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Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

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Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#311

Post by BrendanEich »

hayleox wrote: post #258
caiocaiocaio wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave was started after Eich was pressured out of the Mozilla foundation for financially supporting anti-gay initiatives. He called his company 'Brave' because he felt he was being brave for using his money to attack a minority group.

Had to look it up, it looks like he put $1000 towards California's Proposition 8 (to un-legalize same-sex marriage). In March 2014, he was named as Mozilla's new CEO, but resigned 9 days later under fire. https://www.cnet.com/news/mystery-startup-from-ex-mozilla-ce... Can't find anything on the origin of the company name, I assume that's just hyperbole.

s/hyperbole/projection, also a lie/.

Brave is named for its users, who have to stand up to the surveillance status quo, sometimes at a price in lowing their shields or otherwise tangling with anti-ad-blockers.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#312

Post by BrendanEich »

input_sh wrote: post #179
BrendanEich wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the decision was based on a spreadsheet with many items concerned with web compatibility, HTML5 DRM plugin free-as-in-beer, extension support, etc. Chromium without Google tracking is dominant, this is just a fact (it will change some day; not soon). The best way to counter this is not to die on the wrong hill (engine wars) right now -- it is to go a level up and fight for privacy and user sovereignty where Googl…

"Fighting for privacy" and third-party ads do not belong in the same sentence.

Lotta green handles fibbing about us here.

We don't do third party ads. We block third party tracking which takes out third party and most first party ads. We also block fingerprinting, cryptomining, and other threats.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#313

Post by BrendanEich »

basch wrote: post #113
BrendanEich wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't block 1st party ads. We block tracking tags including GPT/GTM, which will block some direct sold ads. We can with the publisher as partner fix this, but not by whitelisting tracking.

has it ever come up to run something similar to Opera's old community driven javascript site patch library/database? I think it would be amazing to have a browser, that instead of just blocking ads, had a way for you to set "whatever the community thinks is best" and have the browser pull down the best stylish/tampermonkeyish patches for a site, or completely new css. (you would also have a drop down with "see other…

Greaselion is coming up as I write this. Stay tuned.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#314

Post by BrendanEich »

smsm42 wrote: post #278
Ayesh wrote: post #244

I'm a publisher relying on ad revenue, and I hate Brave. It's not because it blocks my ads (I also contribute to an ad blocker list myself), but because Brave can swap my ads with its own. This is theft! Brave is similar to Opera. It's not a mainstream browser, and they also want to make money. Dipping into publisher revenue and using some broken BAT crypto currency to reward publishers is not the way to do it. The c…

> What we need is an ad provider that provides a meaningful experience to advertisers and non-invasive ads to publishers That's like saying "all we need is some honest and wise politicians and some smart non-corrupt government officials". Excellent idea, too bad nobody figured out how to get some and have them stay that way. Until we find a magic way to do it, we should assume the way it is now is the one we'd have t…

Tracking is the worst part of ad-tech. Ads can be annoying or entertaining, marketers will keep making them. Brave's opt-in ads use no tracking, match ads locally based on data generated in any browser, kept in cleartext only on your device. Matching is against a catalog that's the same for all users in a large population who speak the same language. Confirmation of views/clicks uses a protocol based on privacy pass (Chaum blind signature cryptography).

The problem with tracking ad-tech is the sum of the massive conflicts of interest it creates: advertiser vs. user vs. intermediary vs. publisher. Brave aligns with users first by paying them 70% of the user ad revenue, with publishers who partner with us who get 70% while the user gets 15% (so 1/ we pay 70% to owner of ad slot; 2/ we always pay user >= what we take). We then help users support creators, anonymously and easily, not only website publishers but especially youtubers and others. See https://batgrowth.com/ and sign up -- we pay $5USD in BAT per new 30+ day user you refer. https://brave.com/refer

By aligning with users first, we are confident great creators will do well as their users support them with automated contributions, pinned subscriptions, and tips. Who loses? The ad-tech intermediaries we block. You already give your data to your browser. Don't let it be a blind slave of the middlemen. They are not needed.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#315

Post by BrendanEich »

pedro2 wrote: post #275
Ayesh wrote: post #244

I'm a publisher relying on ad revenue, and I hate Brave. It's not because it blocks my ads (I also contribute to an ad blocker list myself), but because Brave can swap my ads with its own. This is theft! Brave is similar to Opera. It's not a mainstream browser, and they also want to make money. Dipping into publisher revenue and using some broken BAT crypto currency to reward publishers is not the way to do it. The c…

> but because Brave can swap my ads with its own. This is theft! AFAIK this is not true. To get in-page ads, you (the page owner) have to opt-in and will be paid over 60% of the profit.

70% not 60.

Of course, we do not replace ads without publishers as paid partners. That would be wrong, also legally unsound whether you think it wrong or not. Thanks for pointing this out.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#316

Post by BrendanEich »

lol768 wrote: post #116
BrendanEich wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the decision was based on a spreadsheet with many items concerned with web compatibility, HTML5 DRM plugin free-as-in-beer, extension support, etc. Chromium without Google tracking is dominant, this is just a fact (it will change some day; not soon). The best way to counter this is not to die on the wrong hill (engine wars) right now -- it is to go a level up and fight for privacy and user sovereignty where Googl…

> No, the decision was based on a spreadsheet with many items concerned with web compatibility, HTML5 DRM plugin free-as-in-beer, extension support, etc. This is a spreadsheet I'd be interested to see. Was this compiled before or after Firefox supported WebExtensions?

This was in late 2015, but WebExtensions support in Firefox is never complete vs. Chrome, and you are ignoring DRM and all the other junk (gmeet screen sharing extension! ChromeCast! the list goes on... Chrome is the new IE, but at least most is open source or free as in beer).

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#317

Post by BrendanEich »

noxer wrote: post #129
JohnTHaller wrote: post #39

We signed up for Brave's setup at PortableApps.com after a few users asked about it. They hold your last 90 days in escrow, so you can find out how successful it is once you sign up. We were looking at around 10 cents a day for a bit under a million monthly users for that timeframe over the summer. And we can't even access it since Brave only works with one crypto provider and they aren't licensed in New York. The pr…

Any chance you'll do this with Coil.com next? Setup should be way way simpler and access the donations should be possible without any crypto at all.

We don't require the publisher to take crypto either. Why did you think we did?

Coil's Chrome extension is not doing well, I suspect in part because of Coil's absolutely terrible privacy policy.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#318

Post by BrendanEich »

Vinnl wrote: post #287
marichards wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever Mozilla's focus is when you load Firefox you experience the following: 1. On ESR first time it loads two pages load including https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/60.8.0/firstrun/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ You then find first party cookies are set by Google Analytics _ga GA1.2.1671101194.1567114471 _gat_UA-36116321-1 1 _gid GA1.2.377831647.1567114471 In the EU this would breach the ePri…

Relevant context: 1. Mozilla only enabled Google Analytics after signing a contract with Google that that data would not be fed into Google's models. There's no reason to believe Google would violate that legal agreement. 2. The Twitter thread you linked is by a Brave employee. It should be judged by the facts it shows, but is good context to keep in mind w.r.t. their presentation.

Are you at Mozilla? That contract was referenced in a bug long ago. I'm not sure it can be enforced, given how Google's revamped Analytics 360 works.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#319

Post by jonathansampson »

reportgunner wrote: post #291
Semaphor wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don’t like Brave, from what I’ve read the ads are decided on locally, so no information is sent to the advertiser. Again, this is what I’ve heard.

Yes, perfect. I absolutely want to download ALL ads instead of NO ads.

With all due respect, that isn't how the solution works. Users must first opt-in to Brave Ads. Once they do, they download a regional catalog. This is a text document, compressed down to about 3 MB in size. Your machine (via on-board machine-learning) studies this for relevancy. When a relevant ad is found, you are given 70% of the revenue, and a notification is displayed on your operating system. You have control from the start, even over the frequency of ads you'll see within an hour.

Re: Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher

#320

Post by BrendanEich »

riquito wrote: post #261
marichards wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Mozilla wanted to respect privacy the "UI that is designed to act as a search field for Google" could be a "UI that is designed to act as a search field for DuckDuckGo", it wasn't that long ago it was a search field for Yahoo. What's notable here is that Google is the default and in doing so is endorsed and recommended by Mozilla for its users. So the fact here is that Mozilla made that choice to be in bed with Go…

Let's completely neglect in those "facts" that Google offers the best search engine and that people want to use it

Brave defaults to Google in most countries, but we get paid $0 for it. We also disable auto-suggestions based on key by key tracking to Google as you type your search term, leaving it as an option some users choose to enable.

This isn't that hard (except for doing without the big bucks, which is hard: Brave is building up small revenue to large, not profitable yet -- again, we pay the user >= what we make, 70% of gross revenue for user-private ads, 15% for publisher partnered ads [not yet launched]).

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