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Brave files adtech complaint against Google

reuters.com

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Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#131

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

some_account wrote: post #81
britch wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, do you have any evidence that most people are installing ad blockers as a privacy measure? I don't have any hard evidence, but I imagine most people block ads because they don't want to have to scroll past a bunch of banners and videos to read the article they want to read. Certainly there are many people who are concerned about privacy, but I don' think that's what's driving the popularity of ad blocker…

I use it because the web becomes usable and fast again, and also because I don't want ad companies making money from my activity and privacy. When they pay me, they can get some of my data. I'm just waiting for their call.

This is an unpopular opinion I also hold. There is no right to advertising to me. If you want me to use your product, pay me.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#132

Post by jonathansampson »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #125
losvedir wrote: post #89

I used Brave for a while, and still like it, but ultimately this bug[0] prompted me to move back to mobile Chrome, unfortunately. Hope they fix it soon! [0] https://github.com/brave/browser-android-tabs/issues/459

Ya. I like the idea, but it was took buggy for me on iOS.

I love to invite the two of you to try the desktop builds; we recently announced the developer preview builds of our brave-core version (on track to be our 1.0 release). This version will also bring some unity to the desktop, iOS, and Android versions.

You can find this version online at brave.com/download-dev

Also, thanks for the bug link. If there are any other items on iOS and/or Android that I can review, please do share.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#133

Post by jonathansampson »

fixermark wrote: post #42
lima wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of conspiracy are you suggesting? It's not like false positives are uncommon.

And indeed, it feels like one should assume that a program that replaces page-originated requests for web resources with requests for different web resources would look an awful lot like malware to a naive heuristic based on the design of past malware.

Brave doesn't do that. Brave blocks ads and trackers. In some (half a dozen or so) cases, we might load an internal resource (known as a siteHack, for fixing broken experiences), but we don't substitute network requests.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#134

Post by downandout »

jonathansampson wrote: post #102
downandout wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do this by using local machine-learning to understand the user better, and making local decisions as to which ads should or should not be shown I pitched almost this same idea to Netscape in 1997. I managed to get a physical meeting with a fairly high level person, but was essentially laughed out the door. It’s interesting that you have a pool of users that have embraced this idea. Netscape - at the time the world…

As you may or may not know, we have a handful of Netscape alumni working on the Brave project today :) Glad to meet another hacker from the original browser wars! One thing that gives our users great comfort is the fact that this is an optional component. As it's baseline, Brave blocks ads and trackers. If you don't want to see them, you stick with the default, out of the box experience. But advertising is what keeps…

Basically what I developed was a local engine that could use characteristics like browser history, programs installed, computer usage stats, etc. to target ads. It had a scripting language so that instructions to implement new targeting criteria to scan the computer for could be sent down without changes to the underlying software. For example, if Netscape wanted advertisers to be able to target Microsoft Office users, we would include instructions for the software to search the computer for Office and watch for future installs of it. No data ever actually left the user’s computer, as is the case with your model - the fact that they matched a given characteristic was simply stored in a local database.

Websites that wanted to place targeted ads on their site could then do so with some special markup indicating exactly what criteria they wanted to use. They could specify an almost limitless number of different creatives and corresponding targeting criteria right in their HTML. My thought was that they could pay Netscape for the privilege of enabling highly targeted ads.

The privacy downfall here, at least in Netscape’s opinion, was that sites could extrapolate whether or not someone matched the criteria by watching to see which banner their browser downloaded. I countered this by having an option for the software to download 5 or 10 other banners in random order in addition to the one that actually met the targeting criteria in the background, but that wasn’t good enough to overcome the perception of privacy issues in their eyes.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#135

Post by jordigh »

jonathansampson wrote: post #117
quotemstr wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a site advertises to support itself, it's entering a consensual and mutually beneficial relationship with visitors: readers give up a sliver of their attention and in exchange get otherwise-free content. Are you suggesting that we make it illegal to enter into this kind of consensual and mutually beneficial business arrangement?

Brave doesn't touch first-party ads. If you wish to advertise to your visitors, we respect that. But opening a tunnel to third party ads and trackers, which are foisted upon the user without their consent, is not okay. Ads are no longer pixels on the screen; they're so much more than that. They're monitoring your activity, your movement, your most intimate details, and more. They're collecting this data, storing it,…

What is the fraud you're trying to reduce? I know advertisers think that not watching their ads is fraud. Is that what you mean?

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#136

Post by jonathansampson »

downandout wrote: post #134
jonathansampson wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you may or may not know, we have a handful of Netscape alumni working on the Brave project today :) Glad to meet another hacker from the original browser wars! One thing that gives our users great comfort is the fact that this is an optional component. As it's baseline, Brave blocks ads and trackers. If you don't want to see them, you stick with the default, out of the box experience. But advertising is what keeps…

Basically what I developed was a local engine that could use characteristics like browser history, programs installed, computer usage stats, etc. to target ads. It had a scripting language so that instructions to implement new targeting criteria to scan the computer for could be sent down without changes to the underlying software. For example, if Netscape wanted advertisers to be able to target Microsoft Office user…

Was all of this to lie dormant until user consent was granted? Curious how that process would have looked.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#137

Post by fiatjaf »

sincerely wrote: post #80
fiatjaf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't know that. It's good news people are willing to reimplement BAT. Special about Bitcoin+Lightning is that these are probably going to last and truly function as money while these others you cited don't.

This is a really strange claim, from the perspective of someone not invested in any specific implementation of crypto or blockchains...why would the first product in a given (tech) category be the one that lasts the longest? That would be like expecting WebCrawler to be the dominant search engine or Six Degrees to be the dominant online social media site, or Mosaic to be the browser with the highest usage %. I can't…

Basically you think Bitcoin cannot ever be "the one that lasts the longest" just because it was the first implementation? That's a valid argument, but it makes no sense to think that all other arguments that claim the contrary are invalid and can only be made by people with evil intentions of enriching themselves.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#138

Post by Cyclone_ »

drb91 wrote: post #123
Cyclone_ wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the ad industry, publishers need some form of revenue in order to do what they do.

So what are the alternatives to ads? They’re going to continue to die until there’s a real alternative.

Brave offers micropayments for content.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#139

Post by DevKoala »

jonathansampson wrote: post #130
DevKoala wrote: post #129

Brave is trying to fix the broken ad-tech industry with a monopoly on the decision of what gets tracked and what doesn't. I am not behind it at all.

Respectfully, you're not at all correct. Brave is aiming to cut out the tracking entirely. No user tracking. That's our default, out of the box behavior. Brave Ads, which is an optional component, also will not track the user. Local machine-learning will decide what willing users are interested in, and whether or not to show them particular ads. The Brave Ads system is antithetical to the current form of digital adve…

"Local machine-learning will decide what willing users are interested in, and whether or not to show them particular ads."

How are you countering my claim? It is trying to establish a monopoly on the ad-targeting protocol. Brave is not a regulated party, and as well-intended as Brave could be, all it essentially doing is moving one part of the architecture to the client, and granting control over it to a single party.

Google used to "do no evil" what guarantees Brave will not?

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#140

Post by komali2 »

brettz wrote: post #77
jonathansampson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to respond, as a developer on the Brave project. We don't simply replace ads with other ads. The entire ad landscape has been co-opted by those who aim to collect as much data about you as is possible. Over 600 million devices were running some form of ad-blocking software in 2017, and that was an increase of 30% from the year prior. This number keeps growing, year over year. Something has to be done. Users…

If it's about privacy then why not just block trackers and allow ads? It seems like a page from Eyeo's playbook, another company trying to insert itself as a middleman for advertising.

Someone can correct me if wrong but I believe tracking can be as simple as monitoring the IP address doing a GET for even a static ad image, which you then save with information such as the referer header to track a person across the internet.
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