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Brave, the false sensation of privacy

ebin.city

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Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#331

Post by meibo »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #288
trts wrote: post #233

Slightly off topic, but it was a lot of fun to listen to Brendan Eich on Lex Fridman's podcast talk about Brave and the browser wars of the 90s and 00s. I've been using the Browser for several months without any of the rewards enabled and appreciate that it seems to quietly remove 95% of ads and does it effectively. https://lexfridman.com/brendan-eich/

Same here. I've also had Brendan Eich respond to one of my posts on HN - not something I'd expect from any other browser on the market. He understands techies because he is one. I wish Mozilla was headed by a techie and not a lawyer :(

Reminder that there's a reason Brendan Eich doesn't work for Mozilla anymore, and it's not just layoffs due to dwindling userbases. Half of their board stepped down when he was about to be appointed.

Decoupling software from the people behind it may be a good thing, but I don't want to support people that work against my interests.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#333

Post by vorticalbox »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #24
seibelj wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your anger is misplaced - you should be angry at government who requires Brave (and eBay, and Etsy, and any company that is paying out money to people) to require this. If this wasn’t legally required they (and every other company) wouldn’t do it.

That, at least, does have a reason. Uphold is an online exchange and crypto wallet more popular in Europe but very similar to Coinbase. The government doesn't want money laundering and other financial crimes, and you might disagree with KYC but at least there's some argument there. I don't like that Brave doesn't say, on their Brave Rewards page, warning: You will need to give up your privacy to cash out. If that's O…

I guess some users don't ever cash out and just use the rewards to fund the content they consume.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#334

Post by pmurt7 »

ehutch79 wrote: post #324
pmurt7 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If earning half a penny in a month is okay for you, in exchange of your privacy, because of course, they’re tracking you with Rewards, then enjoy your money. Lie. Brave doesn't track you. Your ad data never leave your machine (a bit like your bookmarks). The ad engine works privately on your computer and not on Brave server.

If it's fetching ads, it has to 100% be sending some data to someone, who is likely able to correlate it and track you. It doesn't take much.

The entire ad catalog is sent on your machine and some ad engine running inside the browser decides which ads to show you. It's funny seeing all these folks nitpicking at Brave but who are fine using Google or Microsoft every day

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#335

Post by jonathansampson »

mattalex wrote: post #316
_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 still don't really get how brave is supposed to work: You watch significantly fewer ads than before, these ads are then supplied to whoever you yourself engage with. That seems like watching these fewer ads directly on the site, just with a few hoops in between. The difference is that now you watch fewer ads in total, and you have the Brave-browser as an inbetween, which also somehow has to survive. This means that…

I recently did a 5 minute video on the history of digital advertising, with an introduction to Brave's model: https://youtu.be/LsrrT502luI.

Per https://brave.com/rewards and https://creators.brave.com, users opt-in to Brave Rewards and begin participating with privacy-preserving Ads. Each ad nets you, the user, 70% of the associated revenue.

Rewards come in the form of BAT, which moves more easily and comes with considerably less friction. The blockchain enables users to effortlessly and anonymously participate. This also means that everybody with attention (and not necessarily disposable income) can support the content they love online.

As for paying out in BAT, creators can choose to have BAT auto-converted into Bitcoin, US Dollars, etc. Users can also have their rewards converted into another type of asset or currency via Uphold too. BAT is simply a utility token, whose utility is currently best demonstrated within the Brave ecosystem.

To your last point, the "money going in" comes from advertisers. They pay in fiat currencies, or via BAT. If they pay us in dollars, we purchase BAT as needed from the market. Users can also self-fund their wallet, if they have disposable income.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#336

Post by ipaddr »

mattalex wrote: post #316
_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 still don't really get how brave is supposed to work: You watch significantly fewer ads than before, these ads are then supplied to whoever you yourself engage with. That seems like watching these fewer ads directly on the site, just with a few hoops in between. The difference is that now you watch fewer ads in total, and you have the Brave-browser as an inbetween, which also somehow has to survive. This means that…

I started using it. Found it fast. I get many 4 ads a day. They don't appear on the website they appear near the button to the side. Really small ad, just text. It is so out of the way.

The model for profit is around the bat coins gaining popularity. The payouts are extremely low for everyone.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#337

Post by jonathansampson »

freeone3000 wrote: post #319
jonathansampson wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Okay, but, how do I give them actual money, instead of BAT? Will you redeem BAT for dollars?

Within the Brave ecosystem, BAT is the unit of account for attention and support. Those who receive BAT, however, do not have to hold BAT. We offer creators and publishers the option of automatically converting their received tokens from BAT into various other types of assets and/or currencies. Many keep the BAT, others auto-convert to Bitcoin, and a large portion auto-convert to their regional currency (USD, CAD, etc.).

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#338

Post by jonathansampson »

ehutch79 wrote: post #324
pmurt7 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If earning half a penny in a month is okay for you, in exchange of your privacy, because of course, they’re tracking you with Rewards, then enjoy your money. Lie. Brave doesn't track you. Your ad data never leave your machine (a bit like your bookmarks). The ad engine works privately on your computer and not on Brave server.

If it's fetching ads, it has to 100% be sending some data to someone, who is likely able to correlate it and track you. It doesn't take much.

A regional catalog is downloaded routinely. The only "data" going out is your region (e.g. the United States). This returns a protobuf catalog of ads for your region. Your device privately studies this catalog for relevant entries. When an ad is shown, it's presented as a native notification on the OS. This means the user sees a title (text), and a body (text). Screenshots of these notifications are on https://brave.com/rewards. I also covered this model in brief detail recently https://youtu.be/LsrrT502luI (skip to about 3:22 if you like).

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#339

Post by Tepix »

German c't magazine tested all the main browsers in terms of privacy in the latest issue. Brave came out on top by a large margin. They even discovered that Edge sends a list of visited sites while in private browsing mode back to Microsoft!

I've heard some negative things about Brave but i'm willing to give it a try now because it may just be noise. I can imagine the advertising industry being very motivated to keep people away from Brave.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#340

Post by smoldesu »

I will probably never use Brave exclusively because of the fact that BAT shoots their privacy shtick in the foot. Why is my personal exploitation opt-in now? I don't want my browser to make money, and I certainly don't want to be caught in the crossfire while Adsense and other major providers roll out their circumvention mechanisms. Why is it so hard for people to just pick Firefox or a half-decent Chrome fork?
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