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IPFS Support in Brave

brave.com

181–190 of 464 posts

Re: IPFS Support in Brave

#181
Do they always refer to the same gateway, dweb.link? Is there a way to change this gateway?

Otherwise all of ipfs will end up going through dweb.link, and that's how you centralized a decentralized technology.

Re: IPFS Support in Brave

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the customer cares as long as you can use it

The type of people who are into decentralizing the internet are also usually against a single company (google) controlling the rendering engine of most users. If you're talking about typical user of the average web browser, they care about IPFS as much as they care about the rendering engine - i.e. not at all.

I am that person. I moved away from Brave because its still chrome/chromium based. I am also not confident in their "blockchain" advertising model and don't trust they are actually any less private with my data than chrome/chromium.

It would be cool to see IPFS integrated and enabled by default on all browsers. I doubt Google would ever take the leap, but maybe Mozilla would. I also have doubt that Microsoft would but they would be more willing than Google. Anyways, I hope this can happen before Mozilla's market share shrinks more.

Re: IPFS Support in Brave

#184
> The gateway could potentially also lie about the content it is serving you. In the future, Brave plans to verify content retrieved through gateways by using its CID.

Does anyone know why this was omitted? Verifying a hash is straightforward. Both the old simple MerkleDAG format [0] and the new complicated IPLD format [1] allow fetching and verifying individual files inside a CID-addressed bundle.

> Both requests you make and content you serve are observable by network peers.

That is a deceptive way to say, "if you click the 'Enable IPFS' button then your computer will continually publish your browsing history to the world." And they make it too easy to enable. It's just a button below the address bar [0]. And the button has a deceptive name, "Enable IPFS". The browser can use IPFS through a gateway, so IPFS is already enabled.

There are many important projects to improve privacy and reduce tracking and monitoring of user behavior on the network: DNS over HTTPS, TLS Encrypted SNI, blocking third-party cookies, proxy services (incorrectly called VPNs), anti-fingerprinting work in browsers, and mobile privacy features. Is there any work on making IPFS resistant to tracking? Right now, IPFS seems like a step backward for privacy.

> By default, Brave will load the URI being requested via a public HTTP gateway

> If IPFS is not yet configured, the user will have the IPFS page loaded through the gateway https://dweb.link. [2]

Fortunately, Brave shows the gateway URL in the browser address bar. This lets users know which company is tracking them. For Brave users (dweb.link users), this is Protocol Labs https://protocol.ai , a VC-funded company in California.

[0] https://github.com/ipfs-inactive/papers/blob/master/ipfs-cap...

[1] https://github.com/ipld/specs/

[2] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/10220

Re: IPFS Support in Brave

#185
> Additionally, Brave only allows subresources to be loaded over IPFS when the main page is loaded from IPFS.

Bummer. This means normal webpages can't load images or videos from IPFS. :(

Re: IPFS Support in Brave

#186
post #40

Mozilla promised us Tor integration, IPFS integration and more private browsing by default. Brave delivered it all.

Mozilla seems to be moving in the other direction now. "We need more than deplatforming" https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d...

Taken out of context that quote would imply "we need even more serious censorship", but admits that deplatforming a certain world leader is a not a real solution and that these actions that should be taken:

> Reveal who is paying for advertisements, how much they are paying and who is being targeted.

> Commit to meaningful transparency of platform algorithms so we know how and what content is being amplified, to whom, and the associated impact.

> Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation. [link to post on changing Facebook's timeline algorithm]

> Work with independent researchers to facilitate in-depth studies of the platforms’ impact on people and our societies, and what we can do to improve things.

The first two are no-brainers. The third is alright, but I doubt re-weighting Facebook's timeline algorithm is going to put the genie back in the bottle. The fourth is useful but pretty generic at "do research on things".

Re: IPFS Support in Brave

#188

> The gateway could potentially also lie about the content it is serving you. In the future, Brave plans to verify content retrieved through gateways by using its CID. Does anyone know why this was omitted? Verifying a hash is straightforward. Both the old simple MerkleDAG format [0] and the new complicated IPLD format [1] allow fetching and verifying individual files inside a CID-addressed bundle. > Both requests yo…

> Does anyone know why this was omitted? Verifying a hash is straightforward.

A CID for a file is not a simple hash, it represents the root of a merkledag of a file tree and chunks of the file. Getting the dag metadata requires a p2p connection under normal circumstances. A public HTTP gateway, given the CID, returns file content, not the file tree or merkledag the CID is a hash over.

It's doable, but totally reasonable that they didn't include this in 1.0.

further reading:

https://dag.ipfs.io/

https://cid.ipfs.io/

Re: IPFS Support in Brave

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the customer cares as long as you can use it

The type of people who are into decentralizing the internet are also usually against a single company (google) controlling the rendering engine of most users. If you're talking about typical user of the average web browser, they care about IPFS as much as they care about the rendering engine - i.e. not at all.

> against a single company (google) controlling the rendering engine of most users

That isn’t really applicable here though. That’s kinda like claiming we should be against Linux because it runs all the web servers. There is a difference between centralization and standardization.

Re: IPFS Support in Brave

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re either saying: Mozilla can’t afford to hire another set of developers to add IPFS, Firefox is too poorly written for this to be reasonably done, or Mozilla doesn’t actually care about the decentralized web to even try. None of the reasons really sheds a good like on Mozilla.

why would mozilla pay to add a fad technology or take on the tech debt?

Some of us believe that the client-server model has led us to the current situation, ruled by internet giants. A future where people are less reliant on giants is within our reach, the biggest hurdle is making it available to the masses.

Hopefully uptake by non-mainstream browsers like Brave will increase the exposure, attract developers, increase the network and get us closer to having IPFS, Hypercore or some other protocol available to the mainstream, whether that be in Firefox or by some other means.

Besides, you could argue that browsers have added plenty of fad technologies over the past few years, DRM comes to mind.

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