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Comment by catalogia | Hacker News Reader

As far as I'm aware, Brave is the only browser that blocks ads by default. Personally I just use uBO/uMatrix on Firefox, but I can certainly understand why some people might prefer a more streamlined default experience.

The fact that so many people get bent out of shape about Brave blocking ads by default is probably also seen as a positive signal by many people who hate ads. If Brave pisses off people who run ad-supported websites, that's a fantastic endorsement.

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I guess if you can’t figure out how to install uBO, then Brave makes sense. I suspect that the pool of people who care about blocking ads, can’t figure out uBO, but are willing to install an extra browser is pretty small, but I have no skin in this game.

I’ve never seen anyone angry about Brave blocking ads; what I’ve seen are people angry at Brave blocking ads and adding their own, which is a drastically different complaint.

Last I checked, the number of people using Adblock Plus dwarfs the number of people using uBO, so there's clearly a pretty large number of people who find uBO difficult, or perhaps simply don't know about it. Either way, I don't use it and wouldn't invest in that company either; I wouldn't bet on them succeeding in the long run. But I think can certainly understand, if not agree with, the people who decide to use it.

> I’ve never seen anyone angry about Brave blocking ads; what I’ve seen are people angry at Brave blocking ads and adding their own, which is a drastically different complaint.

I think for many people who hate ads, this distinction isn't really relevant. They like that Brave pisses off people who run websites with ads. Perhaps disliking website operators enough to cut off their nose to spite their face.

The difference between Adblock plus and uBO doesn’t affect my point. Most people are fully capable of installing an ad blocker, and tons do.

I guess I get people wanting to piss off those who run ads, but that applies to ad blockers as a whole. That’s not an argument for Brave specifically.

Well I can't defend it further than I have. It's not my intention to provide arguments for using Brave, merely to explain why I think many people have chosen to. You and I agree that Brave isn't the browser to use, but evidently plenty of people do want to use it and I think the reasons I've described explain a lot of that. I doubt it'd be causing so much consternation if that weren't the case.

For website and ad network operators, it could be worse. Automated 'clickfraud' extensions could have gained traction. Maybe Brave will do that in the future too.

Chrome+uBO isnt necessarily the better option, as far as raw performance.

https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/

https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust

Using Chrome+uBO+uMatrix and Brave side by side, Brave just works better. Less knobs to fiddle with, sane defaults. Sure I love the power of uMatrix, but it comes with its own time sink managing it. Brave, out of the box, performs correctly in most situations, and switching from default to blocking all cookies, javascript, and fingerprinting is only a click each (and thats the advanced mode.)

Now that’s a good argument.

Plus as far as their advertising goes (which I still think is pretty grey ethically to block ads and then show your own) its still privacy focused. If you opt into ads, you get OS notifications and they dont build some kind of profile of your behavior on their server. They send your client a list of ads, and your client knows which ads to show you, all targeting is local. Destroy your client, destroy the profile they have build of you. It might not be great, but they are clearly looking at advertising different than the rest of the marketing tech landscape, so kudos.

Theyve somewhat gone back to the juno/netzero/kmartbluelight internet model. If you did want to be subjected to ads, at least they are in a consistent place in the user interface, and not all over random pages breaking performance and scroll.

If I were forced to choose between two ads types, id pick Braves before the modern webs. Their product is like ad supported shareware. (The rest of the tipping and bat economy notwithstanding.)

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