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.
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.