Brave files adtech complaint against Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#171

Post by Jaepa » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 11:28 PM UTC

nightsd01 wrote: post #170

From what I understand, Google isn’t actually giving away people’s data to “hundreds of companies” for advertising purposes. When an advertiser wants to target a specific group of people, Google doesn’t say “here’s everyone’s private data, good luck”. GOOGLE does the filtering and targeting internally. I’m sorry but that isn’t evil or bad. Unless we want to start paying for google searches and Facebook, this is how i…

or this is just a PR stunt on a company who's trying to trumpet their "we block trackers like Google" functionality.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#172

Post by boxspam » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 11:30 PM UTC

nightsd01 wrote: post #170

From what I understand, Google isn’t actually giving away people’s data to “hundreds of companies” for advertising purposes. When an advertiser wants to target a specific group of people, Google doesn’t say “here’s everyone’s private data, good luck”. GOOGLE does the filtering and targeting internally. I’m sorry but that isn’t evil or bad. Unless we want to start paying for google searches and Facebook, this is how i…

I do think that Google has data sharing with "hundreds of companies". These are not advertisers, these are ad companies. They recently updated to comply with GDPR.

https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/9012903

https://developers.google.com/third-party-ads/adx-vendors

Edit: And about it being "evil" or "bad", let's just say that it is "unnecessary" (from a user viewpoint). You can still make money from ads without hovering up user data. But then you don't make money from users not clicking on the ad, and it is slower to build up an effective profile. Relevant ads are better than irrelevant ads, but nothing beats no ads at all. The best future ads will not look like ads at all (but will be hidden inside reviews and editorials).

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#173

Post by rjzzleep » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 11:39 PM UTC

guiomie wrote: post #169

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I install ad blockers because I don't want to get auto redirected to a porn site which some unscrupulous ad vendors make possible. I tried going blocker free at work for 6 months. uBO got installed the day I was sent to a porn site by malicious JavaScript after clicking on an innocuous link. Google won't address the JavaScript problem with their ad network so I cut them off.

Sample bias here. But this hasn't happened to me since the early 2000's. I do not have any ad blocker, no ad bothers me, unless its an adult site, they've gone really crazy there.

Then I guess you are a lucky person. Read up on one of the many ad based exploit toolkits[1].

It took a crypto malware to convince a company I was working with to install uBlock. No more ads, no more flash, no more ransomware.

[1] https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/ultimate-guide-angler-explo...

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#174

Post by nostrademons » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 11:41 PM UTC

Jaepa wrote: post #171

nightsd01 wrote: post #170

From what I understand, Google isn’t actually giving away people’s data to “hundreds of companies” for advertising purposes. When an advertiser wants to target a specific group of people, Google doesn’t say “here’s everyone’s private data, good luck”. GOOGLE does the filtering and targeting internally. I’m sorry but that isn’t evil or bad. Unless we want to start paying for google searches and Facebook, this is how i…

or this is just a PR stunt on a company who's trying to trumpet their "we block trackers like Google" functionality.

I'd bet it's a PR stunt. They're getting all kinds of publicity from this.

...that said, I installed Brave this weekend and am posting this comment from it, and I gotta say that it's really nice viewing a web without ads. I'd forgotten how pleasant browsing the web can be when you're not downloading the 100 or so ads & trackers on a typical news article and playing cat-and-mouse with their anti-AdBlock code. So from my selfish user's POV, this is a win.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#175

Post by cjhanks » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 11:47 PM UTC

I am not familiar with everything relevant here but...

Often sites using ads will have JavaScript enabled. If I wanted to extract private information about my users - I need only scrape the content of sponsored advertisement.

Google does the hard work of aggregating and anonymizing the data, I simple scrape their results on my page.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#176

Post by jonathansampson » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 12:00 AM UTC

jonathansampson wrote: post #98

lasmellslikepee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR: Brave lied about blocking 3rd party JS and I no longer trust them. The main reason I don't use Brave anymore is because I don't trust the Brave team to be transparent about what they're doing. I remember switching to Brave a year or two ago really rooting for them and the model they were positing. I though that blocking third-party JavaScript by default was a great idea - no more Firefox plugins! Well, I soon…

Brave doesn't promise to block all third-party scripting; that isn't necessarily a bad thing. If we were to block all third-party scripts, the web as a whole would largely crumble. Instead, we are judicious about which scripts we block, and which ones are harmless. As for transparency, we couldn't be more open. Take it from me, an ex-Microsoft engineer, Brave is an open book. We talk about features before they're shi…

Correction: The third GitHub link should have read github.com/brave/brave-core (instead of "browser-core").

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#177

Post by manigandham » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 12:06 AM UTC

blub wrote: post #68

tjoff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR consent doesn't work like that...

OP is working in the ad space and he's been complaining about the GDPR forever. They're still in the denial phase.

I'm sure you think you know something about me from a cursory browsing of my comment history, but that wouldn't reveal anything important like the fact that I'm one of the top 5 people in the ad industry who has called for regulation for years, and actually spent the time and money on trying to make it happen, and also did so in the US market which completely dwarfs anything in Europe.

But since you're operating on assumptions and have nothing better to offer than saying "denial", then I'll just go ahead and assume that your experience with both adtech and GDPR amounts to something less than insignificant and that your future comments on this topic will remain lacking.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#178

Post by dkhenry » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 12:07 AM UTC

jonathansampson wrote: post #127

dkhenry wrote: post #97

Maybe they can get Netflix working on Linux in addition to trying to use governments to shut down their competition. I _want_ to use brave, but without a fully working browser its hard to switch off firefox.

Can you elaborate as to what issue(s) you're seeing with Netflix? I know that we use WideVine for DMR content; it could be that this simply isn't an option for the time being. If you can share more information, I'll do my best to address it in a timely manner. Also, version information would be helpful. In brave-muon you can find this in about:brave. In brave-core, it's in about:version. Thank you!

Netflix reports widevine isn't available. I am running stock ubuntu and I installed Brave from the official brave-apt. Here is the github issue where you are tracking when it will be done https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/413

Also for good measure my version info

Brave: 0.23.105 V8: 6.8.275.24 rev: 9a46f8f5cb22a9daf2af21989aed25911aa6f839 Muon: 8.0.9 OS Release: 4.15.0-29-generic Update Channel: Release OS Architecture: x64 OS Platform: Linux Node.js: 7.9.0 Brave Sync: v1.4.2 libchromiumcontent: 68.0.3440.84

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#179

Post by manigandham » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 12:09 AM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #40

manigandham wrote: post #26

Google (and Facebook) already have consent from the majority of users who don't care about this and would rather keep access to gmail, youtube, and social networks. Nice try, like GDPR itself, but the intent does not match the implementation. There are trillions in market cap standing in the way and this will end in nothing but a waste of legal fees.

GDPR consent doesn't work like that...

People keep saying this but that's exactly how it's being done. This is what happens with regulation "on principle" instead of by the letter, which is what GDPR chose to be.

Re: Brave files adtech complaint against Google

#180

Post by Klathmon » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 12:26 AM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #161

purple-dragon wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Is there a certain context you are referring to, or is this how you feel about all online advertising? I'll accept one's claim to rights to browse without advertising if it's accepted that one doesn't have a right to consume ad-supported content without consuming advertisements. It seems only fair to me.

Don't send me the content if you don't want me to render it as I see fit, I make no promises about how I will consume that data.

So can I ask, how would I as a website developer do that? If I don't want you blocking my ads, costing me money for servers and hosting, and removing my income stream, how do is signal to you or enforce that I will only send you content on the stipulation that you make a few promises on what you will display?

Because in my experience, offering paid options to remove all ads and tracking if you want doesn't stop or even put a dent in the adblocking crouds. Trying to not send content to those blocking ads only increases anger and often reduces the performance of the page for everyone, and gating all content behind paywalls is not only opposite to how I feel information should flow and impacts some users more than others (someone making minimum wage has to give up a lot more for a $1/month subscription than someone making $150k/yr), but also destroys the ability for many to discover my content, and makes discussion and interaction significantly harder.

And other approaches like closed off apps or alternate formats like video can be a much worse experience for the user, and can hurt those who need accessibility considerations.

So I genuinely want to know if there is a better way that I'm missing, because if I can't, then my options are to "sell my soul" and just try and for you to be tracked as much as I can, or just close down my service entirely (which if you ask my users, would be a bad thing and would negatively impact them)