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Person 1: Brave replaces existing ads, that’s bad Someone from Brave: actually we don’t replace existing ads at all, here’s why Person 2: no one cares what yo

Person 1: Brave replaces existing ads, that’s bad Someone from Brave: actually we don’t replace existing ads at all, here’s why Person 2: no one cares what you do or don’t do with existing ads! I don’t have any connection to Brave but I find it odd they’ve become some kind of hate figure here on HN. Their iOS client IMO is quite good. Their privacy is miles ahead of the other options. But merely by trying to be privacy first they get crap for not always being perfect. See also: Signal, OpenPGP, Firefox.

smoldesu 5y ago
> Their privacy is miles ahead of the other options. If by "other options" you're purely referring to "the 5 most popular browsers", you're mostly right. Brave still uses much more telemetry than UnGoogled Chromium and Vivaldi, so make of that what you will.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  I reviewed Vivaldi back in 2019 on Twitter (see https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165358155922059266 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11653581559220592...), and later again for an official blog post (see https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traffic-results/ https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traff...). It was indeed much better than many of the other top browsers. Brave does, however, still come out on top when you consider Vivaldi proxies few, if any, requests to Google. On the topic of telemetry, I just updated it and launched a new window to find an immediate call to vialdi.com/rep/rep passing along 25 distinct pieces of information, including what appears to be a distinct 16-character ID (key: _id). Another 6-character ID (key: pv_id) was also passed along for the ride. I'd have to take a closer look into the traffic to determine how sticky these are to the user, device, or browser instance. Anybody interested can download Telerik Fiddler (or the HTTP Toolkit) and conduct a cursory review of the network activity as well. Vivaldi does still come out near the top of the list of browsers though. For example, they don't send keystrokes to Google or Bing behind the scenes as you type. That's a unique restraint not commonly observed in browsers today.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    At this point, I think I'm more comfortable with Google getting my data than Brave. Thanks for the help!
    - gr3pls 5y ago
      Ah yes, brand good
  - mynameismon 5y ago
    Vivaldi user here. If anyone is interested in Vivaldi's network requests, feel free to check their blog post that addresses the same: https://vivaldi.com/blog/decoding-network-activity-in-vivaldi/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/decoding-network-activity-in-vivald...
mustacheemperor 5y ago
I didn’t realize Brave had become a “hate figure” here but it seems like the discussion in this thread took a hard turn to the kind of conspiratorial, reactionary, nasty “gotcha” reply behavior I come to Hackernews specifically to avoid. In this thread are multiple examples of the Brave employee saying Thing A and just getting mean-spirited responses reframing A as negatively as possible as if it’s an argument retort. Example: “Oh this person works for Brave, don’t trust them.” Or in reply to the post explaining what sounds like a bug in the application being misread as a way to grift money from traffic, “No revenue made? So you got caught before you got paid?” Or the clarification that Brave browser ads are confined to the browser and OS UI followed by repetition of the same insisted point that they “block then replace browser ads,” while the rep seems to have explained quite clearly opt-in browser ads are not presented inline to the webpage content. It is, sorry to use a tired comparison, “Reddit behavior.” I recently saw a note by dang in a Bitcoin thread about how crypto tends to generate repetitive arguments on HN and it seems like that blind spot for the community may have eclipsed Brave by association (maybe in addition to HN’s negativity towards anything ad related). I keep scrolling further expecting to learn something salient about why I shouldn’t trust Brave but instead I see a bunch of people beating on a community rep.
- pmurt7 5y ago
  This bullshit has nothing to do with Brave. Brendan Eich (Brave CEO) was cancelled years ago, and the mob is still after him. That's what going on really, it's cancel culture at its finest.
  - approxim8ion 5y ago
    Won't anyone think of the poor homophobe?
    - pmurt7 5y ago
      Thank you for making my point
      - 5y ago
jay_kyburz 5y ago
>Person 1: Brave replaces existing ads, that’s bad >Someone from Brave: actually we don’t replace existing ads at all, here’s why Me: Brave guy used a lot of words but what they said was they remove ads from one place and move them to another place, that's still replacing ads.
- cortexio 5y ago
  not if it's opt-in... if i install a firefox plugin that puts all pages full of ads, it's not firefox doing that.. it's me.
  - jay_kyburz 5y ago
    Did Firefox implement a nice button for you to turn it on? Did they sell the ads to the advertisers? Did they take a cut of the money? Did they trick you into thinking it was a good idea? That's not you.

smoldesu 5y ago

> Their privacy is miles ahead of the other options. If by "other options" you're purely referring to "the 5 most popular browsers", you're mostly right. Brave still uses much more telemetry than UnGoogled Chromium and Vivaldi, so make of that what you will.

jonathansampson 5y ago
I reviewed Vivaldi back in 2019 on Twitter (see https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165358155922059266 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11653581559220592...), and later again for an official blog post (see https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traffic-results/ https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traff...). It was indeed much better than many of the other top browsers. Brave does, however, still come out on top when you consider Vivaldi proxies few, if any, requests to Google. On the topic of telemetry, I just updated it and launched a new window to find an immediate call to vialdi.com/rep/rep passing along 25 distinct pieces of information, including what appears to be a distinct 16-character ID (key: _id). Another 6-character ID (key: pv_id) was also passed along for the ride. I'd have to take a closer look into the traffic to determine how sticky these are to the user, device, or browser instance. Anybody interested can download Telerik Fiddler (or the HTTP Toolkit) and conduct a cursory review of the network activity as well. Vivaldi does still come out near the top of the list of browsers though. For example, they don't send keystrokes to Google or Bing behind the scenes as you type. That's a unique restraint not commonly observed in browsers today.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  At this point, I think I'm more comfortable with Google getting my data than Brave. Thanks for the help!
  - gr3pls 5y ago
    Ah yes, brand good
- mynameismon 5y ago
  Vivaldi user here. If anyone is interested in Vivaldi's network requests, feel free to check their blog post that addresses the same: https://vivaldi.com/blog/decoding-network-activity-in-vivaldi/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/decoding-network-activity-in-vivald...

mustacheemperor 5y ago

I didn’t realize Brave had become a “hate figure” here but it seems like the discussion in this thread took a hard turn to the kind of conspiratorial, reactionary, nasty “gotcha” reply behavior I come to Hackernews specifically to avoid. In this thread are multiple examples of the Brave employee saying Thing A and just getting mean-spirited responses reframing A as negatively as possible as if it’s an argument retort. Example: “Oh this person works for Brave, don’t trust them.” Or in reply to the post explaining what sounds like a bug in the application being misread as a way to grift money from traffic, “No revenue made? So you got caught before you got paid?” Or the clarification that Brave browser ads are confined to the browser and OS UI followed by repetition of the same insisted point that they “block then replace browser ads,” while the rep seems to have explained quite clearly opt-in browser ads are not presented inline to the webpage content. It is, sorry to use a tired comparison, “Reddit behavior.” I recently saw a note by dang in a Bitcoin thread about how crypto tends to generate repetitive arguments on HN and it seems like that blind spot for the community may have eclipsed Brave by association (maybe in addition to HN’s negativity towards anything ad related). I keep scrolling further expecting to learn something salient about why I shouldn’t trust Brave but instead I see a bunch of people beating on a community rep.

pmurt7 5y ago
This bullshit has nothing to do with Brave. Brendan Eich (Brave CEO) was cancelled years ago, and the mob is still after him. That's what going on really, it's cancel culture at its finest.
- approxim8ion 5y ago
  Won't anyone think of the poor homophobe?
  - pmurt7 5y ago
    Thank you for making my point
    - 5y ago

jay_kyburz 5y ago

>Person 1: Brave replaces existing ads, that’s bad >Someone from Brave: actually we don’t replace existing ads at all, here’s why Me: Brave guy used a lot of words but what they said was they remove ads from one place and move them to another place, that's still replacing ads.

cortexio 5y ago
not if it's opt-in... if i install a firefox plugin that puts all pages full of ads, it's not firefox doing that.. it's me.
- jay_kyburz 5y ago
  Did Firefox implement a nice button for you to turn it on? Did they sell the ads to the advertisers? Did they take a cut of the money? Did they trick you into thinking it was a good idea? That's not you.