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Comment by arjbah | Hacker News Reader

What're you talking about? Their content creator program is completely voluntary, and their business model (and the Basic Attention Token) is designed to serve content creators, and is not driven by ads or data collection (like Chrome is).

Brave is the only hope I see for a strictly "privacy-by-default" browser, which is not powered by an ad-based business model. Brendan Eich isn't a dumbell, he knows what is wrong with broswer-based privacy and what needs fixing.

PS: I use Brave on Android and the experience has been better than Chrome.

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Brave has multiple layers to actually help content-creators. It is beyond me how anyone can frame it in the opposite direction.

Layer 1: Blocking everything that is not helpful for the user (i.e. being a browser that is a user-agent first and foremost), thus doing essentially the same as content-blocking extensions or other content-blocking browsers (Opera mini, UC)

In this way, there is nothing to be outraged about, since this is a reaction to a complete lack of respect for human dignity and the state of the web on the side of the publishers. The only thing that is parasitic are the ad-networks that pray on vulnerable people. It is easy to overlook that for years browsers have ignored the user so that many gullible people nowadays think that this is how things are supposed to be, but just like ad-tech, users can lobby against the state of things with chosing their software.

Layer 2: Allowing privacy-friendly ads, as opt-in, to help publishers get money and get free from the parasitic ad-networks at the same time

Layer 3: A future-proof patreon like payment network to help publishers survive the ad-backlash, and connect readers and publishers on a new, voluntary, respectful level while also being privacy-friendly.

Honestly I can't see how anything of this is problematic for anyone, except for Brave's rivals (Google, Facebook, Criteo, etc.)

I believe most of the FUD is, in fact, coming from those rivals.

Brave proposes cutting out a bunch of middlemen through the token market and making the browser something like an anticheat system: opt in and it does its best to serve quality ads while preventing click fraud.

There are a lot of details in the execution that matter to make this competitive, but the basic idea resolves many of the current conflicts of interest that make adtech a miserable market.

It's astounding how many willing employees Google has to comment voluntarily, out of their own awe of the mothership, in favor of anything Alphabet does. They're so many, it's like machine learning, Google barely has to try or know what's going on.

I always have to remind myself how poisoned the well of tech commentary has become with behemoths like FB, GOOG, AMZN.

    > is not driven by ads

One entity pays BAT and the other gets paid BAT to watch ads.

Pretty dishonest to say "not driven by ads."

We don't even have ads out of user trials or paying yet, so he was not dishonest. Ads are opt-in, we have to win users over to get any revenue share to us -- and it's always <= what the user gets.

Note how we take a much smaller (Patreon sized) 5% off the anonized contribution flow, so if we had enough ad-averse users contributing, we'd be ok just on that basis. It's not all about ads, but no one can count out ads right now -- $100B gross spend in US this year on digital advertising!

Edit: Sorry for not following the rules

  Honestly I can't see how anything of
  this is problematic for anyone

Perhaps they heard about Brave blocking ads and... replacing them with different ads [1] that Brave makes money from.

That pretty much means the ads-are-cancer crowd don't like them, and the adblockers-are-theft crowd don't like them either.

[1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3284076/web-browsers/b... https://www.wired.com/2016/04/brave-software-publishers-resp...

Layer 3 implies that there is some system that tracks user to reward content creator according. How is this not a tracking system?

Without knowing the implementation details it looks like Brave is (1) removing all the competition, (2) except the ones that play nice, (3) force content creators to buy into their system.

I think it's good that they are trying to find a solution for content creators to monetize their content. Instead on making suppositions on the OP, why not address those points? Why is using Brave not like building the tracking even further into the browser?

At least go to brave.com and read the FAQ. The tracking is anonymized.

Of course Brave is removing the competition within their own product, that's how it usually works in a free market.

What happens to the small sites that don't track users, but display some ads to keep the servers running? Hope that they get "rewarded with BAT's accordingly to the users attention" ?

Btw, I'm guessing you are a Brave employee, that many Buzzwords in one comment would otherwise be quite astonishing, how does Brave guarantee a users privacy? I assume brave "phones home" in order to replace ads with ads Brave gets compensated for.

Also, I read a lot about a transparent way funds are distributed among publishers, where is the code?

I don't havy any connection to Brave.

I just see the potential, and want Brave to succeed.

> "What happens to the small sites that don't track users, but display some ads to keep the servers running? Hope that they get "rewarded with BAT's accordingly to the users attention" ?"

What happens to them nowadays, now that most users block ads? They struggle, and they will continue struggling. Brave won't change any of that.

PS: I guess I should ask Brave to hire me for PR

> They should hire me

The brilliance of creating a utility token like BAT is so that the creator (Brave) can get rich off speculation, and a horde of people will defend the creator online because they have a couple bucks invested.

It's one of the most insufferable parts of anything to do with cryptocurrency and it's why it's hard to have honest discussion.

I certainly don't think it's necessary nor useful to try and label you as a shill. It's just that BAT is one of the reasons why it's hard to take Brave seriously, and it's why you shouldn't be so dismissive of people who raise issues with Brave much less call them shills of ad-tech or rival browsers (as you did).

Can you provide citation to most users blocking ads? Also note that many people browse on mobile.

While I "technically" have a conflict of interest, when brave launched I had some concerns about how and when creators were paid, and the responses amounted to brave stealing from them unless they signed up.

Unlike patreon (or Google contributor), if the page doesn't sign up, brave still replaces the ads, but they end up keeping the money.

In those cases, their business model is much closer to a Comcast than an uBlock, and it certainly appears like strong arming creators/sites into joining, or forcing them to forgo revenue and donate it to the browser. If you can't see why that would be upsetting to content creators, idk.

That's a very interesting point.

I think there are some subtle, but important, differences though.

Brave users by default block all ads. So those users won't see the ads on content creators sites anyway. Content creators shouldn't feel outraged towards those more than they can feel outraged about any other ad-blocking users.

Some of those Brave users might opt-in for ads that are promised not to compromise their privacy.

So I totally understand that some creators might feel strong-armed if they already use ads. But they shouldn't feel any worse than when faced with ad-blocking users. They do have the chance to opt-in and rely on privacy-respecting ads and get some revenue that they otherwise wouldn't get.

I guess if there was an alternative ad model that was less intrusive, and content creators relied on it, they might have a much stronger reason to be upset. I'm not aware of many creators that use privacy-friendly ads, and it seems like Brave is at least attempting to create this model?

No affiliation with Brave whatsoever. Only found out about it a couple of weeks ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15730294

See this comment and the surrounding chain.

Assuming I'm a creator, the ussue is that brave is monetizing my content and I get nothing unless I opt in to brave, instead of the system that I already have set up to monetize myself.

Ad blockers don't make money by replacing the ads. Brave does. That's why it's more similar to an isp hijacking ads than ad blocking, it's just happening in the browser instead of in the network.

Brave isn't making money if its users choose to block ads.

Users now have the choice to make money from opting-in to ads. But only ads that protect their privacy. Brave enables this, and takes a smaller cut than the user.

Sites choosing to monetize themselves are doing so at the expense of the user, whose privacy is compromised in the process.

I don't think Brave or the User is hijacking things here more than you can say that monetizing sites are hijacking user privacy.

Monetizing sites don't give the user the option to pay for content via other means, or ads that protect their privacy (or even the awareness of what transaction takes place). At least Brave and its users are giving sites the option to get revenue here (revenue that otherwise would be lost if users opt for ad-blocking instead).

N.B. Looking at [0], Brendan Eich stated that "We don't replace ads on publisher sites without that publisher as partner; they get 70% of the gross revenue, user gets 15%.".

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18155869

>Brave isn't making money if its users choose to block ads.

Correct. I don't disagree at all with this statement. In the context of just blocking ads, Brave is doing approximately the same thing as any number of other browsers or ad blockers which aren't really objectionable.

>Sites choosing to monetize themselves are doing so at the expense of the user, whose privacy is compromised in the process.

Sure, ok.

>Sites choosing to monetize themselves are doing so at the expense of the user, whose privacy is compromised in the process.

If as Eich claims, they have permission from all publishers, than this is more ok. But if not, the difference is that in one case, the reader, the ad company, and the publisher all get something of value (an article, money & data, money respectively). But if Brave is actually replacing ads without publisher consent, then the user and brave get something of value, and the publisher gets nothing.

>Monetizing sites don't give the user the option to pay for content via other means, or ads that protect their privacy (or even the awareness of what transaction takes place). At least Brave and its users are giving sites the option to get revenue here (revenue that otherwise would be lost if users opt for ad-blocking instead).

Depends, Brave actually explored an option to monetize in a patreon like fashion [0]. Which sounds great, but there's a huge caveat that makes me less inclined to believe Eich elsewhere. Specifically, The "Payments" tool allows any user to donate to any creator or site. Then Brave sends an email to the webmaster address for that internet site (which often doesn't match the publisher: think subdomains). Then, if people continue donating and the site owner never registers, brave will eventually just keep any money donated to the site[1].

In other words, if I run a popular hosted blog (yes these exist, and are probably some of the best candidates for patreon-like funding), I can't actually get verified because I don't control the DNS records for my site, and I will have to sit back and watch as people unknowingly donate money to Brave instead of me.

They then market this as

>Brave even lets you contribute to your favorite creators automatically

So color me suspicious.

[0]: https://brave.com/publishers/#getverified

[1]: https://brave.com/faq-payments/#unclaimed-funds

You can assume whatever you want, but arguing that people who disagree with you have ties to the ad-tech business is explicitly prohibited by the site guidelines.

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