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Comment by simias | Hacker News Reader

I hear a lot of praise for Brave but I don't really get what's so great about it and the fact that it's cryptocurrency-related triggers all kinds of red flags and make it difficult for me to heed the praise. Are the fans genuine or do they have a vested interest in pumping BAT?

Trying to be a little more constructive, can somebody explain what's so great about it compared to Firefox? Because as far as I can tell it's just yet another Chromium derivative with built-in ad blocker, I don't really see what's so novel or exciting about that. Also AFAIK the source is available but it's not technically under an Open Source license?

Then of course there's the whole BAT thing which as far as I understand it replaces ads with... other ads but it's cryptocurrency based so it's better somehow? I never quite got that.

So what am I missing here? Why is Brave better than Firefox + uBlock origin?

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Just blocking ads with ublock solves the problem of annoying ads but leaves the problem of website revenue.

Ads solve the problem of how to fund websites without subscriptions but create the problem of annoying ads of no relevance.

Google and Facebook mitigate the problem of annoying adverts by trying to make them relevant. That comes at the cost of their constant surveillance without permission, and use of that information to try to “influence” people’s opinions in unrelated ways.

The big lie of recent years has been “we value your privacy” followed some details of how “we” don’t.

BATs try to solve all of these problems by placing control of personal information back with the user.

If I give you a cryptographic representation of my interests you can serve me ads without having to know the intimate details of my life. You only need to know how to deal with the token.

What’s more I can compartmentalise my interests by sending different tokens at different times.

Google could get involved in this sort of research but I suspect that their interests go far beyond just serving ads.

>If I give you a cryptographic representation of my interests you can serve me ads without having to know the intimate details of my life. You only need to know how to deal with the token.

>What’s more I can compartmentalise my interests by sending different tokens at different times.

I'm really perplex. People who care enough about their privacy to make use of something like that are probably those who don't want ads or tracking at all anyway. The rest of the population obviously doesn't care.

I personally can't imagine ever willingly enabling ads in my browser. You want me to pay for your service? Then ask for my credit card number, I may give it to you. If you prefer to beg for me to turn my ad blocker off then be my guest but I won't do it.

The idea of installing Brave, curating several "tokens" containing my interests and selecting what to send to which website is frankly preposterous to me and of dubious value for the advertisers.

Well you should maybe think about the content creators. If they live off the ads then you just killed their living. Bat is about micro transactions - you load Brave with 20usd and leave it to distribute money. It is actually great usecase for crypto. I doubt you want to be giving out your credit card to sites you read and micro transaction services would also invade your privacy by paying for you. All crypto is not bad and BAT is pretty legit in my opinion.

I refuse to accept that ads are the only way for content creators to make a living online. It's not the first time that the cryptocurrency crowd sees a problem and thinks "clearly the blockchain is the solution here". Except that behind buzzwords and vague assertions I fail to see a coherent big picture of how that's all going to work. Instead of giving me Internet Fun Bucks to watch ads, how about you let me pay for your service?

I pay for Spotify, I pay for Memrize, I pay for Tarnsap, I bought a Fontawesome subscription last friday, I used to donate to a couple Patreons. I donate punctually to FreeBSD, Wikipedia and a few other open source projects. I want to support people who offer services that I use. I don't want to prostitute my private life to do it.

If content creators don't want my money but insist that I should let them spam me with ads and share my private info with third parties then it's their problem, not mine.

Life is too short for me to curate "cryptographic interest tokens" in order for advertisers to serve me content that I don't want to see anyway.

Some cryptocurrency projects wanted to develop a cheap and easy micropayment system. That seems a lot more interesting to me although that probably can't work as long as the "currency" part of "cryptocurrency" remains more aspirational than practical.

>. I want to support people who offer services that I use. I don't want to prostitute my private life to do it.

You don't have to, just don't opt-in for Brave rewards (aka ads), and fund your tipping wallet with your money (you can as of today) and voilà !

You'll have:

- No ads, no trackers

- You contribute toward content creators with your cash like you do with Spotify/Netflix using a built-in wallet in your browser

- A fast and privacy-first browser

That sounds ideal. How do I fund my tipping wallet. I can't see anything about it in the Brave desktop brower's UI.

Click on the settings button on the top right --> Brave rewards --> add funds

That does sound a lot more like something I would use. Do the Brave folks get a cut of that money or is it completely peer-to-peer using a cryptocurrency network? If it's the latter what's Brave's business model, they just have a whole bunch of BAT and bet on them gaining value through adoption and deflation?

Making it easier and faster to transfer small amounts of money online is definitely something that needs improving but unfortunately so far cryptocurrency-based solution haven't really managed to solve the problem, mainly because speculation makes them a pretty terrible currency. That's a tough problem to solve.

>Do the Brave folks get a cut of that money or is it completely peer-to-peer using a cryptocurrency network?

No, they don't take a cut if you fund your wallet directly and use it to tip the content creators.

>If it's the latter what's Brave's business model

Here is how they make money, just pasting my comment from below:

By default, ads are blocked, but users of Brave can opt-in to have privacy-friendly ads from the Brave network displayed on websites they browse.

Brave get 30% of the revenue from those ads, and the users get 70% of the revenue as BAT tokens

Users can then use those BAT tokens to tip the websites they like that signed up as Brave publishers (see a list here: https://batgrowth.com/publishers)

So the Ads / Get paid to browse part of Brave is 100% optional and opt-in, many people think it is mandatory

>Making it easier and faster to transfer small amounts of money online is definitely something that needs improving but unfortunately so far cryptocurrency-based solution haven't really managed to solve the problem, mainly because speculation makes them a pretty terrible currency. That's a tough problem to solve.

Yeah, I'm kinda fascinated about Brave's model, I'm wondering if it will be the first cryptocurrency-based solution that make sense to me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)

Brave intends to pay content publishers 55% of the replaced ad revenue. Brave Software 15% Brave ad partners 15% Browser users 15% of the revenue.

So roughly 30%

Thank you for correcting me! I wrote the numbers that were on top of my head

Yeah but it's like cable tv. You would pay a quarter to watch an episode but they want $10 a month. There is no piecemeal solution yet and crypto is not a real solution yet.

But this is exactly what they try to achieve! There are so many creators that don't have regular content worth subscription or patreon. They might be doing one quality blogpost a month or a year. For them ads were only way how to monetize the content somehow.

BAT is trying to change that - instead of ads you put money into Brave and pay those tiny amounts to creators directly. The idea is that you might not even know that you often read some blog and the browser distribute BAT for you (if you want).

Honestly it is not about the cryptocurrency hype at all. Like everybody wanted some legit usecase for crypto and now when there is one then people hate it because it is crypto...

Oh but that does sound interesting, I just wasn't aware of this before this discussion so that was actually quite insightful for me.

I'm still not really considering switching to Brave but if this BAT thing makes it into Firefox (as an extension for instance) I'll probably give it a try.

I remain unconvinced that decentralized blockchains can really scale up to the number of transactions that would be generated by everybody "tipping" individual website as they browse them but that's a different issue.

Oh i fully agree on the crypto part. The scaling is big issue and it could get inefficient financially. I think it was the most straightforward way how to do private transactions without them being fintech company with all the requirements. It is sort of MVP. If they start to have scaling issues they will have time to tackle those.

They also don't have to make the transactions instant. They are basically donations so the transaction time does not really matter. They could spread the transactions for efficiency.

Plus crypto is evolving and they are counting on it. When their scaling issues come there might very well be some ok solution in likes of lightning network. Or doing stuff offchain.

For me Brave is actually secondary browser now because it is the "ungoogled chrome" that is easy to install and i can test webwork i do without chrome.

I feel for them, but ads are just too annoying, intrusive, and possibly malicious for me to willingly disable my adblocker unless they are promising curated ads. The web is already a pretty terrible experience these days, but it's downright painful without an ad blocker.

I’m thinking about the content creators, they have a warm spot in my heart, but it’s not my job to figure out their business model for them. They sent me their web page, and I get to choose how it’s presented - otherwise, I have no control over my own computer. So I choose to enjoy it without ads - ads which often track you, install malware, or act in bad faith in other ways.

If that ruins their business model, they need to figure out how to collect payment before sending me the web page. Don’t freely send OTA TV signals into my house then get offended when I decide to skip the ads. Same thing.

I think a lot of sites have already figured this out. They sell t-shirts. Mugs. Premium podcast episodes, and Patreon sponsorships. The Web is working around this as we speak. But the Googles of the world will make it sound like we’re “stealing web pages”. This will be “the new piracy”. All to defend a business model that relies on my equipment assaulting me with your malicious ads on your behalf. No thank you.

> I personally can't imagine ever willingly enabling ads in my browser.

I have a really hard time reconciling this opinion with "Then ask for my credit card number, I may give it to you."

Even with ad blockers, I have much more control what information I give out than if I trust someone with my credit card number.

Even if the content creator is genuine, there have been so many hacks in the past.

Credit cards are also not good for microtransactions and BAT is a potentially enabler for them. Sure, we aren't there yet but it doesn't look as impossible as it were in 1999 when microtransactions came up the first time as a solution to the ads problem.

If an idea is preposterous to you then fair enough the status quo sounds like a fit for your needs and you are free to stick with it. I'm old enough to remember the time when the World Wide Web and electric self-driving cars were dismissed as preposterous.

For me, I like the idea of paying for content without having to supply my credit card number to each news outlet that I want to read. With no link to me directly the websites no longer need to track me and Brave can go out of it's way to back that up. No need to curate tokens. Just switch profiles if/when you need to.

BTW you don't _need_ to see any ads at all. You can instead just buy BATs and use them for content payment without ads.

Its not several tokens, its just use of the BAT token

User experience aside it makes it clear when you revoke permission to your data

You can point to the public transaction where you did that and show consent to that advertiser and whoever they copied that data to, massive liability for them if they arent playing along

A step towards cooperation, not a cure all

Tokens are also useful in bootstrapping any two sided marketplace, and people would also be aligned in seeing it become more valuable. To you, that means damning unobjectiveness, to others that means necessary skin in the game to know what theyre talking about.

>"Just blocking ads with ublock solves the problem of annoying ads but leaves the problem of website revenue."

To put it bluntly, that is their problem, not mine. I feel absolutely no obligation to support a flawed business model, in fact I feel absolutely no obligation to support the commercialization of the internet.

Based on the egregious attacks on privacy we've seen, I have absolutely no intention of ever allowing ads again.

>To put it bluntly, that is their problem, not mine.

This reminds me of my friends that used to download games of thepiratebay because the gaming industry was a "flawed business model", but were still expecting content to be produced

If you don't support content creators with money, how can you expect content to be produced ? Content creators need to eat too, especially indie ones

>Based on the egregious attacks on privacy we've seen

I like how Brave tackle the privacy issue by displaying only privacy-friendly ads from Brave publishers network while giving a way for users to contribute towards content creator with the built-in tip feature. And this is a opt-in feature, so if you hate ads, you just don't have to opt-in and can still enjoy a fast and privacy-focused browser

I've ditched chrome 2 weeks ago, not going back anytime soon

> Content creators need to eat too, especially indie ones

The vast majority of the World's photographers are amateurs, who derive little or no income from their hobby. Yet they collectively produce stunning photos that are amongst the best ever taken.

Why can't websites be the same? Like they were in the 90s. Why must side-projects monetise ASAP instead of being a hobby?

Perhaps Gmail wouldn't exist in that World, but Fastmail would. And postfix, dovecot, sendmail too.

Depends on what you do for a living. If you have an unrelated job/source of income, then yes, your site and your content can purely be a labour of love. It's an ideal aspiration, but it may not be feasible when EVERY Tom, Dick and Harry wants to have a site or produce content because a large proportion of people have poor or no income. It is also the case that not all content is 'free' to produce (except time & energy) like a blogpost. A news site for example needs to pay real money to employ people. Same with another SaaS solution. How will the creators recoup the expenses if they can't charge direct money or show ads?

You need an ideal world of universal basic income, healthcare and a reasonable standard of living for all if you want people to abandon all ideas of monetising their activities. Sadly we're very far from that world.

>"If you don't support content creators with money, how can you expect content to be produced ? Content creators need to eat too, especially indie ones"

They can throw content at me willy-nilly, but they can't expect me to watch it. I simply let my browser do the filtering, rather than my eyeballs. I also default-deny all 3rd-party frames and scripts, due to security concerns. That alone happens to filter out the majority of ads, all by itself.

This situation is not at all comparable to copyright infringement, where you have to actively seek out the content in question.

Besides, I would never click any ad anyway, no matter if it's a simple text ad or a spinning, jumping, music-playing animated pop-up monstrosity. Never.

But I do support content creators, most often through buying their games on Steam/GOG, though direct purchases on Bandcamp or through Patreon.

However the movie/TV show segment is missing a similarly accessible service. Netflix/HBO/etc. all limit my region to a very reduced catalogue, and they implement overly-strict DRM that prevents me from actually using their services without rebooting to my (gaming-only) Win10 install.

At least Spotify works brilliantly on Linux. The client may be a relatively heavy Electron app, but it works.

>"I like how Brave tackle the privacy issue by displaying only privacy-friendly ads from Brave publishers network"

I don't trust them, because I distrust the entire advertising and marketing industry on principle.

Brave attempts to create a new business model since as you rightly point out the current one is absolutely flawed.

Quality content does need to be paid for, one way or another, whether you enjoy supporting it or not.

I have a simpler solution: websites host their own ads.

Obviously this doesn't bring in as much money so as long as those of us who don't want to be tracked remains a small minority: business as usual.

On desktops I don't see any reason to use Brave, but on smartphones it's a different story.

Advantages of Brave on mobile in comparison to Firefox:

- Single package with add blocking and HTTPS upgrading

- Better handling of offline cache

- Those little PIP clouds to disambiguate a tap

- I always understand how to long press to show context menu instead of selecting

- I believe scrolling is smoother on Brave

- I prefer card/tab layout on Brave

- Less crashes

Advantages of Firefox over Brave on mobile:

- Same browser I use on desktop - helpful with Firefox account and it's FOSS

- I can disable JavaScript and images when I'm on severely limited connection like right now

- Extensions

- I like text search better

- Better location bar search

- Usable reader mode

Now saying all this I would like to have a pure HTML browser, at least for bad mobile connections. It would be lightinnig fast and would show me offline version first and upgrade to more recent version if needed or it was downloaded after all. It would be like a permanent reader mode. So my font, my colors, my line length, no obnoxious position:fixed bars. One of the things on my to-do list.

Use Firefox Focus browser on mobile. It is more privacy focused than Firefox and other browsers, and blocks ads instead of replacing them with its own like the Brave browser does.

Firefox Focus isn't really designed to be a "long-term" browser, in my experience. My normal FF on Android has like 12 different tabs open at any given time, and I maintain logins on a few sites. Firefox Focus doesn't really intend for you to have more than one tab open at once (although it does support it), and its default functionality is to delete the browser history as soon as you close it.

I use Focus for quick, one-time things: open a quick article from my news feed, login to pay my credit card bill, etc., and then trash it.

Yes, Focus is specifically designed for use as a default browser to quickly and safely open links and perform one-off tasks. It's recommended that it be used alongside another browser for more long-term sessions and cases where you want history preserved.

I'd like to point out that Brave never has replaced ads on websites, only blocked them, and in the future will only replace ads on websites whose owner explicitly signed up to let Brave replace their ads. This comment from the Community Manager lays out reasonably well why they're using this model https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/8j4uiy/fud_from...

Brave's big thing is they get to keep some of the revenue from the ads they've removed and replaced for themselves. I think that's a bad thing, not a good thing, but it is why the company exists.

Opera mobile now also has a cryptocurrency wallet amongst other features that get disabled or ignored. I've only tried the mobile Brave version and reverted back to Opera after it has failed to block a Google ad in a floating div. Otherwise it was a quite nice experience and had easily acessible switches for scripts, ads, popups. Pehraps you could opt in to see ads and get BAT but I'm quite ignorant about that since I don't want any ads. Firefox mobile + uBlock origin was quite underwhelming last time I tried it, although I use it daily on the desktop. Never quite used Chrome on the desktop, not on a regular basis anyway.

I use it simply because it's de-Googlyfied and because of the integrated mix of adblock/https everywhere/NoScript without the need to install plugins and Tor tabs (without the need to switch browsers).

I have absolutely no idea what the BAT thing is. It's disabled on my install since I never even clicked on it.

BAT doesn't replace ads with ads - it leaves that part of the website blank like a conventional adblocker. You pay a monthly fee of your choice to the browser, and it distributes that via the ad network to the sites you visit.

It's a 'set and forget' way of supporting your favourite sites. User experience wise it's no better than Firefox + uBlock origin, it's purely a moral choice.

>You pay a monthly fee of your choice to the browser...

You DON'T pay a monthly fee for anything. That statement was terribly misleading.

Monthly fee of your choice, regular donation... I may have been imprecise about what happens at the back end, but I think I described the user experience fairly well.

Because it blocks ads by default, everywhere across all platforms.

Sure you can use Chrome / Firefox / Safari and install extensions and plugins that do something similar but end users don't want to jump through hoops and play whack a mole with ads. If a browser proactively fights ads for them out of the box, it enriches their lives without them needing any additional technical knowledge.

The primary use case for BAT seems to be a micropayment scheme that replaces ad revenue. Of course, micropayments are still payments and people still don't want to pay for content, so you can also pay them (in BAT) for watching your ads, and then they can spend those BAT somewhere else.

As dubious as I am of cryptocurrency in general, display advertising is evil and needs to be destroyed, and BAT is the best (only?) micropayments alternative out there, as far as I can tell.

I really like how Brave has private tabs instead of private windows. It's a small thing, but it makes it easy to mix-and-match.

Not about BAT,cryptocurrency. It's all about usable privacy. Makes it easy for me to quarantine Google services, social media, from each other. Privacy as the killer feature is what makes it killer

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