If an affiliate link offering (shown plainly, and prior to any navigation event) worries you, wait until you see what other browsers are getting away with. If you're using Chrome, Edge, or Firefox, your browser serves as an out-of-the-box keylogger, sending each keystroke off to Google (Chrome and Firefox) or Bing (Edge) as you type into the address bar. Even an unintentional pasting of sensitive information gets transmitted.
https://securityboulevard.com/2019/02/brave-browser-sacrific...
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3284076/brave-browser-...
https://community.brave.com/t/does-brave-inject-buttons-onto...
https://twitter.com/vj_chidambaram/status/107647481470831001...
Your second link suggests Brave replaces ads on websites; this is also wrong. Brave removes harmful third-party ads and trackers (as these harvest user data, and violate privacy). Brave offers an alternative model (Brave's privacy-respecting opt-in model) instead, which reward users with 70% of the associated revenue, while leaving their data untouched.
Your third link is, I believe, asking about our in-situ tipping buttons. These are triggers for the Tipping panel within Brave, enabling you to tip BAT to users on Twitter, GitHub, and elsewhere. I'm not sure what concerns you about this; these can be turned off in brave://rewards, if you like.
The last link you provided is also quite misleading. Brave distributed BAT grants to users, enabling those users to earmark tokens for content creators. Our interface at the time identified "verified" creators as such, but didn't make an equally explicit identification of unverified creators. This lead to some confusion. But as a result of Tom Scott's feedback in 2018, we saw massive improvements made to our UI/UX and tipping model over 48 hours or so. Today unverified creators are clearly identified as such, and tips are held for them on the user's device, rather than in a settlement wallet. See also https://brave.com/rewards-update/
1. https://securityboulevard.com/2019/02/brave-browser-sacrific... Brave has a whitelist for some facebook urls for loading scripts from third party domains. Found the brave community thread imaged in the post: https://community.brave.com/t/how-to-disable-facebook-twitte... My read of this thread is not having the whitelist breaks authentication using facebook and they offer an extension to remove the whitelist.
2. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3284076/brave-browser-... This is about the opt-in basic attention token system, where users can replace ads served by websites with ones that reward them with cryptocurrency. I have used brave for a while and don't use this system (using the built in ad block instead). I don't see this as a negative.
3. https://community.brave.com/t/does-brave-inject-buttons-onto... This is about some piece of the basic attention token system that apparently injects tip buttons into websites. I don't use the basic attention token system so this does not impact me.
4. https://twitter.com/vj_chidambaram/status/107647481470831001... This is apparently about the basic attention token system donation feature not sending out donations that do not meet a threshold. Again, I do not use this system. But I saw this mentioned by someone else in one of the comments on this post and the response mentioned Brave has changed their policies to refund people within 90 days if the donation is not claimed.
1. We whitelist scripts to load, so as to enable Facebook and Twitter posts to be embedded into other sites. But, we don't whitelist/enable the tracking aspect of these scripts. We block them from accessing cookies and other local storage. You can modify this behavior in brave://settings/socialBlocking
2. Brave has never replaced ads on pages. We block harmful, third-party ads and trackers. And, separately, we offer a privacy-respecting digital advertising model. As you point out, our model of showing ad notifications is opt-in.
3. These are harmless tip-triggers shown near Tweets, GitHub comments, and more. Similar to what you would see with an extension like Pocket, where buttons are added near items so you can add them to a reading list, etc.
4. Tips made to unverified creators remain in the user's wallet. There's no threshold requirement here; if you tip 1 BAT to a verified creator, that tip will go out immediately. If you tip 1 BAT to an unverified creator, it will remain in your wallet for up to 90 days.
2.
I think everyone's threshold for what constitutes breach of trust is different. If you accept content injection, unreported whitelists and other similar behaviour from a browser which touts privacy as its selling point ok, then thats your call. But this kind of behaviour is unacceptable from my and many other people's perspective. Which other major browser injects any content in to a website without the users request? Do you see people being ok with being impersonated by Brave without their knowledge? Especially when these mistakes just seem to keep happening, at some point you have to question the intention. Again maybe you are ok with it, but people should be informed about these practices and make their own call. To most people, this is not ok. What other browser has had this level of controversy (outside of chrome possibly) and they have been in business longer than brave.
Accidentally screw up a copy-paste? ctrl-z as quick as you like, it's too late, one of your passwords has been sent out to google...
It's a bit of an impassioned description of the feature, but this is a comment on HN, not some company press release. How neutered do we have to be that we can't make a point with emotion behind it. It's clearly much more hyperbole than "immature" or dishonest, is all I'm saying.
This has not been the case for a long time.
Any effective solution in this space is going to be controversial. Brave is far from perfect, but it is much better than allowing Apple or Google to control your browser and doesn't require any tech expertise to use. Those companies generally don't apologize or revert their scummy practices.
Back in 2018, Brave gave tokens from our own UGP (User Growth Pool) to users. These tokens could then be directed to websites, YouTube channels, and more. If the intended recipient wasn't verified, the tokens would go into a settlement wallet. But note, the tokens people were sending were almost entirely those which they first received from Brave (it was not yet possible to earn rewards at that time). So users were getting tokens from Brave, then earmarking those tokens for content creators.
More details at https://brave.com/rewards-update/
The latest affiliate link controversy was from 2020 [1] Weird ad browser notifications is not that old [2]
Probably others. Happy to be wrong, I haven't researched it much, but what exactly is the case that they have a good track record of any significant length?
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-aff... [2] https://community.brave.com/t/turning-off-brave-notification...
Regarding your second concern about ad notifications, these are Brave Ads. They're opt-in. And they're built on privacy and anonymity. See https://brave.com/rewards for more. A quick summary: users who opt-in to Brave Ads receive a regional catalog of ads. Their browser, locally on their device, studies the catalog for relevant items. When an ad can be shown (users determine frequency), a notification is displayed. At this time, 70% of the associated revenue is directed towards the user.
Brave Rewards is a way for users to support content creators on the Web without having to sign up for services, hand over personal information, or dig into their own pocket. It's a way to passively translate your attention into real, substantive support for the sites you visit.
That thread looks like someone had a device with ads explicitly enabled. Perhaps someone else set it up, or he just forgot about it. That happens all the time with software.
The case is that most of the bad press is inaccurate and overblown, and Brave has changed course when needed. Their track record is imperfect, but far better than the mainstream alternatives.
I don't have sources other than that I've been using Brave as my primary browser on all devices.
For more technical people, ungoogled-chromium [1] is probably the cleanest option. It's completely free from ads, telemetry, "pings", "experiments", and the like.
It made me contribute to content creators way more than I have with Flattr (now owned by scammy EyeO, remember them?) or with Patreon. I can not do any of that with any other offering.
Lastly: what telemetry?
So it's sending some amount of telemetry, but it's not so bad compared to mainstream browsers. A more detailed comparison is available in this report linked by another commenter: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf
Yes. "Oh, another unwarranted mention of Brave!"
Isn't Hacker News a website on things that gratifies own's curiosity? How does an article about how to get started with a browser that isn't new is supposed to fulfill this requirement? By making us ask ourselves these questions?
These mentions which just look like ads need comments like yours at the top of the post.
It's not even hard! The presentation of a new version with interesting new features would fit the bill.
Brave is my favorite browser. It's the best web experience out of the box. No digging into settings to specify my default search engine (DuckDuckGo), ads are blocked by default without having to turn on extensions (which I see as an attack vector).
Im sure there are more but all the bells and whistles Brave touts you can get elsewhere and you are not using a product from a company that has shady practices
More details: https://brave.com/rewards-update/
I personally treat all software with a level of distrust. But brave has done things which all point to a certain behaviour in which people should think twice before using the product. You can get the benefits of privacy that Brave touts from other browsers. If you want to donate to content creators, plenty of ways to do so as well.
> Firefox and safari
For a long time Firefox called home... not to Mozilla but to Google upon installation (hence, before you could install any privacy extensions that would have prevented Google tracking). This was only rectified after a number of tweets about this problem became viral. The fact that Mozilla’s survival depends on its relationship with Google also created some other issues over time so after being a user for many years, I decided that Firefox was no longer a viable option for me.
Safari is a non starter since I can’t even use it outside of Apple’s walled garden (no Linux or Windows version is available).
All of the above in my personal opinion outweighs the issues that Brave had, which I don’t negate but in my eyes are minor.
So for now I stay with Brave.
Edit: I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is no perfect solution out there and you have to evaluate pros and cons based on your personal circumstances or goals.
It's no different than what happened with Brave, except that Brave acknowledged it was bug behavior and that the identifier is only for the browser, not user data.
As for ways to donate to content creators, please do tell: is there any solution out there that let us be rewarded by getting privacy-preserving ads and to contribute the proceeds further to other people?
Im not going to get in to the game of finding specific ways to donate to content creators. There are ways to do it. If you want to do it anonymously, I am sure you can do so as well, I have never been interested in doing so. If the reason you want to use brave is to donate money anonymously, more power to you, personally, I would caution people against using it due to their past shady behaviour (The affiliate link is just one of many examples).
Mozilla’s very existence is based on its financial ties with Google, those utm parameters are there because of that relationship.
There are also other issues stemming from that problematic relationship e.g. Firefox privacy settings by default are more lenient towards Google than Facebook (you get a prompt inviting you to install the official Fb container, by contrast the unofficial Google container did not even get the “trusted” status, hence making it less visible to new users, even though it’s based on the same code).
Firefox is a good browser but there are issues.
> There are ways to do it.
It's more than "donating anonymously". I asked if you can point an alternative that lets me monetize my attention and give it forward. Show me any system as straightforward as Brave that lets me give 2-3€ every month to wikipedia and archive.org and any one else I desire.
> The affiliate link is just one of many examples.
Extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence. I see you already failed at providing an alternative for supporting content creators, will you also back out of showing what "many examples" you are talking about?
PS.: Curious that you single out the CEO. If you don't want to use Brave for having a beef with the CEO it's one thing, but at least be honest about instead of making it about the product.
Why should I research for you a topic which does not negate the shady practices that Brave has been at fault for? If you want to donate money using Brave go for it, the evidence of what Brave has done, and done so consistently on many fronts is out there. If you want to look into it, go for it, I am not your personal researcher, a lot has already been done for you.
Two different people talking about the exact same issue does not constitute "much evidence".
I am not a supporter of the "browser". I am a supporter of having an alternative way to have a healthy economy on the internet that does not rely on Ad Tech.
Tracking, privacy violations, the billions of dollars that go to waste due to ad fraud and the maintenance of an oligopoly that only exists due to it all... These are the real "shady practices" that we should be be pissed about, not "they added a button to the webpage that is actually aligned with their value proposition".
If Brave ever gets to do something that violates user privacy or works as a hostile user-agent, then I would gladly be the front of the line to call out for "shady practices". But the points you are arguing are none of that. What you are doing is basically Googling for "Brave Controversies" and spitting out whatever confirms your biases. This is irresponsible and creates a self-reinforcing loop of bad, unfounded reputation for you people that are working on something you don't care about, but that is important to a growing number of people.
> If you want to donate money using Brave go for it.
It's not a matter of "donate money using Brave". Brave is not the point. Brave is just a tool to build something bigger: a way to have a global digital economy free from Surveillance Capitalism. If lynks gave me that, I would use it. But Apple and Microsoft is not interested in doing that, and Mozilla has shown nothing but some naive idealism and very kind words of support (while at the same time paying enormous amounts of money to its board members). I would love to go back to Firefox if they had something similar to the BAT network. I would love if Mozilla started offering paid services to foster and fund an open web free of tracking and privacy violations, but they don't.
Brave (the company, through the browser) does. They have built a (completely opt-in and configurable) system that allows people to receive money for attention and which lets them use this to circulate in the economy, or even cash out. So when I ask you for an alternative, it's not because I want you to do the work for me. It's for you to realize that there is not any other system out there that compares to this, which then maybe will make you understand that the only reason I am "fervent supporter" of Brave is because it's the current best shot we have.
You can send tips to unverified accounts (different thing from a monthly donation), and if the target does not verify their account in 90 days you get the funds back.
There has NEVER been link hijacking or content injecting on a page, what are you smoking?
Content injection: https://community.brave.com/t/does-brave-inject-buttons-onto...
The second... You are technically right, but I thought you meant the browser was injecting their own ads on someone else's page. The tip button does none of that, it does not disturb the user or gets in the way of any action, can be disabled and is there to help the creators network. I don't see anything to get worked up about.
I like keychain, it makes Safari the only browser with password management I trust. Browser dev history has been littered with poor implementations. I want to say Chrome still stores shit unencrypted, but this is just what I recall off the top of my head from reading tech news. I'm no expert, and that's pretty much my point. I trust keychain and don't want to write a phd thesis on how secure the other options are.
I like the ios integration. Other browsers offer this, but it's just another account to worry about - do i trust this company, will they still be around (and still be trustworthy) in ten years? browser history is the most personal thing I do on a computer so this matters a lot to me. (I guess both of these points are just tldr walled garden)
The lack of good adblocking kills it for me. It's too much of a sacrifice, even with a pihole running at home.
Also, as you said, they move slowly. Not just with shiny new tech, but also basic privacy things like if I type "old.reddit.com/r/embarrassingThingsImInto" or whatever, why are they still defaulting to http, and waiting for the web server to decide to upgrade the connection (leaking the initial request)? Why is defaulting to https hidden away in the developer menu? Developers are the only people these days who should be dealing with http anyway, and in those cases there's probably a ".local" at the end they could use to make a determination.
There are so many better alternatives to brave for those that want to donate to content creators or just browse the web. I have never understood the fascination or usefulness of brave. I would caution people against using it.