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The problem I have with BAT is that it tries to give me power over the commercialization of something that I don't want commercialized. It's like someone launch

by m12k 5y ago

The problem I have with BAT is that it tries to give me power over the commercialization of something that I don't want commercialized. It's like someone launched a "Basic Sexual Favor Token" to empower me to take control over the sex work I'm expected to perform every day. I have a hard time being happy that they want to empower me, because I'm too busy being aghast at their assumption that this aspect of my life is for sale in the first place and that I would be ok with that.

1shooner 5y ago
Could you describe the negative consequence of BAT for a website owner that doesn't want to sell ads?
- danShumway 5y ago
  > for a website owner Not GP, but when I think about the negative consequences of BAT, I'm thinking about the user and society overall, not necessarily the website owner in specific. Monetizing attention is dangerous, and I think we should be a lot more careful about when we do so, as opposed to monetizing attention being the default way we fund everything online. BAT is in many ways less harmful than existing advertising networks, but it's still trying to find a way to ethically commoditize otherwise private attention/focus on what we read/see, and I think that the omnipresent commoditization of that attention/focus across society is harmful regardless of whether or not it's invasive or collects PII and regardless of whether or not users get paid for selling something that we shouldn't encourage them to sell. I think that this has an effect on how humans process the world, I think it has an effect on how much energy we're willing to devote to different tasks. I think it has an effect on attention spans, and on what types of content get made, and the way that we spread memes/culture, and how we interact with each other. I think it has an effect on market efficiency and on what products succeed. I'm not going to oversell modern advertising as some kind of giant monster that's responsible for all problems, but I think its effects are likely more negative than positive at this point and that we can build better systems that don't optimize for keeping people hooked on consuming content endlessly just so we can redirect some of that attention to a product. As a website owner, the social stuff still applies to me, I may not want my stuff commoditized at all. But I also recognize that users have the right to modify code running on their computer, including for the purposes of inserting their own ads, so if it's happening with the user's permission I can't really get mad at the user. In many ways I'm the least impacted person in this situation. However, that doesn't mean that I think Brave's system is good for the user or for society, and I'm not going to encourage people to use it. My feeling is that Brave is trying to reform a system that I would like to see destroyed.
- endominus 5y ago
  Website owners no longer have a choice. Brave is incentivized to add ads to otherwise ad-free websites, and apparently does so as Matthew Butterick complains about; https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html
  - 1shooner 5y ago
    But you're not selling ads. The user has opted-in to seeing spamware that gives them OS-level notifications, right? Is this new? I guess I don't see the specific impact on web content producers.
  - pl0x 5y ago
    Brave is the wolves in sheeps clothing. I won't be surprised in the future if we learn Brave was using their browser and our data for shady things.
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      Why don't you go prove it by checking our code and runtime network behavior? We pay bug bounties through hackerone.com/brave. Talk is cheap, especially stories that don't pass any kind of smell test: we would not take our life into our hands by collecting any user data, when it's easy to discover that for real hackers. https://brave.com/data https://brave.com/data covers our data policies for baseline and optional stuff.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    We don't and never have put ads in publisher pages. It's not ethical without site consent and our users don't want ads in baseline Brave. If Brave users opt into Brave Rewards for private user ads in push notifications (which, contra Butterick, do not belong to any page they might be near or above; they belong to the user's inventory, same as new tabs and unrelated windows of all kinds), we still wouldn't put ads in pages without both publisher and extra user consent (too many users still wouldn't want in-page ads, even if opted into user push notification ads). HN is full of made up nonsense about Brave, in spite of all the hackers here who can verify our open source, network behavior, etc. etc. This site has seen better days.

by m12k 5y ago

1shooner 5y ago

Could you describe the negative consequence of BAT for a website owner that doesn't want to sell ads?

danShumway 5y ago
> for a website owner Not GP, but when I think about the negative consequences of BAT, I'm thinking about the user and society overall, not necessarily the website owner in specific. Monetizing attention is dangerous, and I think we should be a lot more careful about when we do so, as opposed to monetizing attention being the default way we fund everything online. BAT is in many ways less harmful than existing advertising networks, but it's still trying to find a way to ethically commoditize otherwise private attention/focus on what we read/see, and I think that the omnipresent commoditization of that attention/focus across society is harmful regardless of whether or not it's invasive or collects PII and regardless of whether or not users get paid for selling something that we shouldn't encourage them to sell. I think that this has an effect on how humans process the world, I think it has an effect on how much energy we're willing to devote to different tasks. I think it has an effect on attention spans, and on what types of content get made, and the way that we spread memes/culture, and how we interact with each other. I think it has an effect on market efficiency and on what products succeed. I'm not going to oversell modern advertising as some kind of giant monster that's responsible for all problems, but I think its effects are likely more negative than positive at this point and that we can build better systems that don't optimize for keeping people hooked on consuming content endlessly just so we can redirect some of that attention to a product. As a website owner, the social stuff still applies to me, I may not want my stuff commoditized at all. But I also recognize that users have the right to modify code running on their computer, including for the purposes of inserting their own ads, so if it's happening with the user's permission I can't really get mad at the user. In many ways I'm the least impacted person in this situation. However, that doesn't mean that I think Brave's system is good for the user or for society, and I'm not going to encourage people to use it. My feeling is that Brave is trying to reform a system that I would like to see destroyed.
endominus 5y ago
Website owners no longer have a choice. Brave is incentivized to add ads to otherwise ad-free websites, and apparently does so as Matthew Butterick complains about; https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html
- 1shooner 5y ago
  But you're not selling ads. The user has opted-in to seeing spamware that gives them OS-level notifications, right? Is this new? I guess I don't see the specific impact on web content producers.
- pl0x 5y ago
  Brave is the wolves in sheeps clothing. I won't be surprised in the future if we learn Brave was using their browser and our data for shady things.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    Why don't you go prove it by checking our code and runtime network behavior? We pay bug bounties through hackerone.com/brave. Talk is cheap, especially stories that don't pass any kind of smell test: we would not take our life into our hands by collecting any user data, when it's easy to discover that for real hackers. https://brave.com/data https://brave.com/data covers our data policies for baseline and optional stuff.
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  We don't and never have put ads in publisher pages. It's not ethical without site consent and our users don't want ads in baseline Brave. If Brave users opt into Brave Rewards for private user ads in push notifications (which, contra Butterick, do not belong to any page they might be near or above; they belong to the user's inventory, same as new tabs and unrelated windows of all kinds), we still wouldn't put ads in pages without both publisher and extra user consent (too many users still wouldn't want in-page ads, even if opted into user push notification ads). HN is full of made up nonsense about Brave, in spite of all the hackers here who can verify our open source, network behavior, etc. etc. This site has seen better days.