8 ms·

Brave is not so brave after all. It merely swaps other people’s ads for its own, like a thief in the night. A trick as old as AdBlock Plus.

princevegeta89 4y ago
Ublock Origin for the win. Block every shit that gets in the way.
mackatap 4y ago
I completely agree. It feels very dirty. You take away the source of income for the creators to earn an extra dollar for yourself.
- mherrmann 4y ago
  s/to earn an extra dollar for yourself/to fund your project, in a privacy-preserving way, to make the internet a better place/.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    How many impressions would you need to cover even a $20 monthly hosting bill, never mind feed yourself or pay rent?
    - valrix 4y ago
      Out of genuine curiosity, I decided to run a few numbers to really find out what it would take for ads alone to support a website and the single developer (no family, no debts, just rent, food, utilities, and hosting). Hosting: $20/month Rent: $800/month (single room studio, if lucky enough to find one) Food: $200/month (likely should be higher due to recent inflation) Utilities: $150/month Total: $1370/month Typical PPM (Price Per Mille) for ads: $6/1000 ads = $0.006 $1370/$0.006 = ~228,333 ad impressions per month. You could reduce the number of required visitors by shoving more ads into the page (3 or more), but even with 3 ad impressions per visit, you'd still need about 76,166 visits each month. That's over 7,600 visits every single day!
  - madjam002 4y ago
    So it’s okay to take away the creators income and replace it with your own just because your project “makes the internet a better place” whatever that subjective tagline means? The criticism is well deserved imo. It’s a sleazy move from Brave.
    - mherrmann 4y ago
      Is it not sleazy that ad networks track us everywhere we go?
mherrmann 4y ago
1. Brave's ads are opt-in. So you don't see any by default. 2. They are not the same as other ads, because they preserve your privacy. 3. Brave is taking on Google, one of the most powerful companies in the world, so we get a better internet. I'm not sure about you. In my books that's pretty brave. 4. You're dumping on other people's hard work in a fly-by comment that takes seconds to write. How are you being brave? What is your contribution to a better internet? 5. Say you want to create an alternative browser to take power away from Google. It costs many millions of dollars per year to pay for the development. How will you pay for this, if not also with the help of ads?
- keyle 4y ago
  Sorry I tried brave once and never looked back but I am wondering... why would I Opt in for ads that I specifically got a browser to remove?
  - zpeti 4y ago
    Parent already answered that, perhaps you think the ad ecosystem is better served by multiple players not just the FB and google duopoly. Or you want to support a small upstart. Or you don’t mind ads but you do mind the tracking. So brave is way better.
  - kkoncevicius 4y ago
    Brave ads, if you opt in, are displayed as system popups, not in the browser. You opt in so that you get a reward - BAT token - for seeing those ads. These rewards you gain are later distributed to all the content creators, according to how long and how often you visit their websites.
    - raffraffraff 4y ago
      Here's an idea. Why not implement an ad tab that combines search with ads. So you can search for ads. It would be like a micro-store, or one of those old mail-order catalogs. Or those late-night infomercials that took over a whole channel for a few hours after 2am, when regular programmes ended. If I am looking for a new phone, i can browse the ads first. If that fails I can go elsewhere. I just think that the concept of intruding into my frame, via embedded ads or notifications, is distraction I simply do not ever want.
WA 4y ago
Not sure why Brave gets attention on HN at all. Their sketchy business model was clear many years ago, see the intro post from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10938593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10938593
- mherrmann 4y ago
  What to you is sketchy about the business model? The fact that it is also based on ads?
  - ddxv 4y ago
    The reason it feels sketchy to me is that they first block the ads, but then insert their own ads onto the websites. Thus they try to force web publishers to use their services if they want to make any money from showing ads on their site.
    - stametseater 4y ago
      > insert their own ads onto the websites This is very persistent misinformation. Brave used to modify search results pages to insert their referal code, which was scummy as hell and thankfully they went back on that decision and pretended it was an accident (I can't see how that could possibly be done by accident.) Referall codes are not exactly 'ads' though, and other than that, Brave hasn't inserted their own shit into webpages. The ads which Brave displays are in a separate window, not inserted into web pages. Anyway, just stick to Firefox. The perceived "need" to use a Chromium browser is a Google psyop. Firefox works fine, and if it takes a few minutes off my laptop's battery life.. who fucking cares. Not me.
      - toyg 4y ago
        They did more than that at the beginning, their original business model was something like "user pays us X, directly or by looking at ads, and we distribute that X to the sites they visit”, effectively inserting themselves in the ad chain by force. They've since changed that model 15378382 times, every time denying that there was a problem with the previous versions, so I stopped caring. I mean I get it: it's a very hard problem to fund a browser that is user-centric, and all solutions found as of today suck in one way or another. Mozilla does it by leveraging Google's need for a fig leaf when talking to authorities about monopolistic behavior. Vivaldi does it by selling pageview counts or something like that. Etc etc. I just wish companies were more honest about it.
esperent 4y ago
So most advertisers steal your attention without permission and now Brave comes and steals their stealing of your attention. I don't think there are any good actors here. Yes, the content creators who aim to make a living through advertising lose out. But personally it's not a business model I want to support either, and if Brave goes some way to proving that it's an unsustainable business model with bad actors all the way down then I'm actually fine with that. Let's be real here, content creators are far from pure and are playing the game of attention stealing just as much as everyone else here (with a few notable exceptions). The vast majority of them are trying to game the SEO system for their own ends, not love of producing content. All the SEO spam you get with you try to research something on Google, that's the reality of modern ad supported content creation.
Y_Y 4y ago
Is this really like a thief in the night? I would suggest that it is nothing like a thief in the night.

princevegeta89 4y ago

Ublock Origin for the win. Block every shit that gets in the way.

mackatap 4y ago

I completely agree. It feels very dirty. You take away the source of income for the creators to earn an extra dollar for yourself.

mherrmann 4y ago
s/to earn an extra dollar for yourself/to fund your project, in a privacy-preserving way, to make the internet a better place/.
- TylerE 4y ago
  How many impressions would you need to cover even a $20 monthly hosting bill, never mind feed yourself or pay rent?
  - valrix 4y ago
    Out of genuine curiosity, I decided to run a few numbers to really find out what it would take for ads alone to support a website and the single developer (no family, no debts, just rent, food, utilities, and hosting). Hosting: $20/month Rent: $800/month (single room studio, if lucky enough to find one) Food: $200/month (likely should be higher due to recent inflation) Utilities: $150/month Total: $1370/month Typical PPM (Price Per Mille) for ads: $6/1000 ads = $0.006 $1370/$0.006 = ~228,333 ad impressions per month. You could reduce the number of required visitors by shoving more ads into the page (3 or more), but even with 3 ad impressions per visit, you'd still need about 76,166 visits each month. That's over 7,600 visits every single day!
- madjam002 4y ago
  So it’s okay to take away the creators income and replace it with your own just because your project “makes the internet a better place” whatever that subjective tagline means? The criticism is well deserved imo. It’s a sleazy move from Brave.
  - mherrmann 4y ago
    Is it not sleazy that ad networks track us everywhere we go?

mherrmann 4y ago

1. Brave's ads are opt-in. So you don't see any by default. 2. They are not the same as other ads, because they preserve your privacy. 3. Brave is taking on Google, one of the most powerful companies in the world, so we get a better internet. I'm not sure about you. In my books that's pretty brave. 4. You're dumping on other people's hard work in a fly-by comment that takes seconds to write. How are you being brave? What is your contribution to a better internet? 5. Say you want to create an alternative browser to take power away from Google. It costs many millions of dollars per year to pay for the development. How will you pay for this, if not also with the help of ads?

keyle 4y ago
Sorry I tried brave once and never looked back but I am wondering... why would I Opt in for ads that I specifically got a browser to remove?
- zpeti 4y ago
  Parent already answered that, perhaps you think the ad ecosystem is better served by multiple players not just the FB and google duopoly. Or you want to support a small upstart. Or you don’t mind ads but you do mind the tracking. So brave is way better.
- kkoncevicius 4y ago
  Brave ads, if you opt in, are displayed as system popups, not in the browser. You opt in so that you get a reward - BAT token - for seeing those ads. These rewards you gain are later distributed to all the content creators, according to how long and how often you visit their websites.
  - raffraffraff 4y ago
    Here's an idea. Why not implement an ad tab that combines search with ads. So you can search for ads. It would be like a micro-store, or one of those old mail-order catalogs. Or those late-night infomercials that took over a whole channel for a few hours after 2am, when regular programmes ended. If I am looking for a new phone, i can browse the ads first. If that fails I can go elsewhere. I just think that the concept of intruding into my frame, via embedded ads or notifications, is distraction I simply do not ever want.

WA 4y ago

Not sure why Brave gets attention on HN at all. Their sketchy business model was clear many years ago, see the intro post from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10938593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10938593

mherrmann 4y ago
What to you is sketchy about the business model? The fact that it is also based on ads?
- ddxv 4y ago
  The reason it feels sketchy to me is that they first block the ads, but then insert their own ads onto the websites. Thus they try to force web publishers to use their services if they want to make any money from showing ads on their site.
  - stametseater 4y ago
    > insert their own ads onto the websites This is very persistent misinformation. Brave used to modify search results pages to insert their referal code, which was scummy as hell and thankfully they went back on that decision and pretended it was an accident (I can't see how that could possibly be done by accident.) Referall codes are not exactly 'ads' though, and other than that, Brave hasn't inserted their own shit into webpages. The ads which Brave displays are in a separate window, not inserted into web pages. Anyway, just stick to Firefox. The perceived "need" to use a Chromium browser is a Google psyop. Firefox works fine, and if it takes a few minutes off my laptop's battery life.. who fucking cares. Not me.
    - toyg 4y ago
      They did more than that at the beginning, their original business model was something like "user pays us X, directly or by looking at ads, and we distribute that X to the sites they visit”, effectively inserting themselves in the ad chain by force. They've since changed that model 15378382 times, every time denying that there was a problem with the previous versions, so I stopped caring. I mean I get it: it's a very hard problem to fund a browser that is user-centric, and all solutions found as of today suck in one way or another. Mozilla does it by leveraging Google's need for a fig leaf when talking to authorities about monopolistic behavior. Vivaldi does it by selling pageview counts or something like that. Etc etc. I just wish companies were more honest about it.

esperent 4y ago

So most advertisers steal your attention without permission and now Brave comes and steals their stealing of your attention. I don't think there are any good actors here. Yes, the content creators who aim to make a living through advertising lose out. But personally it's not a business model I want to support either, and if Brave goes some way to proving that it's an unsustainable business model with bad actors all the way down then I'm actually fine with that. Let's be real here, content creators are far from pure and are playing the game of attention stealing just as much as everyone else here (with a few notable exceptions). The vast majority of them are trying to game the SEO system for their own ends, not love of producing content. All the SEO spam you get with you try to research something on Google, that's the reality of modern ad supported content creation.

Y_Y 4y ago

Is this really like a thief in the night? I would suggest that it is nothing like a thief in the night.