Why would this be the case? Chrome's rise didn't destroy Firefox or Mozilla's legacy, so it's not clear why a fork would.

The past doesn't always define the future. Younger folks are more interested in privacy.

And Brave is more than just a "fork."

> Younger folks are more interested in privacy.

I believe this.

I'd like to understand how, exactly, moving from a non-profit foundation's browser to a for-profit corporation's fork of that browser with a built in ad marketplace is a net win for my privacy. That seems like a net loss: the incentive is now to make money off of me, and the browser is actually running non-website code with that goal in mind.

* Brave ads are optin

* Machine learning for ads is done locally; can't be evil

* Trackers and third party ads are blocked.

When is FireFox going to block third party ads and trackers?

My understanding is that Firefox has supported in-browser blocking of third-party ads, trackers, fingerprinters, &c., for a while now[1].

> * Machine learning for ads is done locally; can't be evil

There are too many moving pieces to this to dissect in a single comment. But to roughly sum them up: just about every adtech company that promises "privacy preserving targeted advertising" via ML uses some information-theoretical definition of privacy that doesn't align with normal user's intuitions about the word "private." We saw this with k-anonymity schemes, and we'll see it again when these schemes attract more scrutiny.

And on top of that: Brave's own site implies that local ad ML is currently opt-in only[2].

[1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...

[2]: https://brave.com/intro-to-brave-ads/

> My understanding is that Firefox has supported in-browser blocking of third-party ads, trackers, fingerprinters, &c., for a while now

I see the part about trackers. What about ads? Does it also block YouTube ads? That's a really nice feature built into Brave.

> just about every adtech company that promises "privacy preserving targeted advertising" via ML

The difference here is it happens in the browser. Does ML happen in Chrome?

> Brave's own site implies that local ad ML is currently opt-in only

Your reading of that isn't correct. The opt in is for ads. And local machine learning comes along with opting in.

> I see the part about trackers, what about ads? Doe sit also block YouTube ads?

Ads are the way the internet can be funded. For most free sites, they need to either be subsidized by another income (see say a personal website that you host yourself - you pay for the domain and hosting if it's not local). Or by either selling a product (see many software companies), or lastly by using ads (see YouTube, Vimeo, and numerous other video sharing sites)

I understand targeted ads being a nuisance and vehemently despise the datamining that supports said systems. But ads in general aren't an evil until they obfuscate the core material of a site. When you block ads, especially on YouTube for creators who use the platform to attract ads and sell their content then you prevent people who've worked to supply their income. If your issue is the ethics that are at odds with Alphabet and the privacy concerns, your fight is with your government to restrict them, Alphabet's own trackers (which you can work towards disabling).

I donate all the BAT I earn through auto contribute and through gifting of BAT to creators on YouTube.

I’ve also contributed a significant amount to an open source developer on GitHub directly through Brave.

Have you not heard of addons? Specifically ublock origin?

I like the idea of being paid to view ads and then donating to YouTubers or Wikipedia. It's pretty cool.

I like the idea of not seeing ads. It's pretty cool.

What's the connection between jwz and Brave? The only connection I can see is just that both jwz and Brendan Eich worked at Mozilla and now Eich has gone on to start Brave, but presumably there's more than that?

Thread: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1478808783006552065?s...

jwz and I were among the actual, full-time job, [email protected] Mozilla founders. There was no "Mozilla" to work at then, it was Netscape employing almost all staff members, with Chris Blizzard of Red Hat dotted in. Mozilla was not spun out until 2003 summer, when AOL laid off most of Netscape but kept three of us mozillans for a few months to complete the transition to the new nonprofit.

Saying "jwz worked at Mozilla" totally understates his role in writing one of the original web browsers, Netscape Navigator, and his part in the creation of Mozilla.org, among other things. It's like saying Bill Gates worked at Microsoft, or that Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked at Google. Thus Brave supplanting Firefox could metaphorically be seen as Mr Eich supplanting jwz. (That's a huge "if", mind you)

What a fractured fairy tale. jwz and I were true co-founders of Mozilla (see my reply nearby just posted). But jwz quit after a year:

https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html

I led Mozilla on all tech decision making from 1998 through 2014.

Does this mean I was "supplanting" myself by doing Brave? No. In doing Brave, I certainly was not supplanting jwz, who had nothing to do with Firefox (born as mozilla/browser in 2001, over two years after jwz quit).

Thank you for the clarification! (I should be more careful how I phrase things. I didn't expect a personal response from a celebrity like yourself who's part of history and the anestory!)