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

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

rudism.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 251 posts

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

#201

Post by NelsonMinar »

ac29 wrote: post #193
NelsonMinar wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a facile turn you took there. Google and Facebook have agreements with the websites they place the ads on. They asked for those ads to be there. Brave did not.

I think I misunderstood your comment - you are right, Brave's status quo is that they keep all of the revenue from by replacing publishers ads (minus they amount they give to users). My point was that in theory, if: 1) advertisers were willing to pay Brave the same amount as they do existing advertisers, and 2) Brave took a similar cut as existing advertisers (including user payouts), and 3) Publishers were actually…

Fair enough. I think the concept of some alternate way of paying publishers is great. But that's not what Brave is doing. They're more like the AdBlocker Plus shakedown, where they deprive a site of their ad revenue and then say "well if you want some of that back you can have part of it back from us by showing the ads we want you to."

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

#202

Post by Beldin »

philwelch wrote: post #196
wasdfff wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was some mechanism to pay for websites out of your monthly bill. You pay x for internet, and y% is proportionally used to pay for your visits to websites a,b,c. You wouldn’t have to pay to host your site or worry about it bogging down if its been posted on reddit or hn, if it is payed for by visiting users out of their monthly bill to their ISP.

This is called microtransactions and it’s been a dream for a long time. The fact that it wasn’t baked into the web from the outset probably means it’s less likely to ever happen, and even if it did, you’d still have the same clickbait business models so aside from the advertising itself, it wouldn’t improve matters. In fact there wouldn’t be any reason for websites not to double down and have ads anyway! Brave, ironi…

Actually, ads are the only model of microtransactions that has worked in practice.

So the good news is that there is a practical method of microtransactions! The minor downside is that is not C2B, but B2B.

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

#203

Post by onyva »

fastball wrote: post #199
onyva wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.) I’m not gonna trust a company like Brave with anything personal. Why would I? 2.) We’ve got Mozilla doing a great job. Monetizing the internet is not a priority I care about and ads are not what I need my browser to optimize. Also there will always be the problem of Bernden Eich who gave money to take away people’s most basic right in California. I can’t support that.

1) Because it's open source so you don't need to trust them. 2) How is Mozilla facilitating that at all, much less doing a great job of it? 3) Brendan Eich co-founded Mozilla, so that's pretty funny given your point (2).

1) being open source doesn’t mean much in this context.

2) Mozilla’s stated goal and track record is user privacy. Brave’s is a Trojan horse for an alternative ad network.

3) we know who Eich is. Having co-founded Mozilla doesn’t make him a saint. The fact that his world view (expressed through real substantial action that has impact on people’s lives and happiness) is not compatible with what Mozilla stands for, is the reason why he’s not there anymore.

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

#204

Post by fastball »

onyva wrote: post #203
fastball wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Because it's open source so you don't need to trust them. 2) How is Mozilla facilitating that at all, much less doing a great job of it? 3) Brendan Eich co-founded Mozilla, so that's pretty funny given your point (2).

1) being open source doesn’t mean much in this context. 2) Mozilla’s stated goal and track record is user privacy. Brave’s is a Trojan horse for an alternative ad network. 3) we know who Eich is. Having co-founded Mozilla doesn’t make him a saint. The fact that his world view (expressed through real substantial action that has impact on people’s lives and happiness) is not compatible with what Mozilla stands for, is…

(2) is not related to ad networks at all. Mozilla does not facilitate this point in any way.

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

#205

Post by johnphamous »

jsjddbbwj wrote: post #116
skybrian wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just be aware that you're placing a lot of trust in them. It is adding a dependency on the Brave developers not to mess up and create security holes, in addition to whatever trust you place in the Chrome project itself. (A browser plugin requires somewhat less trust since it's sandboxed, but the permissions are still pretty scary.) But I guess it's like buying an Android phone from anyone besides Google? Or installin…

I know. I've been burnt before by Mozilla and Google. Brave will also mess up eventually. I'm just praying that there will be another good browser to hop to when that occurs!

Have you checked out Microsoft's Chromium Edge?

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

#206

Post by dang »

plerpin wrote: post #150
azalemeth wrote: post #2

I never really looked into BAT and only use Brave on mobile (mostly then as its UI for its javascript switch is far better than dealing with uMatrix on firefox mobile). I had no idea that the whole thing is yet another altcoin IPO with excellent marketing. They really must be laughing all the way to the bank...

Excellent marketing, with an army of BAT bagholders willing to shill for the product pro bono.

Please don't post insinuations of astroturfing without evidence. That's seriously against the rules here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

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

#207

Post by bubersson »

webmobdev wrote: post #68
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.

Exactly - add uMatrix to the picture and it decreases page load time and gives you even more control over what can load in a website. I am tired of this constant social media promotion of this clone of a browser that is built to support the online advertising industry (an industry that constantly "innovates" to violate our privacy while irritating us in the process).

If one of the selling points of Brave is that it saves my time, then spending hours trying to set the right extensions and updating rules doesn't sound that appetizing.

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

#208

Post by dang »

wdjdkjwjeje wrote: post #9

Brave is brilliant at mobile design is what they're brilliant at. I find Chrome and Firefox on Android unusable because of how much better browsing with Brave feels. Firefox Lite and Microsoft Edge get closer to the pleasure of using Brave on mobile but neither comes close to matching it since Firefox lacks the reliability of Chromium browsers (I know, boo choosing browsers based on usefulness) and Edge has a fetish…

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

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

#209

Post by prepend »

skybrian wrote: post #104
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.

Just be aware that you're placing a lot of trust in them. It is adding a dependency on the Brave developers not to mess up and create security holes, in addition to whatever trust you place in the Chrome project itself. (A browser plugin requires somewhat less trust since it's sandboxed, but the permissions are still pretty scary.) But I guess it's like buying an Android phone from anyone besides Google? Or installin…

That’s a pretty small risk to take since it’s OSS and I can audit it, if so feel like it.

I think the risk they add from a security perspective offsets the risk Chrome brings from a privacy perspective.

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

#210

Post by Ayesh »

6510 wrote: post #124
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 cla…

I think LetsEncrypt (ISRG) is one of the best examples when it comes to donations. They have a super small budget and a very small staff, but they single handedly made pretty much every web site today encrypted. One billion certificates issued so far, and the rate if it is only going up.

If you have a budget to make some donations, please out LE on the top of the list. They are doing a wonderful job and you are will make a massive change.

Post reply on HN