Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

brave.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 381 posts

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#181

Post by anderber »

RandomBacon wrote: post #172
cameronbrown wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference is that consumers have agreed to let the browser do this.

How do we know that all the consumers realize the browser is doing this? How do we know all consumers with those toolbars didn't know? I imagine those consumers also "agree" to website Terms of Service that don't allow this. I wonder if websites will fight back, closing accounts or doing more to stop people who use adblockers or Brave.

In Brave a user has to actively go to their settings and turn on ads. It's turned off by default.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#182

Post by cameronbrown »

RandomBacon wrote: post #172
cameronbrown wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference is that consumers have agreed to let the browser do this.

How do we know that all the consumers realize the browser is doing this? How do we know all consumers with those toolbars didn't know? I imagine those consumers also "agree" to website Terms of Service that don't allow this. I wonder if websites will fight back, closing accounts or doing more to stop people who use adblockers or Brave.

> I wonder if websites will fight back, closing accounts or doing more to stop people who use adblockers or Brave.

My personal belief is that websites are free to track users as much as they want, but users are free to respond however they want. If it becomes an arms race, so be it, but I think in the end the result will be adtech finally having to fix itself which is a very good thing.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#183

Post by kerkeslager »

dmix wrote: post #112
TheArcane wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deGoogle movement has been gaining steam ever since the ad-block announcement, and I'm a 100% behind it

Which happened after Brave launched.

Okay, but it's not like Brave couldn't have seen that coming. It doesn't take a genius to see that a browser run by one of the world's largest advertisers is going to prioritize advertisers over users.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#184

Post by RandomBacon »

cameronbrown wrote: post #182
RandomBacon wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know that all the consumers realize the browser is doing this? How do we know all consumers with those toolbars didn't know? I imagine those consumers also "agree" to website Terms of Service that don't allow this. I wonder if websites will fight back, closing accounts or doing more to stop people who use adblockers or Brave.

> I wonder if websites will fight back, closing accounts or doing more to stop people who use adblockers or Brave. My personal belief is that websites are free to track users as much as they want, but users are free to respond however they want. If it becomes an arms race, so be it, but I think in the end the result will be adtech finally having to fix itself which is a very good thing.

Same here; I block ads. I am denying revenue to the website. What I am not doing, is giving a middleman that money instead.

My conscience is okay with ad-blocking. It is not okay with helping someone steal.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#185

Post by jefftk »

input_sh wrote: post #177
jefftk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brave should recognize its total dependence on Google and its continued goodwill What do you mean? Brave is based on Chromium, which is open source. Google can't stop people from using it. (Disclosure: I work for Google)

Google is the dictator of what gets accepted into Chromium and what does not. That's how open source development works -- even if the code is available to everyone, its maintainers control its future.

Regardless of how Chromium is run [1] Brave is still in a position to make their browser work however they want. They can choose what Chromium features to enable, and take the code any direction they want.

[1] Your categorization doesn't match what I've seen. Microsoft has been driving substantial changes as Edge moves onto it.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#186

Post by kerkeslager »

vesche wrote: post #180
jonathansampson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave developer here. Great question! Brave Ads are entirely opt-in, and work via on-device machine-learning. The machine-learning bits study your browsing habits in a private, non-leaky manner. Once a day, your device downloads an aggregate catalog of many ad options to be studied locally. If/when an ad is found that fits your interests (as inferred by your browsing habits), the ad is displayed as an OS notification…

I would never opt-in to ads even if there was some upside. That's like asking if I'd like to see billboards on a beautiful drive through Colorado and in return you'll throw some change in my center console. I'll just take the beautiful drive and you can keep the cash. > The machine-learning bits study your browsing habits in a private, non-leaky manner. I think everyone's been around the internet long enough to know…

> I would never opt-in to ads even if there was some upside. That's like asking if I'd like to see billboards on a beautiful drive through Colorado and in return you'll throw some change in my center console. I'll just take the beautiful drive and you can keep the cash.

This, and the fact that Brave has decided to get in bed with advertisers at all seriously undermines their credibility.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#187

Post by RandomBacon »

anderber wrote: post #181
RandomBacon wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know that all the consumers realize the browser is doing this? How do we know all consumers with those toolbars didn't know? I imagine those consumers also "agree" to website Terms of Service that don't allow this. I wonder if websites will fight back, closing accounts or doing more to stop people who use adblockers or Brave.

In Brave a user has to actively go to their settings and turn on ads. It's turned off by default.

I hope the default never flips.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#188

Post by kerkeslager »

javagram wrote: post #84
pushcx wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but they still haven't shown remorse for claiming those payments were held in escrow when in fact Brave held the payments, and planned to take them after 90 days. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736743

Your link doesn’t match your text. You say they “planned” to take funds but when I followed the link, I found a TOS that allowed them to take a portion of the funds, or redistribute all of the funds back to end users without taking any, and a post from a Brave employee saying they never took any for themselves

Ah, you're right, it's okay to take my money as long as you tell me you're going to take my money beforehand in a TOS that nobody reads. Caveat emptor!

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#189

Post by csharp »

bad_user wrote: post #114
bsclifton wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Brave employee here) Curious: what are some of the shortfalls you see in Chromium? Before I joined Brave, the desktop browser was originally using Gecko (from Firefox). Ultimately, there were some problems and the decision was made to move to Chromium. On iOS, Brave is forked from Firefox though You can check out more detail on Reddit where folks asked why FF was not used (which has links to more detailed info): htt…

> On iOS, Brave is forked from Firefox You mean the platform that specifically disallows competing browser engines, making Firefox just a shell over a Safari-enabled web view and that can't even access Safari's content blockers? The only Firefox that's not running a Firefox engine under the hood? That Firefox? Given you're a developer for Brave, it's not possible for you to not know this, therefore your statement is…

(iOS engineer at Brave here) All iOS browsers are based on webkit. WKWebView, which is what we use, does have full access to content blockers. This is how we do ad-blocking, HTTPSE upgrades, and script blocking.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#190

Post by jonathansampson »

vesche wrote: post #180
jonathansampson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave developer here. Great question! Brave Ads are entirely opt-in, and work via on-device machine-learning. The machine-learning bits study your browsing habits in a private, non-leaky manner. Once a day, your device downloads an aggregate catalog of many ad options to be studied locally. If/when an ad is found that fits your interests (as inferred by your browsing habits), the ad is displayed as an OS notification…

I would never opt-in to ads even if there was some upside. That's like asking if I'd like to see billboards on a beautiful drive through Colorado and in return you'll throw some change in my center console. I'll just take the beautiful drive and you can keep the cash. > The machine-learning bits study your browsing habits in a private, non-leaky manner. I think everyone's been around the internet long enough to know…

Your beautiful drive through Colorado requires quite a bit of maintenance and financial support. Somebody has to pay for that. With Brave, Advertisers can pay for it (without getting hold of your data) by way of users. Alternatively, you may choose to "fund the roads" yourself by depositing your own tokens into Brave's wallet—that too is possible.

Brave aims to sustain the roads that grant you access to that scenery. For some users, they are able to pay a bit out of pocket (depositing their own tokens). For others, they can take advantage of a private advertising system that finds relevant ads, while paying the user 70%. This allows users to passively support the roads, if you will.

Unlike billboards down the side of the highway (which, I agree, aren't pleasant to see), only the users who wish to see ads are shown ads. And they always determine how many are shown (which is not the case with billboards). Brave Ads are tuned over time, too. As a user engages the app, the ads will become more and more relevant (unlike billboards). All that said, the default experience is (and will remain) an ad-free experience.

To your Krebs citation, he is absolutely correct. Give your data to somebody, and it's likely they'll lose it, leak it, or sell it. That's why Brave avoids your data as best we can. Brave Ads takes place _on your machine_, where your data naturally lives. You don't entrust us or anybody else with it.

I hope this helps!

Post reply on HN