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I'm surprised people are surprised by this. Brave have said from the beginning that this is how their business model works. What I'm even more surprised about is that Brave has gotten any traction at all, as there is really no reason to use it instead of a normal browser with regular ad blockers.

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> Brave have said from the beginning that this is how their business model works.

This sounded like a pretty surprising claim. I looked at the terms of use (https://brave.com/terms-of-use/) and the privacy policy for the browser (https://brave.com/privacy/) and I wasn't able to find any reference to the notion of automatically inserting affiliate or referral links. Do you have a more specific source on this? I'm really curious about when and how this has been communicated. I'm not trying to accuse you of anything, I just want to make sure I'm understanding the situation correctly.

The substance of their business model has always been "we fight advertisers because money should flow to websites through us". They changed actual terms a few times when called up on their tactics being shady, but that's always been the end goal. In that framework, hijacking referral links is par for the course.

I don't blame them - a man's gotta eat, and they're not doing anything illegal or dangerous - but I've always found very curious that some people actually believe using Brave might be an "ethical" choice. It just isn't, it's simply a better mousetrap.

> they're not doing anything illegal or dangerous

The words "dishonest" and "rent-seeking" come to mind. Also, it seems that using affiliate links without disclosure might actually be illegal.

Brave is really not solving any problem. People that truly want ads removed so they don’t get tracked or bothered, should simply install Firefox. It’s a brilliant browser regardless, and being developed and supported by a non for profit with a proven track record is what makes it trustworthy.

Brave can’t compete with that and Eich is not somebody anyone should rally behind in respect to ethical choices, or moral example. His personal choices to support legislation that will deny basic human rights from the LGBTQ community is a BIG clue.

>His personal choices to support legislation that will deny basic human rights from the LGBTQ community is a BIG clue.

Personal views legitimately expressed in totally distinct political matters should absolutely not be factored in.

Is it fair to call an action which materially supported oppression of people "personal"? The goal of that action was to deny people the right to marry.

Attempting to deny rights to an entire class of human beings should not be classified as simply “personal views legitimately expressed.”

I still fail to see how it's any different than any other moral disagreement. eg. If I were a evangelical christian, and he supported abortion rights for women, I can claim that he's literally trying to kill babies.

Right to happiness is not a moral question that needs to be debated every time someone on Fox News needs to generate mass hysteria for profit. I think the average person can differentiate between what’s moral and what’s immoral and where are the boundaries between the two. The USA is in a complete meltdown because some still insist on staying blind.

But you're describing what a large subset of evangelicals actually do, so that doesn't really help your point.

From a privacy perspective, Safari is pretty good too.

"non for profit with a proven track record" is not how I would describe mozilla.

> His personal choices to support legislation that will deny basic human rights from the LGBTQ community is a BIG clue.

Marriage is not a human right.

> Marriage is not a human right.

Even if it wasn't (the UDHR says it is, and the US Supreme Court has for quite some time held it to be a fundamental right), equal protection of the laws is also widely held to be.

The UDPR also says that it is your right to be arrested in order to be educated (oh hey, it is a human right for the detainees at the Xinjiang camps to be re-educated!). I can't consider this document as anything other than a joke.

> equal protection of the laws is also widely held to be

I am not against equal opportunity for both homosexual and heterosexual couples, rather, I am just anti-marriage. I think that it would be better to just remove any government support or acknowledgement of heterosexual marriage rather than make homosexual marriage official.

> The UDPR also says that it is your right to be arrested in order to be educated

Not sure what the UDPR is, but the UDHR, which I referenced, certainly does not.

I meant UDHR. Check article 26.

I have read it. It unsurprisingly does not say that it is your right to be arrested in order to be educated.

You did not do a good job at it then.

> Elementary education shall be compulsory

In addition it contains a lot of other crap that is not relevant to human rights such as "Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality ..." or "Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the ..."

So education up until about age 12.

That doesn't sound like it has any connection to detainment camps to me.

> So education up until about age 12.

Where did you get that from?

That’s exactly how I feel about it. I’ve never doubted the legality, some pretty shocking things can be defended in TOS, but it just feels dishonest and scammy.

I would be surprised if inserting affiliate links in this manner wasn't against the TOS of the site. It's not adding value for the site if Brave is just front-running people who have already decided to go there.

Brave and Binance have a preexisting business relationship. Brave uses its own crypto funny-money and I think they even integrated a Binance-monitoring widget into the browser.

This is how much Binance stuff is already built into Brave:

https://github.com/brave/brave-core/search?q=binance&unscope...

Yikessssssssssssssssssssssssssss

You can believe it, they are really good at advertising and marketing. They know the arena very well. Ad Ops is their biggest dept, if I had to guess. Everything they do is intentional with an end goal of getting a market share of the ad industry. It’s huge. They want a piece of it, and you’re right, who can blame them.

Vivaldi works too...

https://vivaldi.com/download/

I use Brave because it's a "degoogled" Chrome. Having good blocking built in is a plus. Being able to use Chrome extensions is also a plus.

I've tried Firefox many times over the years, and only recently has it gotten to a point where it's fast and nice enough on macOS. There are still corners of the app I dislike (it doesn't always feel like a native app, for example), but this may be a reason to finally switch.

I have Brave installed for the exact same reason. I usually use Firefox or Safari for most web browsing, but unfortunately some web services requires me to use Chromium-based browsers (e.g., Paperpile).

I used to have Chrome installed for theses situations, but so many factors made me want to use Chrome less and less to the point that I simply didn't want to use it at all, even for rare occasions. For the curious, here are my reasons:

1. Deprecation of APIs that are essential for uBo

2. Phone-home features

3. Non-standard APIs (remember FIDO U2F, anyone?)

4. Constant bashing and name-calling of other browsers that doesn't implement their favored APIs (names like "the new IE")

5. Websites constantly badgering me to use Chrome

Using Brave on rare occasions is a good compromise for me. It has some weird crypto stuff, but it allows me to use an degoogled version of Chromium. I also don't have to worry about it being a vastly insecure fork like some browser forks out in the wild.

In many cases when a website 'requires' chrome it's just because the devs were too lazy to test it in other browsers and copied the snippet that asks for chrome. I usually just switch my user-agent in Safari dev menu to chrome and the site magically starts working.

Vivaldi and the new Edge are other choices that impersonate Chrome using Chromium. If you can't stand Firefox they may the next best choice.

Vivaldi is my pick thanks to its flexibility and recently added built-in ad-block

Just use Ungoogled Chromium. Why suffer rent seeking crypto shenanigans?

Last I checked, Ungoogled Chromium did not have self-updates, and installing Chrome Extensions was a bit of a chore without a special extension.

Not sure if having to use an extension is a dealbreaker for you but this one allows you to

1) Install extensions from the Chrome web store

2) Update them

https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store

You can install extensions normally with a regular Chromium and then uninstall it and use the ungoogled.

That's quite a bit of a chore. Are those extensions ever going to update themselves when there's a security vulnerability?

Automated updates on Windows. That said there is no shortage of Chromium forks with auto update these days.

> Automated updates on Windows.

So, if you want a Google-free Chromium with that...Edge?

I always figured that Edge was meant to be an ironic name.

Why would you trust those random forks? I only use Chromium from authors who have been around for a while.

I've been using Brave for this reason too on desktop. I installed opera for the first time in years last week, very nicely surprised. Fast, chrome based browser. The extension bar on the left is a useful add-on. I'll be removing Brave after this news and be using Firefox mainly, with opera as my 2nd browser.

I hope you are aware of Opera's corporate parentage.

Consider Vivaldi too. It is closer in spirit to the original Opera IMO.

Both are closed-source, also Opera now owns by Chinese company, which is minefield for privacy.

https://otter-browser.org is closest.

Vivaldi is another Chromium based browser, although it's closed source.

Firefox was getting much better for a while right after the Quantum release, but recently it has fallen way behind.

I came here to suggest Vivaldi. I’ve been using it for nearly two years as my primary browser. It’s not perfect, but no browser is. However, it’s the only browser I’ve found that treats It’s users like an adult and lets them setup the browser the way they want.

Vivaldi is the true successor of Opera, more so than the Opera we have today.

Opera is run by some random company but Vivaldi is developed by the original Opera developer.

But Opera is still useful because it has a VPN (proxy really) built in so that you can reach sites blacklisted by various public Wi-Fi access points.

It's the one I used. While people complain it's not open source, it's about 99.9% viewable from the point of view as source code.

Same here but edge is offering the same on desktop so im switching. For mobile, brave is my daily driver.

Check out vivaldi. Edge will have various phone home random messages to Microsoft to let them know what you're doing.

Interesting. Ill have to update pihole to put a stop to that

Collecting sh*tcoins is a reason for a lot of the crypto people. Also many many people put brave download ref links all other their web-presents to generate revenue. Even people who do not use it and openly admit that, still gladly collect the bucks form other downloading it. The whole ref thing is the classic ponzi and it always works for a while because people do whatever you want if the work/reward ratio is good.

To your point, they are collecting contributions for URLs that are not signed up on the platform. When I heard this I checked a few of my publishing URLs and sure enough they are accumulating ETH/BAT without me doing anything.

I know a while back, Tom Scott got pretty annoyed with them for collecting money for him without telling people that he wasn’t on their system

Its goal was to create a sustainable alternative to ads, not just block them. I haven't been keeping up with it so I don't know how successful that's been, but it's a noble task that nobody else is really working on.

Plenty of people and dozens of companies have worked on similar things and continue to this day.

Brave is not an alternative to ads. They are just an ad network that replaces the ads on the page with their own, and then splits some of the money with you instead of sending it all to the publisher.

Ill go a step further, with a likely very unpopular opinion. I think they should leave this feature in the browser, and make it one of the opt in options along with viewing ads.

If I like the product, I may not have a problem supporting them with affiliate link rewrites, if it funds technical development and engineering.

Does anyone use Brave on the desktop? I thought Brave was only relevant on mobile, since mobile Chrome doesn't support extensions, and for some reason unknown to me people don't want to just use Firefox there.

> for some reason unknown to me people don't want to just use Firefox there.

Initial loading of webpages on Android Firefox is very slow compared to Chromium browsers.

Not in the new versions. Firefox Beta has a new rendering engine that is as fast as Chrome. Soon they should release it into the stable, but beta has never given me any issues.

I use it on desktop primarily and have earned ~$40usd with the rewards program so far. You can import your Chrome account and use chrome extensions in Brave, it's basically a faster version of Chrome to me.

You earned that in how long?

Since late last year when I activated Brave Rewards (make sure to opt-out of auto-contributions to keep your BAT)

Unless something's changed recently, Brave mobile doesn't support extensions either.

No, but Brave has adblocking built in.

Kiwi Browser does support extensions. It's what I use.

Brave starting this month will support extensions on mobile.

https://www.xda-developers.com/brave-browser-android-dev-wou...

https://twitter.com/SergZh_/status/1262885174590791682

Good info, thanks for the links.

Firefox Beta works great and is as snappy as chrome and has built in ad blocking (but you have to turn it fully on on your own). I use it and it works great. Give it a try if this situation is weening you off brave.

I use it on iOS because its an easy solution for ad-blocking. Is there a good ad-blocker for Safari on iOS?

adguard - free and open source content blocker. you need to pay premium to add custom lists, but their built-in lists are good enough that I don't need it. manually entered filters are also supported.

if you use apps, it might also make sense to get a VPN based adblocker.

AdGuard Pro adds DNS-based blocking via VPN, in addition to browser content blocking. It also logs tracker requests. The DNS-based blocking works on all apps, afaik.

I use 1Blocker on iOS and MacOS safari, which is great but costs 5$ a year. There is no full port of uBlock to safari at this time.

I'm a huge fan of 1Blocker and I'm glad they charge $5 a year and it's someone's full time lifestyle company.

I've had a few content blocking apps on iOS and they've all been abandoned (or worse sold to ad companies).

1Blocker so far has stuck around and stayed high quality.

I used to use 1blocker, but switched to Wipr after 1blocker started charging yearly or whatever. Also, firefox focus is a free ad blocker on iOS.

There are many, Safari actually has extensions on iOS, there are no shortage of adblockers in all shapes and sizes.

Even Firefox has one.

Personally I use 1Blocker across iOS and macOS.

There's no uBlock (assumedly Origin) port to iOS, because browser extensions are not permitted on iOS, and they don't allow other browser engines so every alternative browser is a Safari skin. You can't just install Firefox to get around that restriction.

IOS does have native content-blocking, which is reasonably effective but nowhere near uBlock Origin. It's similar to the manifest v3 stuff where Google is castrating Chrome. And yeah there are tons of them available for free, which makes sense because they're all just using pretty much just using Easylist[1].

[1] https://easylist.to/

Firefox Focus is a good ad blocker for Safari, you just have to turn on ad blocking integration.

I use 1blocker but its a paid one - there are a bunch of free ones as well but I got bored working out which ones were scammy and 1blocker (at the point in time I started using it) seemed not to be scammy.

A really robust option that will work on all of your devices is to setup a remote Pi-Hole and access it via VPN. (This last point is very important and I learned the hard way after my publicly available Pi-Hole instance was discovered and used for DNS amplification attacks.)

https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/vpn/overview/

I recently went on a journey of setting up a pi hole. I eventually gave up and set up NextDNS instead. I didn't want to have to use a VPN for everything.

I was previously using Adaway on mobile. I think NextDNS produces the same result.

I’ve become a fan of NextDNS.

Same here. I really like NextDNS because you can adjust it such that it also blocks network traffic inside apps.

I use Ad Guard and it works!

Ad Block fast is open source & no $

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adblock-fast/id1032930802

I think the main benefit is precisely that it comes with blocking of ads and trackers by default. I use Firefox myself (mostly because I love Container Tabs), but usually recommend Brave to less techy people as it requires zero post-install configuration.

You can get paid for using the browser by being shown replacement non-targeted ads. Although it's a trivial amount.

Ah, the cornerstone of trickle down economics!

“If you buy into the idea I’m super important, lift me up unreasonably, I’ll pay you back pennies on the dollar!”

It's more profound than that; as I've pointed out on HN a few times, despite what you may think, advertisers don't make that much from you. The problem with the whole "pay people to watch ads" or "share the ad profits with people" plan is that there isn't anywhere near enough money in advertising to make it worth while. We're collectively selling out our social media for an outrage factory, our entire news industry for clickbait, our privacy for everything we do online, and all the second-order effects of all that and more for on the order of $50/year. I worked out the numbers for Facebook once: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19459604#19462402

Aggregated across all of humanity it's worth it to spending millions of dollars to pick up a few more fractions of a penny per person, but if you try to "share the wealth" it just isn't nearly enough.

Perhaps such platforms aren't necessarily about selling advertising. Gold mine for big data analytics though!

The numbers I made come from basic division on the money made by Facebook. No matter how they make it, unless they're completely hiding it from Wall Street, my numbers account for it.

> I'm surprised people are surprised by this

I am thinking of creating a website with two lists of comment threads - the first to collate all the times users say "why are people surprised" at something which is surprising but which has some people already in the know and the second to collate comments about downvoting "why the downvotes", "not sure why you are being downvoted" etc

What other phrases do we use that we can add? I was thinking of also "free speech doesnt apply to private companies"

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