The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web • Hacker News Board

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#201

Post by maxencecornet » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 11:47 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #161

justsee wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your scenario doesn't reflect how Brave's model works at all - it just reflects various misconceptions on your part. Brave does not replace publisher ads with their own. Brave does not block first party ads. Google's search ads display. Facebook's ads display. Twitter's ads display. Brave does block other ads by default, and as a user agent, it's reflecting the valid, ethical choices of the user not to load the untru…

> Brave does not replace publisher ads with their own. It absolutely both blocks (many) pre-existing ads and places its own ads. Those are both overt features of the browser. > If a user opts-in to Brave's ad ecosystem, then they've also made a decision about what content funding model they want to support. It's not really a content funding model, since whether Brave shows (and derives revenue) for ads or not (and wh…

>and places its own ads.

No it does not, I've been using the Brave browser for over a year on desktop, with the users ads activated

This is the most common seen misconception on HN about Brave, Brave is not replacing ads with it's own ads

It just doesn't work like this

A great comment from a Brave team member about that misconception on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/bby4um/the_la_ti...

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#202

Post by maxencecornet » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 11:55 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #159

justsee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Brave does not replace publisher ads with their own.

They literally do. They remove ads on the page. Then they show their own ads to the user.

>They literally do

No they don't, I've been using the Brave browser for over a year on desktop, with the users ads activated

This is the most common seen misconception on HN about Brave, Brave is not replacing ads with their own ads

It just doesn't work like this

A great comment from a Brave team member about that misconception on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/bby4um/the_la_ti...

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#203

Post by krageon » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 11:58 AM UTC

rvnx wrote: post #185

manigandham wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"“A lot of users don’t want to cash out [when they receive BAT],” he added. “It’s not a huge amount of value for most people, so they may prefer to just use it to give back." In that case, it's just an ad network. Users watch ads, publishers get paid. Only difference is a new middleman and 2 hops for payments. Also if the money does add up to a sizable amount then it will be overrun by ad fraud.

It's an incentive adnetwork, users are paid for watching (openly) and clicking ads and installing offers (implicitly, because they get more money if they do). Is it sustainable for advertisers ? Would you want to pay for visitors forced to click on your ads ?

Users aren't paid for watching, they are paid for the browser loading the advertisements. I promise you that the moment this becomes even remotely profitable, people will be running VPSes with automated browsers (or multiple local instances rendering to a virtual frame buffer, with mice/keyboards simulated to generate clicks).

There is no way around this kind of automation, except perhaps given some pretty invasive rootkitting done my the browser (and that still doesn't mitigate the virtualisation problem).

Given that these things are possible or even pretty easy to do, it is an inescapable fact that this model will fail.

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#204

Post by krageon » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 12:04 PM UTC

RenRav wrote: post #91

manigandham wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want advertisers, you need to care about what the industry wants. Obviously that's for Brave to deal with, not the users, but showing ads for money is an ad network. Microtransactions have been tried many times. I spent half a million testing it. Didn't work because of user behavior. And unless users are buying with their own money, it's just converting the BAT they earn from ads into BAT they pay the publishe…

I have a massive 10-years old block filter and never tolerated ads, but Brave changed this. I think now advertisers can make money off me finally. The majority of brave users will be past ad-blockers, so advertisers can now make some money from this group. I don't want to do anything with the BAT, I just want to see how advertisers respond and see how it progresses. I can't wait to see ads on my phone for once.

> I can't wait to see ads on my phone for once.

This made me smile slightly. If you don't mind me asking, why?

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#205

Post by emanreus » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 12:08 PM UTC

xrd wrote: post #108

atomical wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same about Apple and Steve Jobs. Please post legitimate criticisms for Brave/BAT. Your comment reads like a hit piece.

I stand by that I wrote 100%. He is a polarizing figure and that is impacting Brave. The early adopters they need care about this facet of the founder. If you don't recall his financial support of that controversial anti-gay ballot measure in California, you are either being ignorant or dishonest, I'm saying the people they need to adopt Brave care about this, not just me. Full disclosure: I'm working on an alternati…

Polarizing figure can be a good thing, especially for early adopters and getting a foothold in the market.

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#206

Post by m52go » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 12:29 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #110

Wehrdo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you describing Blendle[0]? Access to paywalled content on a pay-per-article basis. [0] https://launch.blendle.com/

I didn't know about them, but looks like they are doing exactly this.

I remember getting on their beta list 3 years ago. Seems like they're still in beta...that cannot be a good sign.

From what I remember, they're a closed platform. One must use their apps to get access to full article content. That's a nice solution for their partners, but not for the broader web (85%+ of the websites you stumble across that are not TIME, NYT, Economist, etc).

Blendle is a nice experiment, but I wouldn't consider it a solution to the problem being discussed here.

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#207

Post by justsee » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 12:37 PM UTC

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #184

justsee wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been a consistent dishonest mischaracterisation: that Brave literally swaps a publisher's own ads with their own. That functionality is on the roadmap, but Brave has stated that will only occur with publisher consent . Keep an eye out for accounts that try to push this mischaracterisation and see if they're linked to the existing ad tech industry...

> Keep an eye out for accounts that try to push this mischaracterisation and see if they're linked to the existing ad tech industry... You keep making vague accusations of shilling so I'll turn the tables - what exactly is your connection to Brave?

Shilling? No, consistently seeing the same attempts at poisoning the well with regard to Brave's model become rather irritating.

I have no connection with Brave.

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#208

Post by 0-_-0 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 12:41 PM UTC

hexane360 wrote: post #182

justsee wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually that's not true. An earlier version of the browser let early adopter users direct where Brave's own marketing budget of BAT tokens was sent to, including sites that hadn't yet signed up. If those sites didn't sign up, the tokens would eventually go back into the marketing budget pool of tokens, to be distributed to other sites (not to Brave). That's very different to the mischaraterisation you mention above,…

>That's very different to the mischaraterisation you mention above, but no surprise as Brave's model is a threat to the current fraudulent ad tech ecosystem. This alone is enough of an inflammatory and conspiratorial statement that I have a hard time taking you seriously. It's a bad look to cry "shill" in the face of fair criticism.

It wasn't fair criticism.

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#209

Post by justsee » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 1:00 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #175

justsee wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been a consistent dishonest mischaracterisation: that Brave literally swaps a publisher's own ads with their own. That functionality is on the roadmap, but Brave has stated that will only occur with publisher consent . Keep an eye out for accounts that try to push this mischaracterisation and see if they're linked to the existing ad tech industry...

All ads are blocked automatically without publisher consent. The only ads available are from Brave. Therefore the only way a publisher can get money from ads is from Brave swapping ads. So I guess if you want to be technical, Brave either swaps with nothing or with their own ads.

Huh? What you're saying is simply wrong.

First party ads aren't blocked.

Publisher ads aren't swapped.

If a user opts-in to Brave's model for ads, they are system-level notifications which lead to full-page ads that aren't linked to any website.

Re: The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web

#210

Post by notafanofBAT » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 1:24 PM UTC

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #184

justsee wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been a consistent dishonest mischaracterisation: that Brave literally swaps a publisher's own ads with their own. That functionality is on the roadmap, but Brave has stated that will only occur with publisher consent . Keep an eye out for accounts that try to push this mischaracterisation and see if they're linked to the existing ad tech industry...

> Keep an eye out for accounts that try to push this mischaracterisation and see if they're linked to the existing ad tech industry... You keep making vague accusations of shilling so I'll turn the tables - what exactly is your connection to Brave?

I've been following brave since the Tom Scott thing blew up. The whole thing seems like a disingenuous cash grab or a (slowish) pump and dump crypto scheme. There are quite a few zealous defenders of BAT and Brave that always turn up in threads like these that you have to question why these people are so willing to look past what seem like obvious flaws in the product.

Anyway, on reddit the user with the same name has deleted their account but this one is still active and active in the BAT / Brave subreddits. [0]

Full disclosure: I came to root against Brave after seeing how Tom Scott was treated and how that whole debacle went. I don’t even work in Tech so really, I shouldn’t care.

If your product has to be opt-out to have a chance of success, then it's a failure from day one.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/user/justsee_/posts/

edit: opt-out in regards to the creaors being sent BAT by users without knowing about that. i.e. the Tom Scott Fiasco.