> Brave Search only uses your search query, country, and device type to show you ads
This, by definition, is not "fully private."
Brave launches private search ads
191–200 of 299 posts
Re: Brave launches private search ads
#192So, let me get this straight. They will block ads on the internet, only to replace them by their own ads? So the money will go to them instead of the creators of the content you're watching?
Yes and no.
They have a browser with a normal adblocking function.
They serve ads themselves, and use these to fund services like Brave News, Brave Talk and Brave Search.
They have an option for the browser to use the OS's toaster popup system to show you ads at predetermined intervals. If you sign up for this, Brave will use a part of their ad revenue to buy BAT from the open market and give it to users who watched these toaster popups.
They have a tipping service where content creators, commenters on eg. Twitter and websites can be tipped with BAT. The people who got tips now have stuff Brave regularly buys from the open market with their ad revenues.
So they serve ads on their own services same as anyone else, they just build them to be privacy respecting. The tipping service + toaster popups combo is intended to replace some of the lost revenue from adblockers like Brave Shields and uBO nuking most ads since most ads are tracking driven. But ads on websites are never replaced, just blocked the same way uBO blocks them, with the same filter lists.
Re: Brave launches private search ads
#193Genuinely interested why do people keep using Brave instead of LibreWolf or ungoogled-chromium? EDIT: LibreWolf Browser: A custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom. https://librewolf.net/ ungoogled-chromium: A lightweight approach to removing Google web service dependency https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium
I like the product, plain and simple. Chromium has better security on mobile, and I like tab groups. Sync is also nice, and Brave's is e2ee. What's not to like?
Re: Brave launches private search ads
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did Apple or Brave ever say “no ads”? In the case of Brave (and every business), somebody’s got to hand money to someone in order to keep the lights on.
Brave (the browser) has a built-in ad-blocker, the existence of which could be taken as an implicit stance by its creators on how they feel about ads.
They've been in the ad serving business for ages and have been upfront about funding or intending to fund their services with privacy respecting ads.
The blocking system is a stance against privacy invasions, not advertising itself.
Re: Brave launches private search ads
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
No they don't. They don't replace ads, that's a lie, stop repeating it here please. The Brave rewards are system OS text notifications that you can OPT IN to. In no way do they replace banner ads on websites.
They could have meant when Brave swapped affiliate links before the backlash had them backtrack. Which was a wild thing to do. Blocking ads in your browser while charging to not show ads is also pretty wild. Why doesn’t their ad blocker block their ads?
They didn't replace affiliate links. They had a feature similar to Firefox Suggest or whatever's in Chrome/Edge nowadays I think. They had a deal with eg. Binance, and if you typed Binance in the address bar, their Binance promo would show up as one of the results.
They had a bug in it where if you typed a valid URL (eg. binance.us) it'd still give the sponsored link as an autocomplete which it shouldn't have. That bug stood for one day, if memory serves, and the feature was turned off by default.
Re: Brave launches private search ads
#196This statement (second paragraph) > Ads are a key part of search engines, helping to facilitate the free and open exchange of information on the Web, and to connect users to helpful products and services related to their search terms. Is just non sequitur for me. It's said in such a smooth way, in such a gaslight-ish way, that your tempted to just accept it. But it actually makes no sense to me. I get what ads are ke…
Yeah, that stuck out to me too. It immediately made me think of that famous quote from Larry Page and Sergey Brin that keeps biting them in the ass:
> "Advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers”
That was from 1998, and obviously it's possible they were wrong, and today's Google (as well as Brave) are right that ads are actually integral to search. But, I don't think so, personally.
Re: Brave launches private search ads
#197After all the Brave controversies [0] I'm not sure why anyone uses Brave anymore. They took creators' money while ostensibly "collecting" it for them, and they inserted their own affiliate links when you visited certain sites. It's just shady behavior all around. I mean, when you have your own "Controversies" section on Wikipedia, you know there's something wrong. Especially with Manifest v3 looming which would kill…
- Brave blocks you more against Fingerprinting than Firefox with uBlock. https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ - Brave uses Chromium and uses better isolation and sandbox than Firefox. Especially on Android. - Brave has Adblock built-in natively. It's written in Rust, so Manifest v3 will not affect it. https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust - Brave is profitable on itself and not dependent on search engines money like Fire…
> Brave uses Chromium
> Brave is profitable on itself and not dependent on search engines money like Firefox.
Brave is still dependent on Google even more than Firefox, I agree that Mozilla must seeks multiple sources of revenue but if it was easy maintaining your own engine Brave would do it.
Re: Brave launches private search ads
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
The browser also has a built-in ad-replacer which tells you even more about how they feel about ads.
No they don't. They don't replace ads, that's a lie, stop repeating it here please. The Brave rewards are system OS text notifications that you can OPT IN to. In no way do they replace banner ads on websites.
Replacement doesn't imply a reuse of a specific location. Taking an ad out your browser and placing a different ad on your desktop is still replacement. Do you really not understand that advertising isn't about space in physical world, but about space in your mind? What brave does is absolutely replacement. They replace a bit of light that was emanating from one part of your device's screen to invade your attention to make some other party money with a bit of light that emanates from a different part of your device's screen to invade your attention to make them money. How in the world is that not "replacement"?
Re: Brave launches private search ads
#199HN could do a better title, it seems almost like it's clickbait. The original article title is "Brave debuts privacy-preserving ads in its search engine" - so the HN title kind of implies the opposite. I think paying for content / services is the only way out of.. this. This thing we're in where Advertiser is King. This ecosystem that breeds dark patterns and skews all discourse towards the uninformed and adversarial…
What would be a better (i.e. more accurate and neutral) title? The article's title sounds too pressreleasey to me, which is a form of misleading+linkbait in its own right, so it was a legit title to rewrite, given HN's rule (" Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait " - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ).
I feel like replacing debuts with launches in the original title would do the trick?
Re: Brave launches private search ads
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brave has never tried to be ad free. Instead the goal is to encourage less intrusive and more benign ads.
Only a HNer will twist themselves in a logic knot claiming "I prefer to be bombarded with ads that aren't relevant to me"
I don't prefer to be bombarded with ads. But a lot of the bad in ads is tracking and being insanely intrusive visually, not that they exist in the first place.