Ads solve the problem of how to fund websites without subscriptions but create the problem of annoying ads of no relevance.

Google and Facebook mitigate the problem of annoying adverts by trying to make them relevant. That comes at the cost of their constant surveillance without permission, and use of that information to try to “influence” people’s opinions in unrelated ways.

The big lie of recent years has been “we value your privacy” followed some details of how “we” don’t.

BATs try to solve all of these problems by placing control of personal information back with the user.

If I give you a cryptographic representation of my interests you can serve me ads without having to know the intimate details of my life. You only need to know how to deal with the token.

What’s more I can compartmentalise my interests by sending different tokens at different times.

Google could get involved in this sort of research but I suspect that their interests go far beyond just serving ads.

>What’s more I can compartmentalise my interests by sending different tokens at different times.

I'm really perplex. People who care enough about their privacy to make use of something like that are probably those who don't want ads or tracking at all anyway. The rest of the population obviously doesn't care.

I personally can't imagine ever willingly enabling ads in my browser. You want me to pay for your service? Then ask for my credit card number, I may give it to you. If you prefer to beg for me to turn my ad blocker off then be my guest but I won't do it.

The idea of installing Brave, curating several "tokens" containing my interests and selecting what to send to which website is frankly preposterous to me and of dubious value for the advertisers.

I pay for Spotify, I pay for Memrize, I pay for Tarnsap, I bought a Fontawesome subscription last friday, I used to donate to a couple Patreons. I donate punctually to FreeBSD, Wikipedia and a few other open source projects. I want to support people who offer services that I use. I don't want to prostitute my private life to do it.

If content creators don't want my money but insist that I should let them spam me with ads and share my private info with third parties then it's their problem, not mine.

Life is too short for me to curate "cryptographic interest tokens" in order for advertisers to serve me content that I don't want to see anyway.

Some cryptocurrency projects wanted to develop a cheap and easy micropayment system. That seems a lot more interesting to me although that probably can't work as long as the "currency" part of "cryptocurrency" remains more aspirational than practical.

BAT is trying to change that - instead of ads you put money into Brave and pay those tiny amounts to creators directly. The idea is that you might not even know that you often read some blog and the browser distribute BAT for you (if you want).

Honestly it is not about the cryptocurrency hype at all. Like everybody wanted some legit usecase for crypto and now when there is one then people hate it because it is crypto...

I'm still not really considering switching to Brave but if this BAT thing makes it into Firefox (as an extension for instance) I'll probably give it a try.

I remain unconvinced that decentralized blockchains can really scale up to the number of transactions that would be generated by everybody "tipping" individual website as they browse them but that's a different issue.

They also don't have to make the transactions instant. They are basically donations so the transaction time does not really matter. They could spread the transactions for efficiency.

Plus crypto is evolving and they are counting on it. When their scaling issues come there might very well be some ok solution in likes of lightning network. Or doing stuff offchain.

For me Brave is actually secondary browser now because it is the "ungoogled chrome" that is easy to install and i can test webwork i do without chrome.

You don't have to, just don't opt-in for Brave rewards (aka ads), and fund your tipping wallet with your money (you can as of today) and voilà !

You'll have:

- No ads, no trackers

- You contribute toward content creators with your cash like you do with Spotify/Netflix using a built-in wallet in your browser

- A fast and privacy-first browser

Making it easier and faster to transfer small amounts of money online is definitely something that needs improving but unfortunately so far cryptocurrency-based solution haven't really managed to solve the problem, mainly because speculation makes them a pretty terrible currency. That's a tough problem to solve.

No, they don't take a cut if you fund your wallet directly and use it to tip the content creators.

>If it's the latter what's Brave's business model

Here is how they make money, just pasting my comment from below:

By default, ads are blocked, but users of Brave can opt-in to have privacy-friendly ads from the Brave network displayed on websites they browse.

Brave get 30% of the revenue from those ads, and the users get 70% of the revenue as BAT tokens

Users can then use those BAT tokens to tip the websites they like that signed up as Brave publishers (see a list here: https://batgrowth.com/publishers)

So the Ads / Get paid to browse part of Brave is 100% optional and opt-in, many people think it is mandatory

>Making it easier and faster to transfer small amounts of money online is definitely something that needs improving but unfortunately so far cryptocurrency-based solution haven't really managed to solve the problem, mainly because speculation makes them a pretty terrible currency. That's a tough problem to solve.

Yeah, I'm kinda fascinated about Brave's model, I'm wondering if it will be the first cryptocurrency-based solution that make sense to me

Brave intends to pay content publishers 55% of the replaced ad revenue. Brave Software 15% Brave ad partners 15% Browser users 15% of the revenue.

So roughly 30%

If that ruins their business model, they need to figure out how to collect payment before sending me the web page. Don’t freely send OTA TV signals into my house then get offended when I decide to skip the ads. Same thing.

I think a lot of sites have already figured this out. They sell t-shirts. Mugs. Premium podcast episodes, and Patreon sponsorships. The Web is working around this as we speak. But the Googles of the world will make it sound like we’re “stealing web pages”. This will be “the new piracy”. All to defend a business model that relies on my equipment assaulting me with your malicious ads on your behalf. No thank you.

I have a really hard time reconciling this opinion with "Then ask for my credit card number, I may give it to you."

Even with ad blockers, I have much more control what information I give out than if I trust someone with my credit card number.

Even if the content creator is genuine, there have been so many hacks in the past.

Credit cards are also not good for microtransactions and BAT is a potentially enabler for them. Sure, we aren't there yet but it doesn't look as impossible as it were in 1999 when microtransactions came up the first time as a solution to the ads problem.

For me, I like the idea of paying for content without having to supply my credit card number to each news outlet that I want to read. With no link to me directly the websites no longer need to track me and Brave can go out of it's way to back that up. No need to curate tokens. Just switch profiles if/when you need to.

BTW you don't _need_ to see any ads at all. You can instead just buy BATs and use them for content payment without ads.

User experience aside it makes it clear when you revoke permission to your data

You can point to the public transaction where you did that and show consent to that advertiser and whoever they copied that data to, massive liability for them if they arent playing along

A step towards cooperation, not a cure all

Tokens are also useful in bootstrapping any two sided marketplace, and people would also be aligned in seeing it become more valuable. To you, that means damning unobjectiveness, to others that means necessary skin in the game to know what theyre talking about.

To put it bluntly, that is their problem, not mine. I feel absolutely no obligation to support a flawed business model, in fact I feel absolutely no obligation to support the commercialization of the internet.

Based on the egregious attacks on privacy we've seen, I have absolutely no intention of ever allowing ads again.

This reminds me of my friends that used to download games of thepiratebay because the gaming industry was a "flawed business model", but were still expecting content to be produced

If you don't support content creators with money, how can you expect content to be produced ? Content creators need to eat too, especially indie ones

>Based on the egregious attacks on privacy we've seen

I like how Brave tackle the privacy issue by displaying only privacy-friendly ads from Brave publishers network while giving a way for users to contribute towards content creator with the built-in tip feature. And this is a opt-in feature, so if you hate ads, you just don't have to opt-in and can still enjoy a fast and privacy-focused browser

I've ditched chrome 2 weeks ago, not going back anytime soon

The vast majority of the World's photographers are amateurs, who derive little or no income from their hobby. Yet they collectively produce stunning photos that are amongst the best ever taken.

Why can't websites be the same? Like they were in the 90s. Why must side-projects monetise ASAP instead of being a hobby?

Perhaps Gmail wouldn't exist in that World, but Fastmail would. And postfix, dovecot, sendmail too.

You need an ideal world of universal basic income, healthcare and a reasonable standard of living for all if you want people to abandon all ideas of monetising their activities. Sadly we're very far from that world.

They can throw content at me willy-nilly, but they can't expect me to watch it. I simply let my browser do the filtering, rather than my eyeballs. I also default-deny all 3rd-party frames and scripts, due to security concerns. That alone happens to filter out the majority of ads, all by itself.

This situation is not at all comparable to copyright infringement, where you have to actively seek out the content in question.

Besides, I would never click any ad anyway, no matter if it's a simple text ad or a spinning, jumping, music-playing animated pop-up monstrosity. Never.

But I do support content creators, most often through buying their games on Steam/GOG, though direct purchases on Bandcamp or through Patreon.

However the movie/TV show segment is missing a similarly accessible service. Netflix/HBO/etc. all limit my region to a very reduced catalogue, and they implement overly-strict DRM that prevents me from actually using their services without rebooting to my (gaming-only) Win10 install.

At least Spotify works brilliantly on Linux. The client may be a relatively heavy Electron app, but it works.

>"I like how Brave tackle the privacy issue by displaying only privacy-friendly ads from Brave publishers network"

I don't trust them, because I distrust the entire advertising and marketing industry on principle.

Quality content does need to be paid for, one way or another, whether you enjoy supporting it or not.

Obviously this doesn't bring in as much money so as long as those of us who don't want to be tracked remains a small minority: business as usual.

Advantages of Brave on mobile in comparison to Firefox:

- Single package with add blocking and HTTPS upgrading

- Better handling of offline cache

- Those little PIP clouds to disambiguate a tap

- I always understand how to long press to show context menu instead of selecting

- I believe scrolling is smoother on Brave

- I prefer card/tab layout on Brave

- Less crashes

Advantages of Firefox over Brave on mobile:

- Same browser I use on desktop - helpful with Firefox account and it's FOSS

- I can disable JavaScript and images when I'm on severely limited connection like right now

- Extensions

- I like text search better

- Better location bar search

- Usable reader mode

Now saying all this I would like to have a pure HTML browser, at least for bad mobile connections. It would be lightinnig fast and would show me offline version first and upgrade to more recent version if needed or it was downloaded after all. It would be like a permanent reader mode. So my font, my colors, my line length, no obnoxious position:fixed bars. One of the things on my to-do list.

I use Focus for quick, one-time things: open a quick article from my news feed, login to pay my credit card bill, etc., and then trash it.

I have absolutely no idea what the BAT thing is. It's disabled on my install since I never even clicked on it.

It's a 'set and forget' way of supporting your favourite sites. User experience wise it's no better than Firefox + uBlock origin, it's purely a moral choice.

You DON'T pay a monthly fee for anything. That statement was terribly misleading.

Sure you can use Chrome / Firefox / Safari and install extensions and plugins that do something similar but end users don't want to jump through hoops and play whack a mole with ads. If a browser proactively fights ads for them out of the box, it enriches their lives without them needing any additional technical knowledge.

As dubious as I am of cryptocurrency in general, display advertising is evil and needs to be destroyed, and BAT is the best (only?) micropayments alternative out there, as far as I can tell.

Mozilla itself says, and I say, that "half the board" did not resign over me. See https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat..., and also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10654651 for a detailed breakdown from me based on what I can say that others involved also said. Mozilla (same FAQ link) testifies that I was not "ejected" and was welcome to stay at an unspecified C-level executive position. If you don't believe them, I can't help you.

On "divisive", beware false division and fake cover stories or excuses. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13429898

In my experience it is best to avoid following one's filter bubble on "how someone is viewed", especially in today's tribal regressive-left world. But YMMV!

Nice pot shot with the tribal regressive-left bit btw. Sadly inaccurate though.

Some discussions happened internally, we don't have the full story, and I won't be using your products due to the murky situation at Mozilla & your past support of certain political causes.

Mozilla FAQ includes answer on whether board quit because they were "angered" and says nope: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat....

For more back-story, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13429898.

Neither is great though.

>There is probably no corporation that has fooled its userbase more and for longer than Mozilla. Pretending to be your friend, it has for years ruined the customizability, privacy, and usability of its browser. The marketing team was, and still is, in full swing trying to spin every one of its shitty decisions positively. [...] The amount of spyware in both these browsers is massive - FF has the most, but it can all be disabled through an user.js script

There's no denying that there have been some fuck ups in Mozilla in the past but it seems to me like the author has an axe to grind here. If they don't then they should at least reference their claims.

I mean they call IE, Chrome and Opera "Botnet web browsers". I suppose they're referencing the 4chan meme and not actually saying that these browsers contain botnet code but I'm not sure if that makes it better.

As the website says your best options are GNU IceCat or Ungoogled Chromium with uMatrix and HTTPS Everywhere.

If the author listed more precisely their problems (like you just did for instance) then the reader could make an informed choice. Saying "Chrome is a botnet and Firefox is filled with spyware" is hogwash and disqualifies this page completely IMO.

People will not start suddenly compile their own browser or dig github for browser they never heard of.

They use Google and Gmail. Firefox surely knows that 70% of people will be pissed right there if google is not default browser so they atleast get money from google for it. It's compromise.

They need money to compete with mainstream browsers and they have to make smart decisions about which compromise to make.

Signal is getting similar shit for using google services for messaging. But it makes e2e encryption mainstream.