11 ms·

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

by jp42 5y ago

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.
        BrendanEich 5y ago
        "They block their rival's ads and bring their own instead" would be taken by most people to mean replacement in the page, and no opt-in. It's misleading with a purpose. Brave is providing users a private (no tracking) ad option with 70% of the gross paid to the user. If only a "rival" did that. But they don't, and we block tracking scripts more than ads (this kills the whole waterfall so blocks most ads). Note we don't block Google or other search ads, or first party ads that don't depend on tracking scripts.
  - vrc 5y ago
    uBlock origin is the only ad blocker worth trusting. Privacy Badger is fine but breaks things too often. PiHole is good but requires too much know-how for most. ABP and Brave both do the same garbage ransom-taking with their ad replacement schema. So few publishers have an account with them that the monies supposedly going to support content sits (at best) in an escrow account that is escheated at some point.
    - ziddoap 5y ago
      >Privacy Badger is fine but breaks things too often. I know it's a bit of a tangent from the topic at hand, but I'm really curious what Privacy Badger has broken for you? I (and all the staff at my office) have been using it basically since release, and not once has the root cause of a website not working properly been Privacy Badger.
      - vrc 5y ago
        So I couldn’t tell you all of them because I don’t keep track of when I need to disable it and refresh to make a page work (and that’s not that big an inconvenience for me). But I used to have to travel a lot for work with strict travel caps. Working within those, I had perfected a few strategies to really get the lowest fares available. On one specific planning adventure, I found a way to book a business class flight through Air Canada’s website that took me through Europe and back across the US for the price of the standard economy fare for the same trip. Privacy Badger killed the payment flow, and I could never get that rate back. I ended up on over 30 hours of flights in economy, and I’ll never forget the refreshed faces of the business class travelers… But more seriously, that and similar situations were the only really bad ones. Many times it’s just disabling and reloading a page. But for a casual Internet user, identifying that fix might be too much.
      - lamontcg 5y ago
        I have 17 exceptions in PB that I've setup, including my ISP, my broker, and my local utilities. Those would all be since I switched to firefox (2-3 years ago now?). It used to be worse, I'm pretty sure I had many dozens of exceptions on my old chrome settings.
- tomComb 5y ago
  I didn't think they did those anymore. True, though, they've tried endless very slimy business models - anything that works until they get caught or called out.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    We never replaced ads on web pages. The binance.{us,com} auto-complete affiliate code was a bug and we renounced any (tiny) revenue that might come from it. I think it's slimy to do what you just did. Why'd you do it? We didn't do the first thing you said, and we shipped and then fixed the bug on the second. I don't see how you can excuse your action.
    - tomComb 5y ago
      Because I don't believe you. For example, I followed up on your claim about the second when it happened and it appeared clear to me that it was not a bug. I'm now familiar with how you aggressively and dishonestly attack people who call out Brave's actions. I know I'm not special - that's just how you do business - but you aren't going to intimidate me. I will make one concession to your attack though, I will declare that I'm not affiliated with any party in this and am simply doing my best to objectively judge the facts.
      - BrendanEich 5y ago
        If you don't believe me, then there's no point in talking. But you can verify for yourself that we've never replaced ads in publisher pages. On the binance.{us,com} autocomplete with affiliate code, it was a blunder where two entries in a table had the wrong flag passed in. Not sure how to prove intent, so again: no point talking if you don't believe me but my work has been in the open for 23+ years and I stand behind it.
        tomComb 5y ago
        I'm not stupid: I'm not going to discard my judgement based on careful examination of independent parties in favour of how you want me to judge it. (Even if I hadn't seen that you are not trustworthy and will aggressively attack people for speaking the truth.) > If you don't believe me, then there's no point in talking. Ok, something we can agree upon!
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  No, we never replaced ads on websites with our own; and no, we made nothing from the binance.com/.us autocomplete bug (no other URLs, no links in pages) getting affiliate codes. Be careful what misinformation you parrot. It doesn't help anyone looking for better privacy products or trustworthy commenters.
  - input_sh 5y ago
    How would you describe stripping ads from websites and then displaying different ones? Personally, I'd call that replacing website ads with your own. I'm fully aware that you don't show them within the content (but in notification) and that it's an opt-in thing, but that doesn't make the statement inaccurate. You absolutely are removing them and showing others. In other words, you're replacing them.
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      Dictionary time again: verb: replace; 3rd person present: replaces; past tense: replaced; past participle: replaced; gerund or present participle: replacing 1. take the place of. "Ian's smile was replaced by a frown" 2. put (something) back in a previous place or position. "he drained his glass and replaced it on the bar" Using "replace" implies in situ (which is false as you admit), or else you seem to think the page owns all your display and OS-mediated window-system attention "surface area". It does not, no page even needs to show for an opt-in Brave User Ad to be posted. So as you've kindly admitted the "in a previous place or position" sense is false, you must mean any page owns your eyeballs if it's anywhere near a user ad. I demur and so do our users. Publishers don't own your eyes, desktop, toolbars, tab strip, new tab pages, or notification channels.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - input_sh 5y ago
        If I take your laptop and put a different one two meters away, I've still replaced it. If I take your glass at the bar to fill it up, is there a requirement that I place it in the exact same position as your previous one, or is there a pretty big margin of error? What makes screen estate different than that? In general, I'm all for the concept of micropayments to websites. But your implementation, weasly language (like here), and of course your homophobic donations makes Brave pretty unappealing to me. I'd rather choose freaking Chrome with a stripped down ad-blocker than it. ...I mean, using Brave is still using Chrome(ium) with a different skin on top, leaky Tor integration, and your own coin that you own... how much of?
- ElijahLynn 5y ago
  I've been using Brave for over a year now. I don't use the opt-in Brave Rewards Ads but do use the Brave Rewards Auto-Contribute. I love Brave and think it is actually going to save the web from becoming a shitty, slow experience over the years to come. My only gripe is that the crypto integration with Uphold to pay creators is/was hard to use. I love the idea that I can pay $20/month to use the web and that money is disbursed to the sites I visit most! Update: This motivated me to login to Uphold again and relink Brave Rewards so I can use the auto-contribute feature. Uphold didn't have recurring transactions for debit/credit cards originally so it was too much friction to use, but it is all working now.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    Off topic but please shoot me a message (I'm easy to reach, first at company dot com) with what you find hard to use. I may agree and we're working on better ways to support creators, but I hope to capture your specific issues. Thanks.
    - ElijahLynn 5y ago
      Sure, sent!
KarlKemp 5y ago
It doesn’t. But it hopes to insert itself into enough interactions to turn the screws on website owners.
BrendanEich 5y ago
Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28620369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28620369.

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

by 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.
      - BrendanEich 5y ago
        "They block their rival's ads and bring their own instead" would be taken by most people to mean replacement in the page, and no opt-in. It's misleading with a purpose. Brave is providing users a private (no tracking) ad option with 70% of the gross paid to the user. If only a "rival" did that. But they don't, and we block tracking scripts more than ads (this kills the whole waterfall so blocks most ads). Note we don't block Google or other search ads, or first party ads that don't depend on tracking scripts.
- vrc 5y ago
  uBlock origin is the only ad blocker worth trusting. Privacy Badger is fine but breaks things too often. PiHole is good but requires too much know-how for most. ABP and Brave both do the same garbage ransom-taking with their ad replacement schema. So few publishers have an account with them that the monies supposedly going to support content sits (at best) in an escrow account that is escheated at some point.
  - ziddoap 5y ago
    >Privacy Badger is fine but breaks things too often. I know it's a bit of a tangent from the topic at hand, but I'm really curious what Privacy Badger has broken for you? I (and all the staff at my office) have been using it basically since release, and not once has the root cause of a website not working properly been Privacy Badger.
    - vrc 5y ago
      So I couldn’t tell you all of them because I don’t keep track of when I need to disable it and refresh to make a page work (and that’s not that big an inconvenience for me). But I used to have to travel a lot for work with strict travel caps. Working within those, I had perfected a few strategies to really get the lowest fares available. On one specific planning adventure, I found a way to book a business class flight through Air Canada’s website that took me through Europe and back across the US for the price of the standard economy fare for the same trip. Privacy Badger killed the payment flow, and I could never get that rate back. I ended up on over 30 hours of flights in economy, and I’ll never forget the refreshed faces of the business class travelers… But more seriously, that and similar situations were the only really bad ones. Many times it’s just disabling and reloading a page. But for a casual Internet user, identifying that fix might be too much.
    - lamontcg 5y ago
      I have 17 exceptions in PB that I've setup, including my ISP, my broker, and my local utilities. Those would all be since I switched to firefox (2-3 years ago now?). It used to be worse, I'm pretty sure I had many dozens of exceptions on my old chrome settings.
tomComb 5y ago
I didn't think they did those anymore. True, though, they've tried endless very slimy business models - anything that works until they get caught or called out.
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  We never replaced ads on web pages. The binance.{us,com} auto-complete affiliate code was a bug and we renounced any (tiny) revenue that might come from it. I think it's slimy to do what you just did. Why'd you do it? We didn't do the first thing you said, and we shipped and then fixed the bug on the second. I don't see how you can excuse your action.
  - tomComb 5y ago
    Because I don't believe you. For example, I followed up on your claim about the second when it happened and it appeared clear to me that it was not a bug. I'm now familiar with how you aggressively and dishonestly attack people who call out Brave's actions. I know I'm not special - that's just how you do business - but you aren't going to intimidate me. I will make one concession to your attack though, I will declare that I'm not affiliated with any party in this and am simply doing my best to objectively judge the facts.
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      If you don't believe me, then there's no point in talking. But you can verify for yourself that we've never replaced ads in publisher pages. On the binance.{us,com} autocomplete with affiliate code, it was a blunder where two entries in a table had the wrong flag passed in. Not sure how to prove intent, so again: no point talking if you don't believe me but my work has been in the open for 23+ years and I stand behind it.
      - tomComb 5y ago
        I'm not stupid: I'm not going to discard my judgement based on careful examination of independent parties in favour of how you want me to judge it. (Even if I hadn't seen that you are not trustworthy and will aggressively attack people for speaking the truth.) > If you don't believe me, then there's no point in talking. Ok, something we can agree upon!
BrendanEich 5y ago
No, we never replaced ads on websites with our own; and no, we made nothing from the binance.com/.us autocomplete bug (no other URLs, no links in pages) getting affiliate codes. Be careful what misinformation you parrot. It doesn't help anyone looking for better privacy products or trustworthy commenters.
- input_sh 5y ago
  How would you describe stripping ads from websites and then displaying different ones? Personally, I'd call that replacing website ads with your own. I'm fully aware that you don't show them within the content (but in notification) and that it's an opt-in thing, but that doesn't make the statement inaccurate. You absolutely are removing them and showing others. In other words, you're replacing them.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    Dictionary time again: verb: replace; 3rd person present: replaces; past tense: replaced; past participle: replaced; gerund or present participle: replacing 1. take the place of. "Ian's smile was replaced by a frown" 2. put (something) back in a previous place or position. "he drained his glass and replaced it on the bar" Using "replace" implies in situ (which is false as you admit), or else you seem to think the page owns all your display and OS-mediated window-system attention "surface area". It does not, no page even needs to show for an opt-in Brave User Ad to be posted. So as you've kindly admitted the "in a previous place or position" sense is false, you must mean any page owns your eyeballs if it's anywhere near a user ad. I demur and so do our users. Publishers don't own your eyes, desktop, toolbars, tab strip, new tab pages, or notification channels.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - input_sh 5y ago
      If I take your laptop and put a different one two meters away, I've still replaced it. If I take your glass at the bar to fill it up, is there a requirement that I place it in the exact same position as your previous one, or is there a pretty big margin of error? What makes screen estate different than that? In general, I'm all for the concept of micropayments to websites. But your implementation, weasly language (like here), and of course your homophobic donations makes Brave pretty unappealing to me. I'd rather choose freaking Chrome with a stripped down ad-blocker than it. ...I mean, using Brave is still using Chrome(ium) with a different skin on top, leaky Tor integration, and your own coin that you own... how much of?
ElijahLynn 5y ago
I've been using Brave for over a year now. I don't use the opt-in Brave Rewards Ads but do use the Brave Rewards Auto-Contribute. I love Brave and think it is actually going to save the web from becoming a shitty, slow experience over the years to come. My only gripe is that the crypto integration with Uphold to pay creators is/was hard to use. I love the idea that I can pay $20/month to use the web and that money is disbursed to the sites I visit most! Update: This motivated me to login to Uphold again and relink Brave Rewards so I can use the auto-contribute feature. Uphold didn't have recurring transactions for debit/credit cards originally so it was too much friction to use, but it is all working now.
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  Off topic but please shoot me a message (I'm easy to reach, first at company dot com) with what you find hard to use. I may agree and we're working on better ways to support creators, but I hope to capture your specific issues. Thanks.
  - ElijahLynn 5y ago
    Sure, sent!

KarlKemp 5y ago

It doesn’t. But it hopes to insert itself into enough interactions to turn the screws on website owners.

BrendanEich 5y ago

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28620369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28620369.