First off, if you installed it and used it to the point where it showed you an ad, you must have seen the initial screen asking whether you'd like to opt into ads. There's no dark pattern, it's spelled out for you. If you just went "yeah, yeah, whatever", that's on you.
Second, the reason why they have ads is pretty much why the browser itself exists. They introduced a suite of privacy features and an ad model that aims to be privacy-preserving and sustainable (especially in the sense of not letting the web turn into a content cesspool like Google has been doing). In fact their model is the only one I've seen so far that is actually desirable to all actors (advertisers, content producers and content consumers -- yes, including those that don't want any ads, ever). It's a shame it comes with all the stigma crypto has and so it's unlikely to take off.
Also to be clear, brave is not remotely desirable to advertisers. (See my post history) I manage tens of millions of dollars in ad spend and 0% of that goes to brave. Full stop. Brave is adlbocking crypto circle jerk and nothing more. Give me a browser that is privacy first without crypto/scam bullshit and I am all in.
No, that’s not stealing. Yes, it is sustainable (as evidenced by Brave’s ongoing viability as a company).
There used to be a free ISP called NetZero that would give you free dial up if you ran an app that ran at the bottom of your screen and showed ads. I used to adjust the screen so those 100 pixels (or whatever) didn’t show. That wasn’t stealing.
On my hardware, I can do whatever I want with what you send me. If you send me ads, I can choose not to look at them. I can write a program that hides the ads. I can use someone else’s program to hide the ads.
It’s strange that somehow my behavior is “stealing” and that shows a bizarre intellectual outlook on reality, to me.
Am I stealing when I mute ads on broadcast tv?
Am I stealing when I don’t look at billboards on the side of the road?
Am I stealing if I write an AR app that replaces billboards with pictures of kittens? (Or other ads?)
Finally, brave runs great with ads and crypto turned off. So I frequently run it as a “free-loader” and am grateful to the people who watch the ads and use the crypto to keep them in business.
Brave takes revenue that would have gone to the website. If you Adblock/etc that revenue is never generated. If you use brave, the revenue is generated and stolen by brave.
Why would an AR goggle replacing IRL ads with their own be stealing?
If I run a pi-hole on my network, am I stealing from all the advertisers I block? What if I charge $1 for access to that network? Am I stealing $1 because the ads are never shown and I show an ad asking for $1.
Are people who sell pi-holes stealing?
I think that any moral expectation of people sending data to me, on my devices is comically wrong. If advertisers want to force ads then give out hardware that they control. I won’t take it, but maybe some will.
Replacing ads that would pay the publisher, but now instead pay somebody else is stealing.
Ads and trackers are blocked on all websites by default when you use Brave. IF a user opts-in to viewing Brave ads, THEN they see the ads as notifications that are in Brave's ad inventory and that line up with their interests. This ad matching to users' interests is all done on-device - Brave or advertisers never learn anything about which ad a user saw or what their interests are.
This is core to the privacy model of Brave ads. You can read more here: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-pri...
The Tor browser, not necessarily using onion routing is the option with the least compromises of your privacy.
Tell that to Google.
This is the same for all the content preview used by Google in search results alongside ads.
In this case the brave install is a pretty straightforward Yes/No prompt with focus on Yes so people will tap it out of habit.
I think the important factor is the harm in the default action. In this case, it shows ad notifications (pretty annoying) and accrues crypto coins (pretty invisible). I’d be angrier if it consented to sharing all data for whatever purposes they’d like (ie, apps that upload all contacts and photos).
Firefox is the nobler choice, to be sure, but I enjoy working within the Chromium ecosystem. Brave is built on top of Chromium and will still be affected, but Brave Shields is a native implementation, not an extension, and will be unaffected. They will also work to support v2 as best as possible. This gives them a certain allure!
Curious what you mean by this. If you're talking about devtools, Firefox dev tools are also great, although there's nothing to say you couldn't use Firefox as a daily driver and pop open Chrome for developer work to avoid learning a new set of browser devtools.
- Yes, dev work. I generally always need to be testing against Chromium where FF has such a small userbase that code regressions aren't costly. Keeping two browsers open all the time isn't a big deal, but feels like a hassle for some reason.
- There's a barrier to transitioning away from Google Chrome, but I have to overcome that for either transition. Exporting/importing passwords, hunting down extensions, etc. There's likely replacements for everything on Firefox, but there's absolutely everything on Brave as it's compatible with the Chrome Web Store.
- I don't give bonus points to Firefox for its approach to open source. Yes, it's better to be open source, but compelling, interesting features are where it's at for me.
- I don't give bonus points to Brave for being pro-crypto, but I'm not anti-crypto, either. It does seem like Brave has a faster pace of development these days, and I think it would be more interesting in conversations to discuss that I'm on Brave, and those facts, while relatively trivial, cause me to lean more towards it.
So I suppose it's not so much about staying within the Chromium ecosystem. It's mostly that Brave feels more alive and doesn't have such a bad reputation (IMO) to dissuade me from using it.
Vivaldi's definitely great, but it focuses more on customizability than raw privacy protections. Brave's the reverse. Stock Chrome, but top tier blocking functionality.
Bandwidth saved 5.23GB
Time saved 2.8hours
- performance gains from optimized machine code
- CNAME adblocking, which is otherwise not possible on Chromium-based browsers
- robustness against potential changes from upstream (i.e. Manifest v3)
And, not exactly adblocking, but other privacy protections that are only possible with a deep level of control over browser APIs:
- advanced fingerprinting protections, including subtle randomized perturbations of canvas reads, fonts, user agent, etc.
- ephemeral storage sandboxing for third-party content
Bandwidth saved 15.84GB
Time saved 5.8hours
I am skeptical of Brave, because their business model seems hand-wavy and their crypto shit seems skeezy. But right now, I can't think of anything offering better ROI for ad/tracker blocking.
If you are going to tell your parents "just set up pi-hole on a cheap raspi, or spin up an LXC or Docker container to run it on your LAN, then use it for DNS" then you definitely have different parents than I do.
But pretty much anybody who uses a computer can install and run Brave.
Micropayments in lieu of ads has been a dream of many for a long time. Brave is doing that, and the crypto part seems like a rare appropriate use case.
(Admittedly, I only use Brave for a small subset of websites.)
The coin works such that Brave buys BAT with a percentage of their normal money ad revenue, distribute it to users who can then use that to tip content creators with Brave's tipping service. Content creators can then sell BAT for real money, and there's always someone buying, namely Brave. It's pretty much the least scammy crypto coin I've come across.
But when I tried it, the ads Brave served were much worse than banner ads in a web page — they were super-intrusive system notifications, with ad payloads in them. I can't imagine any significant number of users ever using Brave with those ads enabled.
Likewise, I have never seen a website that is willing to accept my BAT crypto, other than the one posted in this thread.
Perhaps the second point (micropayments to authors) is not critical to their model, though.
I like it because it’s built in ad blockers do a good job of reducing traffic and simplifying browsing. I can configure blockers in other browsers, but it’s one less thing.
It’s also small compared to chrome. I like being able to have small downloads because my home internet is only 50Mbps.
It also prompts me for updates and doesn’t run any secret background agents that occasionally flip out and peg my cpu (like chrome does). I don’t care enough about timely browser updates to have a process that just watches for this.
The only way to make money with a free commercially built product that kills other advertising... is advertising.
They don't have the coffers for this to be an instance of "commoditizing their complement" as there is no other fat revenue stream from another of their business units to speak of. (I don't even think they have multiple business units.) So they have to make money with Brave somehow.
The original concept of their "basic attention token" was an experiment to see if they could drive growth by paying users to watch ads with some abstract and dubious crypto coin. Their hope is that it's attractive enough to peel users away from Chrome, then they can sell targeted ads. I don't buy it.
In any case, you're not paying for Brave, so therefore you're the product. Yet again. No matter what their marketing says.
There's literally no reason for Brave to exist. You can run Firefox or Chromium just fine.