5 ms·

I'm one of those five, and I'm not switching. Chromium is tainted, Brave is outright corrupt, and IceCat is seriously unpractical (they don't even build Windows

by toyg 5y ago

I'm one of those five, and I'm not switching. Chromium is tainted, Brave is outright corrupt, and IceCat is seriously unpractical (they don't even build Windows binaries, because ideology beats practicality for them). Do I hate the current exec team? Fuck yes. Do I have any serious alternative? Effectively, no. Am I a hostage? Sadly, a bit. I hope people with the power to influence this state of thing will, sooner or later, draw a line and find a better way forward (i.e. a new exec team). Either that, or the project will die and hopefully someone else will pick up the baton.

rglullis 5y ago
> Brave is outright corrupt I am sure I will regret asking... but why do you think that?
- Aeolun 5y ago
  For me at least, all the language Brave uses seems to indicate something similar to a pyramid scheme to me. I dunno, something about the whole thing sets me on edge.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    Really? That is quite odd. Users receive crypto if they join the brave rewards system. The rewards are directly related to Brave's revenue from their ad network - the notification ads. Advertisers put money for a known reason and a quantifiable investment. It's all opt-in. Users don't need to put any of their own money to be able to withdraw the rewards they receive. It's as much the opposite of a scheme as it can be. What would you take to get you to take another look at it, to see it for yourself?
    - teddyh 5y ago
      Any system which involves money and is not immediately obviously simple to understand is almost always created in order to steal people’s money.
      - soundnote 5y ago
        The Brave system is pretty simple, though? They sell ad space, people buy ad space. Brave shows you ads and keeps a cut, they give their users a cut. Brave has a tipping service which lets users tip sites they like. End result is advertisers can advertise, and people making content get some of the ad money, the setup's just built to not track people. The big concern there is that ads that don't track are generally less valuable so even widespread adoption of Brave's system would cause a decrease in ad revenue, same as Apple's recent anti-tracking changes.
        rglullis 5y ago
        It's incredible. I think Brave/BAT is pretty much the only project in the crypto space that has a straightforward answer to "how do you guys plan to make money?" question, yet it is called "outright corrupt" and implied they are stealing from users somehow. I really wonder why there is so much cognitive dissonance.
        smoldesu 5y ago
        Just speaking personally, but every time I've ever confronted a Brave dev online it's been among the worst experiences I've ever had. Every time I try to espouse an issue that I have with the design or architecture, I get lambasted for sharing it and then they insist that I'm objectively wrong. Browser preference is ultimately subjective, like your choice of editor or operating system: the least you can do is explain your mentality in a way that isn't ostracizing to technical users, otherwise you're no worse than Apple with pocketing your 30% and leaving the users out to dry.
        rglullis 5y ago
        I don't know if your choice of words was intentional, but if I am developer and you come to confront me - I would also be more aggressive in the communication. > Every time I try to espouse an issue that I have with the design or architecture If you start a conversation with "issues that you have", you are going to have a hard time. Always. Starting with "issues that you have" is bad because (a) it assumes that you know more than the developers who have done the work of designing and addressing the trade-offs of the system and went through the actual work of developing the solution, (b) it assumes that your needs are more important than those of other users who are satisfied with the solution and (c) places the burden of solving your issue onto their shoulders while offering nothing in return. In other words: no one likes a know-it-all. If you start the conversation with the intent of understanding why things were done in a certain way and why certain design choices were made, you will be more likely to get in an engaging and productive conversation than just showing up with a laundry list of things that you'd like to see "fixed". By asking why instead of "confronting" design choices, you are more likely even to get them to recognize when a choice is sub-optimal. I follow a good part of the lead members in Brave on Twitter. I've seen a lot of conversations from them with other people. Most if not all of them are working with false assumptions and don't even bother to question themselves. Those that come right away aggressive against them or assuming malice are indeed met with brashness. It might seem rude, but I would probably do the same after fending off the 100th random person on the internet accusing you of things you haven't done or demanding that you do something about the token price. Those that come with the intent of understanding and assuming good intentions are way more likely to be treated cordially.
- toyg 5y ago
  Their whole business model is predicated on effectively replacing ad networks with Brave's own system; I don't know about you, but I find that abhorrent from the perspective of site owners. If it became dominant, you'd just be creating a new monopoly.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    > I don't know about you, but I find that abhorrent from the perspective of site owners. No, I find it amazing and I can probably write an essay about it. The "ad-supported" economy is directly responsible for a lot of content, but the majority of it is not just bad, it is also actually damaging to society. Think of all the sites that "make a living" on clickbait, content farming, fake news, SEO manipulation and outright fraud. Also, think of all the big ad tech companies that have no incentive in ensuring any kind of quality on its users and just focusing on metrics like "engagement". It is not too much of a stretch to think of how the "ad supported" content economy is correlated with the increased polarization of people, the growing tribal divide and the isolation of individuals. I honestly think that we should be treating the majority of "ad supported" websites as heavy polluters of our minds and our societies. "Ad-supported" sites have nothing to gain by working on quality content and can put all their efforts optimizing for controversy, shock value and eyeballs. When everything became "free", we lost our ability to vote with our wallet and lose any power in steering the market to produce the things that we value. Given that we can not simply ban "free" sites, the next best thing is to find an alternative way to finance content creators, but where the users can have a say in how the resources are allocated. The Brave model does exactly that. Content creators still have a way to make money from their work, but it is not just enough to plaster ads on our faces and collect a check from Google. They will have to compete for quality. They will have to be able to demonstrate that their work is not just worth of the people's time (for those that want to put up with ads), they will have to produce something of value to us. > If it became dominant, you'd just be creating a new monopoly. No, not at all. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING stopping Mozilla to create a similar ad network and to follow a similar model. In fact, they can even also base it on BAT and leverage all the work that Brave already did and avoid all the pitfalls that Brave had along the way when they were developing the system. Brave buys the token in the open market, Mozilla could do the same. They could use the same partner exchanges. They could probably even use the same codebase on the client side. Honestly, if Mozilla did just that on Firefox, I'd switch back to it immediately. Like you, I also wish that Firefox continued to be a strong alternative to keep Google in check. But after the many years of poor management, blatant cash grabs and all the marketing spending that makes them more focused on "looking good" than "doing good", I've given up. I don't want wishy-washy feelings, I want to destroy Surveillance Capitalism. Mozilla/Firefox are not working on anything to do that. Brave is.
babuskov 5y ago
> Do I have any serious alternative? Vivaldi? I'm using Firefox myself and have been using it almost exclusively since it was named Firebird back in the day, but I have considered Vivaldi as an alternative at one point.
- adar 5y ago
  I like Vivaldi but the issue is that you're still locking yourself into Chromium's Blink rendering engine which just serves to strengthen Google's push to be the de-facto standards enforcer of the web.
  - knob 5y ago
    Exactly. Thanks for writing it out.
    - jimbob21 5y ago
      Anything wrong with Opera or Opera GX?
      - pseudalopex 5y ago
        Same engine.
      - finder83 5y ago
        Also owned now by a China-based company and closed source
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Personally, a proprietary browser really rubs me the wrong way

by toyg 5y ago

rglullis 5y ago

> Brave is outright corrupt I am sure I will regret asking... but why do you think that?

Aeolun 5y ago
For me at least, all the language Brave uses seems to indicate something similar to a pyramid scheme to me. I dunno, something about the whole thing sets me on edge.
- rglullis 5y ago
  Really? That is quite odd. Users receive crypto if they join the brave rewards system. The rewards are directly related to Brave's revenue from their ad network - the notification ads. Advertisers put money for a known reason and a quantifiable investment. It's all opt-in. Users don't need to put any of their own money to be able to withdraw the rewards they receive. It's as much the opposite of a scheme as it can be. What would you take to get you to take another look at it, to see it for yourself?
  - teddyh 5y ago
    Any system which involves money and is not immediately obviously simple to understand is almost always created in order to steal people’s money.
    - soundnote 5y ago
      The Brave system is pretty simple, though? They sell ad space, people buy ad space. Brave shows you ads and keeps a cut, they give their users a cut. Brave has a tipping service which lets users tip sites they like. End result is advertisers can advertise, and people making content get some of the ad money, the setup's just built to not track people. The big concern there is that ads that don't track are generally less valuable so even widespread adoption of Brave's system would cause a decrease in ad revenue, same as Apple's recent anti-tracking changes.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        It's incredible. I think Brave/BAT is pretty much the only project in the crypto space that has a straightforward answer to "how do you guys plan to make money?" question, yet it is called "outright corrupt" and implied they are stealing from users somehow. I really wonder why there is so much cognitive dissonance.
        smoldesu 5y ago
        Just speaking personally, but every time I've ever confronted a Brave dev online it's been among the worst experiences I've ever had. Every time I try to espouse an issue that I have with the design or architecture, I get lambasted for sharing it and then they insist that I'm objectively wrong. Browser preference is ultimately subjective, like your choice of editor or operating system: the least you can do is explain your mentality in a way that isn't ostracizing to technical users, otherwise you're no worse than Apple with pocketing your 30% and leaving the users out to dry.
        rglullis 5y ago
        I don't know if your choice of words was intentional, but if I am developer and you come to confront me - I would also be more aggressive in the communication. > Every time I try to espouse an issue that I have with the design or architecture If you start a conversation with "issues that you have", you are going to have a hard time. Always. Starting with "issues that you have" is bad because (a) it assumes that you know more than the developers who have done the work of designing and addressing the trade-offs of the system and went through the actual work of developing the solution, (b) it assumes that your needs are more important than those of other users who are satisfied with the solution and (c) places the burden of solving your issue onto their shoulders while offering nothing in return. In other words: no one likes a know-it-all. If you start the conversation with the intent of understanding why things were done in a certain way and why certain design choices were made, you will be more likely to get in an engaging and productive conversation than just showing up with a laundry list of things that you'd like to see "fixed". By asking why instead of "confronting" design choices, you are more likely even to get them to recognize when a choice is sub-optimal. I follow a good part of the lead members in Brave on Twitter. I've seen a lot of conversations from them with other people. Most if not all of them are working with false assumptions and don't even bother to question themselves. Those that come right away aggressive against them or assuming malice are indeed met with brashness. It might seem rude, but I would probably do the same after fending off the 100th random person on the internet accusing you of things you haven't done or demanding that you do something about the token price. Those that come with the intent of understanding and assuming good intentions are way more likely to be treated cordially.
toyg 5y ago
Their whole business model is predicated on effectively replacing ad networks with Brave's own system; I don't know about you, but I find that abhorrent from the perspective of site owners. If it became dominant, you'd just be creating a new monopoly.
- rglullis 5y ago
  > I don't know about you, but I find that abhorrent from the perspective of site owners. No, I find it amazing and I can probably write an essay about it. The "ad-supported" economy is directly responsible for a lot of content, but the majority of it is not just bad, it is also actually damaging to society. Think of all the sites that "make a living" on clickbait, content farming, fake news, SEO manipulation and outright fraud. Also, think of all the big ad tech companies that have no incentive in ensuring any kind of quality on its users and just focusing on metrics like "engagement". It is not too much of a stretch to think of how the "ad supported" content economy is correlated with the increased polarization of people, the growing tribal divide and the isolation of individuals. I honestly think that we should be treating the majority of "ad supported" websites as heavy polluters of our minds and our societies. "Ad-supported" sites have nothing to gain by working on quality content and can put all their efforts optimizing for controversy, shock value and eyeballs. When everything became "free", we lost our ability to vote with our wallet and lose any power in steering the market to produce the things that we value. Given that we can not simply ban "free" sites, the next best thing is to find an alternative way to finance content creators, but where the users can have a say in how the resources are allocated. The Brave model does exactly that. Content creators still have a way to make money from their work, but it is not just enough to plaster ads on our faces and collect a check from Google. They will have to compete for quality. They will have to be able to demonstrate that their work is not just worth of the people's time (for those that want to put up with ads), they will have to produce something of value to us. > If it became dominant, you'd just be creating a new monopoly. No, not at all. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING stopping Mozilla to create a similar ad network and to follow a similar model. In fact, they can even also base it on BAT and leverage all the work that Brave already did and avoid all the pitfalls that Brave had along the way when they were developing the system. Brave buys the token in the open market, Mozilla could do the same. They could use the same partner exchanges. They could probably even use the same codebase on the client side. Honestly, if Mozilla did just that on Firefox, I'd switch back to it immediately. Like you, I also wish that Firefox continued to be a strong alternative to keep Google in check. But after the many years of poor management, blatant cash grabs and all the marketing spending that makes them more focused on "looking good" than "doing good", I've given up. I don't want wishy-washy feelings, I want to destroy Surveillance Capitalism. Mozilla/Firefox are not working on anything to do that. Brave is.

babuskov 5y ago

> Do I have any serious alternative? Vivaldi? I'm using Firefox myself and have been using it almost exclusively since it was named Firebird back in the day, but I have considered Vivaldi as an alternative at one point.

adar 5y ago
I like Vivaldi but the issue is that you're still locking yourself into Chromium's Blink rendering engine which just serves to strengthen Google's push to be the de-facto standards enforcer of the web.
- knob 5y ago
  Exactly. Thanks for writing it out.
  - jimbob21 5y ago
    Anything wrong with Opera or Opera GX?
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      Same engine.
    - finder83 5y ago
      Also owned now by a China-based company and closed source
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Personally, a proprietary browser really rubs me the wrong way