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.
Nothing against Blokada, but as a realist using ad blockers (not just Brave), I need more than domain blocking these days.
Why do you think this? What have we done to give you this impression? Our primary focus is to protect the user's rights online, and to create a sustainable experience for content creators.
I cannot argue with that, I very much agree. But plenty of people not only like consuming what I deem hot garbage, they're more than comfortable supporting it via ads; something I would never subject myself to if given a chance.
But I don't believe I should be able to dictate how other people experience their content or how they fund it, and there are still mountains of ad-supported content that is actually good and that would likely be non-viable on a patronage/subscription system due to things such as their target demographics.
So, Brave seems to tick our own boxes of "no ads" and provides the option for others to subject themselves to them. Unless we're arguing for going back to the old "pre-mainstream" Internet (to which I say, there are many places for that, and the Tor network is particularly fertile for fostering such a culture) then I say the Brave model improves the situation on every front.
Anyway, as the last sentence reminds, attacking us based on compensation shows a strange double standard. The huge super-surveillance companies pay people way more than we make, and they do it by raiding user privacy, page load time, radio and so battery life and data plan, and safety from malvertising.
We are out to transplant -- with user consent always, creator too if they are involved -- the necessary minimum viable ads components into a clean ecosystem, to capture some of the huge funding from ad spend ($100B in US on digital this year) and give 70% or 85% to user or user+creator. See other replies on how our ad model preserves privacy.
“Right now” is doing some terribly hard work in that claim.
The question you seem to be avoiding by tone-policing in wake of attacking my motives is whether ad spend can be replaced quickly enough to save the "good" content. Perhaps it is time to let the ad-funded world burn, and rebuild afterward. I'm not yet convinced, so excuse me for trying to reform ad-spend rather than just go for baseline blocking + optional voluntary anonymous token contributions, and no other option.
Did I really? Looking back over our brief exchange I’m not seeing it, you just seemed to use my supposed impropriety as a justification to turn this into a fight. It’s a pattern that seems to hold throughout comments on this thread when you’re questioned on the ethics or wisdom of BAT. A more cynical person would suspect that your position is sufficiently untenable that you’re employing a bit of the dead cat strategy.
Why is your only recourse, on the question of how to replace ad funding and keep even just the top 10% of the web alive, to attack our motives or ethics? Better to give a plausible version of how our rejecting ads, even skipping tokens for anonymous donations it seems, and just blocking to burn the ad-funded world down a little faster, leads to a better wider world later.
It’s also worth pointing out that I’ve explained the core issue I have with your plan have nothing to do with your motives or ethics. I’m not sure how many times I need to repeat the idea that something like uBlock Origin is a superior performer, and “but the ad-supported content!” argument is unmoving for reasons I’ve already stated. It’s not that I’ve failed offered a broader perspective, it’s just that you’ve focused a lot on what you perceive as a personal attack, despite it being nothing of the sort.
But what I'm asking you to do, as a better course of action, or on top if you prefer, is say what "existing solutions" are superior and why they win. We started with baseline ad blocking and some of our users, who see the ecosystem problem of free-riding (which you still dismiss), asked us to build an option for giving back. So we prototyped with Bitcoin, and when that got expensive and cut off users who could not buy it, we created the Basic Attention Token instead.
Again if you dislike our ethics, no need to rehash. But I'm still interested in how you think pure blocking, AKA "free riding", will result in a superior outcome for anyone in the long run. Publisher revenues have been falling for years, decades if you look at newspapers. How do your top ten sites keep their lights on?
I’m done with attempts to frame yourself or your “team” as a wronged party.
But what I'm asking you to do, as a better course of action, or on top if you prefer, is say what "existing solutions" are superior and why they win. We started with baseline ad blocking and some of our users, who see the ecosystem problem of free-riding (which you still dismiss)
I don’t dismiss it, I encourage it. I’ve actively stated several times that it’s a model in need of a bullet in the neck. I’ve pointed out that much ad-supported content and “journalism” exists on a scale between useless and toxic. Moreover, the ad industry itself is inseparable from the industry of information brokering, creating demand for crap, and the subsequent environmental catastrophe of modern consumer culture. The death of it, and the noisy bollocks which exists to draw attention to it would be a good thing. Given their history they don’t deserve more chances, and it’s reasonable to suspect that even if they started off allowing for good intentions, over time the envelope would be pushed until we were back where we are now.
I understand that you disagree with what I’m saying on several levels, but the good news is that ad blocking is free and easy, not to mention popular compared to what you’re attempting.
asked us to build an option for giving back. So we prototyped with Bitcoin, and when that got expensive and cut off users who could not buy it, we created the Basic Attention Token instead. Again if you dislike our ethics, no need to rehash. But I'm still interested in how you think pure blocking, AKA "free riding", will result in a superior outcome for anyone in the long run. Publisher revenues have been falling for years, decades if you look at newspapers. How do your top ten sites keep their lights on?
Less noise, more signal. Will “free riding” kill loads of clickbait, outrage factories, and “journalism” that is really a collection of affiliate links? Yes, and it’s a feature, not a bug. As a bonus it could even encourage a more functional and less societally destructive means of remuneration for content creators that isn’t mediated by profiteering sociopaths who call themselves advertisers.
But in the interest of greater knowledge, I'll try one more time to get something less broad that addresses risk. Here is a top-by-revenue-and-subscriptions publisher trade group. They get 80% in aggregate of revenue from ads, are shifting away from ads, but cannot drop ads. Ideas other than high dose rad & chemotherapy (to use your "cancerous" trope) welcome.
https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2014_Mozilla_Found...
On android it is essentially identical to Chrome in every way apart from the Brave icon next to the address bar that controls the blocking.
I really like it.
I tried the desktop version though and did not like the look and feel of the UI - tabs under the address bar etc. Felt like it was a slavish copy of Safari and I did not like it. Much prefer Firefox on desktop.
I have also learnt of Brave's plans to replace a sites ads with its own ads which I do not like. Will move off of Brave on mobile when Firefox is workable on android (last time I tried it was awful, clunky and slow on android).
Also (to anyone who doesn't know) you can install Firefox addons on Firefox mobile, so uBlock Origin works (can personally confirm it) to block ads.
Try https://brave.com/download-dev for better desktop browser that is coming to stable very soon. Almost all chromium extensions work - any using Google accounts/sync do not.
Cutting advertisers off at the knees does, and as a stance it isn’t subject to being degraded through its relationship to advertisers and their money.
If you think the web can do without $100B in US on digital this year, ~$250B globally that goes through ads, then please demonstrate replacement funding models, or just show some evidence of any that could scale that big.
We can't count ads out, but by lifting 3rd party to 1st ad context (avoids brand safety and reverse: bad ads on good content), aligning interests, and cutting out all the trackers and other intermediaries that evolved because browsers were passive slaves to the system, we hope to more than replace the value of our users to publishers that was "lost" via our users blocking by default.
I’ll stick with Firefox, as Mozilla is the only organization users can truly trust today for their privacy
I am among the founders of Mozilla, and I'll speak only about what is public and happened or at least started while I was there:
1. We rejected 3rd party cookie blocking patches, three times. Safari has had a blocker from birth.
2. We got too dependent on Google revenue shares while Google turned from search (1st party ads) to full surveillance (1st and 3rd) superpower.
3. Tracking protection work that started while I was there was delayed for years, then allowed only in private tabs, then a pref was added. Now, after Safari and Brave have taken the lead, Mozilla is turning on tracking protection in some form by default (which is good).
The claim that Mozilla is the only organization users can truly trust for privacy is belied by these facts.
You may not care; I care about some but not others so do not take this as me twisting your arm. But "I'm all right Jack" is a bad attitude in view of the fact that ad-funding is required for millions of sites today.
You’re selling an ICO based on that premise, I’d argue that yes you do very much need to convince at least some people of that. In addition I’d argue that you need to convince people (against the evidence of their own experience) that the majority of the “visible web” isn’t a dumpster fire that would be better off dead.
It's great you don't like most content. Who does? Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is shit) has not been repealed. But we do not all agree on which 90%, and even the top 10% by many measures needs ads. Why are you trying to make your animus against ads into a universal? Seems cultish.