19 ms·

Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

178 points by mlinksva 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jppope 5y ago
damn... Brave is just crushing it. I've been using brave search and its amazing for development... the code samples are front and center
- nicce 5y ago
  It is just very hard to trust them... they get caught on very hostile things again and again, when they promise that won't happen again. In the end, they are yet another ad based company.
  - dkdk8283 5y ago
    Is Mozilla any better? They’ve lost their way and Google remains their largest source of income.
    - nicce 5y ago
      It is true that they get most of their income by setting Google as default search engine. However, they do not promote or support Google's way to do many things, and all of the evidence is pointing that privacy is everything they have in their brand, and they haven't done user hostile things in the past. They have attempted many kinds of new business models. VPN partnership with Mullavad is really promising one, and maybe they finally get new source for income.
      - jqpabc123 5y ago
        all of the evidence is pointing that privacy is everything they have in their brand That probably explains why their brand is declining. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/study-ranks-edges-default-privacy-settings-the-lowest-of-all-major-browsers/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/study...
      - rvz 5y ago
        So Mozilla isn't any better then. As long as they have Google's money and have them as the default search engine, their stance on privacy is a joke. In fact, they knew about the joke about 'Mozilla living without Google' since 2007 [0] and 14 years later they once begged to Google to renew that contract and now they continue to bite the same hand that kept them alive. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9044160/Mozilla_can_live_without_Google_s_money_Baker_says_ https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.compu...
        nicce 5y ago
        How many shady or user-hostile things has Mozilla done? Receiving money is not making someone automatically bad. You become bad when you do other things than originally agreed for receiving the money, in benefit of money provider. > As long as they have Google's money and have them as the default search engine, their stance on privacy is a joke. Also to my knowledge, you can change search engine anytime you want.
        jonathansampson 5y ago
        Mozilla has been in hot-water in the past for silently installing extensions and more. But to your last comment (i.e. users can change their search engine whenever they want), consider the 'tyranny of the default'. Most users will not make changes to their browser out of the box. Most users frankly do not know how, or even know that they ought to in some areas. When you install Firefox, and fire up that first session, your keystrokes in the address bar are sent to Google. There is no warning, or permission prompt. The same would happen if you accidentally pasted-in your social security number, or some other sensitive information—it gets sent right off to Google. It was this type of behavior, in part, that led independent researchers at Trinity College to grade Firefox lower than Brave in terms of out-of-the-box privacy: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf. In fact, Brave was found to be in its own class as the most private browser tested.
    - blitzar 5y ago
      Hard to imply they are a paid shill of google when they are the only thing stopping us from Chrome browser 100% adoption rate.
      - BrendanEich 5y ago
        No, Apple stands in the way. If you mean browser engine, still true: WebKit was forked as Blink on 4/3/2013 and diverged on both sides since. The time for a new engine may come, and I saw a clean room one go by on HN the other day. It's very hard to get to webcompat. Gecko loses compatibility as Firefox loses market share. For now, the more important fight is a level up: tracker blocking, users dealt into the economics, intermediaries and big tech dealt out.
        blitzar 5y ago
        Point taken ... safari numbers are a little inflated by the iOS share, however, they are devices and that is where the web is used.
    - tomComb 5y ago
      Yes, Mozilla is way better - the polar opposite really. Judge them on their record. Your not liking a company that is giving them money and Brave's actual record of being endlessly slimy and untrustworthy. Mozilla undermines Google at every chance so clearly the only result of Google money is what you see in Firefox and that is easily changable.
      - BrendanEich 5y ago
        I'm glad you like Firefox, I spent a lot of years on it, and on Mozilla, Gecko, SpiderMonkey, and the XUL platform before it. But Mozilla is currently beholden to Google and this has left them with year over year market share losses against Chrome. I don't see how they've "undermined" Google. If they switch to Bing as scooped by TechCrunch, they may start.
        tomComb 5y ago
        Yes, I'm quite familiar with your record - you sell it endlessly. Your getting in early at Mozilla doesn't make up for the damage you've done to the web with Brave.
        BrendanEich 5y ago
        "damage"? Be serious. Brave even at 40M users has not done enough to the Web to merit such fake-drama langauge from you. What's your issue?
        DonHopkins 5y ago
        Since you claim to be so honest and open and brave, then please finally and truthfully answer my questions about all the damage you intentionally inflicted on same sex couples in California, by donating your money to the Proposition 8 campaign, who used your money to produce hateful anti-gay propaganda full of outright lies and "fake drama language", like this "Gathering Storm" ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AzLrn5JVIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AzLrn5JVIo Why did you successfully try to destroy other people's marriages by donating your money to support Proposition 8? Please explain why you believe same sex couples shouldn't have the same human rights to marry the person they love that you presumably enjoy? Was your own marriage undermined as badly as you intentionally undermined many other people's marriages, after the Supreme Court declared same sex marriage legal?
  - jppope 5y ago
    sure... but lets remove the whole trust/ ad thing... Brave is a faster version of chrome, and Brave search gives me the code sample I'm searching for first thing in the sidebar...both are major improvements in my life. It's a better product.
    - nicce 5y ago
      > Brave is a faster version of chrome This line alone makes Brace insecure. It relies on the upstream project. Whenever the upstream project gets a security patch, it will be exploited on the downstream and there is X time for the update, unless you have the userbase of Edge or something. But everybody has opinions to prioritize and we can discuss about them forever.
      - BrendanEich 5y ago
        We update within a day of Chrome on all channels. This is a piece of work, but much less than creating our own engine (which would have its own security bug habitat and early bugs to shake out, until maintenance using bounties and fuzzing). https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
    - tomComb 5y ago
      > but lets remove the whole trust/ ad thing. Huh? Trust is what it all comes down to! You are trusting them with your data and access to your devices. Brave is the last browser company I would trust (based on their record) and to me that it the key.
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    > "they get caught on very hostile things again and again" This is not the case. The most common claims are "Brave accepted donations for others", "Brave replaces ads across the Web", "Brave injected/modified referral links"—each of these claims are unequivocally false. You are right that Brave is an "ad based company," however. But that needs to be explained a bit, since Brave is unlike any other ad-based company you've likely encountered on the Web. When people think of "ad-based company," they often picture something like Google. A company that has its hands in most of what you do on the Web, existing as a third-party resource in most of your traffic. But compare Brave with Google for a moment. Brave's ad-model is consent based, while Google's is not. Brave's model follows the user's configuration for determining how often/whether ads should be shown, while Google does not. Brave's model pays the user 70% of the associated revenue, while Google does not. Brave collects [no user data], while Google does the opposite. The Brave model is built on consent, equity, and privacy. Google's model is the opposite, in every regard.
    - nicce 5y ago
      > This is not the case. The most common claims are "Brave accepted donations for others", "Brave replaces ads across the Web", "Brave injected/modified referral links"—each of these claims are unequivocally false. How so? For example the case "Brave injected/modified referral links" https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/components/omnibox/browser/suggested_sites_provider_data.cc#L14 https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/components/o... The "problem" of open-source is, that you can see what is happening.
      - jonathansampson 5y ago
        No problem here; I'm happy you went straight to the source. You can also find this code at code.brave.com in the future (to save you some clicks). Note that the source to which you linked does not demonstrate Brave "injecting" or "modifying" any referral links. What is shown instead is our affiliate-code offering, which is presented in the UI of the browser itself when the participating user searches particular terms via the ominibox. We wrote about this here, including screenshots of how it appears in-app: https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    Do you want to talk about the very hostile things? We're not perfect (neither is Mozilla, people still roast them for stuff like bundling Pocket without it being uninstallable) but we fix and learn.
open-paren 5y ago
To start a call, there is a requirement that you are 1) Using the Brave Browser 2) Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on. Not loving that. Edit: the first one is fine (although a little strange that it is a requirement here but not for their other products, like Brave Search). I'm irked by the second one.
- bool3max 5y ago
  I bet you are loving that it's free though.
  - nicce 5y ago
    > 2) Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on. There are different definitions for "free".
  - open-paren 5y ago
    Free is great, free is what they advertise. However, I don't personally like Brave Rewards because I am not bullish on crypto and I don't think most of BAT goes to creators, because Brave Rewards market usage is really, really small, so it gets used speculatively. My perfect world solution is that they either a) advertise that Brave Rewards is required ("Brave Talk is free, ad-supported), or b) have a payment tier between premium and free that allows me to pay-per-call or something, without the premium features.
  - deeblering4 5y ago
    It’s not free, it just doesn't cost any money.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      I was just about to say this. Brave is the opposite of a free browser, it just so happens to cost nothing to download/use it.
      - BrendanEich 5y ago
crackercrews 5y ago
Nice that there are no time limits. Not great that passwords are only for Premium customers. But if you're just doing 1-on-1 calls it's pretty easy to notice if an uninvited guest has appeared. Does this offer scheduling, or just initiating calls in real time?
- html5web 5y ago
  you can set a password in the security settings, also there's a feature called Lobby which allows to let users to join the call
slenk 5y ago
https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ for the ability to do it with any browser and not having to opt in to their ads.
- olah_1 5y ago
  Brave is technically using this SaaS solution from the company that develops Jitsi: https://jaas.8x8.vc/#/ https://jaas.8x8.vc/#/
  - blitzar 5y ago
    So it is just Jitsi with a shitcoin scam attached?
    - runawaybottle 5y ago
      I think jitsi as a service is not free. So Brave is at least covering the cost of leveraging the service.
      - blitzar 5y ago
        https://meet.jit.si/ https://meet.jit.si/ Start & Join meetings for free - No account needed
        runawaybottle 5y ago
        At scale, nothing is free. They are offering this free to everyone via their browser. https://jaas.8x8.vc/#/pricing https://jaas.8x8.vc/#/pricing
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        blitzar 5y ago
        > They are offering this free to everyone via their browser. By they I assume you mean Brave - by this I assume you mean Jitsi, which Jitsi also offers free to everyone via any browser.
html5web 5y ago
Looks like you can bypass Brave browser lock by copying and pasting the iframe source url on other browsers
endisneigh 5y ago
I wonder if Brave (the company) is what Mozilla would look like if Eich ended up being CEO of Mozila. EDIT: Some people took offense, so I am more explicit in my hypothetical here.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  How many times does this need to be repeated? Mozilla didn't fire Brendan Eich. He resigned of his own free will, against the Mozilla board's request that he stay. His own words and the Mozilla FAQ quoted below, I'm not just making this up. Down the following thread, Brendan suggested googling "constructive separation" -- but I'm not sure if he meant for that euphemism to apply to how he left his job at Mozilla, or to how he wanted to cancel and destroy existing happy same sex marriages in California against their consent. All of the google results have to do with marriage, not employment. Brendan, care to clarify? As JavaScript proves, Brendan Eich never really understood the concept of equality: https://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/ https://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24127716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24127716 DonHopkins 3 months ago | on: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses ... Eich was not forced out or fired. In fact, just the opposite: the board actually tried to get Eich to stay, but he decided to leave all on his own. Don't try to rewrite history to make an ideological point. It's all very well and unambiguously documented what really happened, and there's no excuse for you spreading that misinformation. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat... Q: Was Brendan Eich fired? A: No, Brendan Eich resigned. Brendan himself said: “I have decided to resign as CEO effective April 3rd, and leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next.” Brendan Eich also blogged on this topic. Q: Was Brendan Eich asked to resign by the Board? A: No. It was Brendan’s idea to resign, and in fact, once he submitted his resignation, Board members tried to get Brendan to stay at Mozilla in another C-level role. It's a common misconception which is a key part of the narrative that Brendan's Alt-Right Incel GamerGate supporters were doing their best to spread at the time (GamerGate was in full swing when he resigned, and the Alt-Right jumped on the issue at the expense of Mozilla), in order to help Brendan play the victim (instead of respecting Brendan's own victims and co-workers whose marriages he wanted to terminate) and make him a martyr. (Not that I think you're one of them, but they unfortunately succeeded at spreading the misconception that Brendan was fired far and wide, in the service of their cultural war.) Edit: And do you acknowledge that Brendan wanted to cancel many same sex marriages in California? And do you agree or disagree with him that those marriages should have been canceled? Because he got what he paid for, Proposition 8 passed, and those marriages WERE canceled. Which is worse: canceling one job, or thousands of marriages? Edit 2: It's pretty rich that Brendan would claim to be the one suffering from a hostile work environment, when he was the one who wanted to destroy the marriages of his co-workers and users. Was it too much for him to bear facing the dirty looks of his co-workers who he didn't believe deserved the same rights as he enjoyed? Bullies are always playing the victim. Breaking apart other people's marriages sounds more like "destructive separation" to me.
IceWreck 5y ago
> Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on If this is true then its another shady thing by a self proclaimed privacy company. They used to do the protection racket thing where they indirectly threatened website owners with the ultimatum that if they don't work with them, they will man-in-the-middle them to replace the website's ads with their own and not give them a cut of the profit. Also, Brave has been caught modifying URLs and adding its own affiliate links in them compromising user privacy to earn $$$ for itself.
- Spivak 5y ago
  I do think that Brave would be 100% in the clear (same with any browser or extension) to "MiTM", modify, or refuse to display any part of any web page. I don't really want to set any kind of precent that browsers should somehow be forced to display web pages exactly as sent.
  - throwdecro 5y ago
    > I do think that Brave would be 100% in the clear (same with any browser or extension) to "MiTM", modify, or refuse to display any part of any web page. Taken literally this would mean that browsers would be allowed to re-write, either actively or by deleting sections, the actual content of articles. Surely there has to be some expectation that what a person publishes on the internet will be faithfully represented? And if faithful representation of the original is respected for the writing, why shouldn't it be respected for the writer's business/advertising arrangements?
    - Spivak 5y ago
      I feel like I'm taking crazy pills in this thread. Are we all suddenly against ad/content blockers and the built-in tracking protection that Firefox/Safari have? Do you all not not feel that the browser is ya know the user's agent?
      - jjulius 5y ago
        >Are we all suddenly against ad/content blockers and the built-in tracking protection that Firefox/Safari have? No, but the point is that it's a bit more nuanced than your original post suggests. Users should have the control over how a page is displayed to them. I want to tell my browser to block ads, and which ads to block. I don't fully trust it to make the same exact decisions in that area that I might want, or to not selectively block ads based on an agreement it may or may not have with advertisers. >Do you all not not feel that the browser is ya know the user's agent? It is the user's agent, and as the user, I want the control. I want to make the decisions.
jp42 5y ago
May be naive question. How does Brave earn money to sustain its operations?
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Brave Rewards and outside funding as far as I know.
- zormino 5y ago
  By replacing ads on websites with their own, and url hijacking for referral profits. They are not a good service, they're content thieves with a mask on.
  - soundnote 5y ago
    It doesn't? It adblocks ads like uBlock Origin and tracking blocking tech in other browsers (except the shields are not an add-on so they can exceed the Manifest v3 type limits). There are entirely separate channels (toaster popups, start page backgrounds) that they use to deliver their own ads. I get the crypto stuff is not everyone's cup of tea (certainly isn't mine) but get the basics straight, at least?
    - nicce 5y ago
      They block their rival's ads and bring their own instead. It might be visible on a little different location, but in the end the result is the same; replacing ads from the websites.
      - BrendanEich 5y ago
        False. Did you even check your claim, or are you parroting some unreliable source?
        nicce 5y ago
        Yes. It is on your web page: https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Brave-Ads-FAQ https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Bra... > Rather than displaying Ads on web pages, Brave Ads appear as push notifications on your device that you can choose to engage with or dismiss. I did not say it is a default behavior, but in the end you are blocking ads and bringing new ads, hence replacing. Just an another way to provide ads. Just a different way of seeing the concept as a whole.
sneak 5y ago
How many times have Brave pivoted at this point? First it was ad replacement, then it was a patreon thing that took donations (illegally) for third parties that didn't want it, then it was ad blocking, then it was a search engine, then it was videoconferencing.... What exactly is their revenue model?
- hundchenkatze 5y ago
  > What exactly is their revenue model? Seems they're still trying to figure that out.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    No, we are transparent about it. https://brave.com/brave-rewards https://brave.com/brave-rewards https://brave.com/transparency https://brave.com/transparency and premium products such as VPN, Talk, more to come. EDIT: some of you think we should do only a browser, but we also have a search engine now (https://search.brave.com/ https://search.brave.com/). We're going big across privacy and user-agent models that fit together well and provide our users with value in the form of products, also in revenue shares including >= what we make on any opt-in attention economics. Think big, avoid pigeonholing us as some of you did and still do Mozilla. My advice!
    - babbledabbler 5y ago
      This is really neat to see. I'm actually working on an idea that involves conferencing and have been using jitsi's open source solution for the POC. I've been impressed with the openness and flexibility of the platform. Are there any plans to enable installable third party app/extensions with talk.brave like zoom is currently rolling out their app store?
      - BrendanEich 5y ago
        App stores require curation for safety properties (security, brand, abuse). We're not ready to take those on. But Talk's HTML-based web app can be user-scripted. Let me know if you develop anything.
marban 5y ago
Every program attempts to expand until it can host video conferences.
sciurus 5y ago
Time to bring back Firefox Hello? https://www.pcworld.com/article/3102890/goodbye-hello-firefox-casts-off-its-built-in-video-chat-client-this-fall.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/3102890/goodbye-hello-firefo...
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  There have definitely been some really nice features shipped in other browsers, or by other vendors, in the past. Timing is often a curious element. I wonder if Hello might have found more success if it were introduced in 2020-2021, given the great exodus of people from offices, schools, etc., and their increasingly heavy reliance upon the Web to remain in touch. I'm excited for our launch of Brave Talk in part due to the timing, but also for the technology, and the team behind the effort. WebRTC has come a long way, and the additional encryption options offered are really appealing.
  - soundnote 5y ago
    Firefox's Pocket integration definitely was just years too early, people hadn't gotten used to paying for web services anywhere near today's extent.
bserge 5y ago
What does "no tracking" even mean here? Does it include no facial recognition? I mean, ffs, the FBI or Interpol or whoever could release such an app using keywords that mean nothing these days. Privacy preserving, no tracking, no installation, no special permissions. We just match everyone on video against a criminal database, but it's fine, we don't save your mugshot if you're not a criminal!
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  No one in the middle sees unencrypted video. Two-party is fully end-to-end encrypted. We avoid overusing that overloaded phrase for multiparty and we're working on defenses against active (zoom bomb) attacks, that do not require a login. So any face scanner on a multiparty call would have to be someone the host invited who is doing face scanning at their endpoint where the cryptographic session terminates and video gets decrypted.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    I didn’t describe the active threat correctly — not zoom bombing (auth system saves day), MitM from us or 8x8. We are closing off this attack surface in a followup release.
  - warkdarrior 5y ago
    Do you have plans to support monetization of video chat? This would be a nice competitor to OnlyFans. Also, what is your approach to CSAM? Do you plan to go the Apple route and do endpoint scanning?
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      Apple whiffed it with NeuralHash, didn't they? Hard problem. We don't host content. For Brave Search, we have been using a neat trick: not serving pages that Google doesn't index (we can cheaply test in our service with no privacy loss), but as we scale up, we are looking at top vendors who can help filter.
thegabez 5y ago
Easily the best browser on the market and continues to produce great features. Very bullish on its crypto token BAT which is earned by viewing their ads ($5-10/mo). If you're going to use a browser why wouldn't want to use Brave with rewards turned on, honestly?
- mNovak 5y ago
  I use Brave, but turned off the ads. Only so many times I want to see ads for crypto exchanges and such.
  - thegabez 5y ago
    Sure, I've gotten use to them. Having ads enabled also allows for easy donations to Wikipedia, Khan Academy, etc.
fancy_pantser 5y ago
Important to note that only 1:1 calls are E2E encrypted and larger calls are forwarded to a SFU that 8x8 calls "Jitsi Videobridge" where they are decrypted, processed in memory, and then re-encrypted for each participant stream.
- secretj 5y ago
  Hi I'd like to correct this, if you have enabled "Video Bridge Encryption" in Brave Talk, this is not the case. Calls of up to 20 participants would be encrypted, using keys locally exchanged among participants. The SFU wouldn't be able to decrypt these video/audio streams. Of course, as would be standard and expected, the SFU would decrypt the transport layer of encryption, but wouldn't be able to decrypt the second layer of video/audio encryption. You can find more about the current underlying Jitsi encryption implementation here: https://jitsi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/jitsi-e2ee-1.0.pdf https://jitsi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/jitsi-e2ee-1.0....
  - fancy_pantser 5y ago
    Does that require all participants to have enabled "Video Bridge Encryption" in Brave Talk? Does it notify participants when they go over 20 and does then everyone stop encrypting at the same time?
    - secretj 5y ago
      Once the moderator enables "Video Bridge Encryption" it is automatically enabled for other participants. I believe that if a 21st user tried to join it would error out, but let me confirm this with the 8x8 team.
      - secretj 5y ago
        Update, I checked with the 8x8 team, and it will warn from 21 to 25 users, and then disable when the 25th user joins. You'll see the green video bridge encryption notification turn off at the top at that point.
hammyhavoc 5y ago
Yet another silly messaging app. Why not just use an open protocol like Matrix and have done with it? Makes far more sense than this. Nobody asked for their browser to be a messaging system in 2021, nor for exclusivity of initiation based upon browser. Lol?
betwixthewires 5y ago
Jitsi? Anyone? I'm not one of those people that doesn't like redundancy or thinks that people developing tools that serve a purpose for which other tools already exist is a waste of time. I like options, I want people to build what they think they should build. But I honestly do not see a point of this, except that Brave is trying to become an ecosystem. I don't want another ecosystem.
- anaganisk 5y ago
  Dont use it? Its not like Google is trying to force google meet on on you? Or Microsoft is forcing edge on windows, oh yeah they already do it.
rank0 5y ago
Honestly I’m glad to see some disruption in the web advertising space. I’m not sure I understand Braves claim about “sharing revenue” with rewards users. Rewards users are getting paid in BAT no? I assume Brave is getting paid in USD. Do they have an arbitrary treasury of BAT tokens? It seems like Brave isn’t sharing any revenue if they’re paying out in tokens they created. Can’t they just create more BAT tokens or switch to BAT2 whenever they please? I am genuinely confused here and would love to be enlightened.
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  BAT is capped by its genesis contract at 1.5B tokens, we can't make any more. It has broad and deep liquidity. Most ad buyers pay in fiat, but some pay in BAT, USDC, etc. When paid not in BAT, we take 70% of the gross revenue and buy BAT with market orders, to send to users as their ad revenue shares. See https://brave.com/transparency https://brave.com/transparency for these purchases. This makes a buy side for the ecosystem (there are others coming up). See also https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/psnn6o/first_2m_month_for_braveinitiated_bat_purchases/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/psnn6o/first_2m.... HTH
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    Needless to say (I hope, but hostile and skeptical folks here), when the ad buyer does pay us in BAT, we send 70% directly to the rewards users based on anonymous confirmation protocol (blind signature certs; putting on a fast blockchain via THEMIS soon). That is to say, we always pay the opted-in rewards user 70% of gross.
    - rank0 5y ago
      Thanks for the reply! I appreciate you taking the time to respond to comments like mine. I tried brave several years ago but it seems the ecosystem has developed quite a bit since then so I’ll give it another go.
hrez 5y ago
So, BAT is required to use it? I wonder how all the US BAT users plan to answer IRS 1040 question "did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency?"
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  No, BAT is not required. Rewards opt in is, but you can then turn off Brave Ads. I use bitcoin.tax and recommend it (for no compensation). Are you just anti-crypto in general?

178 points by mlinksva 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jppope 5y ago

damn... Brave is just crushing it. I've been using brave search and its amazing for development... the code samples are front and center

nicce 5y ago
It is just very hard to trust them... they get caught on very hostile things again and again, when they promise that won't happen again. In the end, they are yet another ad based company.
- dkdk8283 5y ago
  Is Mozilla any better? They’ve lost their way and Google remains their largest source of income.
  - nicce 5y ago
    It is true that they get most of their income by setting Google as default search engine. However, they do not promote or support Google's way to do many things, and all of the evidence is pointing that privacy is everything they have in their brand, and they haven't done user hostile things in the past. They have attempted many kinds of new business models. VPN partnership with Mullavad is really promising one, and maybe they finally get new source for income.
    - jqpabc123 5y ago
      all of the evidence is pointing that privacy is everything they have in their brand That probably explains why their brand is declining. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/study-ranks-edges-default-privacy-settings-the-lowest-of-all-major-browsers/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/study...
    - rvz 5y ago
      So Mozilla isn't any better then. As long as they have Google's money and have them as the default search engine, their stance on privacy is a joke. In fact, they knew about the joke about 'Mozilla living without Google' since 2007 [0] and 14 years later they once begged to Google to renew that contract and now they continue to bite the same hand that kept them alive. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9044160/Mozilla_can_live_without_Google_s_money_Baker_says_ https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.compu...
      - nicce 5y ago
        How many shady or user-hostile things has Mozilla done? Receiving money is not making someone automatically bad. You become bad when you do other things than originally agreed for receiving the money, in benefit of money provider. > As long as they have Google's money and have them as the default search engine, their stance on privacy is a joke. Also to my knowledge, you can change search engine anytime you want.
        jonathansampson 5y ago
        Mozilla has been in hot-water in the past for silently installing extensions and more. But to your last comment (i.e. users can change their search engine whenever they want), consider the 'tyranny of the default'. Most users will not make changes to their browser out of the box. Most users frankly do not know how, or even know that they ought to in some areas. When you install Firefox, and fire up that first session, your keystrokes in the address bar are sent to Google. There is no warning, or permission prompt. The same would happen if you accidentally pasted-in your social security number, or some other sensitive information—it gets sent right off to Google. It was this type of behavior, in part, that led independent researchers at Trinity College to grade Firefox lower than Brave in terms of out-of-the-box privacy: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf. In fact, Brave was found to be in its own class as the most private browser tested.
  - blitzar 5y ago
    Hard to imply they are a paid shill of google when they are the only thing stopping us from Chrome browser 100% adoption rate.
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      No, Apple stands in the way. If you mean browser engine, still true: WebKit was forked as Blink on 4/3/2013 and diverged on both sides since. The time for a new engine may come, and I saw a clean room one go by on HN the other day. It's very hard to get to webcompat. Gecko loses compatibility as Firefox loses market share. For now, the more important fight is a level up: tracker blocking, users dealt into the economics, intermediaries and big tech dealt out.
      - blitzar 5y ago
        Point taken ... safari numbers are a little inflated by the iOS share, however, they are devices and that is where the web is used.
  - tomComb 5y ago
    Yes, Mozilla is way better - the polar opposite really. Judge them on their record. Your not liking a company that is giving them money and Brave's actual record of being endlessly slimy and untrustworthy. Mozilla undermines Google at every chance so clearly the only result of Google money is what you see in Firefox and that is easily changable.
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      I'm glad you like Firefox, I spent a lot of years on it, and on Mozilla, Gecko, SpiderMonkey, and the XUL platform before it. But Mozilla is currently beholden to Google and this has left them with year over year market share losses against Chrome. I don't see how they've "undermined" Google. If they switch to Bing as scooped by TechCrunch, they may start.
      - tomComb 5y ago
        Yes, I'm quite familiar with your record - you sell it endlessly. Your getting in early at Mozilla doesn't make up for the damage you've done to the web with Brave.
        BrendanEich 5y ago
        "damage"? Be serious. Brave even at 40M users has not done enough to the Web to merit such fake-drama langauge from you. What's your issue?
        DonHopkins 5y ago
        Since you claim to be so honest and open and brave, then please finally and truthfully answer my questions about all the damage you intentionally inflicted on same sex couples in California, by donating your money to the Proposition 8 campaign, who used your money to produce hateful anti-gay propaganda full of outright lies and "fake drama language", like this "Gathering Storm" ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AzLrn5JVIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AzLrn5JVIo Why did you successfully try to destroy other people's marriages by donating your money to support Proposition 8? Please explain why you believe same sex couples shouldn't have the same human rights to marry the person they love that you presumably enjoy? Was your own marriage undermined as badly as you intentionally undermined many other people's marriages, after the Supreme Court declared same sex marriage legal?
- jppope 5y ago
  sure... but lets remove the whole trust/ ad thing... Brave is a faster version of chrome, and Brave search gives me the code sample I'm searching for first thing in the sidebar...both are major improvements in my life. It's a better product.
  - nicce 5y ago
    > Brave is a faster version of chrome This line alone makes Brace insecure. It relies on the upstream project. Whenever the upstream project gets a security patch, it will be exploited on the downstream and there is X time for the update, unless you have the userbase of Edge or something. But everybody has opinions to prioritize and we can discuss about them forever.
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      We update within a day of Chrome on all channels. This is a piece of work, but much less than creating our own engine (which would have its own security bug habitat and early bugs to shake out, until maintenance using bounties and fuzzing). https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
  - tomComb 5y ago
    > but lets remove the whole trust/ ad thing. Huh? Trust is what it all comes down to! You are trusting them with your data and access to your devices. Brave is the last browser company I would trust (based on their record) and to me that it the key.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  > "they get caught on very hostile things again and again" This is not the case. The most common claims are "Brave accepted donations for others", "Brave replaces ads across the Web", "Brave injected/modified referral links"—each of these claims are unequivocally false. You are right that Brave is an "ad based company," however. But that needs to be explained a bit, since Brave is unlike any other ad-based company you've likely encountered on the Web. When people think of "ad-based company," they often picture something like Google. A company that has its hands in most of what you do on the Web, existing as a third-party resource in most of your traffic. But compare Brave with Google for a moment. Brave's ad-model is consent based, while Google's is not. Brave's model follows the user's configuration for determining how often/whether ads should be shown, while Google does not. Brave's model pays the user 70% of the associated revenue, while Google does not. Brave collects [no user data], while Google does the opposite. The Brave model is built on consent, equity, and privacy. Google's model is the opposite, in every regard.
  - nicce 5y ago
    > This is not the case. The most common claims are "Brave accepted donations for others", "Brave replaces ads across the Web", "Brave injected/modified referral links"—each of these claims are unequivocally false. How so? For example the case "Brave injected/modified referral links" https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/components/omnibox/browser/suggested_sites_provider_data.cc#L14 https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/components/o... The "problem" of open-source is, that you can see what is happening.
    - jonathansampson 5y ago
      No problem here; I'm happy you went straight to the source. You can also find this code at code.brave.com in the future (to save you some clicks). Note that the source to which you linked does not demonstrate Brave "injecting" or "modifying" any referral links. What is shown instead is our affiliate-code offering, which is presented in the UI of the browser itself when the participating user searches particular terms via the ominibox. We wrote about this here, including screenshots of how it appears in-app: https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  Do you want to talk about the very hostile things? We're not perfect (neither is Mozilla, people still roast them for stuff like bundling Pocket without it being uninstallable) but we fix and learn.

open-paren 5y ago

To start a call, there is a requirement that you are 1) Using the Brave Browser 2) Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on. Not loving that. Edit: the first one is fine (although a little strange that it is a requirement here but not for their other products, like Brave Search). I'm irked by the second one.

bool3max 5y ago
I bet you are loving that it's free though.
- nicce 5y ago
  > 2) Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on. There are different definitions for "free".
- open-paren 5y ago
  Free is great, free is what they advertise. However, I don't personally like Brave Rewards because I am not bullish on crypto and I don't think most of BAT goes to creators, because Brave Rewards market usage is really, really small, so it gets used speculatively. My perfect world solution is that they either a) advertise that Brave Rewards is required ("Brave Talk is free, ad-supported), or b) have a payment tier between premium and free that allows me to pay-per-call or something, without the premium features.
- deeblering4 5y ago
  It’s not free, it just doesn't cost any money.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    I was just about to say this. Brave is the opposite of a free browser, it just so happens to cost nothing to download/use it.
    - BrendanEich 5y ago

crackercrews 5y ago

Nice that there are no time limits. Not great that passwords are only for Premium customers. But if you're just doing 1-on-1 calls it's pretty easy to notice if an uninvited guest has appeared. Does this offer scheduling, or just initiating calls in real time?

html5web 5y ago
you can set a password in the security settings, also there's a feature called Lobby which allows to let users to join the call

slenk 5y ago

https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ for the ability to do it with any browser and not having to opt in to their ads.

olah_1 5y ago
Brave is technically using this SaaS solution from the company that develops Jitsi: https://jaas.8x8.vc/#/ https://jaas.8x8.vc/#/
- blitzar 5y ago
  So it is just Jitsi with a shitcoin scam attached?
  - runawaybottle 5y ago
    I think jitsi as a service is not free. So Brave is at least covering the cost of leveraging the service.
    - blitzar 5y ago
      https://meet.jit.si/ https://meet.jit.si/ Start & Join meetings for free - No account needed
      - runawaybottle 5y ago
        At scale, nothing is free. They are offering this free to everyone via their browser. https://jaas.8x8.vc/#/pricing https://jaas.8x8.vc/#/pricing
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        blitzar 5y ago
        > They are offering this free to everyone via their browser. By they I assume you mean Brave - by this I assume you mean Jitsi, which Jitsi also offers free to everyone via any browser.

html5web 5y ago

Looks like you can bypass Brave browser lock by copying and pasting the iframe source url on other browsers

endisneigh 5y ago

I wonder if Brave (the company) is what Mozilla would look like if Eich ended up being CEO of Mozila. EDIT: Some people took offense, so I am more explicit in my hypothetical here.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
DonHopkins 5y ago
How many times does this need to be repeated? Mozilla didn't fire Brendan Eich. He resigned of his own free will, against the Mozilla board's request that he stay. His own words and the Mozilla FAQ quoted below, I'm not just making this up. Down the following thread, Brendan suggested googling "constructive separation" -- but I'm not sure if he meant for that euphemism to apply to how he left his job at Mozilla, or to how he wanted to cancel and destroy existing happy same sex marriages in California against their consent. All of the google results have to do with marriage, not employment. Brendan, care to clarify? As JavaScript proves, Brendan Eich never really understood the concept of equality: https://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/ https://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24127716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24127716 DonHopkins 3 months ago | on: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses ... Eich was not forced out or fired. In fact, just the opposite: the board actually tried to get Eich to stay, but he decided to leave all on his own. Don't try to rewrite history to make an ideological point. It's all very well and unambiguously documented what really happened, and there's no excuse for you spreading that misinformation. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat... Q: Was Brendan Eich fired? A: No, Brendan Eich resigned. Brendan himself said: “I have decided to resign as CEO effective April 3rd, and leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader. I will be taking time before I decide what to do next.” Brendan Eich also blogged on this topic. Q: Was Brendan Eich asked to resign by the Board? A: No. It was Brendan’s idea to resign, and in fact, once he submitted his resignation, Board members tried to get Brendan to stay at Mozilla in another C-level role. It's a common misconception which is a key part of the narrative that Brendan's Alt-Right Incel GamerGate supporters were doing their best to spread at the time (GamerGate was in full swing when he resigned, and the Alt-Right jumped on the issue at the expense of Mozilla), in order to help Brendan play the victim (instead of respecting Brendan's own victims and co-workers whose marriages he wanted to terminate) and make him a martyr. (Not that I think you're one of them, but they unfortunately succeeded at spreading the misconception that Brendan was fired far and wide, in the service of their cultural war.) Edit: And do you acknowledge that Brendan wanted to cancel many same sex marriages in California? And do you agree or disagree with him that those marriages should have been canceled? Because he got what he paid for, Proposition 8 passed, and those marriages WERE canceled. Which is worse: canceling one job, or thousands of marriages? Edit 2: It's pretty rich that Brendan would claim to be the one suffering from a hostile work environment, when he was the one who wanted to destroy the marriages of his co-workers and users. Was it too much for him to bear facing the dirty looks of his co-workers who he didn't believe deserved the same rights as he enjoyed? Bullies are always playing the victim. Breaking apart other people's marriages sounds more like "destructive separation" to me.

IceWreck 5y ago

> Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on If this is true then its another shady thing by a self proclaimed privacy company. They used to do the protection racket thing where they indirectly threatened website owners with the ultimatum that if they don't work with them, they will man-in-the-middle them to replace the website's ads with their own and not give them a cut of the profit. Also, Brave has been caught modifying URLs and adding its own affiliate links in them compromising user privacy to earn $$$ for itself.

Spivak 5y ago
I do think that Brave would be 100% in the clear (same with any browser or extension) to "MiTM", modify, or refuse to display any part of any web page. I don't really want to set any kind of precent that browsers should somehow be forced to display web pages exactly as sent.
- throwdecro 5y ago
  > I do think that Brave would be 100% in the clear (same with any browser or extension) to "MiTM", modify, or refuse to display any part of any web page. Taken literally this would mean that browsers would be allowed to re-write, either actively or by deleting sections, the actual content of articles. Surely there has to be some expectation that what a person publishes on the internet will be faithfully represented? And if faithful representation of the original is respected for the writing, why shouldn't it be respected for the writer's business/advertising arrangements?
  - Spivak 5y ago
    I feel like I'm taking crazy pills in this thread. Are we all suddenly against ad/content blockers and the built-in tracking protection that Firefox/Safari have? Do you all not not feel that the browser is ya know the user's agent?
    - jjulius 5y ago
      >Are we all suddenly against ad/content blockers and the built-in tracking protection that Firefox/Safari have? No, but the point is that it's a bit more nuanced than your original post suggests. Users should have the control over how a page is displayed to them. I want to tell my browser to block ads, and which ads to block. I don't fully trust it to make the same exact decisions in that area that I might want, or to not selectively block ads based on an agreement it may or may not have with advertisers. >Do you all not not feel that the browser is ya know the user's agent? It is the user's agent, and as the user, I want the control. I want to make the decisions.

jp42 5y ago

May be naive question. How does Brave earn money to sustain its operations?

endisneigh 5y ago
Brave Rewards and outside funding as far as I know.
zormino 5y ago
By replacing ads on websites with their own, and url hijacking for referral profits. They are not a good service, they're content thieves with a mask on.
- soundnote 5y ago
  It doesn't? It adblocks ads like uBlock Origin and tracking blocking tech in other browsers (except the shields are not an add-on so they can exceed the Manifest v3 type limits). There are entirely separate channels (toaster popups, start page backgrounds) that they use to deliver their own ads. I get the crypto stuff is not everyone's cup of tea (certainly isn't mine) but get the basics straight, at least?
  - nicce 5y ago
    They block their rival's ads and bring their own instead. It might be visible on a little different location, but in the end the result is the same; replacing ads from the websites.
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      False. Did you even check your claim, or are you parroting some unreliable source?
      - nicce 5y ago
        Yes. It is on your web page: https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Brave-Ads-FAQ https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Bra... > Rather than displaying Ads on web pages, Brave Ads appear as push notifications on your device that you can choose to engage with or dismiss. I did not say it is a default behavior, but in the end you are blocking ads and bringing new ads, hence replacing. Just an another way to provide ads. Just a different way of seeing the concept as a whole.

sneak 5y ago

How many times have Brave pivoted at this point? First it was ad replacement, then it was a patreon thing that took donations (illegally) for third parties that didn't want it, then it was ad blocking, then it was a search engine, then it was videoconferencing.... What exactly is their revenue model?

hundchenkatze 5y ago
> What exactly is their revenue model? Seems they're still trying to figure that out.
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  No, we are transparent about it. https://brave.com/brave-rewards https://brave.com/brave-rewards https://brave.com/transparency https://brave.com/transparency and premium products such as VPN, Talk, more to come. EDIT: some of you think we should do only a browser, but we also have a search engine now (https://search.brave.com/ https://search.brave.com/). We're going big across privacy and user-agent models that fit together well and provide our users with value in the form of products, also in revenue shares including >= what we make on any opt-in attention economics. Think big, avoid pigeonholing us as some of you did and still do Mozilla. My advice!
  - babbledabbler 5y ago
    This is really neat to see. I'm actually working on an idea that involves conferencing and have been using jitsi's open source solution for the POC. I've been impressed with the openness and flexibility of the platform. Are there any plans to enable installable third party app/extensions with talk.brave like zoom is currently rolling out their app store?
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      App stores require curation for safety properties (security, brand, abuse). We're not ready to take those on. But Talk's HTML-based web app can be user-scripted. Let me know if you develop anything.

marban 5y ago

Every program attempts to expand until it can host video conferences.

sciurus 5y ago

Time to bring back Firefox Hello? https://www.pcworld.com/article/3102890/goodbye-hello-firefox-casts-off-its-built-in-video-chat-client-this-fall.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/3102890/goodbye-hello-firefo...

jonathansampson 5y ago
There have definitely been some really nice features shipped in other browsers, or by other vendors, in the past. Timing is often a curious element. I wonder if Hello might have found more success if it were introduced in 2020-2021, given the great exodus of people from offices, schools, etc., and their increasingly heavy reliance upon the Web to remain in touch. I'm excited for our launch of Brave Talk in part due to the timing, but also for the technology, and the team behind the effort. WebRTC has come a long way, and the additional encryption options offered are really appealing.
- soundnote 5y ago
  Firefox's Pocket integration definitely was just years too early, people hadn't gotten used to paying for web services anywhere near today's extent.

bserge 5y ago

What does "no tracking" even mean here? Does it include no facial recognition? I mean, ffs, the FBI or Interpol or whoever could release such an app using keywords that mean nothing these days. Privacy preserving, no tracking, no installation, no special permissions. We just match everyone on video against a criminal database, but it's fine, we don't save your mugshot if you're not a criminal!

BrendanEich 5y ago
No one in the middle sees unencrypted video. Two-party is fully end-to-end encrypted. We avoid overusing that overloaded phrase for multiparty and we're working on defenses against active (zoom bomb) attacks, that do not require a login. So any face scanner on a multiparty call would have to be someone the host invited who is doing face scanning at their endpoint where the cryptographic session terminates and video gets decrypted.
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  I didn’t describe the active threat correctly — not zoom bombing (auth system saves day), MitM from us or 8x8. We are closing off this attack surface in a followup release.
- warkdarrior 5y ago
  Do you have plans to support monetization of video chat? This would be a nice competitor to OnlyFans. Also, what is your approach to CSAM? Do you plan to go the Apple route and do endpoint scanning?
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    Apple whiffed it with NeuralHash, didn't they? Hard problem. We don't host content. For Brave Search, we have been using a neat trick: not serving pages that Google doesn't index (we can cheaply test in our service with no privacy loss), but as we scale up, we are looking at top vendors who can help filter.

thegabez 5y ago

Easily the best browser on the market and continues to produce great features. Very bullish on its crypto token BAT which is earned by viewing their ads ($5-10/mo). If you're going to use a browser why wouldn't want to use Brave with rewards turned on, honestly?

mNovak 5y ago
I use Brave, but turned off the ads. Only so many times I want to see ads for crypto exchanges and such.
- thegabez 5y ago
  Sure, I've gotten use to them. Having ads enabled also allows for easy donations to Wikipedia, Khan Academy, etc.

fancy_pantser 5y ago

Important to note that only 1:1 calls are E2E encrypted and larger calls are forwarded to a SFU that 8x8 calls "Jitsi Videobridge" where they are decrypted, processed in memory, and then re-encrypted for each participant stream.

secretj 5y ago
Hi I'd like to correct this, if you have enabled "Video Bridge Encryption" in Brave Talk, this is not the case. Calls of up to 20 participants would be encrypted, using keys locally exchanged among participants. The SFU wouldn't be able to decrypt these video/audio streams. Of course, as would be standard and expected, the SFU would decrypt the transport layer of encryption, but wouldn't be able to decrypt the second layer of video/audio encryption. You can find more about the current underlying Jitsi encryption implementation here: https://jitsi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/jitsi-e2ee-1.0.pdf https://jitsi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/jitsi-e2ee-1.0....
- fancy_pantser 5y ago
  Does that require all participants to have enabled "Video Bridge Encryption" in Brave Talk? Does it notify participants when they go over 20 and does then everyone stop encrypting at the same time?
  - secretj 5y ago
    Once the moderator enables "Video Bridge Encryption" it is automatically enabled for other participants. I believe that if a 21st user tried to join it would error out, but let me confirm this with the 8x8 team.
    - secretj 5y ago
      Update, I checked with the 8x8 team, and it will warn from 21 to 25 users, and then disable when the 25th user joins. You'll see the green video bridge encryption notification turn off at the top at that point.

hammyhavoc 5y ago

Yet another silly messaging app. Why not just use an open protocol like Matrix and have done with it? Makes far more sense than this. Nobody asked for their browser to be a messaging system in 2021, nor for exclusivity of initiation based upon browser. Lol?

betwixthewires 5y ago

Jitsi? Anyone? I'm not one of those people that doesn't like redundancy or thinks that people developing tools that serve a purpose for which other tools already exist is a waste of time. I like options, I want people to build what they think they should build. But I honestly do not see a point of this, except that Brave is trying to become an ecosystem. I don't want another ecosystem.

anaganisk 5y ago
Dont use it? Its not like Google is trying to force google meet on on you? Or Microsoft is forcing edge on windows, oh yeah they already do it.

rank0 5y ago

Honestly I’m glad to see some disruption in the web advertising space. I’m not sure I understand Braves claim about “sharing revenue” with rewards users. Rewards users are getting paid in BAT no? I assume Brave is getting paid in USD. Do they have an arbitrary treasury of BAT tokens? It seems like Brave isn’t sharing any revenue if they’re paying out in tokens they created. Can’t they just create more BAT tokens or switch to BAT2 whenever they please? I am genuinely confused here and would love to be enlightened.

BrendanEich 5y ago
BAT is capped by its genesis contract at 1.5B tokens, we can't make any more. It has broad and deep liquidity. Most ad buyers pay in fiat, but some pay in BAT, USDC, etc. When paid not in BAT, we take 70% of the gross revenue and buy BAT with market orders, to send to users as their ad revenue shares. See https://brave.com/transparency https://brave.com/transparency for these purchases. This makes a buy side for the ecosystem (there are others coming up). See also https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/psnn6o/first_2m_month_for_braveinitiated_bat_purchases/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/psnn6o/first_2m.... HTH
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  Needless to say (I hope, but hostile and skeptical folks here), when the ad buyer does pay us in BAT, we send 70% directly to the rewards users based on anonymous confirmation protocol (blind signature certs; putting on a fast blockchain via THEMIS soon). That is to say, we always pay the opted-in rewards user 70% of gross.
  - rank0 5y ago
    Thanks for the reply! I appreciate you taking the time to respond to comments like mine. I tried brave several years ago but it seems the ecosystem has developed quite a bit since then so I’ll give it another go.

hrez 5y ago

So, BAT is required to use it? I wonder how all the US BAT users plan to answer IRS 1040 question "did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency?"

BrendanEich 5y ago
No, BAT is not required. Rewards opt in is, but you can then turn off Brave Ads. I use bitcoin.tax and recommend it (for no compensation). Are you just anti-crypto in general?