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Brave Search beta

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Re: Brave Search beta

#391

Post by jonathansampson »

smoldesu wrote: post #152
axaxs wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same excitement here. I'd love to see anyone(Brave or others) chip away at my Google dependencies, even if they charge me for them. I already love Brave as a browser, so here's hoping search pans out. I don't mind a company profiling me. A lot of Google's cross interacting products work great(Gmail to Calendar and Maps, for example). I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data. A guy can dream...

> I don't mind a company profiling me Not everyone has that luxury. > I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data Then your data is worthless to them. Nobody wants companies to abuse their personal data, that's why it's such a lucrative business. Companies like Apple and Brave get away with it by edging out competition and instating their own standards (see: Brave's Ad "replacement"). It's all so rid…

Brave isn't capturing user data, and the "replacement" topic requires more nuanced coverage. Internet users have been installing ad-and-content blockers long before Brave (when Netscape launched the Plugin API back in 1996 or so, ad-blockers began to appear almost immediately).

Brave is rescuing the Web from a block-alone response, which starves content creators of much-needed support. Brave also increases the potential for support by giving users without disposable income (and those with disposable income) the ability to support those who make the Web enjoyable. We do this in a manner which is low-friction, and anonymous too (thanks to the Basic Attention Token).

Brave has introduced a model that understands the security and privacy reasons for blocking third-party ads and trackers. But Brave doesn't stop there (as is the case with popular blockers); it also aims to address the issue of content sustainability online.

Re: Brave Search beta

#392

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway292893 wrote: post #326
smoldesu wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point.

The only issue you have left with BAT is user education, got it. So thankfully the tech is solid. Now just UX polishing and onboarding. Personally, I think you're just being obtuse and looking for a problem. -- edit -- @dang, go fuck yourself, seriously. Until this edit I haven't said anything offensive. I've simply been a contrarian for many topics: technical, social, political, agricultural, philosophical. It seems…

[deleted]

Re: Brave Search beta

#393

Post by jonathansampson »

smoldesu wrote: post #385
howolduis wrote: post #367

> On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users type a URL of Binance into the address bar, which earns Brave money. Further research revealed that Brave redirects the URLs of other cryptocurrency exchange websites, too. In response to the backlash from the users, Brave's CEO apologized and called it a "mistake" and said "we're correcting". Brave is just a "pop-priv…

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Their attitude towards advertisement and cryptocurrency is the reddest flag imaginable.

Elaborate, please? The blockchain enables everybody to participate, earn, and support content creators in an low-friction, anonymous manner. Advertisements serve as a great way to introduce revenue into the system (by way of advertisers who wish to reach an audience). Brave pulls it all together into a single, OPTIONAL component, which guards the user's privacy and security by conducting its operation locally, on the user's device with client-side machine-learning. No red flags here.

Re: Brave Search beta

#394

Post by maverick74 »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #317
ramesh1994 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also highly recommend the blog post series [1] from Cliqz talking about the tech behind the search. [1] - https://0x65.dev/

I was involved with the cliqz search engine and used their browser for a while. Great people with excellent integrity.

Very sad about what happened. Had very high hopes for you guys (more than from brave).

I know TailCat is open source... But what about Brave Search? Any clue?

Re: Brave Search beta

#395

Post by jonathansampson »

smoldesu wrote: post #386
tobr wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do this, but at some point I just stopped. Google is not better than DDG. More SEO spam and much more hostile UX. Brave has a culture of user-hostile UX too so I don’t have any big hopes for this. I like the idea of paying for a search engine, though. I would seriously consider that if DDG offered it.

> Brave has a culture of user-hostile UX Yep. The missteps that they've made over the past few years do not give me any confidence in the future of the project.

What missteps? The only notable UX issue we've had was years ago, and was a matter of naïve design. When we were made aware of the issue, it was corrected within 48 hours. Hard to portray that as a "culture of hostile UX".

Re: Brave Search beta

#396

Post by jonathansampson »

tills13 wrote: post #378
zzyzxd wrote: post #46

Previous related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328758 If things go as planned, this may become a paid, ad-free, zero-tracking search engine. I can't express how exciting this is to me. Over the past few years, I have made several attempts to replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo. But they have all failed and I always ended up changing the default search engine back to Google. I mean, DDG worked f…

> Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results Why are we OK with these free services literally stealing Google results? Could you imagine the backlash if it was discovered that Google was doing the same for its results by stealing from DDG or another, smaller player?

Google is a Search Engine. Further, it displays content from sites directly in its results. This includes recipes, show times, sporting event details, and more. It has been argued that Google is stealing this data from smaller sites. Brave is (optionally, if you enable the feature) merely using Google (a more mature apparatus) as a means of learning to deliver better results to the user. The only way somebody is going to "build a better Google" is by training their data on what makes Google so popular to begin with. Brave is able to do this is a secure and private manner.

Re: Brave Search beta

#397

Post by striking »

jonathansampson wrote: post #381
r-w wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave Search supports !bangs ;)

Indeed, including nearly all of DDG's !bangs :) We also add in some others, such as !so for StackOverflow, !gh for GitHub, and !mdn for the Mozilla Developer Network.

Those are also in DDG.

Re: Brave Search beta

#398

Post by jonathansampson »

tomjen3 wrote: post #221
zzyzxd wrote: post #46

Previous related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328758 If things go as planned, this may become a paid, ad-free, zero-tracking search engine. I can't express how exciting this is to me. Over the past few years, I have made several attempts to replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo. But they have all failed and I always ended up changing the default search engine back to Google. I mean, DDG worked f…

You can't have something be zero tracking and paid since they need to know if you have paid and so need to be able to track you. I use DDG for my main search, but there is the !g (i think) that you can prefix a search with to get it sent to google through DDG.

Tracking isn't a necessary component of a subscription service. You can have a model with premium features and/or offerings which doesn't harvest user data, such as searches and more.

Re: Brave Search beta

#399

Post by maverick74 »

jonathansampson wrote: post #245
threatofrain wrote: post #207

How does Brave plan to handle relations with law enforcement and their requests? Will Brave offer a mechanism to uniquely identify the most offensive users?

Not sure what you're referring to here; Brave doesn't have any user data. We don't collect it to begin with. We believe in Can't be Evil over Don't be Evil .

Yeah yeah.

Let me put it this way: if it's an opensource search engine you'll have me for sure.

If it's not 100% opensource then I can't be sure you don't track me and we end up in the google cage again.

Re: Brave Search beta

#400

Post by kowlo »

jonathansampson wrote: post #379
howolduis wrote: post #367

> On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users type a URL of Binance into the address bar, which earns Brave money. Further research revealed that Brave redirects the URLs of other cryptocurrency exchange websites, too. In response to the backlash from the users, Brave's CEO apologized and called it a "mistake" and said "we're correcting". Brave is just a "pop-priv…

That's not accurate. Brave offered affiliate link options to users who were searching for particular terms (screenshot: https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png ). These were presented to users as a way of optionally supporting Brave development. Our mistake was matching fully-qualified URLs too (screenshot: https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image2-1.png ). When we were made aware of this, w…

What about Safari?
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