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Brave launches private search ads

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Re: Brave launches private search ads

#221

Post by bishplsok »

heywoodlh wrote: post #213

I'm not a fan of ads at all. But I am curious, is there an alternative way to provide a free service while still making money? Unrelated, it would be cool to be able to self host an actual search engine (not talking about privacy-focused front ends like Searx -- but I'm grateful for projects like it) without having to store petabytes of data. Is there a self-hostable search engine alternative that doesn't just use an…

Actually Useful(tm) result out of the recent influx of AI hype -- "search engine" trained on, by and large, how people recommend links on sites like Reddit. It's a little hit or miss in my experience still, but when it hits it's legitimately brilliant, and mostly avoids the "Google search results are useless and dominated by SEO-farm garbage" issue.

https://metaphor.systems/

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#222

Post by Semaphor »

hunterb123 wrote: post #99
skinnymuch wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I doubt that. They said replace ads, not add affiliates, those are different words entirely. The "ad replacing" is a common lie. Just don't use Brave search, the separate product. Or you know, add the blocking rules yourself to the ad blocker, that works. Or you know, pay the $3 dollars to support the thing you use. Most of the people complaining here don't actually care about this. This is all just a proxy war to go…

> This is all just a proxy war to go against Eich for his beliefs.

Of course. Just like I war against your beliefs, whatever they may be. I war against all the beliefs.

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#223

Post by heresie-dabord »

pempem wrote: post #188
SebastianKra wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that ads are now seen as a necessary evil for funding free access to services. The money still comes from you, just through the purchase of products. What's worse, if you pay for YouTube Premium or Kagi, you're effectively paying for your content twice. No wonder, poorer people can't afford that. I guess you could frame it like this: "Company are overcharging us by insane amounts anyways, so at least some of t…

Its more pernicious imho. "Let us pay for this service by serving you ads which undermine your comprehension of what you actually need and cause you to constantly have an investigative part of your mind on, or mindlessly consume." Its truly more than walletshare and tremendously mentally taxing or can destroy your financial wellbeing if unchecked.

At this point, I feel you are understating the perniciousness.

"We will expose you to advertising and claim for a time to conduct ethical oversight, but when the revenue is large enough, forcing the advertising on you will become our primary business. We will enable the surveillance economy and take money from any source however dubious."

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#224

Post by Semaphor »

hunterb123 wrote: post #69
Semaphor wrote: post #43

Earlier 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.

Maybe they never activated it, but they certainly planned to do so: https://brave.com/braves-response-to-the-naa-a-better-deal-f...

I didn’t follow up on details on this, so I guess they changed their plans, that still tells me what they think about ads.

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#225

Post by heywoodlh »

bishplsok wrote: post #221
heywoodlh wrote: post #213

I'm not a fan of ads at all. But I am curious, is there an alternative way to provide a free service while still making money? Unrelated, it would be cool to be able to self host an actual search engine (not talking about privacy-focused front ends like Searx -- but I'm grateful for projects like it) without having to store petabytes of data. Is there a self-hostable search engine alternative that doesn't just use an…

Actually Useful(tm) result out of the recent influx of AI hype -- "search engine" trained on, by and large, how people recommend links on sites like Reddit. It's a little hit or miss in my experience still, but when it hits it's legitimately brilliant, and mostly avoids the "Google search results are useless and dominated by SEO-farm garbage" issue. https://metaphor.systems/

Whoa, this is really cool! Is it self-hostable/open source?

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#226

Post by syntheweave »

travisgriggs wrote: post #105

This 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…

I take an "ad-optimistic" stance.

For the most part, the economy doesn't need a lot of ads in crowded markets: the brand of soft drink or toothpaste you buy isn't going to vary substantially, and any deal-breaker in a certain brand is one you'll pick up on without an ad.

But the stuff you didn't even know existed is where ads can add something. Word of mouth doesn't always give the answers you need, especially as the subject matter becomes more private, sensitive, or trade-secretive. Some of the answers can be found by asking directly, but in many other cases, you need an introduction. Opting to keep some degree of advertisement in your life - in spaces where you want to "keep some feelers out" - could actually be a benefit because it means you will learn just that new things exist.

The downside is that you may think the new thing is what you need, and it isn't. But that's probably most of consumerism. So your read on it will come down to whether you are "ad-optimistic" as I stated up front. An ad-pessimist will assume that nothing sold could be useful enough to bother listening to the pitch.

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#227

Post by NayamAmarshe »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #217
arepublicadoceu wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can, at least for Youtube - the premium offering is ad-free. ad-free =/= surveillance free.

Please offer some proof that Google does more surveillance than Brave.

https://privacyspy.org

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#228

Post by taejavu »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #217
arepublicadoceu wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can, at least for Youtube - the premium offering is ad-free. ad-free =/= surveillance free.

Please offer some proof that Google does more surveillance than Brave.

I mean, just the fact that they track your location would put their surveillance way ahead of Brave, no?

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#229

Post by NayamAmarshe »

satvikpendem wrote: post #74

After 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…

I'm honestly tired of so much misinformation regarding Brave floating around.

> They took creators' money while ostensibly "collecting" it for them

They did not. In the initial days, they did not have the feature to block unregistered creators from getting donations. When Brave was informed about it, they made sure that creators who registered can claim their tipped tokens and for the rest, they refunded the tokens to users.

The fact that you think they'd want their tokens back, when they themselves give them away to Brave Rewards users every month is kinda weird. Not only did they refund the tokens but also got them to the registered creators.

> and they inserted their own affiliate links when you visited certain sites

They had a URL auto-complete bug in the system and it was an opt-in feature but the bug replaced the whole URL instead of suggesting links. They fixed it in a day, before the news even got out. The PR is there on GitHub but people love to bash them because of a bug that happened when Brave wasn't even 6 months old at that point (iirc).

> I mean, when you have your own "Controversies" section on Wikipedia, you know there's something wrong.

So does Mozilla, your point?

> Sure, Brave and other Chromium browsers might say they'll fork Chromium, but how long will that last, really? It's no joke to maintain a fork.

Brave does not depend of manifest v3 for adblocking. Their Ad blocker written in rust is much low level than Ublock. They'll just be fine.

> I see no reason not to use Firefox.

but I do see reasons to not use Firefox. How about performance? Memory management? Loading speed? Dev tools? Webkit?

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#230

Post by NayamAmarshe »

dhaavi wrote: post #3

Their example screenshot shows their own VPN as the first result for "VPN". Reminds me of this other search engine.

> Their example screenshot shows their own VPN as the first result for "VPN". Reminds me of this other search engine.

They do not do this in reality. When you search for VPN, the results are organic.

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