Brave Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments • Hacker News Board

Re: Brave Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments

#31

Post by WayneBro » Fri, Sep 02, 2016, 3:17 PM UTC

Why add features that users don't really care about before features that users do really care about?

There are a minimum set of extended functions that I need from a browser that I'm going to use daily. They are: a speed dial that I can manually organize, a quick javascript switcher and an adblocker. Brave has only one of those.

So I'll stick with Chrome/Chromium on my desktops thank you very much. On mobile, Dolphin Browser gives me 2 out of the 3. So, for a long while I did most of my mobile browsing on an 8 inch Windows tablet with full Chrome. Recently I have been trying out an iPad Pro 9.7 to replace that tablet. It's a better device in every way except for the web browsing which is a second rate experience on iOS.

However, I'm thinking of forking Brave for iOS so that I can make it do whatever I want. It's just a wrapper for WkWebView written in Swift. Shouldn't be too hard to alter for my purposes - I might get started this weekend!

Re: Brave Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments

#32

Post by Karunamon » Fri, Sep 02, 2016, 3:31 PM UTC

Brendinooo wrote: post #26

mootothemax wrote: post #13

If I'm an advertiser, why would I want to advertise only to people who can't afford $5/month to turn off ads internet-wide? That's the problem advertising faces; as soon as you encourage people with disposable income to avoid all advertising, the whole system becomes pointless.

I don't think that's an accurate way to portray it. I might be able to afford $5/month, but I'd rather buy five songs a month with that money. Ad-free Web viewing is a luxury, not a necessity. Also, not all advertising targets disposable income. I might see an ad for clothing, which I would need to buy at some point. Maybe I'm underwater on my mortgage and want to learn one weird tip to get refinanced. Plenty of ads…

Ad-free Web viewing is a luxury, not a necessity.

Given the prevalence of ads as a malware/privacy invasion vector, I'm not sure that's true anymore.

Browsing the wider internet without a blocker on is like walking down a bad part of town and sticking yourself with every discarded needle you find.

Re: Brave Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments

#33

Post by witty_username » Fri, Sep 02, 2016, 3:32 PM UTC

mike-cardwell wrote: post #21

tiles wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could refuse to serve to web browsers with a Brave user-agent. Or I could fetch your website using wget and strip out ads. If you can't control a user agent in other situations, why do you want to control it here?

I don't want to control the user agent, I just want to programatically announce that I am not talking part in the Brave micro-tip system, so that no end-user funds are put in a wallet for me which will never be withdrawn. Looking into this further, they would eventually email me after there are $10 worth of funds queued up for me, and then after 30 days of me ignoring them, those funds would be spread out amongst oth…

> However, until that wallet has at least $10 in it, Brave is just sitting on top of free money. I don't want that.

One reason could be they don't want to bug website owners about small amounts.

Re: Brave Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments

#34

Post by ramblenode » Fri, Sep 02, 2016, 3:40 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #27

So it's like Google contributor, but it runs through Brave. Brave is a story of how to take a good product and make it bad. It started out as "Link Bubble" which was one of the most innovative apps on Android. Brave bought it, introduced a number of bugs, and added "Brave Shields". These 'shields' generally break most sites around the web by blocking trackers and, more importantly, replacing website ads with ads that…

> replacing website ads with ads that pay Brave

Do you have a source for this? I had not heard of this until now.

Re: Brave Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments

#35

Post by mike-cardwell » Fri, Sep 02, 2016, 3:41 PM UTC

witty_username wrote: post #33

mike-cardwell wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to control the user agent, I just want to programatically announce that I am not talking part in the Brave micro-tip system, so that no end-user funds are put in a wallet for me which will never be withdrawn. Looking into this further, they would eventually email me after there are $10 worth of funds queued up for me, and then after 30 days of me ignoring them, those funds would be spread out amongst oth…

> However, until that wallet has at least $10 in it, Brave is just sitting on top of free money. I don't want that. One reason could be they don't want to bug website owners about small amounts.

How kind of them to hang on to the money instead of bugging the people it was intended for.

Re: Brave Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments

#36

Post by habosa » Fri, Sep 02, 2016, 3:55 PM UTC

ramblenode wrote: post #34

habosa wrote: post #27

So it's like Google contributor, but it runs through Brave. Brave is a story of how to take a good product and make it bad. It started out as "Link Bubble" which was one of the most innovative apps on Android. Brave bought it, introduced a number of bugs, and added "Brave Shields". These 'shields' generally break most sites around the web by blocking trackers and, more importantly, replacing website ads with ads that…

> replacing website ads with ads that pay Brave Do you have a source for this? I had not heard of this until now.

https://brave.com/about_ad_replacement.html

The graph shows the following payout distribution:

  * 55% publishers

  * 15% ad partners

  * 15% brave

  * 15% brave users

Whatever you think of internet ads, I don't think Brave is a publisher's best friend.

Re: Brave Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments

#37

Post by mst » Fri, Sep 02, 2016, 3:59 PM UTC

mike-cardwell wrote: post #23

mst wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else would you suggest they maintain the infrastructure without turning the users back into the product?

By taking a lot less than 5% of the donations and creating a successful and widely used product.

One would hope that if they get sufficiently successfuly they'd drop the percentage, but requiring them to achieve wider scale just to initially break even doesn't seem like it sets up good incentives to me.

Re: Brave Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments

#38

Post by hackuser » Fri, Sep 02, 2016, 3:59 PM UTC

WayneBro wrote: post #31

Why add features that users don't really care about before features that users do really care about? There are a minimum set of extended functions that I need from a browser that I'm going to use daily. They are: a speed dial that I can manually organize, a quick javascript switcher and an adblocker. Brave has only one of those. So I'll stick with Chrome/Chromium on my desktops thank you very much. On mobile, Dolphin…

This could be said of any innovation. Users want faster horses.

Re: Brave Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments

#39

Post by ramblenode » Fri, Sep 02, 2016, 4:00 PM UTC

I want to like the idea of Brave but have a hard time seeing this project taking off. It requires buy-in both from publishers, who make more money from ads, and from visitors, who probably don't want to spend money, configure a payment option, or switch from their current browser. Good idea for a cross-browser plugin, but an entire browser?

Re: Brave Browser Adds Bitcoin Payments

#40

Post by hackuser » Fri, Sep 02, 2016, 4:04 PM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #3

MichaelBurge wrote: post #2

It's a neat idea, but I feel like users need to be rewarded for it to really take off. Look at Patreon as an example: If you support someone there, they will often deliver rewards every month and payment is tied to the reward. This straightforward implementation ignores some of the privacy ideas, but might be a starting point: If a site notices I'm using a Brave-compliant browser, it tells me that I can unlock some n…

Publishers hate Brave though: they destroy much of the value those impressions have and then take a cut. Or at least they hate the idea of Brave, I doubt they take it seriously enough to really hate it. Brave will probably be resigned to the software scrap heap after this funding round runs out.

> Publishers hate Brave

This seems doubtful. Brave is almost completely unknown.