Brave is just an intermediary that replaces ads with other ads. It's an adnetwork delivered as a browser that creates ad inventory <i>on top</i> of the page instead of within it.<p>That being said, the tokens are basically worthless. This is not what the digital advertising industry wants and Brave is not going to get any decent advertisers with this. They'll end up with the same shady affiliate/performance marketers running CPA ads currently infesting all the 'content recommendation' widgets.
I think the privacy crowd drawn to Brave couldn't care less what the (current) digital advertising industry wants.<p>Anyone who's been involved in the current ad-tech industry knows it's a total tire fire of fraud, technical incompetence and deep hostility to end-users.<p>Brave's model is very interesting and also a threat to the current ad-tech cesspool, so there should be no surprise to see attempts to misinform people about the model.<p>Brave doesn't replace ads with other ads.<p>Brave is a browser first, with an economic layer that will support all sorts of opt-in economic activity in a privacy-respecting way.<p>The tokens have a market price of more than zero.<p>Advertisers already include brands like Vimeo and Vice, and many within the ad industry appreciate the model Brave is attempting.<p>Using on-device machine learning to deliver relevant ads, while at the same time protecting privacy by not sending that data over the wire is a rather brilliant idea.<p>It certainly remains to be seen what advertisers are convinced to trial this approach, but predictions based on a very wonky understanding of the Brave model aren't particularly interesting.
My understanding is they’ve been taking money “on behalf of creators” who never signed up and pocketing it. That’s reason enough for me to not use the product. Sounds like it could be construed as fraud. Eich got pretty defensive on Twitter and this whole thing came up here before too [2].<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theblockcrypto.com/2018/12/24/brave-browser-is-collecting-donations-on-your-behalf-did-you-know/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theblockcrypto.com/2018/12/24/brave-browser-is-c...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736759" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736759</a>
former user of their product. originally presented to me as a chrome alternative with the ad-block built right into the browser itself and not as a javascript extension. But as the product has evolved, they've changed in ways to monetize it themselves. While they still block ads, they're deciding which ads they want to block now based on how sponsors compensate them. As a bonus, they're throwing you back a bone to put up with their new business model. Brave has inserted itself as a new middleman between the advertisers and web users.
There's a lot of negativity here about brave. But the fact is that the web desperately needs a new financial model, and as far as I can tell brave is a lot further along on that than any other project.<p>Would anyone like to argue that the present web financial model is fine? Or would anyone like to point to someone else who has an alternative that would be workable and is anywhere near usable?<p>And let met add one more point. Any workable alternative is not going to be perfect, so the fact one is not is not, at least alone, a reason to not use it.<p>But again, let me ask all the brave critiques, what is your alternative? And by that I mean that can be used by your average user, not something only a techy can make work.
"Today, there’s no way for users who receive BAT for viewing ads to swap their digital currency for dollars, but Eich says Brave will partner with cryptocurrency exchanges to make that possible."<p>So people can pay to buy tokens but can't sell them, seems legit.
I think what Brave is doing might be misunderstood: it seems like a brilliant take on the current problem facing content creators... I think of Brave as trying to reach a common ground-- help content creators make a profit, put the consumers out of the current dragnet misery. That said, there might still be opportunities for different (not necessarily controversy-free) solutions, like the ones that are set in motion:<p>- Net Neutrality violating deals by ISPs/BigTech.<p>- Users forced to install apps (in a bid to escape the browsers).<p>- Native advertising, where ads are indistinguishable from actual content.<p>...and so on. Is Brave's model any worse [0]? For better or for worse, things will continue to change.<p>[0] IIRC, they have more than 10M installs. I reckon, if they hit 100M or so, they'd be <i>fatal</i> to the ad-networks. I don't see any other tech today wielding that kind of threat? Adblockers might have higher installation numbers, but they don't solve the problems for the content creators, so they are not really the solution to this mess we are in, imo.
I have been using the brave browser for a few months now. I think the concept is great, and possibly one of the best uses for crypto currency. In my case I want to disable ads entirely and use the auto-pay system to pay publishers directly when I read their content. It also has a "tip" button so you can send extra with one click if you really like the content.<p>Edit: There seems to be a ton of negative comments in this thread from people who have never actually used the Brave Browser. I would encourage anyone who is interested to actually install it and try it. The ads section is completely opt-in. The "auto-contribute" and "tips" features can be used without the ads. I feel the "auto-contribute" and "tips" features are what would really appeal to most HN readers.
This seems like one of those ideas that's great in theory but not in practice. I don't care about paying or even being paid when browsing the web...I just want to be left alone.<p>Also this particular implementation is rather shady.<p>See podcast:<p><a href="https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/francis-pouliot-on-the-network-effect-of-money-and-why-tokens-are-scams" rel="nofollow">https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/francis-pouliot-on-th...</a>
So, let me get this straight. If I set up an old computer in the corner and script it to just meander around the web 24/7 using Brave, I can rack up a ton of useless BAT tokens/currency/whatever?
Looks bad to me.<p>I'll be 100% frank: I never want to look at another advertisement again and I'm ok if the entire economy tanks because of it.
They've literally selected for a userbase of people who dislike advertising enough to go out of their way to find and use a largely unknown browser.<p>I doubt that the people who downloaded it to avoid advertising will sign up for this without paying them a lot.
I don't think that this kind of thing is the solution, but when I click on a link on HN, in a browser with no blockers installed, and I see this - <a href="https://ibb.co/jhDfC5k" rel="nofollow">https://ibb.co/jhDfC5k</a> I can't help but believe the web is broken, and we need some sort of fix.
I find these kind of bait-and-switches to be really tasteless. Company X is created originally with the sole purpose of blocking ads and privacy trackers - and then decides to monetize using some kind of "good" ad. (I'm looking at you, AdBlock Plus.)
This idea is very interesting. It reminds me of how YouTube shares their ad revenue with content creators, and that in turn grows YouTube's network and business.<p>Similarly, the act of web browsing is content creation. It's data creation. Very valuable data.<p>If users are currently blocking ads in their power, why not entice them back by allowing them to make an appropriate amount of money from the data that only they have the power to give to others? 'Sell your data.'<p>The more one browsed or shared of their data, the more one would get paid. It's simple business.<p>It sounds like a model that would bring diversity to the economy.
I started using Brave a few weeks ago. Not because of privacy concerns - mainly out of curiosity.<p>One thing I did NOT expect is the noticeably faster performance. (Presumably due to the lack of ad content loading.)<p>This is a big deal at my house. We turned off wired Internet service to save money during a job search. (There's only one HS vendor in our neighborhood. (And this is in Austin. Go figure.) We're tethering our phones and foregoing any high-bandwidth use cases.<p>Has anybody published performance benchmarks?
According to the article, Eich will pay you in a "cryptocurrency" which cannot be exchanged for cash.<p>> Brave will give users a 70 percent cut of its advertising revenue, which Eich estimates could work out to about $5 a month. Brave will pay users with its own bitcoin-style "cryptocurrency” called Basic Attention Tokens or BAT, which has traded for as little as 12 cents and as much as 46 cents over the past 12 months, according to CoinMarketCap. Today, there’s no way for users who receive BAT for viewing ads to swap their digital currency for dollars, but Eich says Brave will partner with cryptocurrency exchanges to make that possible.
Brave Browser on Android has been my goto since 2017. It's the Chrome browser, but with an adblocker, which obviously the main Chrome app doesn't support.<p>That said, I really don't like this scheme. Paying users with a worthless e-coin while putting your own ads on top of blocked ads? Why would site owners opt in to this? So they can monitor 2 different ad systems present on their site?<p>Not to mention, the conversion probability of a user who blocks ads is much lower than that of someone who sees ads daily. So how much would you really be earning by serving ads to people who specifically downloaded an adblocking browser?
FTFY: <i>The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Watch the Ads</i><p>If you do not want to watch any ads on the Internet, period, here's nothing the Brave browser can offer you than uBlock Origin cannot.
I'm a fan of Brave's mission, and the browser itself is great (basically Chromium but faster), but the practice of hiding publisher's ads but showing their own, which may or may not end up compensating the publisher, seems fairly unethical.<p>I think a couple things would make it less objectionable and more awesome:<p>1. don't block verifiably "clean" ads by default, which basically means lightweight, no JavaScript, etc. Something like AMP for ads. If a publisher wants to show their own ads, given them a reasonable way to do so without buying into the whole centralized Brave/BAT system.<p>2. don't allow users to keep the money they "earn" from viewing the replacement ads. Ideally hold it in an escrow smart contract that automatically sends it to a charity if the publisher doesn't claim it after a certain amount of time.<p>3. come up with a way for publishers to easily allow users to pay per-article. I don't pay for a WSJ subscription but occasionally I want to read an article. Let me easily pay, say, $0.25 per article, otherwise I'll continue to find ways around your paywall.
I'm still waiting for Brendan Eich to apologize for donating $1k to the campaign to to pass Prop 8 which held up same sex marriage in California for five years.
Brave got to where it is because Brendan Eich is the face of it.<p>Everything I've seen about the browser seems tied to him, and generally his interactions with people seem testy and confrontational.<p>It's ironic that Google owns the browser and ad network. Brave wants to change that by creating a new browser and ad network. But until they can make brave less tied to him it'll be hard.
I stopped using Brave because of this exchange: <a href="https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1118689481777766400" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1118689481777766400</a><p>>Our value add is free speech. A free speech browser. With a free speech app store. With free speech money. (Bitcoin.) We don’t care about saving advertising. We care about saving free expression. Fundamental difference. Fundamental USP.<p>Edit: Not talking about anyone's politics here, I'm talking about Brave's focus on advertising - not end user's freedom.