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Brave, the false sensation of privacy

ebin.city

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Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#301

Post by jonathansampson »

fastball wrote: post #258

A rebuttal of the points in the article, as most of it is arguing in bad faith: > Brave's adblocker is uBlock origin It's not[1]. > Brave Today can't be disabled Currently called "Brave News" if you're looking for it. And of course it actually can be disabled[2]. > Rewards is used to track you A request being made to a URL does not mean you are being "tracked". Brave ads are the most privacy-preserving ad architectur…

Brilliant and succinct response. I provided 3 long responses here as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27552530. One thing to point out regarding the Tor issue too is that this bug only happened because Brave is leading the industry in decloaking third-party ads and trackers masquerading as first-party resources (see https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/ for more). This is what happens when you lead; others get to see you stumble from time to time.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#302

Post by jonathansampson »

llacb47 wrote: post #81

This made some decent points but relied too much on FUD.

What decent points were made? The author is clearly not technical (or not to the degree needed to conduct such a review). Contrast it with an actual competent review of Brave and other browsers, such as https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#303

Post by unknown_error »

jaywalk wrote: post #160
unknown_error wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't they the ones who pioneered DNS hijacking of unknown domains to serve their own recommendations and ads?

No, that was VeriSign back in 2003: https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/advisory-conc...

Ah, OK. I didn't realize verisign did that too. Comcast followed not long after...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/08/comcasts-dns-red...

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#304

Post by jonathansampson »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #208

Brave's business model is replacing the ads on websites with their own ads. Then there was that one time they started inserting their own affiliate codes into web pages. No surprise they replace the trackers on websites with their own tracking, too. At least their ethics are consistent.

"Brave's business model is replacing the ads on websites with their own ads."

Incorrect. Isn't true now, and has never been true in the past.

"Then there was that one time they started inserting their own affiliate codes into web pages."

Also false. Not true now, and was never true in the past.

"No surprise they replace the trackers on websites with their own tracking, too."

Still false. You're 0 for 3. Please consider downloading Brave and actually trying it for a day. It seems you have been quite misled on this topic.

See a more detailed response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27552530

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#305

Post by snapetom »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #3
auslegung wrote: post #2

I’ve been using Brave to watch YouTube videos in incognito mode ever since 1Blocker on Safari stopped blocking YouTube ads. This article brings up some good points, and I want to support Firefox more anyway, so I need to see how Firefox handles YouTube ads.

For the past month or so, Brave on Ubuntu has been failing to block YT ads, so now I've been stuck with 2 unskippable multi-minute ads before almost every vid. I've been hitting mute and switching tabs while I wait. The most egregiously annoying one was 6 minutes of ads on an 8-minute standup comedy clip. Brave on mobile still blocks all that crap so I've transitioned to listening to YT content on my cellphone, propp…

Have you double checked that the shields are still up for YouTube? I had the same thing happen to me a couple of weeks ago. Turned out my shields were down for YouTube for some reason.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#306

Post by jonathansampson »

songshuu wrote: post #232

The surest sign that Brave has made it is that 3 hours in, we aren't seeing a rush of rebuttals from Sampson, Clifton, or Eich in the comments. The article rehashes some FUDy and misleading comments which have been knocked down years ago. Brave's not perfect, but for different reasons than this author raises.

Sorry for the late arrival; I provided a response (via 3 comments) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27552530. I'll try to be faster in the future

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#307

Post by CharlesW »

fastball wrote: post #286
CharlesW wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that Brave can't be trusted by default. It's nice that they roll back dark patterns when they're caught by people like Tom Scott, I guess?

I think there is a difference between an imperfect implementation of something that has never been done before (especially when your competition is an adtech giant oligopoly) and "dark patterns". Worth pointing out that part of the reason it was hard to just refund people who donated to non-verified creators was Brave actually caring about privacy, so the donations in question were completely anonymous. So when it wa…

> So when it was pointed out that it's still a problem, they came up with a solution that I think strikes a good balance.

Fair enough.

To me, it couldn't have been more obvious that collecting "money" in creators' names and also misrepresenting that was Bad™. I'll try to be gracious and chalk this up to "lack of common sense" instead of "part of the evil plan".

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#308

Post by jonathansampson »

nmz wrote: post #252
Belphemur wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil advocate. On one side, Brave come with an adblocker that will remove any ads from the website you're visiting. On the other, they provide their own ads through the reward program. So it can be seen as "replacing website ads by its own". I approve that line of reasoning, but I think that what the author meant.

You can disable seeing ads in settings though. if you choose to see ads however, the website doesn't get anything, you get crypto from it.

In Brave, by default, when a user opts-in and earns rewards from Brave Ads, Brave will enable the user to tip verified sites and content creators (even making automatic, pro-rata contributions possible). This is currently how content creators benefit (indirectly) from Brave Ads. Their users earn rewards, and forward them along. We're currently settling more than 8-figures each month to website owners and more. See creators.brave.com for more information. Further options will come in the future as well.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#309

Post by rchaud »

Moodles wrote: post #132

I appreciate articles that look into topics in some depth that I’m curious about. But I really dislike the author’s strident writing style. Now, if there’s a single exaggeration or untruth from the author, It’ll throw the rest of the article in doubt for me. I think it would be better if it was a bit more dispassionate. Another thing I’ve noticed in security (and I actually work in this field) is that if a project ma…

It's a personal website, not a corporate blog. Why does it have to be dispassionate? The tone is strident, but there are no personal attacks or abusive language used.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#310

Post by jonathansampson »

rch wrote: post #294
_fnhr wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more lies in that article. This one for example is so often repeated but untrue: > Rewards is their shitty program that will replace ads displayed on websites with their own. Brave doesn't replace ads with their own. Brave ads are displayed as desktop pop-ups. They can also be easily disabled (which, surprise, the author doesn't mention because of his bias). And the idea behind Brave ads is to give you toke…

I'd prefer it if I could contribute cash monthly, and let the browser distribute the funds based on my browsing. The notion of getting paid to view a separate stream of ads seems bizarre. It's the 'Ad Buddy' model, but with crypto.

You can do that today with Brave. Brave Rewards enables users to self-fund, and contribute automatically to the sites they visit, proportional to the time spent on those sites. See https://brave.com/rewards and https://creators.brave.com for more information. The beautiful thing about Brave Ads, however, is that everybody can support the content they love. Even if they don't have the ability to self-fund; they can convert attention into substantive support for content creators.
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