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Brave launches private search ads

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261–270 of 299 posts

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"An index (yellow pages) of what's available would help me search for a product." This is what "tech" companies are seeking to prevent. If the user has no idea of what's available, then the "tech" company can "suggest" its advertisers' products and services. "Recommendations" are supposed to be technologically indistinguishable from "search". Gaslighting indeed. But don't believe me. Get it from the horse's mouth. Re…

>Google wants the US Supreme Court to believe that recommendations systems and search engines are the same thing They literally are the same. Recommendation systems just search using an embedding of a under instead of an embedding of a textual query.

of a user

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#262

So, 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…

Yeah that doesn't sound much better when you say it like that imo.

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#263
post #215

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…

>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. How is this true with YT premium? There are no ads if you pay.

To clarify: When you pay to remove ads, you're still paying indirectly for the production and delivery of ads. Just because you didn't see an advertisement from Apple doesn't mean you're not going to buy from them.

So you now pay the cost of producing and delivering ads _as well as_ a premium so that you won't have to see them.

It's like paying for the construction of a guillotine and then pay to not have to stick your head in it.

Of course this is a simplified view: Not all companies benefit equally from advertising. Not all companies spend equally on ads, etc...

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#264

I've been testing Brave search for some time now (switched from DDG after 2y) and I have to say that I'm very impressed with the quality of results to the degree that I'm wondering if they are simply scraping Google.

Can't be scraping google as their results are crap.

Kagi is good if you haven't tried it. Best search engine I've used in years IMO and I've tried them all.

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#265
post #53

Genuinely 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

It just works. It blocks almost all ads. It has a simple button to turn ad blocking off when I need to use websites that don't work with ad blockers. I don't need to fiddle with an extension. I can use it on android without effort. This is about brave search, which I have never used. I don't use the brave homepage, so I never saw the homepage ads that folks complained about. HN seems to hate Brave for some reason. Bu…

Brave is chromium though isn't it?

I think some if the hate comes from people who would like to see more variety in the browser market. At the moment we're heading to a single dominant force of chromium based browsers. And history has shown what happens when an entity holds all the cards and there is less choice.

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#266

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…

> An index (yellow pages) of what's available would help me search for a product

Why do you think a yellow pages of websites, with literally millions of results/pages, in alphabetic (?) order would be usable?

Surely, you want some sort of ranking, filtering, reordering, etc curation?

Do you google businesses to get their phone number, or do you whip out the local yellow pages directory and start flipping through its pages hoping it’s up to date…?

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the ads you see are just based on country, type of device (windows,linux,macos,android or ios), and your search term, which is the minimum you really need for relevance. But these are not kept in any sort of tracking profile and Brave doesn't know anything about you, or queries across sessions. And unlike most of the search engines out there right now, we are motivated to ensure that the ads do not become a mess t…

Why is type of device needed for relevance? I can think of specific searches where maybe it could matter, but generally I don't think it does.

Says at least something about socioeconomic status. Although I think less than one might imagine.

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#268

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…

> After all the Brave controversies "Brave's controversies" are not really about Brave. Brave as a company is not above criticism and should be harshly gone after for their mistakes when they do anything less than perfect with regards to privacy or anything else. I think they've done over 90% of things right, but have screwed up a small portion of the complicated stuff (new browser, new online advertising models, and…

>A certain crowd will not give Eich an inch to ever succeed and will continuously rip even the most minor and inane issue solely to destroy what he represents.

Oh fuck off. To add on to the comments of others, Many of us _do_ care about his "political beliefs". If you're in the tech industry, you're in one of the most queer industries of all time, and some (and sometimes, many depending on where you are) of your colleagues are likely to be some form of queer.

Just being a supporter of Prop 8 would have been a political belief. Actively donating money to fight for it is hate. Additionally, donating to Ron Paul is just proof of bad taste, but donating to Pat Buchanan, a known homophobic, antisemitic, white supremacist candidate doesn't just make it "oh his political beliefs is that gay people aren't cool, teehee" but veers straight into actual fucking hatred.

So, yes, fuck Brendan Eich as a person, _and_ Brave as a company has done a lot of things that make it truly untrustable.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/02/controver...

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#269

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…

"An index (yellow pages) of what's available would help me search for a product." This is what "tech" companies are seeking to prevent. If the user has no idea of what's available, then the "tech" company can "suggest" its advertisers' products and services. "Recommendations" are supposed to be technologically indistinguishable from "search". Gaslighting indeed. But don't believe me. Get it from the horse's mouth. Re…

"There is no precedent that suggests it protects "recommendations"."

That is not true. Majorities in Dryoff and Force did suggest that 230 protects recommendations.

But there were also dissenting opinions in each case.

Re: Brave launches private search ads

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I have not had any performance issues with Firefox and while I have not used Brave much Chrome has always been a memory hog. Maybe Brave solved that but......

Not just maybe, they actually did.

Here you can find the research: https://brave.com/brave-saves-batteries/

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