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

rudism.com

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

#221

Post by onyva »

BrendanEich wrote: post #218
fastball wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ignoring Onyva's misstatements, please note that Mozilla does depend for most of its revenue on Google's ad system (people don't use "ad networks" much any longer, but as a loose term for a platform such as Google's Authorized Buyers and AdSense programs, it'll do). Brave does not have such a data-breaching ad "network" or "real-time bid" platform. Instead the Brave browser downloads a fixed-per-day-for-large-N-popul…

Mozilla doesn’t embed an ad network in your browser!?!? Why would anybody want a browser that does this?

You can do whatever you want to do with Firefox. Enjoy the free blocking mechanisms, including fingerprinting, and install whichever 3rd party ad blocker.

Users understand the relationship there, so please don’t try to spin it. It’s not about user’s data.

You’re embedding an ad client into the browser. You want to sell ads yourself. Selling ads and controlling the browser is Google. That’s a conflict of interests.

* fixed typos

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

#222

Post by onyva »

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…

It’s actually worse since they’re clearly promoting it claiming it’s open source and it puts privacy first, which are better selling points then the fact that if comes with a Trojan horse in form of an ad network, clearly.

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

#223

Post by untangle »

The article should be entitled "Brave Executive Team is Brilliant."

Brilliant in two ways: (1) they are an ad company that has fairly successfully wrapped itself in a Klingon Cloaking Sheild made up of "open source" and "pro-privacy" atoms; and (2) they did an ICO at a perfect time (peak of hype with BC soaring) and ease of implementation (Etherium). It was so good (bad) that it brought a tear to my eye.

Getting back to the article, I felt that the grade school "Daddy-O" interludes were unnecessary and distracting but I otherwise really liked it. And the illustrations were boss!

In fact, I liked it so much that I wanted to buy the author a coffee. So I clicked the link and...I was taken to some startup payment service that made it a chore to pay $3, so I bailed. I thought that was ironic as that payment site reminded me of Brave. Intermediating a common transaction with useless clutter and therefore foiling it.

So the Brave exec team and founders made a nice chunk of change and have perpetrated a ruse. But, luckily for users, they balanced Karma by producing a mighty-fine browser. Its capabilities rank it among the best.

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

#224

Post by onyva »

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…

Free is NOT the problem. Free is the “business model” of the internet. Just because some people want to monetize it doesn’t mean we need to give up and just let them do what they want. Selling ads is not the purpose of the internet. Content created to sell ads is most of the time garbage. No chicken, no egg no puzzle to resolve.

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

#225

Post by jankiehodgpodge »

LessDmesg wrote: post #213
johnphamous wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you checked out Microsoft's Chromium Edge?

It doesn't work. As in, can't render some perfectly renderable sites correctly. It seems Microsoft is chronically bad at making browsers, even when using a good ready-made engine.

What site in particular are you having trouble with? I haven't found a single problem in the few months it's been released.

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

#226

Post by cdrake »

https://brave.com/transparency/ To have a better idea of creators and advertisers volume.

But hey Rudis is probably right. Everything should be free and no one should get paid for work. lets not even try to fix or attempt a different economic model. We're all so happy with the current one...

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

#227

Post by webmobdev »

faitswulff wrote: post #77
webmobdev wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

As a casual uBlock user, what does uMatrix give you that uBlock Origin doesn’t?

uMatrix is a bit more harder to use than uBlock Origin.

Basically, when a website loads, it can access resources from various sources. For example, if you access www.example.com, it may also load Analytics from google.com, it may use sharing icon and javascript from twitter and Facebook, it may load some video file from Akamai content delivery network etc. etc.

With uMatrix you can control what resources load from where.

In the default mode, uMatrix will load the resources only from the domain you are accessing, i.e. if you are accessing example.com, it will allow images, javascript, videos etc. to only load from example.com and block from all other sites. This can break some websites - for example, youtube.com which loads videos and javascript from other servers in different domain. In such cases uMatrix allows you to allow resources from the other domains / servers to load and save this settings (or you can just switch off uMatrix temporarily for that site).

Since many resources aren't loaded by default (and a lot of websites include such crap resources from other sites like Google, Facebook etc), it saves bandwidth and the web page often loads faster. But it comes with added complexity when a website breaks.

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

#228

Post by 6510 »

onyva wrote: post #224
6510 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Free is NOT the problem. Free is the “business model” of the internet. Just because some people want to monetize it doesn’t mean we need to give up and just let them do what they want. Selling ads is not the purpose of the internet. Content created to sell ads is most of the time garbage. No chicken, no egg no puzzle to resolve.

I don't think the purpose of the internet is set in stone. It is an ongoing experiment, we are evolving the square peg to fit in the round hole. (haha)

I like the "asking the right questions" thing a lot. I'm never quite happy with the question, the way I've put it certainly leaves a lot of room for improvement. My formula is something like: First blow up the "problem" way out of proportion (summarize all parts that are wrong with something) then remove the most unreasonable arguments.

I do lots of things for free both online and offline. Its a gift really, I put in the effort, the time and the money. (I wouldn't call it a business model tho) The problem with this is that I can only do so much. With free software for example people have a drive to make something that works. We get a huge amount of great stuff but with rare exception the end results don't get polished. There is always a lack of effort with boring shit that would add a lot to a project. (I always feel terrible when looking back at the state I abandoned a project in.)

Say you have a product to sell, you have to find ways to find customers. The same goes for gifting free things (like software) So, uhhh... where is the free marketing?

Users expect the product to find them FOR FREE! but this simply doesn't work. If we paid some incredibly small amount to be found by products that are interesting to us we would be far less reluctant to provide the necessary personal details. I own 3 guitars that I never play. There are lots of products that fit that profile. If such a product finder was tied in with say 100 other subscriptions and my ISP billed me for those services it would be something incredibly cheap and worth buying. In stead google charges stores an arm and a leg to chase me with wimmens panties because my deceased mum ordered those 15 year ago. WTF??

People wrote fantastic free software that would have been even better if enough users could find it. Meanwhile the commercial alternative is rubbed in peoples face all day long. I would like to see the "build it and they will come" model work.

Adsense makes a hundred billion in revenue because free doesn't work. This is the puzzle. If you can figure out how to do it for free ill give you 5 internet stars and a standing ovation. Ill be pondering how to do it on the cheap. Call me unambitious ;)

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

#229

Post by anoncake »

xixixao wrote: post #173
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'd like to remind everyone that we enjoy this conversation on a FREE forum, which is basically one big AD for a startup incubator company. Which I personally have no gripes with.

HN is marketing and PR but it's hardly an ad.

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

#230

Post by anoncake »

Beldin wrote: post #202
philwelch wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"The only that has ed" is not and never will be an argument until the end of time.
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