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Comment by fuu_dev | Hacker News Reader

Criticism:

#1 Brave advertise with privacy and speed while all they do is adding adblock.

#2 Brave replaces adds with their own adds. This basically means you get the same experience but cut off the income of the content creator entirely.

#3 Brave allows you to reward 3rd party sites. This system is so nice they even got legal issues as it was assumed as fraud.

#4 BAT. Brave advertise with consumer first. The best choice for the consumer would be Paypal. If there is an incent to stay with crypto currency Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Given Brave created their own crypto currency and base every model around that they can profit from Transactions/services with the currency too on top of the share they take when you use their add platform/feature.

Given the criticism its very hard for me to understand users sympathizing with the browser.

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#1 Their ad-blocker is also a tracking blocker and a pretty strict one at that. They also spend a lot of time optimizing the performance[0] of this ad-blocking. This improves the browsing experience.

#2 Brave Ads are opt-in. You can alternatively fund the sites you visit on the web by putting BAT into your wallet directly and having the browser automatically distribute funds based on which content you spend time on per month. The entire idea of Brave is that people were already using ad-blockers, so I'm not sure how this is worse for content creators.

#3 ???

#4 BAT is an ERC-20 token - it exists on the Ethereum blockchain. Not sure why you think BTC would be better than that. Honestly not sure why you think Paypal would be better than that. At this point, anyone can transact the currency easily and quickly without any intervention from Brave. I can convert BAT to DAI right now on a decentralized exchange in less than a minute and have a virtual currency pegged to USD even if I don't bank with USD. At the moment this process is somewhat technical, but it overall seems very pro-consumer to me.

[0] https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/

ad 2: Brave takes a 30% cut of the add income. The adds you block are targeted adds, thus they yield a higher income. Besides that there are usually service fees for converting your BAT to other currencies.

The entire service is opt in making it also not guaranteed for the content creator to receive the reward.

This should lead even in the best case to a notably worse outcome.

ad 3: https://outline.com/fJm5C3

ad 4: i explained the issue in my other response.

The current case is content creators not receiving any reward because people are using ad-blockers. I don't see how that can possible be "best case" a "notably worse outcome". Worse case, content creators get some pittance where before they were getting nothing. Best case content creators can be entirely directly funded by the people actually consuming their content.

In worst case he still gets nothing. The system is an opt in.

Re: criticism 1, this is mostly true. However the fact that it's "not google" adds some privacy, or at least diffuses vulnerabilities.

Regarding criticism 2, you have to opt-in. Otherwise brave is just a browser with adblocking capabilities built-in.

I don't understand criticism 3, but then again I have just been using Brave without opting-in to the BAT portion so I'm out of the loop on that.

Regarding 4, why would Paypal be the best choice? Paypal has shown they will close your account and confiscate your money pretty much at their whim. Using a non-BTC/Ether crypto token at least means your Brave wallet isn't a big fat target for crypto thieves.

I think the success of patreon et al have shown that people in fact are perfectly willing to pay content creators, they just hate ads.

Paypal is the most popular billing service that is present everywhere. By not using Paypal you essentially create extra steps for the end user. This goes 2 ways, you need to purchase BAT if you want to use their reward system.

This was partly an big issues as even tech savvy streamers on YouTube had issues getting the currency. This makes the end user less likely to use this feature at all.

Unless something has changed in the past few years, I don't believe Paypal facilitates micro-transactions.

Source on tech savvy streamers being unable to deal with BAT? The process is pretty straightforward. If you're fine with centralized services you can:

1. Send your BAT to Coinbase or similar (a couple clicks)

2. Sell BAT to Coinbase in major currencies

If you prefer an approach that requires no centralized middleman, you can:

1. Convert BAT to ETH on a Decentralized Exchange (DEX)[0]

2. Sell ETH on something like LocalEthereum[1] to get your local currency.

You could also:

1. Convert your BAT to DAI (stablecoin pegged to USD) on a DEX

2. Put up the DAI for loans on a decentralized lending platform like Compound[2], where you can currently earn 5.22% interest on your DAI loan.

Yes, admittedly this is a more intensive than existing solutions, and things require multiple steps and some setup to get working. But it's really not that difficult once you get started, and the friction is getting less and less every day. If and when the Ethereum team can actually release Eth2.0 with scaling and other such stuff, you will be paying actually negligible fees on such transactions.

[0] https://dex.ag/ [1] https://localethereum.com/ [2] https://app.compound.finance/

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