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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

As far as I can tell, there is zero functionality in Brave related to ipfs that can't be accomplished in a different browser with a very simple plugin. They're not running the p2p net as a transport, last I looked.

It's not very important though, as approximately nobody is using ipfs to move webpages to eyeballs, and actually nobody is choosing their browser based on support for ipfs or lack thereof. (I say this as a big proponent of ipfs and an early adopter/user.)

This is one of the things that contributes to the brand incoherence. Chasing anything that's trending (ico! p2p web! google's quality is declining, so search engine! video calls!) does not instill confidence.

It reminds me a lot of Mozilla (the Brave CEO's last gig), another organization that seems to have no defined philosophy or clear product strategy other than keeping antitrust regulators off of Google's back.

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I'm amazed that you managed to find so much negativity in Brave - a tiny player - making massive accomplishments. Unlike Firefox, Brave does not get half a billion USD of Universal Basic Income from Google every year. They are a for profit entity and need a revenue stream to fund the highly expensive browser development work.

Mozilla is on a nosedive towards fading to obscurity. I am unable to understand any parallels here.

Mozilla does highly expensive browser work. Brave just adds cryptogrift to a browser that already exists.

Mozilla actually builds a browser. Brave tacks things on top of an existing browser.

There's a few people here that are repeating a theme that they don't understand Brave's brand. Let me explain what my take on it is.

The CEO has been pivotal in important parts of the internet, he created Javascript and co-founded Mozilla. He seems to be trying to creating a more useful and equitable internet, that's more for users and less for large corporate interests.

All the things I've seen are in support of these goals.

BAT / the ads system he proposed => trying to make the funding for internet sites more balanced for the roles involved, and sustainable both culturally and economically. You can read his thoughts/philosophy on this, he's eloquent and it's informed and interesting - make sure you get it from the source of his own writing instead of the many attacks on him.

The best Adblocking available => not blockable by google, fastest runtime performance. Good for users, less for megacorps.

IPFS => not having much impact now, but aligned with the goal of balancing power away from megacorps towards users.

Calls/Jitsi => again, away from megacorps toward users.

Notice a theme here! That's the brand, however he's not going to sell you on it, hes not spending money doing megacorp 'branding' instead he's quietly making genuinely useful things.

He's actually continuing the mission of what Mozilla was formed to do long ago, before it was overtaken by the G megacorp.

n.b. I would say that the theme of rebalancing power away from megacorps towards users probably explains why he gets continual astroturfing, as opposed to the wokeist reasons that are usually stated for it, but thats a different converstation.

I have to agree. Brave's original reason for being was to work on a disruptive new model for media, one that's better for users, producers and advertisers. It looked good on paper, and I think many of us were just glad to see someone try something different. I think the dank cryptocurrency scene was the first thing to seriously undermine its core proposition when it comes to mainstream adoption, so much energy wasted on that BS. As far as I can tell, there was no reason it had to be a blockchain, and all of a sudden you're surrounded by a bunch of losers fluctuating between yelling about the moon and trying to steal their mom's TV set, foaming at the mouth in any case. "I'm gonna go over there", said almost everyone else. So, clearly the attraction to shiny objects was really there from the beginning. Then Search, VPN, "firewall", Playlist (Pocket? On iOS only?), now this. However many years on, core proposition adrift and still no good mainstream browser available.

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