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Brave launches 1.0

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Re: Brave launches 1.0

#211

Post by fastball »

fuu_dev wrote: post #197

Criticism: #1 Brave advertise with privacy and speed while all they do is adding adblock. #2 Brave replaces adds with their own adds. This basically means you get the same experience but cut off the income of the content creator entirely. #3 Brave allows you to reward 3rd party sites. This system is so nice they even got legal issues as it was assumed as fraud. #4 BAT. Brave advertise with consumer first. The best ch…

#1 Their ad-blocker is also a tracking blocker and a pretty strict one at that. They also spend a lot of time optimizing the performance[0] of this ad-blocking. This improves the browsing experience.

#2 Brave Ads are opt-in. You can alternatively fund the sites you visit on the web by putting BAT into your wallet directly and having the browser automatically distribute funds based on which content you spend time on per month. The entire idea of Brave is that people were already using ad-blockers, so I'm not sure how this is worse for content creators.

#3 ???

#4 BAT is an ERC-20 token - it exists on the Ethereum blockchain. Not sure why you think BTC would be better than that. Honestly not sure why you think Paypal would be better than that. At this point, anyone can transact the currency easily and quickly without any intervention from Brave. I can convert BAT to DAI right now on a decentralized exchange in less than a minute and have a virtual currency pegged to USD even if I don't bank with USD. At the moment this process is somewhat technical, but it overall seems very pro-consumer to me.

[0] https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/

Re: Brave launches 1.0

#212

Post by thefreeman »

bvda wrote: post #26
judah wrote: post #13

I've been using Brave rewards, both as a user and a content maker. It's really great, and I feel this may be a reasonable alternative to the invasive trackers+ads we have today. For the uninitiated, Brave lets users opt-in to Brave rewards: - You set your browser to reward content creators with Basic Attention Token (BAT). You set a budget (e.g. 10 BAT/month), and Brave distributes it the sites you use most, e.g. if…

I wonder why they chose to use (yet another) crypto currency for this.

people will provide all kinds of reasons but let's be real... it's so they can get rich. they own an enormous amount of BAT just like any stakeholders in a newly created cryptocurrency.

Re: Brave launches 1.0

#213

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

bad_user wrote: post #187
brettnak wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this largely ignores "how" ads are distributed. The website you are looking at did not select _any_ of the ads you see. They chose a network who is delegating that placement to someone else. Depending on which ad network, this could delegated by several different ad networks until an advertiser is finally selected by the final intermediary. In principle this may not be a very important distinction. However, I…

> The website you are looking at did not select _any_ of the ads you see. That's irrelevant. In general the content creator gets to choose how their content gets monetized. They own the copyright after all. That ads blocking isn't considered yet a copyright violation in the court of law probably has to do with the upsides, like protecting against malware and privacy. But blocking ads for commercial reasons, like Brav…

> Voting with your wallet works.

But it doesn't, not in this case. Very few people want to manage a separate payment stream, and a separate login, for each content provider on the off chance that they might stumble across that provider's content. And those that do don't want to pay a flat rate for access to content that they might never stumble across in a given payment period.

My uncle used to give me a lot of grief for getting my music via bittorrent--but it was never about avoiding having to pay for content, it was about objecting to a monetization model (DRM) that was less convenient than its free alternatives. I started paying for music just as soon as Spotify made it easier to pay than it was to pirate.

Ads are the same way. I don't mind paying for my content, but blocking ads and circumventing paywalls is currently less work than the hassle of managing a fleet of flat rate subscriptions. Brave offers an alternative where you only have to move dollars once (buying BAT and funding your browser's wallet), and the money is thereafter distributed according to which content you spend more time viewing.

It solves a problem that no other "voting with your wallet" way currently does.

I'll confess that I'm not currently using brave that way, but it's only because they don't currently support a unified wallet across browsers. Once I have to manage just a single BAT balance, though, I intend to keep the shields up and the contributions flowing, and set up recurring transfers into the BAT wallet from my bank account.

Re: Brave launches 1.0

#214

Post by Wheaties466 »

dsincl12 wrote: post #114

Sorry I've tried to give Brave a shot for a couple of months and the 3-6x faster browsing is nonsense. It's really slow compared to Chrome or Firefox. Just do a quick comparison yourself, you can probably count seconds on a couple of sites you visit regularly whereas Chrome loads instantly.

I run a high spec machine with 3 browsers(Brave and Google Chrome, Firefox) 8-10 hours a day every work day. I respectfully completely disagree. I do not find it slow in comparison to the others, I do find it much much quicker on 90%+ sites.

I do not work for brave, mozilla, google or apple. I also have no stake in any of those companies nor do I know anyone that works for those companies. I really wonder how so many people in this thread can have a negative response when I personally have felt the complete opposite.

I do suspect it has something to do with employer bias.

Re: Brave launches 1.0

#215

Post by siegecraft »

fuu_dev wrote: post #197

Criticism: #1 Brave advertise with privacy and speed while all they do is adding adblock. #2 Brave replaces adds with their own adds. This basically means you get the same experience but cut off the income of the content creator entirely. #3 Brave allows you to reward 3rd party sites. This system is so nice they even got legal issues as it was assumed as fraud. #4 BAT. Brave advertise with consumer first. The best ch…

Re: criticism 1, this is mostly true. However the fact that it's "not google" adds some privacy, or at least diffuses vulnerabilities.

Regarding criticism 2, you have to opt-in. Otherwise brave is just a browser with adblocking capabilities built-in.

I don't understand criticism 3, but then again I have just been using Brave without opting-in to the BAT portion so I'm out of the loop on that.

Regarding 4, why would Paypal be the best choice? Paypal has shown they will close your account and confiscate your money pretty much at their whim. Using a non-BTC/Ether crypto token at least means your Brave wallet isn't a big fat target for crypto thieves.

I think the success of patreon et al have shown that people in fact are perfectly willing to pay content creators, they just hate ads.

Re: Brave launches 1.0

#216

Post by iseeyou »

I use Brave on iOS with javascript blocked as it is the only* iOS browser which gives me the ability to easily use the Web without JS while giving me the ability to quickly enable it for the site where it makes sense, and still retain the ad blocking feature.

A surprisingly big part of the Internet works as well or better and faster with javascript disabled, but sometimes it is actually needed and useful so I find this whitelisting method works well.

I tried playing around with the script blocking ability of native content blockers but never got it working properly, for one I think it can't block script tags only externa scripts.

But my recommendation, if you are giving Brave a try is to change the default to disallow scripts, and enable them as needed, it's refreshing to browse the Web without Popups 2.0 and all the other not so nice uses of JS.

(* only I've found with my limited searching)

Re: Brave launches 1.0

#217

Post by snek »

Regardless of Brave's intent, they operate in the advertising industry, and eventually, if not already, it will become a conflict of interest.

Re: Brave launches 1.0

#218

Post by fastball »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #200
have_faith wrote: post #30

If people like Brave's ad model, all the power to them. I would personally never touch it. I'm not philosophically on board with the idea that paying people to look at ads is a pragmatic way forward. It doesn't matter if it's opt-in, free-to-play games with loot crates are opt-in, but the decision to go down that road will effect their decision making process when designing new features and I don't want to be part of…

Brave is unethical. The key problem is they insert themselves into the revenue stream without the consent of the web publishers. It's fine to block ads entirely, but substituting your own ads and collecting money from that is wrong.

I'm not sure I see the clear cut ethical dilemma you do.

Option 1. block all ads, publishers receive no revenue.

Option 2. block all ads, user opts in to unrelated ads, user can choose to give some of the proceeds of seeing those ads to publishers they utilize.

How can (2) possibly be worse than (1)?

Re: Brave launches 1.0

#220

Post by woodandsteel »

There are a lot of negative comments here about Brave. They fall into two classes. One group thinks the present state of affairs with the web is ok, so there is no need for Brave. That view is so cracked that I am not going to bother responding to it.

The other group agrees the web is broken, but then claims that Brave won't fix things and will even make them worse.

I don't think that is true, but the thing is, we need to have something new here, and Brave is the only solution out there at present that is developed, is trying to address all the problems, and is reasonably usable by non-techies, and so I am using it and I urge everyone else to do so too.

To those people who claim Brave is awful, I say they should be working on something they think would better. I suspect they aren't doing that because they are just negative people, or they are trollers who are being paid by the present internet powers-that-be.

On the latter idea, its not just paranoia. If someone came up with a good alternative, people like the advertising networks would feel mortally threatened, and I think it is absolutely certain they would strike back with a massive disinformation campaign.

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