Comment by miedpo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by miedpo | Hacker News Reader

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So I feel as if the author is missing the point.

Of course brave markets to you with ads. That's the entire point of the web browser. To ad-block, but then to replace it with a suitable privacy protecting alternative to the point that Brave (and everyone else) has no idea which ads you were served and what your browsing history is. The entire point is to mot just be an ad blocker, but to be private, and to provide a workable alternative to the ads that track us on websites.

Furthermore... brave lists on their website what they collect in analytics programs. And... it's not much. They also send the answers in what they call 'low resolution', which basically means multiple choice with ranges making it a lot harder to identify you compared to a specific number. Sure, it's not no tracking at all, but it's probably pretty close to the least you can get to serve relevant ads while serving a general populous.

It is true that it'd be nice if they forked off Chromium at some point so they are less in Google's hands. We can all use more of that.

So, at least for me, this kinda falls on deaf ears. It's missing the point as to why Brave does what it does.

I feel the author is on point. Brave is all about marketing and surfing the privacy wave to make profit.

Take a look at https://brave.com/brave-ads/

Brave goal is to acquire as much users as possible to sell them to advertisers. They are no different from Google. Might as well use Chrome with ublock origin and farm crypto on your own.

Well I mean, yes, they want their ads to succeed (that's how they can offer a product for free). I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

What matters to me is how much data they collect and how they use it. It seems pretty clear to me that they go out of their way to collect less data, and try to be very privacy concious about it.

Do you think they are lying about that? I personally don't, and the code is there for us to audit (the only closed source part of the browser is the part that guarantees it's a human not a bot viewing the ads as far as I know). So I think it's pretty safe to call them much better than Google and their revenue model is certainly a lot more stable than Firefox's.

The difference is that with Brave you are rewarded for your attention to these ads. That idea has some merit I think, regardless of how it's implemented in Brave.

I think the key difference is that user data are never shared with a third party, not even Brave. All the ad matching logic is done in client so data doesn’t leave my machine.

This is a big difference so using Brave vs Chrome doesn’t result in a company having a record of every site browsed.

The privacy/tracking aspect of Braves Ads (which you don't have to use) seems to be way, way better than Google Adsense. It's like comparing the good ol' fixed "image banner + link" vs Adsense. They're both ads, but one is better than the other.

And then you have Chrome sending data directly to Google, the auto logins, dark patterns, etc, which you don't get with Brave or Vivaldi.

I find it funny that people say this when this is pretty much exactly what FLOC is - the browser choosing your interests and deciding which interests to send to the ad server - but without the "show ads on every website and hold the profits from website owners until they claim it".

> deciding which interests to send to the ad server

I was looking at their media kit[0]. They link to a presentation[1] which mentions that the ads are sent to the browser and then the browser itself picks the ones that should be shown to the user.

If this is really the case, then the browser isn't sending that information to the ad server.

[0] https://brave.com/brave-ads/assets/Brave_Media_Kit.pdf

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEj5ZiQohJc

This wouldn’t work for an ad network as big as Google’s, and would further centralize who can serve ads to users (something Google can’t get away with like Brave can).

> This wouldn’t work for an ad network as big as Google’s

Yeah, maybe. I was just pointing out that it doesn't send the user's preferences to a server.

>The privacy/tracking aspect of Braves Ads (which you don't have to use) seems to be way, way better than Google Adsense

Exactly, "seems". Once again, good marketing from the Brave team. Heck, they even sponsored chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura on his Twitch stream.

Can you target users via Brave Ads like you can with Adwords/Adsense? If I understood correctly (I might be wrong - hence the "seems"), you can't because they're not doing anything close to what Google does.

I guess my point is that not all tracking or ads are the same. You can track clicks and views of a banner without profiling users across multiple sites and apps, learn all you can, and then let advertisers target them.

The ad industry isn't going away, if you're thinking of a world in the future sans ads. With the Brave's model, at least you are able to make some profit for yourself.

It's not utopian, but works from a capitalist's standpoint. And a lot of real users like it!

> They are no different from Google.

Brave lets you turn off the ads. They also pay you cryptocurrency if you decide to turn them on.

Not sure if I'm fully behind that comment, but it kind of raises an important point. If you want a freer web based on some kind of business, and not a non-profit/charity (and often a shaky one like Mozilla, financed mainly by Google)... this business has to function in some realistic way. (This is largely orthogonal to the open source/free - proprietary axis (which doesn't really exist in web browsers anymore). You should be able to sell/monetize free software.)

I, for one, wouldn't complain if some financially solvent (self-sustaining, money-making), reasonably ethical and non-exploitative web browser existed (the same for search engine, OS etc.). In the economic system that we have it could be more efficient in marketing -> market share among privacy-unaware people and so on.

So maybe we should strive to have a reasonable, analytic discussion what business practices are acceptable (rationally, if not emotionally at first glance) and which are not. This does not mean that we should just eat up whatever "privacy entrepreneurs" think of. But the tone of TFA feels a little less convincing because of the sprinkling of phrases like "their shitty program", like expecting you've already made up your mind.

The issue is that Brave's "point" is a self-defeating motive. It wants to rid the internet of ads by... creating more amicable ads? Furthermore, the proceeds from said ads almost never benefit the creators of the content, meaning that Brave has effectively created an ulterior economy adjacent to the internet. Great, just what we needed, Another Competing Standard.

Nobody in the ads industry wants this, and a good 90% of the privacy sector is watching Brave in horror. Creators will make less money and be exclusively paid in a fiat currency, which probably won't appeal to anyone either. If nobody can reconcile Brave's existence, it will always be a second-class citizen on the web, even if it is forked from Chrome.

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