Chrome is the only one of these browsers that is produced by a company where at least 80% of its billions of dollars of revenue is generated by monetizing the personal identifying information of web users using ad tech.
It’s also the only major browser without built-in support for mitigating tracking cookies and scripts.
What Brave is trying to do is bootstrap an ecosystem where users can use a utility cryptocurrency to reward content creators they like while optionally getting paid to view ads that related to sites on the web they visit without leaking personal information due to zero knowledge proofs.
Brave really wants to increase the value of the Basic Attention Token by flipping the current business model of the web on its head.
That’s not a bad idea.
It's not a bad idea, but IMO it's a bad execution.
They're effectively running a business based on extorting everyone building anything for the web (everyone from big businesses to small hobbyists trying to make something new) by flat-out replacing the most common form of monetization (ads) with their own monetization and saying, "Hey developers, I know you worked hard on that website, so if you want that money (or, at least, a cut of it we feel is fair), sign up for our platform instead".
The dividing line is privacy invading third-party ads.
At a whole 12M users, they're hardly extorting anyone at this point. Let's back the hyperbole train up a bit.
They're only free to do so in Brave's eyes if they roll their own ad solution, which is an option but not _always_ the best option. The "easy" (and, arguably, more featureful/secure/"better") route to monetize across the Internet (especially on hobby projects and small businesses) is third-party ads. There's lots of reasons someone might weigh the options and make the decision to go with a third party ad provider; Brave takes that decision away. Whether that's better or worse for the Internet as a whole is debatable.
wrt third-party ads being more secure... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising
You also point the arrow of causality in the wrong direction. It's not as though Brave magically shows up on devices. The current ecosystem and its host of problems (including privacy and security) are precisely why users are choosing adblockers of all stripes.
In Brave's case, at least they're conscientious enough to provide an alternative path to monetization for creators.
Or they can choose block 3rd party ads and tracking scripts and opt-in to seeing ads they are more likely to be interested in and get paid a percentage to do so.
Chrome—and by extension Google—does not give you that choice and certainly doesn't share any of the ad revenue with web users.
The browser company (Brave) only makes money if the user opts in to ads, which is exactly that; opt-in. That choice is on the user.
Brave have been very open about their focus on privacy and an open web.
That sounds insidious but this is what most media platforms do.
It's true, but I also think that people who pile on Mozilla when they do such things wouldn't touch Brave with a 10 foot pole to begin with so they don't really care much about it. From the start Brave's core proposition is to be more intrusive by default by shipping an ad-blocker, their ad system and a few other things. You're buying into that when you install the browser. This particular change doesn't seem out of line for them.
After all most of Brave's features (including this very one) are one extension away in Firefox, which is one of the main reasons I don't understand why anybody would bother with Brave especially if the goal is to avoid browser monoculture.
1. Go to https://archive.org/donate/ in any browser, on any device.
2. Click "$100", click "Donate", enter credit card info.
Now you write out the process for doing it via Brave. Assume the user just installed Brave and has 0 BAT.
You had to spend a certain number of years on Earth to become old enough to have a credit rating and legal standing to get a credit card.
You had to obtain a credit card by filling out paperwork and being accepted by the company issuing the credit card.
You had to wait for the card to arrive in the mail.
You had to activate it the card.
I don't think it's fair to just skip over all those steps just because they're already done. Sure, for you, today, the card is probably easier. But by that token a guy with a horse in 1900 who already had a stable and a bunch of hay could say, "Why would anyone buy a car?"
And he'd be right, on that particular day, for him. But not for everyone, and not forever.
The payments are anonymous and private.
I also find the self-acclaimed "Brave" browser company an odd partner to work with for an organisation dedicated to the open web like IA. This browser has exactly one purpose: to make money. In terms of the people working on it, it's arguably more commercial than Chrome, Safari, or Edge.
The proposition "Brave" is making is: "Don't you also feel what this world needs is an intermediary between you and the people creating what you like, skimming from both sides whenever money is involved?"