Mozilla founder unveils Bitcoin-based micropayments system for users, publishers

I think advertisers should pay me directly to show me some ads. That would incentivise them to show me just ads that have non-zero probability of succeeding.<p>Every user could decide, how much information about himself he shares with advertiser (even up to eyetracking with webcam if user wants) and how high he prices adspace before his eyes. Advertisers could filter out whom they would like to serve their ads based on the price and information user was willing to disclose and past success of the ads that were presented to him.<p>If we agree that ads are good then most targeted ads that us as much information each user is willing to share are the best ones. If we agree that ads are bad, why not just ban them altogether and replace them with one single directory of stuff and stuff providers where customer would go to when he needs some stuff.

I would switch to Brave immediately except for extensions like Lastpass and Vimium are simply too integral to abandon, however that may change [0].<p>Ultimately, advertising is a form of inefficiency both for the end-users and producers. Perfect world, user&#x27;s are aware of products and services they do&#x2F;could&#x2F;would want without annoying grabs for their attention while producer&#x27;s can either reduce prices or focus capital elsewhere. Finding models that successfully reduce advertising inefficiencies is better for everyone. Consider how much better the internet is than television and print newspapers&#x2F;magazines where you actually pay to consume what contains a substantial amount of advertisement (over 1&#x2F;4 for television).<p>Because advertisement is a necessary efficiency I don&#x27;t think just blocking advertisements is really a solution. For now, some model of efficient advertisement is better than the growing number of bloated and data gathering websites out there. I don&#x27;t see any of the other browser vendors making efforts to move this forward.<p>Yes, a new browser is annoying and then again perhaps we wouldn&#x27;t need one if Mozilla hadn&#x27;t fired Eich for his political contributions?<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;brave&#x2F;browser-laptop&#x2F;issues&#x2F;253" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;brave&#x2F;browser-laptop&#x2F;issues&#x2F;253</a>

I find it hard that people are going to change their primary browser (a big ask) and post for content, when they can simply continue use their existing browser, and install an extension ublock origin). Maybe brave plans in having extensions as well?

A browser that accepts payments that only a tiny fraction of users know how to use or trust (bitcoin)...for a very technical subset of the market (demographic), for which this problem doesn&#x27;t really exist. Outlook not great.

To me this concept seems like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flattr.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flattr.com&#x2F;</a> with bitcoin.<p>Flattr is stagnant at best, maybe Brave will do better though.

For non-rival goods (which are increasingly common, since copying bits is cheap), Brave seems like the right kind of model -- users pay an overall tax, and it gets parceled out to creators proportionally [1] to usage.<p>[1] or some other function-- e.g. proportionally to sqrt(usage), in order to flatten out power-law returns, and reward creators who make it but aren&#x27;t in the top 10.

Side note: I thought it was a side project of the ING bank because of the orange lion: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ing.com&#x2F;Over-ons&#x2F;Onze-berichten&#x2F;Geschiedenis-van-ING&#x2F;Geschiedenis-ING-leeuw.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ing.com&#x2F;Over-ons&#x2F;Onze-berichten&#x2F;Geschiedenis-van-...</a><p>I hope this wont cause any trouble for Brave.

This is a really interesting model and I hope it catches on with many more similar initiatives.<p>Both ads and search engines benefit greatly from greater user profiling. The path I see for a privacy-sane future is a system where users get to have a personal program (like the Brave Browser) that manages their information and acts like a privacy firewall for third party applications.<p>I look forward to the day when I can search for something without Google and the likes trying to profile me to give me better results but simply ask in a anonymized and privacy conscious way a contextualized search query from my personal private information broker program.<p>The Brave ad system looks like a first step in the right direction where users get to control their information.

ill say this again. Brave is the best concept executed in the worst way. i tweeted until eich actually responded just hoping they would take a dif tact.<p>a browser is almost 100% a commodity wrapped around a search engine. they cant be decoupled. forking chrome and installing some security makes 0 difference to isers.<p>you have to build top notch security but dont expect users to care. fork apache products &amp; elastic and build a personalizef search engine and browser. let people use your platform to transact and sell optimization and information, then the alt currency piece will make sense.<p>still like brave though. opera of 2016

What I don&#x27;t fully understand: are they going to replace google ads with their own ads? Is it even legal? There are battles whether blocking ads is legal, but replacing someone&#x27;s ads with your own ads looks like potential trouble. Imagine if Google Chrome will adopt that approach.<p>And if they won&#x27;t replace other ads but only interact with their partners, I don&#x27;t see how that&#x27;ll work. There are billions of websites, unless they got some really big contracts, they won&#x27;t make it.<p>Interesting project, anyway.

I think this is a brillaint idea. It&#x27;s not that I don&#x27;t like paying for content. It&#x27;s that ads on the web have become so intrusive, overbearing, comumbersome, and, well, BAD, that it has destroyed the browsing experience. There are no controls. I don&#x27;t need to be paid, as some have suggested, to be given ads. However I do want more control over the ads displayed, how they&#x27;re displayed, and who benefits. I love this model and I can&#x27;t wait to direct some money to better causes.

I think if people want to donate money to the creators of content they should install the Autotip browser extension. It works the same way as Brave, except it sends the tip on-chain. If you read Brave&#x27;s documentation, the architecture of their tipping system has the Brave organization as the midleman who takes a cut of all donations. Because autotip is completely on-chain, your tip arrives to the tipee without anyone taking a cut.

I can&#x27;t really see this being good for any publisher or advertiser, you&#x27;re cutting in two new parties (Brave &amp; the user) and the CPM will tank due to poor targeting. They&#x27;d be better off blocking it and hoping it dies off before adoption.<p>Maybe users will flock to it to earn a few pennies in ad replacement mode? Certainly not for the oppty to pay for ad-free mode.

It&#x27;s not clear to me if they [include](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;brave&#x2F;browser-ios&#x2F;blob&#x2F;6f4a0c7175990f18bf162333f76da41e799b939b&#x2F;brave&#x2F;src&#x2F;BraveApp.swift#L6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;brave&#x2F;browser-ios&#x2F;blob&#x2F;6f4a0c7175990f18bf...</a>) Fabric analytics module into their deployments on the iTunes store. If they do, I think it&#x27;s really ironic for a browser touting anonymity and non-tracking to include a tracking module from Twitter, even if &quot;only for crash monitoring&quot;.<p>In that context, it&#x27;s hard to take any of their efforts without a pinch of salt.

Wow, they are up to a hard problem. Freedom won and people can block anything they want, how to persuade them buying into our ad network. Seriously? Pay us not to show ads, is this some new kind of ransomware? &gt;We love browsers What does this even mean? Then continuing with how ads work in Brave. Selling how they care about users and being pro ads don&#x27;t match, sorry. It is sneaky and disingenuous and defaults you to being a bad actor. Even when you can opt out ads, all these pro ads nonsense shoveled in your face, makes me want to help kill ads more quickly, not just seeing them agonizing.

I didn&#x27;t see estimates of costs for ad-free page views. There&#x27;s discussion about letting users prioritize sites for support. But nothing about how much sites will want to display ad-free content.

I still don&#x27;t really get it. Why would i as publisher care? If it gives me some extra BTC without me having anything to do, ok. Sure why not. But it sounds like i need some obscure verification process and then earn a laughtable small sum. I rather use non blockable ads with affiliate links.

Offtiopic, but I think it is a real shame that the Gecko API is so unstable that even a Mozilla founder won&#x27;t use Gecko for a browser!

Nah...I think I will just stick with my free Ad blocker plus because the minimum ads that I do get are really not a problem.

Nice idea but Bitcoin is no good except as a proof of concept. I have to be able to use Paypal to make this practical.

Damn it this is silly. Just give me a way to send Matt Taibbi a quarter.

Some feedback:<p>1. You really need to remove that picture of Eich. It&#x27;s just bad. We get it, he&#x27;s a visionary who wears suits. Please don&#x27;t downvote me, it&#x27;s legitimate criticism. It&#x27;s vain and out of touch. A picture of him is fine but one that is less market-y, more down to earth, isn&#x27;t trying as hard.<p>2. The ad-experience-oriented value-add over existing browsers is too low. The vast majority of people just want a fast&#x2F;stable&#x2F;free browser to search google and browse Facebook. For the most part they aren&#x27;t conscious of what browser they are using. When it comes to web-based tracking&#x2F;advertising they either don&#x27;t care or don&#x27;t know to care. It&#x27;s sad but inescapably true.<p>Additionally, for those who do care about privacy and&#x2F;or are aware that their browser is a program they can change, they definitely don&#x27;t want to pay for an ad-free experience. Why would someone pay for ad-free Brave when they can use ad-free Firefox&#x2F;Chrome for free? If you&#x27;re going to argue that they can make money with Brave, how much money are we talking? I&#x27;d guess dollars if not cents, is that worth it?<p>I really hope the Brave team can realize their project is a mistake before learning the hard way. There is definitely a more successful thing out there that they could work on.