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The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

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Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#211

Post by tinodotim »

xur17 wrote: post #76
justsee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say good luck with that. To acquire BAT at scale fraudulently from rewards will likely cost more than it's worth, and to convert it into fiat will require going through KYC / AML processes AND avoiding being flagged by Brave's fraud analysis. I don't think they've published anything on fraud analysis, but what their research team has published is indicative of the calibre of Brave's team: https://brave.com/resear…

> to convert it into fiat will require going through KYC / AML processes AND avoiding being flagged by Brave's fraud analysis. Are they going to require KYC to withdraw from your wallet or something? Otherwise I'm not sure what keeps people from withdrawing and trading on whatever sketchy exchange they want.

> Are they going to require KYC to withdraw from your wallet or something?

yes, afaik.

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#213

Post by mud_dauber »

I started using Brave a few weeks ago. Not because of privacy concerns - mainly out of curiosity.

One thing I did NOT expect is the noticeably faster performance. (Presumably due to the lack of ad content loading.)

This is a big deal at my house. We turned off wired Internet service to save money during a job search. (There's only one HS vendor in our neighborhood. (And this is in Austin. Go figure.) We're tethering our phones and foregoing any high-bandwidth use cases.

Has anybody published performance benchmarks?

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#214

Post by rchaud »

dragonwriter wrote: post #173
nostrademons wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would advertisers bid higher when this is not the only channel and comes with less targeting and increased fraud potential? Brave's model - like all ad-supported ones - depends upon them getting very big, enough that they get a substantial fraction of total user attention. They're going for this by blocking all existing ads, which in today's web makes the browser significantly faster and less annoying. They're…

> Because they get money for it. When that becomes a real motivation, it'll collapse the system, because view-fraud will either overwhelm honest views or Brave will be forced to take invasive measures to try to prevent such fraud.

I believe view fraud is exactly what happened to the dotcom-era company that offered to pay users. I recall reading about it in Michael Lewis' book "Panic!"

No wonder Brave is trying to pay people with a useless e-token.

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#215

Post by rchaud »

tomc1985 wrote: post #140
atomical wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone uses either of your suggested options the publishers go broke and there is no content to view. Brave has a plan for that. So yes, they are farther along than any idea you have presented.

> If everyone uses either of your suggested options the publishers go broke and there is no content to view. Yay! Then things go back to nerds willing to pay for hosting. Then maybe the internet will go back to being an information resource rather than a machine for monetizing my attention and emotions

I agree that the Internet as we know it is full of content marketing disguised as informational resources, but that's not the Internet's fault. It is the result of the perverse incentives created by a small group of search engines and social media networks.

They render your presence as more or less invisible unless you're constantly spamming your followers with low-content posts and ruining your website with lead-gen focused blog posts.

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#216

Post by rchaud »

drb91 wrote: post #150
atomical wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone uses either of your suggested options the publishers go broke and there is no content to view. Brave has a plan for that. So yes, they are farther along than any idea you have presented.

> If everyone uses either of your suggested options the publishers go broke and there is no content to view. This is absolute bullshit: people will pay more than they realize for content, and people will produce it for free. One way or another people will consume content. We should all encourage the reduction of useless crap on the internet that exists solely to drive ad views. The faster we all block ads the faster…

We haven't yet reached the tipping point where adblock use is so widespread that publishers start bringing ad sales back in-house.

But with each passing year, media companies are implementing ways to be less reliant on digital ad revenue, either via sponsorships, native advertising, conferences etc.

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#217

Post by rchaud »

drb91 wrote: post #148
manigandham wrote: post #23

Brave is just an intermediary that replaces ads with other ads. It's an adnetwork delivered as a browser that creates ad inventory on top of the page instead of within it. That being said, the tokens are basically worthless. This is not what the digital advertising industry wants and Brave is not going to get any decent advertisers with this. They'll end up with the same shady affiliate/performance marketers running…

I was under the impression you could also pay the content producer directly to bypass ads, which is IMHO the ideal solution. Is this no longer viable?

It works when "pay the producer" is the default option, and not something you have to opt into. Also helps if you are serving a niche audience rather than a general one.

The Stratechery website charges $10/mo for what is essentially a tech consultant's take on SV company product strategy. This is a narrow niche, and the site isn't one that will get millions of ad views. So there aren't any ads at all, and as a bonus, there aren't any throwaway blog posts designed to be shared on social media.

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#218

Post by rchaud »

Brave Browser on Android has been my goto since 2017. It's the Chrome browser, but with an adblocker, which obviously the main Chrome app doesn't support.

That said, I really don't like this scheme. Paying users with a worthless e-coin while putting your own ads on top of blocked ads? Why would site owners opt in to this? So they can monitor 2 different ad systems present on their site?

Not to mention, the conversion probability of a user who blocks ads is much lower than that of someone who sees ads daily. So how much would you really be earning by serving ads to people who specifically downloaded an adblocking browser?

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#219

Post by rchaud »

sirn wrote: post #167
xur17 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, there’s no way for users who receive BAT for viewing ads to swap their digital currency for dollars, but Eich says Brave will partner with cryptocurrency exchanges to make that possible. I'm confused by this statement - there are currently several exchanges you can use to trade BAT for USD. Is this suggesting that the UI will be made more clear in the future, or are users actually blocked from withdrawing BA…

Right now Brave require a creator account to be linked to Uphold which automatically exchange BAT to USD (at a 1.95% fee). Uphold balance can also be withdraw to a bank account in the US or to other cryptocurrency.

I remember simpler times of the Web 1.0 age when Epinions would just mail me a check every few months. Outside of the reviews I wrote on their website, I didn't have to lift a finger to get paid.

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#220

Post by turdnagel »

turdnagel wrote: post #52

I find these kind of bait-and-switches to be really tasteless. Company X is created originally with the sole purpose of blocking ads and privacy trackers - and then decides to monetize using some kind of "good" ad. (I'm looking at you, AdBlock Plus.)

It appears I'm dead wrong about this - sorry for posting before I got the whole story.
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