ https://brave.com/terms-of-use/) and the privacy policy for the browser (https://brave.com/privacy/ https://brave.com/privacy/) and I wasn't able to find any reference to the notion of automatically inserting affiliate or referral links. Do you have a more specific source on this? I'm really curious about when and how this has been communicated. I'm not trying to accuse you of anything, I just want to make sure I'm understanding the situation correctly.

toyg 6y ago
The substance of their business model has always been "we fight advertisers because money should flow to websites through us". They changed actual terms a few times when called up on their tactics being shady, but that's always been the end goal. In that framework, hijacking referral links is par for the course. I don't blame them - a man's gotta eat, and they're not doing anything illegal or dangerous - but I've always found very curious that some people actually believe using Brave might be an "ethical" choice. It just isn't, it's simply a better mousetrap.
- SahAssar 6y ago
  > they're not doing anything illegal or dangerous The words "dishonest" and "rent-seeking" come to mind. Also, it seems that using affiliate links without disclosure might actually be illegal.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    That’s exactly how I feel about it. I’ve never doubted the legality, some pretty shocking things can be defended in TOS, but it just feels dishonest and scammy.
  - bootlooped 6y ago
    I would be surprised if inserting affiliate links in this manner wasn't against the TOS of the site. It's not adding value for the site if Brave is just front-running people who have already decided to go there.
    - plerpin 6y ago
      Brave and Binance have a preexisting business relationship. Brave uses its own crypto funny-money and I think they even integrated a Binance-monitoring widget into the browser.
      - davidgerard 6y ago
        This is how much Binance stuff is already built into Brave: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/search?q=binance&unscoped_q=binance https://github.com/brave/brave-core/search?q=binance&unscope...
        plerpin 6y ago
        Yikessssssssssssssssssssssssssss
  - onyva 6y ago
    Brave is really not solving any problem. People that truly want ads removed so they don’t get tracked or bothered, should simply install Firefox. It’s a brilliant browser regardless, and being developed and supported by a non for profit with a proven track record is what makes it trustworthy. Brave can’t compete with that and Eich is not somebody anyone should rally behind in respect to ethical choices, or moral example. His personal choices to support legislation that will deny basic human rights from the LGBTQ community is a BIG clue.
- _eht 6y ago
  You can believe it, they are really good at advertising and marketing. They know the arena very well. Ad Ops is their biggest dept, if I had to guess. Everything they do is intentional with an end goal of getting a market share of the ad industry. It’s huge. They want a piece of it, and you’re right, who can blame them.
  - fredsanford 6y ago
    Vivaldi works too... https://vivaldi.com/download/ https://vivaldi.com/download/

noxer 6y ago

Collecting sh*tcoins is a reason for a lot of the crypto people. Also many many people put brave download ref links all other their web-presents to generate revenue. Even people who do not use it and openly admit that, still gladly collect the bucks form other downloading it. The whole ref thing is the classic ponzi and it always works for a while because people do whatever you want if the work/reward ratio is good.

_eht 6y ago
To your point, they are collecting contributions for URLs that are not signed up on the platform. When I heard this I checked a few of my publishing URLs and sure enough they are accumulating ETH/BAT without me doing anything.
- notwhereyouare 6y ago
  I know a while back, Tom Scott got pretty annoyed with them for collecting money for him without telling people that he wasn’t on their system

flarex 6y ago

You can get paid for using the browser by being shown replacement non-targeted ads. Although it's a trivial amount.

trickldwn8nxjf 6y ago
Ah, the cornerstone of trickle down economics! “If you buy into the idea I’m super important, lift me up unreasonably, I’ll pay you back pennies on the dollar!”
- jerf 6y ago
  It's more profound than that; as I've pointed out on HN a few times, despite what you may think, advertisers don't make that much from you. The problem with the whole "pay people to watch ads" or "share the ad profits with people" plan is that there isn't anywhere near enough money in advertising to make it worth while. We're collectively selling out our social media for an outrage factory, our entire news industry for clickbait, our privacy for everything we do online, and all the second-order effects of all that and more for on the order of $50/year. I worked out the numbers for Facebook once: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19459604#19462402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19459604#19462402 Aggregated across all of humanity it's worth it to spending millions of dollars to pick up a few more fractions of a penny per person, but if you try to "share the wealth" it just isn't nearly enough.
  - kyuudou 6y ago
    Perhaps such platforms aren't necessarily about selling advertising. Gold mine for big data analytics though!
    - jerf 6y ago
      The numbers I made come from basic division on the money made by Facebook. No matter how they make it, unless they're completely hiding it from Wall Street, my numbers account for it.

josephcsible 6y ago

Does anyone use Brave on the desktop? I thought Brave was only relevant on mobile, since mobile Chrome doesn't support extensions, and for some reason unknown to me people don't want to just use Firefox there.

FillardMillmore 6y ago
Unless something's changed recently, Brave mobile doesn't support extensions either.
- istjohn 6y ago
  No, but Brave has adblocking built in.
  - smhmd 6y ago
    Kiwi Browser does support extensions. It's what I use.
- doasifoo 6y ago
  Brave starting this month will support extensions on mobile. https://www.xda-developers.com/brave-browser-android-dev-would-add-extension-support-2020/ https://www.xda-developers.com/brave-browser-android-dev-wou... https://twitter.com/SergZh_/status/1262885174590791682 https://twitter.com/SergZh_/status/1262885174590791682
  - FillardMillmore 6y ago
    Good info, thanks for the links.
leppr 6y ago
> for some reason unknown to me people don't want to just use Firefox there. Initial loading of webpages on Android Firefox is very slow compared to Chromium browsers.

mmcru 6y ago

I use it on iOS because its an easy solution for ad-blocking. Is there a good ad-blocker for Safari on iOS?

lyonlim 6y ago
I use Ad Guard and it works!
olliej 6y ago
I use 1blocker but its a paid one - there are a bunch of free ones as well but I got bored working out which ones were scammy and 1blocker (at the point in time I started using it) seemed not to be scammy.
chrisjarvis 6y ago
I use 1Blocker on iOS and MacOS safari, which is great but costs 5$ a year. There is no full port of uBlock to safari at this time.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I used to use 1blocker, but switched to Wipr after 1blocker started charging yearly or whatever. Also, firefox focus is a free ad blocker on iOS.
- fossuser 6y ago
  I'm a huge fan of 1Blocker and I'm glad they charge $5 a year and it's someone's full time lifestyle company. I've had a few content blocking apps on iOS and they've all been abandoned (or worse sold to ad companies). 1Blocker so far has stuck around and stayed high quality.
trickldwn8nxjf 6y ago
Ad Block fast is open source & no $ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-fast/id1032930802 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-fast/id1032930802
ztjio 6y ago

atombender 6y ago

I use Brave because it's a "degoogled" Chrome. Having good blocking built in is a plus. Being able to use Chrome extensions is also a plus. I've tried Firefox many times over the years, and only recently has it gotten to a point where it's fast and nice enough on macOS. There are still corners of the app I dislike (it doesn't always feel like a native app, for example), but this may be a reason to finally switch.

alistproducer2 6y ago
Same here but edge is offering the same on desktop so im switching. For mobile, brave is my daily driver.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Check out vivaldi. Edge will have various phone home random messages to Microsoft to let them know what you're doing.
  - alistproducer2 6y ago
    Interesting. Ill have to update pihole to put a stop to that
djsumdog 6y ago
Vivaldi is another Chromium based browser, although it's closed source. Firefox was getting much better for a while right after the Quantum release, but recently it has fallen way behind.
- agotterer 6y ago
  I came here to suggest Vivaldi. I’ve been using it for nearly two years as my primary browser. It’s not perfect, but no browser is. However, it’s the only browser I’ve found that treats It’s users like an adult and lets them setup the browser the way they want.

Borish_Johnson 6y ago

What a stupid comment, wow.

_bxg1 6y ago

Its goal was to create a sustainable alternative to ads, not just block them. I haven't been keeping up with it so I don't know how successful that's been, but it's a noble task that nobody else is really working on.

basch 6y ago
Ill go a step further, with a likely very unpopular opinion. I think they should leave this feature in the browser, and make it one of the opt in options along with viewing ads. If I like the product, I may not have a problem supporting them with affiliate link rewrites, if it funds technical development and engineering.
manigandham 6y ago
Plenty of people and dozens of companies have worked on similar things and continue to this day. Brave is not an alternative to ads. They are just an ad network that replaces the ads on the page with their own, and then splits some of the money with you instead of sending it all to the publisher.

chippy 6y ago

> I'm surprised people are surprised by this I am thinking of creating a website with two lists of comment threads - the first to collate all the times users say "why are people surprised" at something which is surprising but which has some people already in the know and the second to collate comments about downvoting "why the downvotes", "not sure why you are being downvoted" etc What other phrases do we use that we can add? I was thinking of also "free speech doesnt apply to private companies"

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jabirali 6y ago

I think the main benefit is precisely that it comes with blocking of ads and trackers by default. I use Firefox myself (mostly because I love Container Tabs), but usually recommend Brave to less techy people as it requires zero post-install configuration.