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Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

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Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#71

Post by nicce »

soundnote wrote: post #62
zormino wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By replacing ads on websites with their own, and url hijacking for referral profits. They are not a good service, they're content thieves with a mask on.

It doesn't? It adblocks ads like uBlock Origin and tracking blocking tech in other browsers (except the shields are not an add-on so they can exceed the Manifest v3 type limits). There are entirely separate channels (toaster popups, start page backgrounds) that they use to deliver their own ads. I get the crypto stuff is not everyone's cup of tea (certainly isn't mine) but get the basics straight, at least?

They block their rival's ads and bring their own instead. It might be visible on a little different location, but in the end the result is the same; replacing ads from the websites.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#72

Post by billiam »

zormino wrote: post #52
sneak wrote: post #24

How many times have Brave pivoted at this point? First it was ad replacement, then it was a patreon thing that took donations (illegally) for third parties that didn't want it, then it was ad blocking, then it was a search engine, then it was videoconferencing.... What exactly is their revenue model?

Their business model is theft by another name, however they can manage to swing it. When they get caught, pivot and steal content for profit a different way. Repeat.

Saint Joseph on a hot plate, the intolerance and rigidity of thinking of people on this web page is too much. Hacker News and FB and Twitter and a million other things we use every day are also guilty of theft, theft of our time and attention and ability to think slowly enough to not just reinforce our own preconceived notions. Yes, those Brave people are shifting their model all the time. Eich and team saw first hand that a browser company is almost impossible to run for profit unless you own your own multibillion dollar ad network or half the global phone business. Eich got to learn that first hand at Mozilla. He's trying to find an audience and offer what he considers innovative products. He's no more deceptive than Google or Amazon or Ycombinator are about what gets done with the attention and clicks.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#73

Post by kf6nux »

aeturnum wrote: post #31
IceWreck wrote: post #18

> Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on If this is true then its another shady thing by a self proclaimed privacy company. They used to do the protection racket thing where they indirectly threatened website owners with the ultimatum that if they don't work with them, they will man-in-the-middle them to replace the website's ads with their own and not give them a cut of the profit. Also, Brave h…

I don't understand why Brave Rewards needs to be enabled, but it seems very normal for the company operating a service to require some kind of account or membership. If you don't trust Brave this is probably not the service for you.

It's even more mundane than that.

They just require you to allow their ads during your call. It's privacy preserving ad tech in exchange for 1:1 video calls.

That's way better than sites requiring you to allow 3rd party ads to use their site.

EDIT: I just saw they let you set your ads to "0 per hour" and still let you use this service. I wonder if that's an oversight.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#74

Post by vrc »

soundnote wrote: post #62
zormino wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By replacing ads on websites with their own, and url hijacking for referral profits. They are not a good service, they're content thieves with a mask on.

It doesn't? It adblocks ads like uBlock Origin and tracking blocking tech in other browsers (except the shields are not an add-on so they can exceed the Manifest v3 type limits). There are entirely separate channels (toaster popups, start page backgrounds) that they use to deliver their own ads. I get the crypto stuff is not everyone's cup of tea (certainly isn't mine) but get the basics straight, at least?

uBlock origin is the only ad blocker worth trusting. Privacy Badger is fine but breaks things too often. PiHole is good but requires too much know-how for most. ABP and Brave both do the same garbage ransom-taking with their ad replacement schema. So few publishers have an account with them that the monies supposedly going to support content sits (at best) in an escrow account that is escheated at some point.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#75

Post by antonok »

jjulius wrote: post #50
Spivak wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills in this thread. Are we all suddenly against ad/content blockers and the built-in tracking protection that Firefox/Safari have? Do you all not not feel that the browser is ya know the user's agent?

>Are we all suddenly against ad/content blockers and the built-in tracking protection that Firefox/Safari have? No, but the point is that it's a bit more nuanced than your original post suggests. Users should have the control over how a page is displayed to them. I want to tell my browser to block ads, and which ads to block. I don't fully trust it to make the same exact decisions in that area that I might want, or t…

> It is the user's agent, and as the user, I want the control. I want to make the decisions.

What kind of decisions do you want to be able to make? Unless you're writing all your own filters (in which case, kudos to you!), you're still ultimately delegating these decisions primarily to a handful of filter list maintainers you've probably never met. Brave's source code and filter lists are all developed in the open and are heavily customizable, as well.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#76

Post by bsclifton »

open-paren wrote: post #4

To start a call, there is a requirement that you are 1) Using the Brave Browser 2) Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on. Not loving that. Edit: the first one is fine (although a little strange that it is a requirement here but not for their other products, like Brave Search). I'm irked by the second one.

There is an alternative option 2 available- you can subscribe to Brave Premium for a cost (shows as $7 USD/month). Just wanted to share as I hadn't seen it mentioned here

For the no-cost option, enabling Brave Rewards helps Brave to cover the costs of video infrastructure

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#77

Post by smoldesu »

deeblering4 wrote: post #35
bool3max wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you are loving that it's free though.

It’s not free, it just doesn't cost any money.

I was just about to say this. Brave is the opposite of a free browser, it just so happens to cost nothing to download/use it.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#79

Post by zakember »

crackercrews wrote: post #7
open-paren wrote: post #4

To start a call, there is a requirement that you are 1) Using the Brave Browser 2) Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on. Not loving that. Edit: the first one is fine (although a little strange that it is a requirement here but not for their other products, like Brave Search). I'm irked by the second one.

Number 1 is to be expected. Number 2 came as a surprise. Doesn't appear to be mentioned anywhere in the launch announcement. I assume someone could turn on Brave Rewards, start a call, and then turn it off later?

Sorry but why is Number 1 to be expected? HN often shows a lot of hate when any Google products like Gmail or Google Meet works well on Chrome, but not on Firefox.

Web technologies should be browser independent.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#80

Post by jonathansampson »

sciurus wrote: post #26

Time to bring back Firefox Hello? https://www.pcworld.com/article/3102890/goodbye-hello-firefo...

There have definitely been some really nice features shipped in other browsers, or by other vendors, in the past. Timing is often a curious element. I wonder if Hello might have found more success if it were introduced in 2020-2021, given the great exodus of people from offices, schools, etc., and their increasingly heavy reliance upon the Web to remain in touch.

I'm excited for our launch of Brave Talk in part due to the timing, but also for the technology, and the team behind the effort. WebRTC has come a long way, and the additional encryption options offered are really appealing.

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