The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think • Hacker News Board

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#121

Post by bad_user » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

krebs_liebhaber wrote: post #111

unnouinceput wrote: post #60

Quote: "You’re going to be browsing the web anyway; you’re going to be inundated with ads anyway;" Naaaah, Firefox with uBlock Origins and Privacy Badger makes sure I don't see ads, but thank you for trying.

The best thing about Brave is that all of the ad / tracker blocking is built into the browser itself - it's noticeably faster than any extension. The blog posts about the implementation make an interesting read: https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/

I never notice performance problems with my Firefox, except for Gmail (which sucks in Chrome too). And uBlock Origin is pretty well optimized already, I'm actually skeptical that Brave can be much better.

Is this an actual thing that's noticeable by people?

What is more noticeable to me is that projects like uBlock Origin are entirely community driven and thus less likely to succumb to monetization schemes like "acceptable ads".

Plus I trust Firefox itself more than I trust Brave, because Firefox has been with me ever since 2005 when I started my career.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#122

Post by Marsymars » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #67

unnouinceput wrote: post #60

Quote: "You’re going to be browsing the web anyway; you’re going to be inundated with ads anyway;" Naaaah, Firefox with uBlock Origins and Privacy Badger makes sure I don't see ads, but thank you for trying.

Can a similar level of privacy be reached through extensions with Safari on iOS or Chrome on Mac?

With Safari, no, iOS/macOS content blockers are significantly less powerful than uBlock Origin.

With Chrome, yes, as long as it continues to support uBlock Origin and you don't count its built-in communication with Google.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#123

Post by lucasverra » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

GoofballJones wrote: post #110

unnouinceput wrote: post #60

Quote: "You’re going to be browsing the web anyway; you’re going to be inundated with ads anyway;" Naaaah, Firefox with uBlock Origins and Privacy Badger makes sure I don't see ads, but thank you for trying.

Plus, on Mac OS I run Little Snitch with a set of custom blocking rules that's updated on a regular basis. Also, at this point, I don't trust anything based on Chromium...even if it's all open-source etc. The last time I checked, it still phoned home to Google some telemetry data. Granted, I haven't looked into it for a while as I've turned my back on all things Google a while ago.

You can swith to edgium to equilibrate

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#124

Post by 6510 » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

surround wrote: post #113

The reason why “the internet is broken” is because of ads. Ads incentivize tracking and clickbait. In the end, ad companies, such as Google and Faceboook, act in the interests of advertisers, not users. Brave is an ad company. On the other hand, companies which are supported by user donations act in the best interests of users. This includes websites such as Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. Brave does offer the op…

I think FREE is the problem. Anything that is free will either find ways to make you pay for it or has other people pay for it. As a bonus you don't have any complaints either since you officially didn't pay.

Is Wikimedia acting in users best interest? It really doesn't need to beg for your money but it cant get enough of your money? haha

I don't know what it costs to host 250 billion page views per year but they claim 40% is spend on hosting. They have 180 million to spend so hosting would be72 million? 1 dollar would buy 1400 page views? If you simply use a crappy service, say hostinger's 1 usd per month x 12 you get 1200 GB bandwidth. Average wiki articles are 3.6 kb. That is 27 million page views. 20 000 times 1400? I'm not an expert but I imagine hosting on that scale is much cheaper.

It is acting in my interest 1:20000 which is certainly better than selling my personal information to creepy faceless money men.

I would much rather buy access to 250 GB worth of wiki articles for 1 euro but no one figured out the payment model.

Brave does seem lovely until you see them solicit funds in other peoples name without permission. It much seems like [say] collecting funds for Greenpeace but hey! I keep an administrative chunk for myself.

The puzzle is unsolved.

Good luck

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#125

Post by lucasverra » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #67

unnouinceput wrote: post #60

Quote: "You’re going to be browsing the web anyway; you’re going to be inundated with ads anyway;" Naaaah, Firefox with uBlock Origins and Privacy Badger makes sure I don't see ads, but thank you for trying.

Can a similar level of privacy be reached through extensions with Safari on iOS or Chrome on Mac?

i use nextdns.io to block at os level vpn. its free and they are partners of mozilla, so good enought for me. When I asked why should i trust them with my dns request they told me that i should not do it lightly.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#126

Post by Marsymars » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

jsjddbbwj wrote: post #51

Am I the only one who uses brave with all bat stuff off? It's a fork of chromium that's up to date, completely open source, ad blocking and fingerprinting defeating built-in, reader mode, etc. Chrome but just better.

I use Vivaldi as a secondary/tertiary browser. It's a Chromium fork without the weird ad/crypto-stuff that Brave has or the shady Chinese ownership that Opera now has. (And the Android version seems to be the only browser app that's putting effort into good ChromeOS functionality.) I've never really been clear on why Brave is more popular than Vivaldi.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#127

Post by ac29 » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

NelsonMinar wrote: post #114

I'm grateful to the author for the detailed analysis of the cryptocurrency part of the grift. Before I'd never got past the "Brave is taking ad revenue from publishers and keeping it for themseleves" part in any detail.

All ad networks keep revenue for themselves, so in this regard they aren't any different than Google or Facebook providing the ads. But, they also give a cut to users, so unless Brave's cut + the user cut is less than the existing ad networks' take, that's less money for publishers.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#128

Post by sombremesa » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 6:00 PM UTC

songshuu wrote: post #97

Angeo34 wrote: post #88

The way Brave is doing it currently though makes it look worse than snake oil. Why would they advertise a fingerprinting if it actually makes your fingerprint more unique? Why would they advertise Tor although using it inside Brave makes you instantly unique??? If this wasn't the case I'd not have a problem with it. This way it just seems like a huge scam (which considering you can just use Firefox with some add-ons…

I think you wholly misunderstand that the fingerprint is randomized on every restart of the browser. That is so much noise that it renders fingerprinting as a strategy utterly useless.

Most people don't restart their browsers as often as you might think (the modern trend is very much away from desktops). Especially on mobile, where things stick around in the background without your knowledge.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#129

Post by scrozart » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 6:01 PM UTC

unnouinceput wrote: post #60

Quote: "You’re going to be browsing the web anyway; you’re going to be inundated with ads anyway;" Naaaah, Firefox with uBlock Origins and Privacy Badger makes sure I don't see ads, but thank you for trying.

The author isn't selling Brave. They mention themselves that they use FF with ad blockers.

Re: The Brave browser is brilliant, but probably not for the reasons you think

#130

Post by ac29 » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 6:03 PM UTC

fullstop wrote: post #44

latchkey wrote: post #20

I've been clicking the desktop ad notifications like a madman. Earning BAT, then taking that BAT and converting it to an interest bearing stable coin token in DeFi (~8%). Some of the BAT I earn, I also convert into ETH so I can pay for gas, making my transactions 'free'. It has been a fun experiment in playing with this stuff, but it certainly isn't going to make me rich or anything.

I've apparently earned 103 BAT since last September. Something is up, though, because I earn way more than estimated at the end of the month.

To save folks a search: that's worth about $24 at current market price (less whatever fees it would take to convert in to your currency of choice). $4/month.