Brave Introduces Brave Today, the Privacy-Preserving News Reader(brave.com)
brave.com
Brave Introduces Brave Today, the Privacy-Preserving News Reader
https://brave.com/announcing-brave-today/
162 comments
Not sure there are necessarily third parties involved, but given Brave's track record of lying about not tracking users (whilst actually inserting affiliate links onto websites they visited and collecting revenues and data from them) as well as lying about donations they solicited going to the parties whose name they solicited them in, I don't see why any privacy-conscious person should trust them
Passing an affiliate code doesn’t mean they’re tracking the individual, it’s just meant to get credit for sales they’ve driven. Affiliates just get a payout of commission from the merchant, there’s no data-sharing beyond that. Affiliate cookies can be cleared by wiping browser cookies whereas Google’s data-mining (as present in Chrome) can’t be stopped.
Affiliate marketing is means to generate revenue and a better than taking massive payouts from Google, which is the primary funding source for Mozilla Firefox.
As a privacy conscious user I’d rather see a browser that be sustained without Google’s support. Given the co-creator of Mozilla (and .JS) is behind Brave, I trust it more than the fly by night browser.
Affiliate marketing is means to generate revenue and a better than taking massive payouts from Google, which is the primary funding source for Mozilla Firefox.
As a privacy conscious user I’d rather see a browser that be sustained without Google’s support. Given the co-creator of Mozilla (and .JS) is behind Brave, I trust it more than the fly by night browser.
Brave is absolutely dependent on Google, now and in the future, continuing to release their millions of dollars of engineering effort on Chromium to the public for free. If Google were to stop updating Chromium, Brave could re-architect onto... what, exactly? Firefox becomes a less viable competitor every time Mozilla issues a press release. Perhaps they could revert to Webkit, which would make them 100% dependent on Apple instead. It's sad, but there is no way for a modern browser vendor to be independent of FAANG.
That's like saying using linux is being dependent on redhat and intel. Big contributors to Chromium include Microsoft, Samsung and many other giant companies. If Google abandons Chromium, it will still be maintained by other companies as too many in the industry rely on it.
Chromium isn't developed by Google alone; it has many contributors. Brave doesn't rely on Google. If they stopped contributing to Chromium, we could continue without them.
Chromium seems like one of the least-likely-to-be-killed Google projects.
On the subject of Mozilla, they could very well integrate a news reader through Pocket as it already has my interests with label!
Pocket now shows recommendations base on popular saves, but a proper news aggregator for daily news could serve Mozilla and its customers well considering Pocket is tightly integrated within Firefox.
A banner of Firefox currently shows that 703 million links were saved on Pocket this year alone.
Pocket now shows recommendations base on popular saves, but a proper news aggregator for daily news could serve Mozilla and its customers well considering Pocket is tightly integrated within Firefox.
A banner of Firefox currently shows that 703 million links were saved on Pocket this year alone.
> . Affiliates just get a payout of commission from the merchant, there’s no data-sharing beyond that.
Consider that LTT shows a spreadsheet of all the Amazon items bought of a specific item in their video "I can SEE what you Bought Online", and it includes the quantity, price, and date in which it was bought:
https://youtu.be/gHHyqoU8sQM?t=310
Consider that LTT shows a spreadsheet of all the Amazon items bought of a specific item in their video "I can SEE what you Bought Online", and it includes the quantity, price, and date in which it was bought:
https://youtu.be/gHHyqoU8sQM?t=310
In what sense have they driven the sales? By being the browser?
You went to a site, and in this case they facilitated the browsing to the website :)
It’s no different than the terrible browser addons that claim they’re helping you find coupon, while stuffing affiliate cookies into your session to generate commission (and also selling your data)
It’s no different than the terrible browser addons that claim they’re helping you find coupon, while stuffing affiliate cookies into your session to generate commission (and also selling your data)
No different than something terrible is also terrible...
It's a perfectly legitimate way for a browser vendor to generate revenue and far from the most intrusive collection of data on internet usage, but you can't honestly claim to be a privacy conscious browser that removes all tracking and fingerprinting codes whilst surreptitiously inserting codes for the specific purpose of enabling third parties to send you money based on use of your browser. The 'sorry, but we thought leaving the source code for people to scrutinise was the appropriate level of disclosure' attitude doesn't exactly inspire confidence they won't make a worse 'mistake' next time either.
If you really want to avoid being tracked, you probably want a more robust solution than simply choosing the browser vendor that's least honest about its monetisation strategy, and you're particularly unlikely to want to be getting browser history based feed recommendations from your browser vendor's CDN anyway
If you really want to avoid being tracked, you probably want a more robust solution than simply choosing the browser vendor that's least honest about its monetisation strategy, and you're particularly unlikely to want to be getting browser history based feed recommendations from your browser vendor's CDN anyway
That doesn't make any sense. The code from affiliate sales has nothing to do with you, the end user. It identifies the affiliate, in this case Brave. There is no user information there. Their claim then is in perfectly good faith.
I think you're confusing BAT with the affiliate links which are two distinct things Brave has done. BAT I agree with you on there is still tracking there or otherwise they wouldn't be able to attribute the money to you. Affiliate links though do not have the same connotation and is the subject under discussion in this comment chain.
I think you're confusing BAT with the affiliate links which are two distinct things Brave has done. BAT I agree with you on there is still tracking there or otherwise they wouldn't be able to attribute the money to you. Affiliate links though do not have the same connotation and is the subject under discussion in this comment chain.
The code doesn't identify the user as an individual, but it does inform Brave when its users visit particular third party websites (if they use its URL bar autocomplete), much like many supposedly anonymised analytics services privacy-conscious users often prefer to block.
And the actual discussion subject I raised isn't the horrors of affiliate links and affiliates accessing metadata on trends in their user base's access to certain third party websites so much as Brave's history of "mistakes". The BAT might require considerably more storage of personal data, but at least its existence isn't a secret
And the actual discussion subject I raised isn't the horrors of affiliate links and affiliates accessing metadata on trends in their user base's access to certain third party websites so much as Brave's history of "mistakes". The BAT might require considerably more storage of personal data, but at least its existence isn't a secret
Please see my response to your list of "mistakes". You claimed that Brave tracked users, modified links on pages, and more. All of that, without exception, is false. Brave (the company) doesn't know what sites you visit. Brave is considered the most private browser in terms of phoning home: https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-deemed-most-private-brow.... Please feel free to inspect your own network traffic from the browser via Fiddler.
Grimm1(1)
Affiliate links were in the address bar and not injected into the webpage. You are spreading lies.
You are correct and it's equally as awful.
Equally as harmless. The affiliate codes don’t give anyone any information that they don’t already have (if you’re one of whatever tiny fraction of users edit their user agent strings, why the heck would you choose to accept the the URL suggestions‽ And if you really care about strict privacy, why would you use a Chromium-based browser in the first place, when invasive features have been discovered in Chromium’s codebase long after they were added before?). The sheer stupidity of the toxic FUD people spread about Brave makes me angry in its behalf (despite never using it beyond a test run myself).
Showing suggestions in the browser isn't "equally as awful" as injecting them into pages (or modifying links on pages, as was claimed). The intent here was for users of Brave [who also happen to have an interest in product/service x] to support the former with their traffic to the latter. This isn't unethical; it's an clean and privacy-respecting way of supporting an effort.
You're mistaken, or misleading. Brave has never tracked users, and Brave has also never inserted affiliate links into websites. Let's discuss these claims in a bit more depth.
TRACKING
Brave doesn't track users. I invite anybody reading to take a look at their network activity; in fact, I'll sit down and give anybody an introductory walk-through of Telerik Fiddler and show them how to inspect their own network activity, to observe in plain-text what Brave is doing, and with whom it is communicating. I do this regularly, and share results [1]. You don't have to take my word on it either; unaffiliated third-parties have published similar results [2].
[1] https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traff... [2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-deemed-most-private-brow...
AFFILIATE LINKS
Brave has never "inserted affiliate links onto website". This is quite misleading. What Brave did do was offer users who were performing a search from the address bar of the browser a list of suggested results. Among those results, Brave would at times show an affiliate option.
We wrote about this on our blog (and included screenshots) for those interested [3]. Note, no data was involved. No network requests were made. There was no impact to privacy in any way, shape, or form. This was simply a suggestion offered in a drop-down beneath the address bar.
Affiliate links are a clean way for browsers (or any app, really) to generate revenue. Open up Firefox, Vivaldi, or Opera and type 'hacker news' into the address bar. In Firefox, you'll be redirected to https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=hacker+ne... by default. Note the "client=firefox" in the query-string parameter list. In Opera you're sent to https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=hacker+news&sou... by default. Note the "client=opera" and "sourceid=opera" elements.
Brave's mistake was matching a fully-qualified domain name. What we had planned for was showing a set of suggested URLs (some with an affiliate code) when a user searched for something like "binance". We mistakenly showed the same results when the user typed a fully-qualified domain name, like "binance.us" as well. That was unintended, and was corrected within 48 hours of identification.
[3] https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
SOLICITING DONATIONS
Brave is doing something quite different from other browsers; it aims to not only improve security on the Web, but also to offer novel support options to content creators everywhere in a privacy-respecting, and sustainable manner.
Brave ships with a Tipping interface to empower users to send rewards (in the form of Basic Attention Tokens) to content creators. When we launched this model, Brave gave tokens to its users, and users could give those to the sites they visit. When a user tipped a site, the tokens would go to the Creator (if verified), or into a settlement wallet to be claimed at a later date. Brave would reach out to Creators, informing them of rewards (similar to the early days of PayPal).
There were a couple issues here, which you can read about on our blog [4]. One was a UI issue. Brave marked verified domains with a checkmark (similar to Twitter's 'verified' accounts). We didn't have any special mark for non-verified properties. This was naive on our part. We remedied this by explicitly stating the status of the Creator in both cases.
The second problem was allowing tokens to move out of the user's wallet when the Creator wasn't even verified. Personally, I'm incredibly thankful that this issue was found. Under that model, tons of tokens could be dropped into a wallet, and never claimed by anybody. In the update we produced within a couple days), this model was changed. Now unverified creators wouldn't receive anything; instead, tips issued to an unverified creator would stay on your device, and be retried for up to 90 days. If the Creator verified within that timeframe, they'd collect the tips. If they didn't, the tips could be sent to somebody else.
Brave never solicited tips for anybody. There was simply a component of the browser which enabled users to send tips to sites and creators they appreciated. Brave's main fault here was with naive UI, and a contribution model which could have resulted in lost tokens. Thankfully, our users caught both issues and we were able to improve the feature quickly.
[4] https://brave.com/rewards-update/
I hope this helps.
TRACKING
Brave doesn't track users. I invite anybody reading to take a look at their network activity; in fact, I'll sit down and give anybody an introductory walk-through of Telerik Fiddler and show them how to inspect their own network activity, to observe in plain-text what Brave is doing, and with whom it is communicating. I do this regularly, and share results [1]. You don't have to take my word on it either; unaffiliated third-parties have published similar results [2].
[1] https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traff... [2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-deemed-most-private-brow...
AFFILIATE LINKS
Brave has never "inserted affiliate links onto website". This is quite misleading. What Brave did do was offer users who were performing a search from the address bar of the browser a list of suggested results. Among those results, Brave would at times show an affiliate option.
We wrote about this on our blog (and included screenshots) for those interested [3]. Note, no data was involved. No network requests were made. There was no impact to privacy in any way, shape, or form. This was simply a suggestion offered in a drop-down beneath the address bar.
Affiliate links are a clean way for browsers (or any app, really) to generate revenue. Open up Firefox, Vivaldi, or Opera and type 'hacker news' into the address bar. In Firefox, you'll be redirected to https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=hacker+ne... by default. Note the "client=firefox" in the query-string parameter list. In Opera you're sent to https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=hacker+news&sou... by default. Note the "client=opera" and "sourceid=opera" elements.
Brave's mistake was matching a fully-qualified domain name. What we had planned for was showing a set of suggested URLs (some with an affiliate code) when a user searched for something like "binance". We mistakenly showed the same results when the user typed a fully-qualified domain name, like "binance.us" as well. That was unintended, and was corrected within 48 hours of identification.
[3] https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
SOLICITING DONATIONS
Brave is doing something quite different from other browsers; it aims to not only improve security on the Web, but also to offer novel support options to content creators everywhere in a privacy-respecting, and sustainable manner.
Brave ships with a Tipping interface to empower users to send rewards (in the form of Basic Attention Tokens) to content creators. When we launched this model, Brave gave tokens to its users, and users could give those to the sites they visit. When a user tipped a site, the tokens would go to the Creator (if verified), or into a settlement wallet to be claimed at a later date. Brave would reach out to Creators, informing them of rewards (similar to the early days of PayPal).
There were a couple issues here, which you can read about on our blog [4]. One was a UI issue. Brave marked verified domains with a checkmark (similar to Twitter's 'verified' accounts). We didn't have any special mark for non-verified properties. This was naive on our part. We remedied this by explicitly stating the status of the Creator in both cases.
The second problem was allowing tokens to move out of the user's wallet when the Creator wasn't even verified. Personally, I'm incredibly thankful that this issue was found. Under that model, tons of tokens could be dropped into a wallet, and never claimed by anybody. In the update we produced within a couple days), this model was changed. Now unverified creators wouldn't receive anything; instead, tips issued to an unverified creator would stay on your device, and be retried for up to 90 days. If the Creator verified within that timeframe, they'd collect the tips. If they didn't, the tips could be sent to somebody else.
Brave never solicited tips for anybody. There was simply a component of the browser which enabled users to send tips to sites and creators they appreciated. Brave's main fault here was with naive UI, and a contribution model which could have resulted in lost tokens. Thankfully, our users caught both issues and we were able to improve the feature quickly.
[4] https://brave.com/rewards-update/
I hope this helps.
A locally run algorithm is spying? Brave is run by the CIA? Are these Google talking points?
I don't trust Brave, and especially Brave CDN. You might choose to, and it is fine.
They don't really have an amazing track record as privacy first company. They do have a proven track record of "trying to monetize users".
They don't really have an amazing track record as privacy first company. They do have a proven track record of "trying to monetize users".
Can you share examples of Brave having a poor privacy record?
I've recently switched to it as my main browser, enjoy using it and have recommended to others who want to opt-out of the Google ecosystem. However, if there are examples of privacy abuse I may revisit.
I've recently switched to it as my main browser, enjoy using it and have recommended to others who want to opt-out of the Google ecosystem. However, if there are examples of privacy abuse I may revisit.
Brave converted urls into affiliate links: https://www.coindesk.com/brave-browsers-affiliate-link-contr...
Vivaldi is a pretty good chromium-based browser, if you want to stay away from Google but still need chromium. I'd still take Firefox any day, though.
Vivaldi is a pretty good chromium-based browser, if you want to stay away from Google but still need chromium. I'd still take Firefox any day, though.
Monitoring users without violating their privacy is the point of Brave. Affiliate links do not violate the integrity or the privacy of the browsing experience. These are great things, it keeps the browser free from cost while still protecting your privacy. It is how they continue to exist without financial support from Google.
We should be careful with the "monitoring users" statement; no user data is sent to Brave. Any "monitoring" is done locally, by the browser itself. The browser doesn't pass user data off to Brave (the company) or any other third parties.
Every Google search/purchase through Firefox that can be attributed back to FF funds Mozilla. No different really.
Brave offered search suggestions [in the UI of the browser]. Our mistake was doing this for fully-qualified domains. We fixed that quickly. As for Vivaldi and Firefox, do me a favor and open either one. Search "hacker news" from the address bar, and check the resulting page.
Firefox: google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=hacker+news
Vivaldi: bing.com/search?FORM=INCOH2&PC=IFJ1&PTAG=ICO-c9d0fc87&q=hacker%20news
Note how both of the browsers you suggested here added affiliate tags onto the URL. In Brave, the user could see the affiliate code before navigating. Not so in the browsers you suggest as "pretty good" and worth taking "any day".
Firefox: google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=hacker+news
Vivaldi: bing.com/search?FORM=INCOH2&PC=IFJ1&PTAG=ICO-c9d0fc87&q=hacker%20news
Note how both of the browsers you suggested here added affiliate tags onto the URL. In Brave, the user could see the affiliate code before navigating. Not so in the browsers you suggest as "pretty good" and worth taking "any day".
Yeah, so Vivaldi or Brave? Is Vivaldi slower than Brave? I used Vivaldi for a while but Brave was so much faster than Vivaldi for me. Could it be because of the loads of history and whatnot in Vivaldi? Maybe it is possible that I could make it much faster by just deleting everything apart from bookmarks.
Edit: I deleted everything apart from cookies. Vivaldi feels much faster now. I think equally as fast as Brave.
Edit: I deleted everything apart from cookies. Vivaldi feels much faster now. I think equally as fast as Brave.
Nevermind, Brave is actually much faster.
>Brave converted urls into affiliate links
True, and they reversed course after (quite fairly) being called out on it.
But, that incident has nothing to do with privacy.
True, and they reversed course after (quite fairly) being called out on it.
But, that incident has nothing to do with privacy.
>In the meantime, Vivaldi added good old, classic RSS reader (and email client)
I still dont understand why RSS isn't part of every browser. In the old days we have problem with syncing. Today most browser bookmark has online backup. You have a bunch of RSS links, that could be saved as Bookmarks / Favourite. The content are simply XML and all inks are synced to all Browsers. You laid them out like in Feedly and that is it.
I could understand email being a lot more difficult, but RSS? Am I missing something?
I still dont understand why RSS isn't part of every browser. In the old days we have problem with syncing. Today most browser bookmark has online backup. You have a bunch of RSS links, that could be saved as Bookmarks / Favourite. The content are simply XML and all inks are synced to all Browsers. You laid them out like in Feedly and that is it.
I could understand email being a lot more difficult, but RSS? Am I missing something?
RSS failed when it became another siphon to pull you onto their site to view ads. (I.e. only putting "above the fold" in the rss feed). Exporting your content nicely structured actively works against the business models of ad-supported sites, and there are no replacements for ad-transaction-supported monetization on the horizon. While Google has control of the market we aren't going to have any decent way of aggregating news.
The concept of having a middleman hiding the source from the destination while also not being able to read the contents (like Tor) is good in principle.
[deleted]
Similar to ODoH, which aims to do the same with DNS.
> We’re using Brave’s new private CDN to fetch RSS feeds anonymously via the browser and the browser’s personalization capabilities to rank the headlines for users with a simple algorithm that will make the experience interesting for everyone.
Can't get much simpler than "chronological", I hope they don't get too fancy with the same black box ordering that's ruined social media for news aggregation.
Can't get much simpler than "chronological", I hope they don't get too fancy with the same black box ordering that's ruined social media for news aggregation.
While we may experiment, it won't ever be a blackbox. The source is always available at github.com/brave/brave-browser and github.com/brave/brave-core. We'll be sure to document the process if it ever changes as well.
Vivaldi looks nice, if I ever do decide to move to chromium I would seriously consider it.
It came a long way. I used firefox from version 2 but with time it felt less like a power user browser, more like a chrome copycat.
Vivaldi has tons of features, with recent additions maybe even too much for average job. The major flaw is, as you mentioned, it is chromium based.
Vivaldi has tons of features, with recent additions maybe even too much for average job. The major flaw is, as you mentioned, it is chromium based.
I'll take chromium based for vivaldi excellent history management.
If only vivaldi had an iPhone app. I need my bookmarks to be available anywhere.
This. They have an app for Android but refuses making one for iOS because of the Webkit requirement from Apple.
That seems very understandable. I think the WebKit requirement will change in the near future though mostly for legal reasons.
If Firefox works on iOS, especially with the extension support... I'm in! I know many people love it but I hate Safari (no need to go into the reasons, it's about the freedom we're talking) and hate that restriction.
I agree with that requirement being silly, but it does limit adoption.
Vivaldi is also proprietary, which should be a dealbreaker for every IT person with half a brain.
Heck, so is Safari. And Chrome.
Brave is open source.
While Chrome is proprietary, Chromium and Brave are not.
If they have expenses but it's free, then you're the product.
I mean, yeah, they said it right in the press release:
> Brave Today is supported by two new commercial offerings: Brave Offers and Promoted Content.
They also said:
> A premium ad-free version of Brave Today will be available soon.
IMHO this is a pretty decent balance. Companies have to capture value from their work somehow. Brave's advertising strategy involves software on the local device using data on the local device to make a decision about what to show the user. (Not an ever expanding privacy invasive cloud-profile of the user).
Additionally, if ads are not your thing, you can always pay for the premium version and everyone still wins!
> Brave Today is supported by two new commercial offerings: Brave Offers and Promoted Content.
They also said:
> A premium ad-free version of Brave Today will be available soon.
IMHO this is a pretty decent balance. Companies have to capture value from their work somehow. Brave's advertising strategy involves software on the local device using data on the local device to make a decision about what to show the user. (Not an ever expanding privacy invasive cloud-profile of the user).
Additionally, if ads are not your thing, you can always pay for the premium version and everyone still wins!
Yeah, I think the idea of just paying and therefor not having data stolen is really nice, and way too few companies do this.
"Data stolen" isn't even remotely relevant here; Brave is built to preclude abuse. This is why we've gone to such great lengths to design the Private CDN in such a way to prevent us and others from knowing who is viewing/requesting what.
Brave is "Can't be evil," as opposed to "don't be evil." We don't even want the capacity to do wrong.
Brave is "Can't be evil," as opposed to "don't be evil." We don't even want the capacity to do wrong.
I love Brave's privacy features but this constant addition of bundled features and services feels more and more like the crappy bundled software you get with a cheap phone or laptop.
I've literally turned off all of their crypto/ad/sponsor features and it's starting to get pretty annoying; every time Brave gets a major update I feel like more crap is bundled that I'll have to hunt down and turn off. Their crypto tips feature added tip buttons on various websites (like Twitter). This is not ok. People would be hugely annoyed if Chrome started adding "Tip with Google Pay" under each tweet.
I get that they're a company and need to make money. Their stance on privacy is awesome but I wish there was a better way to do this. I would pay for Brave+ with none of this bundled stuff and all of the privacy features.
I've literally turned off all of their crypto/ad/sponsor features and it's starting to get pretty annoying; every time Brave gets a major update I feel like more crap is bundled that I'll have to hunt down and turn off. Their crypto tips feature added tip buttons on various websites (like Twitter). This is not ok. People would be hugely annoyed if Chrome started adding "Tip with Google Pay" under each tweet.
I get that they're a company and need to make money. Their stance on privacy is awesome but I wish there was a better way to do this. I would pay for Brave+ with none of this bundled stuff and all of the privacy features.
Exactly. This should all be under an extension that if you haven't selected won't be installed and won't be updated.
I don't understand why you're using Brave then though. Don't get me wrong I think all the stuff you listed is crap I wouldn't want in my browser either but isn't that the whole reason to choose Brave over UnGoogled Chromium?
There are more problems facing the Web than just "Google". Removing Google is good, and necessary, and solves a lot of problems. It's why we excise much of Google and Chromium from our own code-base with each update [1].
Blocking harmful ads and trackers is a necessity; users were already doing it in growing numbers before Brave came along. But this trend, while it yields safer users, cuts into the support given to the sites we visit and love. And asking users to send money to sites isn't necessarily a solid solution either.
So Brave aims to address both issues: 1) User Privacy, and 2) Creator Support. What's interesting about this is that Ads are both the problem and solution. But not in their present form. Presently, ads on the Web harvest user information, auction it off to third-parties, and build up profiles on remote servers, far beyond user control.
Brave's privacy-respecting ad model uses client-side matching against regional catalogs (avoiding fingerprinting) with machine-learning. This model ensures privacy. And when an ad is displayed, 70% of the revenue goes into the user's cryptographically-secured wallet. This is where the second challenge (supporting content creators) comes in. As you browse, the ad-revenue you've generated gets queued up for the sites you visit. The privacy-respecting ads you view are translated into real-world support for the sites you visit.
This is one of the reasons why users prefer Brave. We aren't trying to solve half of the problem; we're trying to reform the Web such that it remains free, equitable, and open.
[1] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
Blocking harmful ads and trackers is a necessity; users were already doing it in growing numbers before Brave came along. But this trend, while it yields safer users, cuts into the support given to the sites we visit and love. And asking users to send money to sites isn't necessarily a solid solution either.
So Brave aims to address both issues: 1) User Privacy, and 2) Creator Support. What's interesting about this is that Ads are both the problem and solution. But not in their present form. Presently, ads on the Web harvest user information, auction it off to third-parties, and build up profiles on remote servers, far beyond user control.
Brave's privacy-respecting ad model uses client-side matching against regional catalogs (avoiding fingerprinting) with machine-learning. This model ensures privacy. And when an ad is displayed, 70% of the revenue goes into the user's cryptographically-secured wallet. This is where the second challenge (supporting content creators) comes in. As you browse, the ad-revenue you've generated gets queued up for the sites you visit. The privacy-respecting ads you view are translated into real-world support for the sites you visit.
This is one of the reasons why users prefer Brave. We aren't trying to solve half of the problem; we're trying to reform the Web such that it remains free, equitable, and open.
[1] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
They do a lot more than remove just Google from Chrome.
Their work on browser fingerprinting is a good example of a feature only available in Brave, to pick just one. This involved implementing mitigation techniques based on the latest research into the topic, something I haven't seen anyone else do.
Their work on browser fingerprinting is a good example of a feature only available in Brave, to pick just one. This involved implementing mitigation techniques based on the latest research into the topic, something I haven't seen anyone else do.
They do still have the ad-blocking stuff built in (although is that much better than Privacy Badger?).
One big plus for me is it syncs with my phone (where I do vastly prefer Brave to Chrome).
One big plus for me is it syncs with my phone (where I do vastly prefer Brave to Chrome).
This. I'm sure all these bundles help keep the metaphorical lights on in the short term, but I can't help but see this as a risk posed to Braves long term adoption.
Not just long term adoption but short term retention. The ads and forceful promoting of crypto and Brave services while browsing are distasteful enough that it leads me to question the validity of the premise on which I first picked them up.
Brave Rewards is a nice idea. But I'm not interested at all. So continually trying to put it back in my face means I trust them less as a whole.
Personally, I'm uninstalling as soon as I shrink the open number of tabs down to zero (which does take me some weeks sometimes!).
Brave Rewards is a nice idea. But I'm not interested at all. So continually trying to put it back in my face means I trust them less as a whole.
Personally, I'm uninstalling as soon as I shrink the open number of tabs down to zero (which does take me some weeks sometimes!).
Yep, I've given up on Brave due to this long ago.
So I've gotta admit, the way they do the CDN privacy is kinda cool. It works like HaveIBeenPwned does passwords almost (they send a subset of articles to all users, and then locally it is chosen, and then for images, they use a reverse proxy in front of a CDN to make sure people can't match an IP to an article). Give it a read, they talk about the technical details. https://brave.com/brave-private-cdn/
Same about the algorithm (see the link in the article in the top). It's kinda nice knowing what algorithm is controlling what you are seeing.
Same about the algorithm (see the link in the article in the top). It's kinda nice knowing what algorithm is controlling what you are seeing.
I just want to say Brave has been an awesome browser. It’s fast, it blocks ads, it upgrades connections to SSL, it’s stable. Runs great on desktop and mobile.
I’ve never once cared or noticed the crypto stuff. It’s a simple toggle off.
We’ve deployed Brave across our entire enterprise worldwide, mobile and desktop.
There is a negative anti-Brave campaign that comes sweeping through every time Brave is posted on HN.
I’ve never once cared or noticed the crypto stuff. It’s a simple toggle off.
We’ve deployed Brave across our entire enterprise worldwide, mobile and desktop.
There is a negative anti-Brave campaign that comes sweeping through every time Brave is posted on HN.
> There is a negative anti-Brave campaign that comes sweeping through every time Brave is posted on HN.
There seems to be a positive one too. Brave’s shortcomings are not completely unfounded.
EDIT: Added “completely”
There seems to be a positive one too. Brave’s shortcomings are not completely unfounded.
EDIT: Added “completely”
> Brave’s shortcomings
What would those be?
What would those be?
Fully agreed that there's much to criticize about Brave, but the parent comment is talking about isn't just criticism _per se_, it's a higher proportion of poorly-reasoned and surprisingly negative comments than one would expect. I've noticed it too, and it reminds me of nothing more than Android-Apple threads in the early 2010s.
I doubt this is a complete explanation, but a lot of the nonsensical comments I've seen come from Firefox fans who can't deal with a browser neutralizing one of the most compelling arguments against Chrome (privacy), so they have to pretend that Brave's odd business model (which is totally worthy of criticism!) has flaws that it doesn't, particularly as experienced by the user.
I doubt this is a complete explanation, but a lot of the nonsensical comments I've seen come from Firefox fans who can't deal with a browser neutralizing one of the most compelling arguments against Chrome (privacy), so they have to pretend that Brave's odd business model (which is totally worthy of criticism!) has flaws that it doesn't, particularly as experienced by the user.
Yes it’s all very internet-y Us v. Them and it goes both ways.
I haven't come across the Brave fanboy side much on HN, but totally believe that they're out there. I'm personally a Brave user but not a passionate one; if I was forced to switch to Chrome with ABP et al, I doubt I'd much care.
Yes, I'm using it for a month now.
It blocked most ads and I even made around 2€ in BAT with it. For that I got small text ads as a popup in the bottom right corner.
I switched from Firefox, which I used for a year, because using heavy web apps are my bread and butter.
It blocked most ads and I even made around 2€ in BAT with it. For that I got small text ads as a popup in the bottom right corner.
I switched from Firefox, which I used for a year, because using heavy web apps are my bread and butter.
I'm testing it, and so far I'm happy with it. I think I'm going to expand it's use, as Firefox continues to disappoint.
You're right about how it seems to... generate a certain kind of negative reaction when mentioned. The comments about Brave not respecting privacy because it inserted affiliate links is nonsensical but repeated over and over, which makes it seem that someone is on a crusade against them.
You're right about how it seems to... generate a certain kind of negative reaction when mentioned. The comments about Brave not respecting privacy because it inserted affiliate links is nonsensical but repeated over and over, which makes it seem that someone is on a crusade against them.
>We’ve deployed Brave across our entire enterprise worldwide
Does this issue cause any administrative pain (inability to whitelist entire domains)?
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/5290
Does this issue cause any administrative pain (inability to whitelist entire domains)?
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/5290
I wish browsers would stick to being browsers. 'Brave Today' could easily be a website, PWA or a plugin that I can happily ignore.
I agree with the spirit of your comment (web browser != news feed). However, in this case I think the whole value-proposition of Brave Today is that it is not just another web site. Meaning that instead of needing to compile a sketchy privacy invasive cloud-profile on a user in order to surface relevant content, since Brave Today runs locally it can make the decision locally about what content is relevant to the user (based on the local browser data) without having to send anything to a centralized service.
> The Brave Today news reader ranks stories locally for the user from hundreds of popular RSS feeds using an algorithm that weighs several factors, including the user’s browser history and article published date.
Ideally, though, I would like to see this implemented as a browser extension or something like that that can be added/removed as desired.
> The Brave Today news reader ranks stories locally for the user from hundreds of popular RSS feeds using an algorithm that weighs several factors, including the user’s browser history and article published date.
Ideally, though, I would like to see this implemented as a browser extension or something like that that can be added/removed as desired.
If this is actually the motivation - that Brave believes web sites are inherently bad because they cannot run locally - then Brave sounds like a web browser with a serious identity crises.
It's not that web sites are inherently bad; it's that the browser is able to protect the user in ways websites cannot. Brave has local access to information about you; websites do not. Even if you were to give over all of your data to a website (why would you?), you now have to worry about that site sharing it, losing it, selling it, etc. With Brave, the data is on your device; cursory network scans confirm that it doesn't flow outward either (see https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-deemed-most-private-brow...). It's much better to do this as a feature locally than as a third-party service remotely.
I would argue that corporate surveillance dystopia exists precisely because everything is done in the cloud. While I agree that browsers should just be browsers, but your newreader app should be a separate desktop app that is just a newreader app.
You can ignore Brave and use Lynx.
just write a little GET request and do it manually, then you print out the html source code and interpret it by hand. It's how I do it, and it's far superior to Lynx. Lynx is just a multitool, not really good at just GETing and rendering.
Because the modern web runs on Lynx.
Somewhere far down the page it says that somewhere down the line we might be able to add our own RSS feeds :/
Not really interested until then.
Not really interested until then.
> …it says that somewhere down the line we might be able to add our own RSS feeds
Even then, what this really means is that when you "add an RSS feed", it'll be added to Brave's back-end system so they can continue to own the distribution. This demolishes the creator/consumer relationship, which is an incredibly sleazy thing to do to content creators.
Imagine the HN outcry if Chrome worked the same way, and could no longer fetch web pages directly.
I will personally never use a so-called news reader that inserts itself as a centralized middleman between myself and everything I read.
Even then, what this really means is that when you "add an RSS feed", it'll be added to Brave's back-end system so they can continue to own the distribution. This demolishes the creator/consumer relationship, which is an incredibly sleazy thing to do to content creators.
Imagine the HN outcry if Chrome worked the same way, and could no longer fetch web pages directly.
I will personally never use a so-called news reader that inserts itself as a centralized middleman between myself and everything I read.
What do you mean by "own the distribution"? Brave passes the content through a privacy-respecting CDN. It goes to great lengths to knowing nothing about who is accessing what. If you don't mind sharing, please elaborate on your concerns.
> What do you mean by "own the distribution"? Brave passes the content through a privacy-respecting CDN.
Yes. Brave [EDIT: the company] is unilaterally putting itself between the creator and the consumer, usurping the task of serving the RSS content without the permission of the content owner. Among other problems, this destroys the ability of creators to get even basic readership metrics for people who might choose to use Brave.
Imagine that Brave [EDIT: the browser] started copying and serving your entire web site in your name without your permission, rather than just your RSS. Does that help you understand why this is a problem?
Yes. Brave [EDIT: the company] is unilaterally putting itself between the creator and the consumer, usurping the task of serving the RSS content without the permission of the content owner. Among other problems, this destroys the ability of creators to get even basic readership metrics for people who might choose to use Brave.
Imagine that Brave [EDIT: the browser] started copying and serving your entire web site in your name without your permission, rather than just your RSS. Does that help you understand why this is a problem?
I think there are many issue with this take. Brave is a web browser, putting itself between the creator and the consumer is what it does, by definition. It's the User Agent. In the case of Brave Today, however, only a preview of the content is shown; when the user clicks, they are directed to the source itself (unlike AMP or some other pervasive middle-man).
Serving RSS content doesn't require permission; the public feed itself is permission. It's created for the purpose of content syndication (it's in the name). Brave shows only a preview of content (an image, headline, title, date, and maybe a sentence or two from the feed). For the actual content, the user has to go to the resource itself.
As for measuring their Brave user-base, publishers were already in a tough spot. Brave reports itself as "Chrome" to these sites. Ideally, the publisher shouldn't need to know if their users are in Chrome or Brave. This feature (Brave Today) doesn't change this relationship in any way.
Your hypothetical (if Brave starting copying and distributing, verbatim, websites) is definitely terrible. But that isn't even remotely close to what's happening here; Brave Today shows less content than search results on DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing, or beyond.
Serving RSS content doesn't require permission; the public feed itself is permission. It's created for the purpose of content syndication (it's in the name). Brave shows only a preview of content (an image, headline, title, date, and maybe a sentence or two from the feed). For the actual content, the user has to go to the resource itself.
As for measuring their Brave user-base, publishers were already in a tough spot. Brave reports itself as "Chrome" to these sites. Ideally, the publisher shouldn't need to know if their users are in Chrome or Brave. This feature (Brave Today) doesn't change this relationship in any way.
Your hypothetical (if Brave starting copying and distributing, verbatim, websites) is definitely terrible. But that isn't even remotely close to what's happening here; Brave Today shows less content than search results on DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing, or beyond.
> Brave is a web browser…
I've clarified my comments above to disambiguate, thank you.
> Serving RSS content doesn't require permission; the public feed itself is permission.
So does Brave not understand the importance of feed metrics for creators? Or if it does, is the plan is to force creators to get metrics for Brave Today users from Brave?
I've clarified my comments above to disambiguate, thank you.
> Serving RSS content doesn't require permission; the public feed itself is permission.
So does Brave not understand the importance of feed metrics for creators? Or if it does, is the plan is to force creators to get metrics for Brave Today users from Brave?
Thank you for clarifying. That said, I'm not sure I understand why a feed source needs to know if a viewer is accessing the content via Brave or Chrome.
Regarding feed metrics from Brave, what information would we give over? Brave doesn't know who is reading what; we've made Brave Today in such a way that uses and requests aren't handled by the same entity at the same time. The goal is to have no knowledge, while yielding a personalized experience.
Regarding feed metrics from Brave, what information would we give over? Brave doesn't know who is reading what; we've made Brave Today in such a way that uses and requests aren't handled by the same entity at the same time. The goal is to have no knowledge, while yielding a personalized experience.
> Regarding feed metrics from Brave, what information would we give over?
There should be none to give, which is perfectly aligned with your goal to have no knowledge.
Brave [the company] should consider interfering with RSS metrics as verboten has interfering with web page metrics. That means that clients/user-agents should grab feed updates from the original RSS, using ETags and Last-Modified to avoid unnecessary fetches of unchanged feeds. (Caching for temporary unavailability is normal and fine.)
> …I'm not sure I understand why a feed source needs to know if a viewer is accessing the content via Brave or Chrome.
You brought this up, but it isn't a concern I've expressed. Brave Today would ideally have a uniquely identifiable user agent for RSS metrics, but I don't know that it's necessary.
(That's all I have to say about this. Thanks for listening.)
There should be none to give, which is perfectly aligned with your goal to have no knowledge.
Brave [the company] should consider interfering with RSS metrics as verboten has interfering with web page metrics. That means that clients/user-agents should grab feed updates from the original RSS, using ETags and Last-Modified to avoid unnecessary fetches of unchanged feeds. (Caching for temporary unavailability is normal and fine.)
> …I'm not sure I understand why a feed source needs to know if a viewer is accessing the content via Brave or Chrome.
You brought this up, but it isn't a concern I've expressed. Brave Today would ideally have a uniquely identifiable user agent for RSS metrics, but I don't know that it's necessary.
(That's all I have to say about this. Thanks for listening.)
> You brought this up…
Sorry, I thought that's what you meant by "this destroys the ability of creators to get even basic readership metrics for people who might choose to use Brave" earlier.
> Brave Today would ideally have a uniquely identifiable user agent for RSS metrics, but I don't know that it's necessary.
That's definitely something I could see a publisher requesting in the future; we've done something similar with custom headers in requests, standing in for a unique user-agent string.
Sorry, I thought that's what you meant by "this destroys the ability of creators to get even basic readership metrics for people who might choose to use Brave" earlier.
> Brave Today would ideally have a uniquely identifiable user agent for RSS metrics, but I don't know that it's necessary.
That's definitely something I could see a publisher requesting in the future; we've done something similar with custom headers in requests, standing in for a unique user-agent string.
Why the negative perception?
If you don't like it, turn it off.
I switched to brave 4 months ago after trying all the available ones (Chrome - memory and power hog, Everything else – no good app store).
First use it, before you review it! Duh!
Because Brave has a long history of very questionable business decisions, and is not really trustworthy. They have collected donations on behalf of people without the consent of those people, they have secretely added affiliate links, and they are deeply involved the incredibly shade business of cryptocurrencies.
> They have collected donations on behalf of people without the consent of those people
Wasn't this related to YouTube channels? I remember Tom Scott complaining about it on Twitter.
While the browser probably shouldn't ask users if they want to donate to people that haven't joined Brave Rewards, the money is returned to the sender (up to 3 months later, I believe) if the creator doesn't join Brave Rewards. It's not like they stole donations.
> they have secretely added affiliate links
They did that with some crypto sites when typing the keyword/URL in the search bar. I can't defend the decision, but the code is on Github[0] and they admitted doing it as soon people pointed it out. And then reverted the change.
I'm not sure what to think about this monetisation strategy. What's the downside for users? Is it worse than generating revenue by selling the default search engine to the highest bidder? And why is it wrong for browsers to do it but it's fine when some search engines do it?
---
0. https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/1cac2377c9a2d5e3587...
Wasn't this related to YouTube channels? I remember Tom Scott complaining about it on Twitter.
While the browser probably shouldn't ask users if they want to donate to people that haven't joined Brave Rewards, the money is returned to the sender (up to 3 months later, I believe) if the creator doesn't join Brave Rewards. It's not like they stole donations.
> they have secretely added affiliate links
They did that with some crypto sites when typing the keyword/URL in the search bar. I can't defend the decision, but the code is on Github[0] and they admitted doing it as soon people pointed it out. And then reverted the change.
I'm not sure what to think about this monetisation strategy. What's the downside for users? Is it worse than generating revenue by selling the default search engine to the highest bidder? And why is it wrong for browsers to do it but it's fine when some search engines do it?
---
0. https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/1cac2377c9a2d5e3587...
Regarding the tips and affiliate links, please see my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25410189.
How are cryptocurrencies any worse or more shady than banks, investment firms or any other business involved in finance?
By being something like 90% scams?
It's a mistake to assume that a project is shady just because it's involved with crypto.
I use Brave Rewards (as a website owner) and never had any issues. I receive BAT, convert it to my local currency, and then transfer it to my bank account. That's money I would never receive because it comes from users that block ads.
I use Brave Rewards (as a website owner) and never had any issues. I receive BAT, convert it to my local currency, and then transfer it to my bank account. That's money I would never receive because it comes from users that block ads.
> Because Brave has a long history of very questionable business decisions, and is not really trustworthy.
Okay boomer... Seriously people, ease up on the hyperbole and approach this with a little perspective. Sure, Brendan Eich != Mother Theresa, but its not like he is claiming to be! He is just another bloke with some good ideas and some not so good ideas, trying to be successful (and honestly doing a pretty good job of it).
Sure, Brave has made some mistakes along the way and it is right to call them out on it. Stuff like secret affiliate links is not great from a transparency perspective, but it is also not really hostile or harmful to Brave users. Plus, let the record show that corrective action was taking when Brave was called out.
I am not saying we should all "trust" Brave any more that other companies (do your research and come to your own conclusions), but lets not pretend that the folks at Google or anywhere else are really any more trustworthy.
(Lastly, I am sorry if cryptocurrency makes you uncomfortable, but that does not change the fact that it is a really effective way to provide a low-friction method of exchanging value (e.g. micro-transactions). IDK if the BAT is the future of ad-tech, but I applaud them for trying to find new methods of monetization that don't involve directly harming users and their privacy...)
Okay boomer... Seriously people, ease up on the hyperbole and approach this with a little perspective. Sure, Brendan Eich != Mother Theresa, but its not like he is claiming to be! He is just another bloke with some good ideas and some not so good ideas, trying to be successful (and honestly doing a pretty good job of it).
Sure, Brave has made some mistakes along the way and it is right to call them out on it. Stuff like secret affiliate links is not great from a transparency perspective, but it is also not really hostile or harmful to Brave users. Plus, let the record show that corrective action was taking when Brave was called out.
I am not saying we should all "trust" Brave any more that other companies (do your research and come to your own conclusions), but lets not pretend that the folks at Google or anywhere else are really any more trustworthy.
(Lastly, I am sorry if cryptocurrency makes you uncomfortable, but that does not change the fact that it is a really effective way to provide a low-friction method of exchanging value (e.g. micro-transactions). IDK if the BAT is the future of ad-tech, but I applaud them for trying to find new methods of monetization that don't involve directly harming users and their privacy...)
Note, the affiliate links weren't "secret" either. They were quite visibly displayed in the suggestion list of the browser. The user could see them before navigating. Brave's mistake was showing them on fully-qualified domain names (that wasn't our intention, and was fixed within 48 hours).
Affiliate links aren't uncommon; definitely not worth trying to keep a secret. Open Firefox (or Opera, Vivaldi, etc.) and do a search for "hacker news" from the address bar. Every one of these browsers adds its identifier to the resulting query. By contrast, Brave offered a search suggestion with a [visible] affiliate code attached.
Affiliate links aren't uncommon; definitely not worth trying to keep a secret. Open Firefox (or Opera, Vivaldi, etc.) and do a search for "hacker news" from the address bar. Every one of these browsers adds its identifier to the resulting query. By contrast, Brave offered a search suggestion with a [visible] affiliate code attached.
I agree with your comment. I'm continuously surprised at how much hate Brave gets from HN. It's a decent browser with a unique and novel way to try to deal with the current adpocalypse. If anything, they should be celebrated for actually trying out a new business model. Come to think of it though, the comment sums up HN perfectly, ending with `deeply involved the incredibly shade business of cryptocurrencies`.
I've been using Brave for about a year now and am really happy with it. I love paying creators directly and just wish more creators would sign up for the rewards.
I've been using Brave for about a year now and am really happy with it. I love paying creators directly and just wish more creators would sign up for the rewards.
I think it's really the idea of blocking a websites ads AND replacing them with your own that turns so many people against it. It just feels..... wrong. Way more like stealing from content creators than just blocking ads in the first place. That combined with what feels like a cash grab with their cryptocurrency likely immediately turns a lot of people off.
ps. I know, I know. Brave's ads are unobtrusive, they don't track you, they donate crypto to the sites, etc. etc. It doesn't change the underlying emotional response a lot of people seem to have to their business model.
ps. I know, I know. Brave's ads are unobtrusive, they don't track you, they donate crypto to the sites, etc. etc. It doesn't change the underlying emotional response a lot of people seem to have to their business model.
Replacing ads with our own would indeed be pretty bad; but we don't do that. I think the underlying emotional response you're seeing (which does exist with some) is based on what others say Brave is doing, rather than what Brave is actually doing. Help us correct the misinformation
The blocking of ads and trackers has been taking place for years; long before Brave came along (in it was happening when Netscape released the NPAPI back in the mid-90s).
Content Creators and Publishers, who make the Web enjoyable for us, rely on third-party advertising models which engage in data-harvesting and attention-auctioning without explicit user consent.
Brave helps protect users from harmful ads and trackers (which not only harvest data, but deliver malicious bits in return), while offering a model whereby users can anonymously support publishers by way of privacy-respecting ads.
Brave Ads are matched on-device, using local access to data. When you view an ad, 70% of the associated revenue is sent to your cryptographically-secured wallet. As you browse the Web, verified content creators can receive support (either actively or passively) from those rewards.
Users are safe. Creators are supported. That's Brave.
The blocking of ads and trackers has been taking place for years; long before Brave came along (in it was happening when Netscape released the NPAPI back in the mid-90s).
Content Creators and Publishers, who make the Web enjoyable for us, rely on third-party advertising models which engage in data-harvesting and attention-auctioning without explicit user consent.
Brave helps protect users from harmful ads and trackers (which not only harvest data, but deliver malicious bits in return), while offering a model whereby users can anonymously support publishers by way of privacy-respecting ads.
Brave Ads are matched on-device, using local access to data. When you view an ad, 70% of the associated revenue is sent to your cryptographically-secured wallet. As you browse the Web, verified content creators can receive support (either actively or passively) from those rewards.
Users are safe. Creators are supported. That's Brave.
They don't replace ads. Brave allows you to block ads (just like any ad-blocker). Separately, you can opt-in to see Brave ads via system notifications.
Accusations of stealing are pretty foul. Please can we keep the discussion focused on the facts?
Accusations of stealing are pretty foul. Please can we keep the discussion focused on the facts?
> I think it's really the idea of blocking a websites ads AND replacing them with your own that turns so many people against it. It just feels..... wrong.
Brave doesn't do this so that's a plus.
Brave doesn't do this so that's a plus.
> Brendan Eich != Mother Theresa
That's a pretty low bar. Mother Teresa's no Mother Teresa.
Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed? (psyche.co)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25353734
That's a pretty low bar. Mother Teresa's no Mother Teresa.
Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed? (psyche.co)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25353734
They made some mistakes and took responsibility. Consider that Brave is taking on Google with the GDPR. That's pretty cool.
They absolutely did not take responsibility properly. They dragged their feet, they argued and argued that they were doing nothing wrong, and them finally reluctantly changed things when they could find no other way to weasel out of it.
>They absolutely did not take responsibility properly. They dragged their feet, they argued and argued that they were doing nothing wrong, and them finally reluctantly changed things when they could find no other way to weasel out of it.
This is not only a lie, it's a particularly egregious one. And very easy to verify.
Original tweet (2:36 AM Pacific, June 6 2020) https://twitter.com/cryptonator1337/status/12692014801055784...
Response from Brave (10:00 AM Pacific, same day) https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201
It took them all of one whole business hour to respond. One hour. That's absolutely unheard of.
The above just goes to show how eager some people are to spread FUD in a blatantly dishonest and malicious way about certain things they oppose. It blows my mind.
This is not only a lie, it's a particularly egregious one. And very easy to verify.
Original tweet (2:36 AM Pacific, June 6 2020) https://twitter.com/cryptonator1337/status/12692014801055784...
Response from Brave (10:00 AM Pacific, same day) https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201
It took them all of one whole business hour to respond. One hour. That's absolutely unheard of.
The above just goes to show how eager some people are to spread FUD in a blatantly dishonest and malicious way about certain things they oppose. It blows my mind.
And by June 9th, less than 3 whole days later, user's had an updated build of Brave with the issue resolved: https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/.
>I switched to brave 4 months ago after trying all the available ones (Chrome - memory and power hog
Are you sure you're not experiencing placebo effect and/or confirmation bias? Brave and Chrome use the same underlying rendering engine, so the performance and memory usage should be the same.
Are you sure you're not experiencing placebo effect and/or confirmation bias? Brave and Chrome use the same underlying rendering engine, so the performance and memory usage should be the same.
Brave excises quite a bit of Chromium[1], but that isn't what makes it fast and lightweight. The real savings come by way of not having to download all of the cruft of the Web. For many sites, more than 50% of the data loaded consists of ads and trackers[2]. When you don't have a sea of third-parties dropping scripts and more onto your machine, the Web is quite a bit more enjoyable
[1] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost...
[1] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost...
Theres a lot of code in chrome that is not the rendering engine.
No no no. I'm tired of everyone pushing their opinion pieces everywhere. I use browsers to find information that I want. I don't want the browser to become a vehicle for others to push their views on me. F* off.
Corporations don't want to let users decide for themselves what to see. Google ranks pages (decides what to hide), Twitter and FB do the same with feeds. Advertisers infest any corner of the net, like cockroaches. Political parties buy targeted ads in huge amounts and generate tons of self serving press to put into our feeds.
We need to put the filtering / ranking function back into our hands. We need a browser that can learn our preferences and enforce them, while protecting our privacy as well. Ad block lists are a start, but they only filter ads and don't re-rank the feeds.
We need to put the filtering / ranking function back into our hands. We need a browser that can learn our preferences and enforce them, while protecting our privacy as well. Ad block lists are a start, but they only filter ads and don't re-rank the feeds.
A customisable search engine would be great too.
I would love the ability to:
Permanently block Quora and Pinterest from any results
Choose how to sort my results. Why doesn’t google have that?
Have the option to prioritise forum pages
Have a clear choice between getting generic results and personal algorithm results
Permanently block Quora and Pinterest from any results
Choose how to sort my results. Why doesn’t google have that?
Have the option to prioritise forum pages
Have a clear choice between getting generic results and personal algorithm results
the most popular form of computer, a smartphone exists for that.
The decision process on Brave Today sounds to be (mainly?) local.
You need the filtering processing to be local and visible but you can't win the fight by avoiding all filtering.
IMO what makes sense is manually curated sources for your knowledge area and the rest machine-picked for you to read and retain a general knowledge of the world.
You need the filtering processing to be local and visible but you can't win the fight by avoiding all filtering.
IMO what makes sense is manually curated sources for your knowledge area and the rest machine-picked for you to read and retain a general knowledge of the world.
I want others to push their opinion pieces on me - this is the only way to get out of my bubble and learn new stuff. But yeah - the problem is whom can I trust with such a power.
I think they are spotting a trend. Not one I'm a fan of, like the newsfeed to the left of my homescreen on my Pixel phone.
You can disable that. It's not intuitive but once you do, you're so much better off without that kind of constant spam of very low quality.
Then you can just use an RSS reader like Flym which works just fine and access the websites that you want when you want it with a mobile browser.
Then you can just use an RSS reader like Flym which works just fine and access the websites that you want when you want it with a mobile browser.
One of the best things about reader and hacker news and twitter is really fast loading of top news. This also preserves the relationship to the reader while blocking nuisance ads and still compensating news agencies while preserving privacy.
Bravo brave!
Bravo brave!
Brave today, gone tomorrow.
I don't understand Brave. 'We protect your data! By stealing it ourselves and having less accountability than the larger companies.' Am I missing something? They blatantly collect and use (monetize?) the same data they pretend to protect.
Why is it pegging the CPU out at 100%? Right... I've had enough now..., back to Netscape I go!
Why everyone is after news? Is it to get their customers hooked on to their client regularly? OR there is ton of money in that domain?
Well that's the thing. Regular ephermal news is essentially a commodity, and while I do love some privacy preserving edge computing, but it's hard to figure out how to monetize this. If you have a browser, you can, but if you don't have the browser, you can't really, unless you can get people to install your extension, and that seems like a very limited business model.
Brave is doing what we hoped Mozilla would do.
I haven't kept up with Brave, is there a totally ad-free option yet? I mean, I pay money, and you don't show me ads. At all. My attention isn't for sale, and I want a company that will let me pay to make sure that's the case. Does this hit that mark?
Ads have always been opt in.
Not true. There are ads on new tabs that are opt out.
Those are Sponsored Images, which aren't categorically the same as Brave Ads. The latter have always been opt-in, but you're correct that Sponsored Images are on by default. That said, they can be hidden with 2 clicks form the New Tab Page.
Call them what you want, they're ads.
They broke my old.reddit experience with their shitty tip icon on every damn comment after "brave helper" switched me to a "browser variant", without asking of course..
The in-situ Tip button can be hidden by going to brave://rewards, scrolling down to 'Tips', clicking the and unchecking any of the properties you wish to exclude.
That said, if this broke the layout on Reddit, we definitely consider that a bug and would like to fix it. If you don't mind sharing, are you using any extensions which augment Reddit in any way (e.g. Reddit Enhancement Suite)?
That said, if this broke the layout on Reddit, we definitely consider that a bug and would like to fix it. If you don't mind sharing, are you using any extensions which augment Reddit in any way (e.g. Reddit Enhancement Suite)?
Really think Brave is gonna become a dominant browser in 2021
I would like really like if news aggregators somehow indicated paywalls to users before they click. Reading and searching for news these days is incredibly frustrating. I understand that quality media comes at a price, but it's sad to see where things are headed...
> the Brave browser fetches directly from the source of the content, so publishers maintain their relationships with readers on their own sites, instead of being forced through a redirect [...], compelled to publish through Google’s AMP proxy[...] or another such proprietary proxy.
As a screen reader user, I want a newsreader that does the exact opposite, actually. Nothing but article contents should be let through, no "related stories", no GDPR pop ups, and no "we don't seve European users here" error pages. I would be happy if I could force my browser to display everything as AMP, whenever there was an AMP version available. Kind of like the default reader view in Safari.
As a screen reader user, I want a newsreader that does the exact opposite, actually. Nothing but article contents should be let through, no "related stories", no GDPR pop ups, and no "we don't seve European users here" error pages. I would be happy if I could force my browser to display everything as AMP, whenever there was an AMP version available. Kind of like the default reader view in Safari.
Honestly? Disabling JS accomplishes most of that.
It removes the popups, but it doesn't remove the navigation, the copyright footer, and all the useless parts of the website that make it hard to get to the actual article, assuming the website isn't designed properly.
How far does Firefox's Reader View takes you in terms of stripping out all the crap?
But...Brave's private cdn is a 3rd party...
Not [a] third-party, but a set of unrelated third-parties. Like ODoH, this ensures the data identifying the user is not associated with the data identifying the resource(s) requested. As a result, third-parties (which can't be avoided) are incapable of tracking users or their data.
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I feel old - I was expecting a Usenet client.
For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially with cron by downloading the RSS feeds with curl, parsing the XML with jq, and then using SVN or CVS on the final text.
Do you have a few qualms with this News Reader?
You didn't recognize this riff?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23797092
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23797092
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Although I will probably disable this like Pocket, thank you for doing this in a more private way than Google does with the newsfeed in Chrome.
I was somewhat interested until I read "an algorithm".
yarrr
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What "algorithm" you ask?
> We’re using Brave’s new private CDN to fetch RSS feeds anonymously via the browser and the browser’s personalization capabilities to rank the headlines for users with a simple algorithm that will make the experience interesting for everyone.
This seems like spying... with extra steps. In the meantime, Vivaldi added good old, classic RSS reader (and email client). To their experiments[1] (not affiliated).
Brave might be great, but it feels like Crypto AG[2] spinoff.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-mail-technical-preview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG