1) Using the Brave Browser
2) Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on.
Not loving that.
Edit: the first one is fine (although a little strange that it is a requirement here but not for their other products, like Brave Search). I'm irked by the second one.
For the no-cost option, enabling Brave Rewards helps Brave to cover the costs of video infrastructure
I assume someone could turn on Brave Rewards, start a call, and then turn it off later?
Web technologies should be browser independent.
https://brave.com/privacy/browser/
Our terms are better for privacy than 8x8’s, e.g., callstats are disabled in Brave Talk.
The second one, I addressed directly for all Brave products that have significant fixed and per-user/usage costs, the other week on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/pl2lgi/comment/...
Quote:
"A free browser is a free lunch, and TANSTAAFL. Brave has sponsored images on by default, we don't pretend to be free by selling default search to Google as Firefox does. Privacy-conscious users know that nothing on the Web, no app or service, is free.
The salient difference about Brave in this context: we put users first and deal them in for >= the revenue we make on any attention-based revenue where we take the gross. This can't be done with search deals: Google, Bing, and others forbid paying users a share of the revenue that the search partner shares with the browser maker. But we aim to do it when ready with self-serve keywords-at-auction private search ads.
Before then, we hope to offer private ads via a partner, but that's not a sure thing. Details if and when we have a deal. That's the free leg of Brave Search. The premium is ad-free search for a small monthly fee (a few dollars, discounted if paid annually).
This is necessary because Brave Search has per-user as well as fixed costs, which we must cover with a reasonable margin. I think users understand this. In all cases, Brave Search remains private: no tracking or use of IP even for short-term query-refinement "sessions". But if users won't pay, we will put private-until-and-unless-clicked ads in the free leg. This freemium model goes for Brave News too."
End Quote
TANSTAAFL = There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (popularized by Robert A. Heinlein).
Hackers here on HN may be able to self-host a Jitsi instance, even build their own browser. Most users cannot. We at Brave aim to provide all users with a truly user-first, privacy-designed+engineered-in-&-on-by-default products to take on Big Tech with its centralized data collection, surveillance based ads, fraud and abuse problems, and monopolistic, user-hostile tendencies.
We know TANSTAAFL is true so we don't pretend to offer a free lunch and we don't track users. We will work to add more "buy out my ad inventory" ease of use, including for Rewards as well as News. Those who can't or won't pay can still use Brave as a fast, tracking/fingerprinting-blocking browser. We aim to get enough of you using Rewards to keep our lights on, and we'll have to work on distribution and promotion of search to get it covering its costs (premium ad-free or free private ads leg, you choose).
I hope this helps explain what we're trying to achieve, and that you'll give us a try.
There are different definitions for "free".
a) advertise that Brave Rewards is required ("Brave Talk is free, ad-supported), or
b) have a payment tier between premium and free that allows me to pay-per-call or something, without the premium features.