Users banding together to send crypto anonymously toward their favorite sites and creators is not "parasitic" -- you and your browser are the host, already colonized by tracking scripts for ads if you don't use a no-compromises blocker such as uBO.
Users' right to block is well supported by web standards and case law. Adding a separate, direct to creator funding option is not parasitism, it is found money for creators.
To see someone here call our opt-in (meaning that each user consents without duress) anonymous micro-contributions and (coming up fast) private ads model layered on top such a name tells me that person has confused host and parasite, or is working for one of the parasites.
It was never a given that your browser should become a blind and passive servant to surveillance super-companies either wholly or partly dependent on ads, but such companies did capture arguably 3 of the top 4 browsers.
Now is the time for users to push back, whether by Brave if you like it, a blocker such as uBO on a browser that doesn't track you by default (perhaps when "logged in"; whatever), or another method that works for you. I hope those who have not yet will give Brave a try. https://brave.com/download-dev for the chromium-extensions-ready new version.
I know Brave has their own arguably evil agenda, but their Android browser right now is simply amazing. It blocks all ads and trackers, without needing to set up VPNs or proxys or companion apps that mess with your settings and don't always work. If you prefer Chrome over Firefox on your Android then for ad-free browsing it can't be beat.
Slightly off topic, but if you're okay with a bit of setup, there's a cool F-Droid app called Blokada that's like a personal pi-hole.
I had an issue where my firefox browser was great, but the other apps on my phone were extremely noisy with ad networks. This would compliment an ad blocked Brave/Firefox browser nicely.
Anything above baseline blocking, protection against fingerprinting, etc., is optional and must remain so or our core users would bolt. So please feel welcome to use in default mode.
BTW, chromium bloat rep in part comes from Chrome not blocking ads and tracking well. Extensions must use JS and so use more memory. Brave uses C++ in the network threads of the browser process.
The first time I heard of Brave, I thought Oh cool, a privacy focused, chromium based browser. But I must say I'm honestly appalled by its parasitic business model.
Content creators are strong armed into becoming verified publishers, while users have to trust Brave that their data is handled properly and carefully.
What're you talking about? Their content creator program is completely voluntary, and their business model (and the Basic Attention Token) is designed to serve content creators, and is not driven by ads or data collection (like Chrome is).
Brave is the only hope I see for a strictly "privacy-by-default" browser, which is not powered by an ad-based business model. Brendan Eich isn't a dumbell, he knows what is wrong with broswer-based privacy and what needs fixing.
PS: I use Brave on Android and the experience has been better than Chrome.
Why I never use it. I will always stick to Firefox. Firefox has yet to irritate me. A few plugins here or there is not as awful as most of what Google does.
Besides if I REALLY wanted to I could run one of the GPL forks of Firefox. They may be dated after a while but they work usually.
Edit: I meant to say GNU forks like IceWeasel and GNU IceCat which are licensed as GPL usually. There's other forks too.
I don't know much about this browser, but I'm finding it strange that multiple accounts are describing it using the same adjective ("parasitic") without actually explaining what it does.
However, I think a fundamental issue arises if you are going to pay people to see ads: What if someone forks Brave, and creates a browser which blocks all Brave ads, while pretending to click on them?
Neither of the two solutions I can think of are pleasant ones: you either need to somehow verify that that ads are viewed by a human (i.e. CAPTCHAs), or use DRM-like mechanisms to hide a token in Brave’s brinary, so that only “honest” browsers can get paid.
Any network with grants or revshares of tokens or other units of account that might exchange to money, and humans in the loop, will have fraud. Blockchain cannot stop it and has really nothing to offer yet on this front -- reputation on chain is a hope, some say a vain dream.
What Brave offers that's far better than today's joke of an antifraud system for ads is as follows: 1/ integrity-checked open source native code, which cannot be fooled by other JS on page; 2/ looking at all the sensors, even the ones without web APIs, to check humanity.
(1) requires SGX or ARM equivalent, widespread on mobile. JS by contrast cannot be sure of anything unless the antifraud script knows it runs first, and publishers cannot guarantee this in general or easily.
(2) is a material advantage over JS, which has only some but not all sensor APIs.
What platform are you on? It works perfectly in both Brave and Firefox installations (unmodified) on Android (version 9, Pie). (Tested on wikipedia articles). However, keep in mind that individual web pages can disable this behavior with meta viewport. (https://www.w3schools.com/Css/css_rwd_viewport.asp)
I've looked at using brave instead of Firefox because I'd install fewer extensions to get what I want in terms of ad blocking and privacy. Fewer extensions is a regular goal of mine. That said, Brave isn't quite there yet for me on the desktop but based on the roadmap, I'll be checking it out again in a few months. In the meantime, Brave is my primary mobile browser.
Brave decided to protect users by default from privacy concerns, it may not be perfect, I'm going to give it a go and see.
Firefox offers various privacy features (check about:config), but they're opt-in and typically have a bar to entry for users to be willing to change settings and know what they will do.
Mozilla might claim to care about privacy, but by not clamping down on third party content and referers, it left most of its userbase in the position of having their privacy invaded by default when using their product. If you care about privacy you fix that, they didn't.
The built in ad-blocking is more performant, it’s based on chromium, so compatibility with some marginal sites. Other than that they’re pretty comparable. Brave has some crypto-related compensation scheme for websites but it’s completely opt-in and optional.
> This app has access to: Device & app history Allows the app to view one or more of: information about activity on the device, which apps are running, browsing history and bookmarks
I support Brave's vision for the Web, but it currently seems to represent a step backwards for privacy. Making payments to providers essentially involves sending your Web browsing history to Brave. The FAQ states that "we do not know which BAT wallet is associated with the lists of sites that you choose to support". I believe that is false.
I think it works like this: (1) Brave Browser submits its transactions to a Brave server to exchange a BAT for an Anonize ballot (anonize.org), (2) each ballot has the name of a site you visited randomly added by the browser with probability proportional to the frequency of site visits, and (3) the ballots are sent to a Brave server. Key here is that the token and ballot submissions are sent directly (e.g. not through a proxy or Tor). In addition, I believe the ballots may be submitted as a batch (i.e. at one point in time). Therefore, it is easy for Brave to see your votes for your visited websites, all coming at once, all from your IP address. That IP address may well be the same one used to exchange the BAT for ballots as well.
There are additional problems regarding visits to unusual and identifying websites that I feel like Brave hasn't begun to consider, either. Suppose that every and only time that Brave receives a ballot for your personal website, they also receive a ballot for some unpopular and sensitive website. They can then conclude that the owner of the website also visits that sensitive site.
These problems must be addressed before Brave can be considered seriously by privacy-conscious users.
No history sent to Brave - did you assume this, or read it somewhere?
We use ANONIZE2 based on https://anonize.org/ to blind ourselves to your history. Can’t be evil > Don’t be evil. We see only zero-knowledge proofs that say how many votes go to sites or YouTube or Twitch accounts. These proofs do not link to user id or to ine another (so no fingerprint by clustering). They go over an IP address masking service to our accounting server, while your monthly budget goes in a single token transaction.
Note Google and other ad tech powers do track your history. Logging into Chrome even gives your history over for ad targeting. Blendle, Flattrplus, other such services also see your history. But we do not.
Brave claims to be 2-8 times faster than Chrome & Firefox on popular news sites. If Brave is based on Chromium, no ways it can be twice faster than Chrome. If it based on a new developed browser kit, it’s too fantastic to be true. It’s already a respectable performance if a new browser kit can come close to the unicorn browsers like Chrome & Firefox (Quantum). The whole thing is too fishy for my taste.
It's faster because it neither loads nor displays the ads, which are a huge portion of the page weight. In my subjective experience using Brave, I'd say 3-4x is about right.
BTW, the rampant inefficiency and bugginess of ads is what prompted me to install first AdBlock and then Brave in the first place. I have no problem with viewing ads or supporting content publishers; I do have a problem when the sheer weight of all the ads and trackers they include on their page means I'm waiting 10+ seconds for the page to load and there's a good chance of it locking up entirely. If the damn ad networks would just follow best practices regarding efficient & robust JS serving I wouldn't block them, but they don't, so I do.
As others have pointed out, Brave is much faster largely due to us blocking third party ads and trackers. These can account for more than 50% of your data at times. As a result, blocking them will result in better performance.
Block current ad tech and replace it with their own. Where does Brave hope to be in 10 years? Controlling the internet ad marketplace via their BAT token platform. Once the initial creators have earned their take and lost their will the platform values will be slowly (rapidly?) eroded and we'll be right back where we are today.
They actually explain what exactly is stored and what it is used for. You can see and control it as well. But on hacker news and this is an unpopular opinion.
There’s adaway for Android (needs root) that downloads, merges and replace /etc/hosts with your favorite hosts blacklists, working system wide and not consuming extra battery: https://adaway.org
I respect the CEO's right to keep details of his opinions on other people's rights to himself. Unfortunately, the appearance of his Prop 8 donation makes me not want to send money his way. There are plenty of browsers out there.
Installed brave on Linux, the autocomplete is sluggishly slow which I guess is due to history search but makes it completely unusable. There's an open issue for that, but I wished they didn't market it with such a critical bug.
If anyone from Brave is here, I look forward to customizing the install location on Windows. I need to install to a secure area, not my user directory. I look forward to giving it a good test when I can.
i have lot count of the number of browser projects that positioned themselves as an alternative to XYZ existing product. not saying it doesn’t happen (chrome) just that there are often several attempts made that rise and fall quickly. adding cryptocurrency may be an interesting spin...but in the end it’s just a spin and the core loop is not much different. best of luck to them!
[+] [-] BrendanEich|7 years ago|reply
Users' right to block is well supported by web standards and case law. Adding a separate, direct to creator funding option is not parasitism, it is found money for creators.
To see someone here call our opt-in (meaning that each user consents without duress) anonymous micro-contributions and (coming up fast) private ads model layered on top such a name tells me that person has confused host and parasite, or is working for one of the parasites.
It was never a given that your browser should become a blind and passive servant to surveillance super-companies either wholly or partly dependent on ads, but such companies did capture arguably 3 of the top 4 browsers.
Now is the time for users to push back, whether by Brave if you like it, a blocker such as uBO on a browser that doesn't track you by default (perhaps when "logged in"; whatever), or another method that works for you. I hope those who have not yet will give Brave a try. https://brave.com/download-dev for the chromium-extensions-ready new version.
[+] [-] mswift42|7 years ago|reply
True, but replacing ads you don't get compensated for with ads you do, is.
[+] [-] highace|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] androidgirl|7 years ago|reply
I had an issue where my firefox browser was great, but the other apps on my phone were extremely noisy with ad networks. This would compliment an ad blocked Brave/Firefox browser nicely.
[+] [-] androidgirl|7 years ago|reply
My browser is for reading docs, for JS/WASM development, and the occasional Gmail or HN visit, so maybe I'm not their target market.
[+] [-] BrendanEich|7 years ago|reply
BTW, chromium bloat rep in part comes from Chrome not blocking ads and tracking well. Extensions must use JS and so use more memory. Brave uses C++ in the network threads of the browser process.
[+] [-] codezero|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mswift42|7 years ago|reply
Content creators are strong armed into becoming verified publishers, while users have to trust Brave that their data is handled properly and carefully.
[+] [-] arjbah|7 years ago|reply
Brave is the only hope I see for a strictly "privacy-by-default" browser, which is not powered by an ad-based business model. Brendan Eich isn't a dumbell, he knows what is wrong with broswer-based privacy and what needs fixing.
PS: I use Brave on Android and the experience has been better than Chrome.
[+] [-] giancarlostoro|7 years ago|reply
Besides if I REALLY wanted to I could run one of the GPL forks of Firefox. They may be dated after a while but they work usually.
Edit: I meant to say GNU forks like IceWeasel and GNU IceCat which are licensed as GPL usually. There's other forks too.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranded_by_...
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat
[+] [-] hliyan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spooneybarger|7 years ago|reply
What's the alternative to Brave's model? I personally will keep using Firefox with an adblocker and publishers will get nothing.
[+] [-] raitucarp|7 years ago|reply
Can you elaborate more?
[+] [-] strainer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] googletron|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway4864a|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mkeyhani|7 years ago|reply
However, I think a fundamental issue arises if you are going to pay people to see ads: What if someone forks Brave, and creates a browser which blocks all Brave ads, while pretending to click on them?
Neither of the two solutions I can think of are pleasant ones: you either need to somehow verify that that ads are viewed by a human (i.e. CAPTCHAs), or use DRM-like mechanisms to hide a token in Brave’s brinary, so that only “honest” browsers can get paid.
[+] [-] BrendanEich|7 years ago|reply
What Brave offers that's far better than today's joke of an antifraud system for ads is as follows: 1/ integrity-checked open source native code, which cannot be fooled by other JS on page; 2/ looking at all the sensors, even the ones without web APIs, to check humanity.
(1) requires SGX or ARM equivalent, widespread on mobile. JS by contrast cannot be sure of anything unless the antifraud script knows it runs first, and publishers cannot guarantee this in general or easily.
(2) is a material advantage over JS, which has only some but not all sensor APIs.
For more on the joke of antifraud adtech today, please see https://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/state-of-digital-ad-... and https://twitter.com/acfou's other work.
[+] [-] herf|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] majewsky|7 years ago|reply
EDIT: Tried just now. Pinch-to-zoom works fine on HN.
[+] [-] _hyn3|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hazz99|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spooneybarger|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marichards|7 years ago|reply
Firefox offers various privacy features (check about:config), but they're opt-in and typically have a bar to entry for users to be willing to change settings and know what they will do.
Mozilla might claim to care about privacy, but by not clamping down on third party content and referers, it left most of its userbase in the position of having their privacy invaded by default when using their product. If you care about privacy you fix that, they didn't.
[+] [-] radicaldreamer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Markoff|7 years ago|reply
much smoother scrolling
[+] [-] dbielik|7 years ago|reply
Why is this required?
[+] [-] gruez|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohmygodel|7 years ago|reply
I think it works like this: (1) Brave Browser submits its transactions to a Brave server to exchange a BAT for an Anonize ballot (anonize.org), (2) each ballot has the name of a site you visited randomly added by the browser with probability proportional to the frequency of site visits, and (3) the ballots are sent to a Brave server. Key here is that the token and ballot submissions are sent directly (e.g. not through a proxy or Tor). In addition, I believe the ballots may be submitted as a batch (i.e. at one point in time). Therefore, it is easy for Brave to see your votes for your visited websites, all coming at once, all from your IP address. That IP address may well be the same one used to exchange the BAT for ballots as well.
There are additional problems regarding visits to unusual and identifying websites that I feel like Brave hasn't begun to consider, either. Suppose that every and only time that Brave receives a ballot for your personal website, they also receive a ballot for some unpopular and sensitive website. They can then conclude that the owner of the website also visits that sensitive site.
These problems must be addressed before Brave can be considered seriously by privacy-conscious users.
[+] [-] BrendanEich|7 years ago|reply
We use ANONIZE2 based on https://anonize.org/ to blind ourselves to your history. Can’t be evil > Don’t be evil. We see only zero-knowledge proofs that say how many votes go to sites or YouTube or Twitch accounts. These proofs do not link to user id or to ine another (so no fingerprint by clustering). They go over an IP address masking service to our accounting server, while your monthly budget goes in a single token transaction.
Note Google and other ad tech powers do track your history. Logging into Chrome even gives your history over for ad targeting. Blendle, Flattrplus, other such services also see your history. But we do not.
[+] [-] sinuhe69|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sleavey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostrademons|7 years ago|reply
BTW, the rampant inefficiency and bugginess of ads is what prompted me to install first AdBlock and then Brave in the first place. I have no problem with viewing ads or supporting content publishers; I do have a problem when the sheer weight of all the ads and trackers they include on their page means I'm waiting 10+ seconds for the page to load and there's a good chance of it locking up entirely. If the damn ad networks would just follow best practices regarding efficient & robust JS serving I wouldn't block them, but they don't, so I do.
[+] [-] jonathansampson|7 years ago|reply
See https://medium.com/@robleathern/carriers-are-making-more-fro... and https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost... for more information.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mdimec4|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dxhdr|7 years ago|reply
How is this appealing?
[+] [-] owly|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andreygrehov|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mda|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kbob|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emersonrsantos|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unstuckdev|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mping|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcunite|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jazoom|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unrealchild|7 years ago|reply