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Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

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Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#121

Post by jonathansampson »

nicce wrote: post #108
jonathansampson wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "they get caught on very hostile things again and again" This is not the case. The most common claims are "Brave accepted donations for others", "Brave replaces ads across the Web", "Brave injected/modified referral links"—each of these claims are unequivocally false. You are right that Brave is an "ad based company," however. But that needs to be explained a bit, since Brave is unlike any other ad-based company yo…

> This is not the case. The most common claims are "Brave accepted donations for others", "Brave replaces ads across the Web", "Brave injected/modified referral links"—each of these claims are unequivocally false. How so? For example the case "Brave injected/modified referral links" https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/components/o... The "problem" of open-source is, that you can see what is happening.

No problem here; I'm happy you went straight to the source. You can also find this code at code.brave.com in the future (to save you some clicks). Note that the source to which you linked does not demonstrate Brave "injecting" or "modifying" any referral links. What is shown instead is our affiliate-code offering, which is presented in the UI of the browser itself when the participating user searches particular terms via the ominibox. We wrote about this here, including screenshots of how it appears in-app: https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#122

Post by BrendanEich »

nicce wrote: post #118
BrendanEich wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. Did you even check your claim, or are you parroting some unreliable source?

Yes. It is on your web page: https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Bra... > Rather than displaying Ads on web pages, Brave Ads appear as push notifications on your device that you can choose to engage with or dismiss. I did not say it is a default behavior, but in the end you are blocking ads and bringing new ads, hence replacing. Just an another way to provide ads. Just a different way of seeing t…

"They block their rival's ads and bring their own instead" would be taken by most people to mean replacement in the page, and no opt-in. It's misleading with a purpose. Brave is providing users a private (no tracking) ad option with 70% of the gross paid to the user. If only a "rival" did that. But they don't, and we block tracking scripts more than ads (this kills the whole waterfall so blocks most ads). Note we don't block Google or other search ads, or first party ads that don't depend on tracking scripts.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#123

Post by BrendanEich »

babbledabbler wrote: post #113
BrendanEich wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we are transparent about it. https://brave.com/brave-rewards https://brave.com/transparency and premium products such as VPN, Talk, more to come. EDIT: some of you think we should do only a browser, but we also have a search engine now ( https://search.brave.com/ ). We're going big across privacy and user-agent models that fit together well and provide our users with value in the form of products, also in revenue…

This is really neat to see. I'm actually working on an idea that involves conferencing and have been using jitsi's open source solution for the POC. I've been impressed with the openness and flexibility of the platform. Are there any plans to enable installable third party app/extensions with talk.brave like zoom is currently rolling out their app store?

App stores require curation for safety properties (security, brand, abuse). We're not ready to take those on. But Talk's HTML-based web app can be user-scripted. Let me know if you develop anything.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#124

Post by nicce »

jonathansampson wrote: post #121
nicce wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not the case. The most common claims are "Brave accepted donations for others", "Brave replaces ads across the Web", "Brave injected/modified referral links"—each of these claims are unequivocally false. How so? For example the case "Brave injected/modified referral links" https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/components/o... The "problem" of open-source is, that you can see what is happening.

No problem here; I'm happy you went straight to the source. You can also find this code at code.brave.com in the future (to save you some clicks). Note that the source to which you linked does not demonstrate Brave "injecting" or "modifying" any referral links. What is shown instead is our affiliate-code offering, which is presented in the UI of the browser itself when the participating user searches particular terms…

But that is exactly what injection is. But anyway I'm glad you fixed it.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#125

Post by ziddoap »

jonathansampson wrote: post #117
ziddoap wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but wonder if you were in politics at some point in your career, being able to hinge on a very strict and literal definition of "replace" and missing the entire spirit of topic at hand.

Words have semantic range, and this is no less true for "replace" than for any other word. In 2016 there were reports that Brave would replace ads [meaning in-situ, in-page substitution] with its own ads. This never happened. Yet the claim continues to live on (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28619682 for a local example). But anybody who downloads and uses Brave for a few seconds can quickly tell that this…

>Words have semantic range, and this is no less true for "replace" than for any other word.

I agree. Although I'm sure it's clear that I believe "replace" is semantically compatible with "remove advertisements from X, instead serving ads from Y in a different location".

>perhaps the author meant only "Brave blocks Google's ads, and has created its own advertising model in its place."

This was my interpretation.

>Brave Ads replaces Google Ads.

I guess we both agree that "replace" is within the semantic range. Which is why "We never replace ads." didn't sit well.

For what it is worth, I'm neither for nor against Brave. Just surprised about how vigorous Brave employees are being in the thread.

>Google's model is quite the opposite

Don't worry, I'm not on the Google train either.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#126

Post by jonathansampson »

peakaboo wrote: post #119
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.

This is the wrong way for them to do it. It must work on all browsers and the they can possibly add features that make people WANT to use Brave, not force them to do it.

Brave Talk does work in all major browsers. Initiating a call requires Brave, but participation in a call does not.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#127

Post by rglullis »

zakember wrote: post #79
crackercrews wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would you pay to have a browser-independent version?

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#128

Post by rglullis »

vrc wrote: post #74
soundnote wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Brave rewards is opt-in. If you don't want to receive ads, just don't turn it on.

If you still want to support creators but do not want to receive any kind of ads, just buy some BAT at any exchange, load your wallet and schedule monthly contributions.

If you want to support a publisher who is not on the creators program - send them a message and let them know they have another income alternative.

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#129

Post by babbledabbler »

BrendanEich wrote: post #123
babbledabbler wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really neat to see. I'm actually working on an idea that involves conferencing and have been using jitsi's open source solution for the POC. I've been impressed with the openness and flexibility of the platform. Are there any plans to enable installable third party app/extensions with talk.brave like zoom is currently rolling out their app store?

App stores require curation for safety properties (security, brand, abuse). We're not ready to take those on. But Talk's HTML-based web app can be user-scripted. Let me know if you develop anything.

That makes sense. App stores add a lot of cost both on the platform and developer side, and I think in this case a straight forward scripting api with some well thought security/privacy protections would probably be easier to integrate with.

Will definitely shoot you a note when we've got something built. Thanks!

Re: Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

#130

Post by BrendanEich »

smoldesu wrote: post #77
deeblering4 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What browser is different in this regard?
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