Brave Zoom Competitor | Hacker News Reader

Brave Zoom Competitor

together.brave.com

50 pointsjarsin27 comments

From the creators of "what if we fought ads on the web by making our own ads you can't block and attaching a cryptocurrency to it" comes video calling that doesn't work on Firefox. No thanks.

Ads are here to stay unless human nature about paying for shit changes. Brave's approach while still having ads may nor may not be worse than FireFox who receive the majority of their revenue by partnering with search engines, who, y'know, mine your data and dont pay for it

We don't need to guess about Brave's approach, it is worse: https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html

It’s only worse if you’re invested in the current surveillance capitalism of the current ad system that exists.

We need a better way of funding websites that doesn't involve selling people's personal information and tracking data.

Wow, thats a long piece. He ends his essay with

> You know what would’ve been brave, Mr. Eich? Charging users for your software—on the idea that personal privacy is worth it—and puncturing the myth that web browsers must be free.

Which my point you were replying to already addressed. People dont like paying for shit.

> Or helping publishers find a way to induce more readers to pay for the material they find valuable, without the unnecessary indirection of ads and cryptocurrency. Like I do.

No indication how much money he makes "his way" or if he would make more with ads. No indication how to "induce more readers to pay". It may work on a single blog but doesnt work when you are scaling.

Seeing Brave’s ads and getting paid in cryptocurrency is opt-in, so nobody is being forced to do so.

> making our own ads you can't block

I keep seeing this claim, but I don't think its true? The ads are opt-in

This is false. You have to explicitly find and enable ads on Brave. The vast majority of users probably have no idea that they can see ads.

Have you ever used Brave? Even once?

I think the main problem I (Along with many others I know) have with zoom is that it basically requires you to download and install something before you can join a call. Obviously you can call in but if you want good quality video you have to download their app. Being forced to download the Brave browser in order to join a call just seems like blatantly unreasonable bar of entry. If blocking website ads wasn’t enough for me to download the browser, video calls with only other people who have download the browser certainly won’t be either.

Well you also get a more privacy oriented browser as a perk. :)

maybe they could bundle an entire OS that's privacy enabled, that would be a bigger perk?

Zoom works in the browser, isn't this good enough? https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/214629443-Zoom-web....

Looks like they're using Jitsi Meet: https://github.com/brave/jitsi-meet

Seems odd that it doesn't work on Firefox in that case, as Jitsi meet works on Firefox. I wonder what they've done / added that lead to dropping support for Firefox.

Edit: I guess it's strategy, pushing more people to use Brave browser, rather than an actual limitation of the software.

It literally just checks whether navigator.brave.isBrave(). The following Greasemonkey script is sufficient to fool it:

    // ==UserScript==
    // @name        Very brave
    // @match       https://together.brave.com/*
    // @grant       none
    // ==/UserScript==
    navigator.brave = { isBrave: () => true };

Any page with actual details? This just says "download brave", which I don't want to do.

if you are running brave browser, it just allows you to launch a video call, gives you a link to share

does brave route calls through their own server or is this also p2p?

According to the Brave privacy policy Together uses 8x8’s servers, so my guess is that this is using Jitsi Meet.

The last time I looked through the Jitsi Meet config files, by default it uses Google’s TURN servers to route the calls. Not sure how Brave Together is doing it.

It is very strange that they don't even try to give non-brave users any details.

agreed, was just explaining.

https://brave.com/privacy/#brave-together-learn

Sounds like a good idea. We need more competition-- and if it increases privacy, all the better.

Where's the case of this being a true Zoom competitor without some type of comparison, or any other info that pertains to the specific solution it is supposed to be the answer to?

Scratches head.

Me = Zoom user/admin that doesn't love Zoom.

The person who posted this link claims it's a "Zoom Competitor" with the title. I don't necessarily think Brave believe it's a direct competitor.

Sorry, Zoom has a Linux client. That makes them awesome.

Wasn’t that something Firefox had implemented for a while before scrapping the feature for some reason?

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