[HN Gopher] Brave Talk - Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing
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Brave Talk - Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing
Author : mlinksva
Score : 154 points
Date : 2021-09-22 16:26 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brave.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brave.com)
| fancy_pantser wrote:
| Important to note that only 1:1 calls are E2E encrypted and
| larger calls are forwarded to a SFU that 8x8 calls "Jitsi
| Videobridge" where they are decrypted, processed in memory, and
| then re-encrypted for each participant stream.
| sciurus wrote:
| Time to bring back Firefox Hello?
|
| https://www.pcworld.com/article/3102890/goodbye-hello-firefo...
| jonathansampson wrote:
| There have definitely been some really nice features shipped in
| other browsers, or by other vendors, in the past. Timing is
| often a curious element. I wonder if Hello might have found
| more success if it were introduced in 2020-2021, given the
| great exodus of people from offices, schools, etc., and their
| increasingly heavy reliance upon the Web to remain in touch.
|
| I'm excited for our launch of Brave Talk in part due to the
| timing, but also for the technology, and the team behind the
| effort. WebRTC has come a long way, and the additional
| encryption options offered are really appealing.
| soundnote wrote:
| Firefox's Pocket integration definitely was just years too
| early, people hadn't gotten used to paying for web services
| anywhere near today's extent.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Yet another silly messaging app. Why not just use an open
| protocol like Matrix and have done with it? Makes far more sense
| than this.
|
| Nobody asked for their browser to be a messaging system in 2021,
| nor for exclusivity of initiation based upon browser. Lol?
| jp42 wrote:
| May be naive question. How does Brave earn money to sustain its
| operations?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Brave Rewards and outside funding as far as I know.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28620369.
| zormino wrote:
| By replacing ads on websites with their own, and url hijacking
| for referral profits. They are not a good service, they're
| content thieves with a mask on.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| No, we never replaced ads on websites with our own; and no,
| we made nothing from the binance.com/.us autocomplete bug (no
| other URLs, no links in pages) getting affiliate codes.
|
| Be careful what misinformation you parrot. It doesn't help
| anyone looking for better privacy products or trustworthy
| commenters.
| input_sh wrote:
| How would you describe stripping ads from websites and then
| displaying different ones? Personally, I'd call that
| replacing website ads with your own.
|
| I'm fully aware that you don't show them within the content
| (but in notification) and that it's an opt-in thing, but
| that doesn't make the statement inaccurate. You absolutely
| are removing them and showing others. In other words,
| you're replacing them.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| Dictionary time again:
|
| verb: replace; 3rd person present: replaces; past tense:
| replaced; past participle: replaced; gerund or present
| participle: replacing
|
| 1. take the place of. "Ian's smile was replaced by a
| frown"
|
| 2. put (something) back in a previous place or position.
| "he drained his glass and replaced it on the bar"
|
| Using "replace" implies in situ (which is false as you
| admit), or else you seem to think the page owns all your
| display and OS-mediated window-system attention "surface
| area". It does not, no page even needs to show for an
| opt-in Brave User Ad to be posted.
|
| So as you've kindly admitted the "in a previous place or
| position" sense is false, you must mean any page owns
| your eyeballs if it's anywhere near a user ad. I demur
| and so do our users. Publishers don't own your eyes,
| desktop, toolbars, tab strip, new tab pages, or
| notification channels.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| I've been using Brave for over a year now. I don't use the
| opt-in Brave Rewards Ads but do use the Brave Rewards Auto-
| Contribute. I love Brave and think it is actually going to
| save the web from becoming a shitty, slow experience over the
| years to come.
|
| My only gripe is that the crypto integration with Uphold to
| pay creators is/was hard to use. I love the idea that I can
| pay $20/month to use the web and that money is disbursed to
| the sites I visit most!
|
| Update: This motivated me to login to Uphold again and relink
| Brave Rewards so I can use the auto-contribute feature.
| Uphold didn't have recurring transactions for debit/credit
| cards originally so it was too much friction to use, but it
| is all working now.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| Off topic but please shoot me a message (I'm easy to reach,
| first at company dot com) with what you find hard to use. I
| may agree and we're working on better ways to support
| creators, but I hope to capture your specific issues.
| Thanks.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Sure, sent!
| soundnote wrote:
| It doesn't? It adblocks ads like uBlock Origin and tracking
| blocking tech in other browsers (except the shields are not
| an add-on so they can exceed the Manifest v3 type limits).
| There are entirely separate channels (toaster popups, start
| page backgrounds) that they use to deliver their own ads.
|
| I get the crypto stuff is not everyone's cup of tea
| (certainly isn't mine) but get the basics straight, at least?
| nicce wrote:
| They block their rival's ads and bring their own instead.
| It might be visible on a little different location, but in
| the end the result is the same; replacing ads from the
| websites.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| False. Did you even check your claim, or are you
| parroting some unreliable source?
| nicce wrote:
| Yes. It is on your web page:
| https://support.brave.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360026361072-Bra...
|
| > Rather than displaying Ads on web pages, Brave Ads
| appear as push notifications on your device that you can
| choose to engage with or dismiss.
|
| I did not say it is a default behavior, but in the end
| you are blocking ads and bringing new ads, hence
| replacing. Just an another way to provide ads. Just a
| different way of seeing the concept as a whole.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| "They block their rival's ads and bring their own
| instead" would be taken by most people to mean
| replacement in the page, and no opt-in. It's misleading
| with a purpose. Brave is providing users a private (no
| tracking) ad option with 70% of the gross paid to the
| user. If only a "rival" did that. But they don't, and we
| block tracking scripts more than ads (this kills the
| whole waterfall so blocks most ads). Note we don't block
| Google or other search ads, or first party ads that don't
| depend on tracking scripts.
| vrc wrote:
| uBlock origin is the only ad blocker worth trusting.
| Privacy Badger is fine but breaks things too often. PiHole
| is good but requires too much know-how for most. ABP and
| Brave both do the same garbage ransom-taking with their ad
| replacement schema. So few publishers have an account with
| them that the monies supposedly going to support content
| sits (at best) in an escrow account that is escheated at
| some point.
| ziddoap wrote:
| >Privacy Badger is fine but breaks things too often.
|
| I know it's a bit of a tangent from the topic at hand,
| but I'm really curious what Privacy Badger has broken for
| you? I (and all the staff at my office) have been using
| it basically since release, and not once has the root
| cause of a website not working properly been Privacy
| Badger.
| lamontcg wrote:
| I have 17 exceptions in PB that I've setup, including my
| ISP, my broker, and my local utilities. Those would all
| be since I switched to firefox (2-3 years ago now?). It
| used to be worse, I'm pretty sure I had many dozens of
| exceptions on my old chrome settings.
| vrc wrote:
| So I couldn't tell you all of them because I don't keep
| track of when I need to disable it and refresh to make a
| page work (and that's not that big an inconvenience for
| me). But I used to have to travel a lot for work with
| strict travel caps. Working within those, I had perfected
| a few strategies to really get the lowest fares
| available. On one specific planning adventure, I found a
| way to book a business class flight through Air Canada's
| website that took me through Europe and back across the
| US for the price of the standard economy fare for the
| same trip. Privacy Badger killed the payment flow, and I
| could never get that rate back. I ended up on over 30
| hours of flights in economy, and I'll never forget the
| refreshed faces of the business class travelers... But
| more seriously, that and similar situations were the only
| really bad ones. Many times it's just disabling and
| reloading a page. But for a casual Internet user,
| identifying that fix might be too much.
| rglullis wrote:
| Brave rewards is opt-in. If you don't want to receive
| ads, just don't turn it on.
|
| If you still want to support creators but do not want to
| receive any kind of ads, just buy some BAT at any
| exchange, load your wallet and schedule monthly
| contributions.
|
| If you want to support a publisher who is not on the
| creators program - send them a message and let them know
| they have another income alternative.
| vrc wrote:
| Right. You're missing my point. From the consumer side
| that makes sense. Very few publishers (ie those that are
| high quality and you'd happily spend on) are hooked up to
| receive funds from Brave, or will ever choose to receive
| funds from Brave. So lots of these transactions leave
| your wallet, Brave takes a cut, and then the remainder
| sits in limbo or is escheated to the state. The ads
| ecosystem is a 2-sided marketplace, and Brave really only
| supports/is supported by 1 side.
| rglullis wrote:
| > high quality and you'd happily spend on
|
| Can you give an example of publisher/creator that you
| support directly, and that is not interested in joining
| Brave Creators?
|
| If I am a popular creator who relies on, e.g, Patreon or
| Ko-Fi for some sustained income, and I learn about a
| platform that gives people money and it makes it easy for
| them to pass along that money to me... why wouldn't I be
| interested?
| [deleted]
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| FWIW, these sites are all setup on Brave Rewards to
| receive funds via Brave Rewards contributions. I got this
| list from my history by going to brave://rewards/ in
| Brave:
|
| * Wikipedia.org
|
| * SmithsonianMag.com
|
| * ArsTechnica.com
|
| * TheRegister.com
|
| * Archive.org
|
| * TheGuardian.com
|
| * LaTimes.com
|
| * DuckDuckGo.com
|
| * NPR.org
| BrendanEich wrote:
| See https://bravebat.info/ for the full list of sites and
| channels.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Thanks, I found what I was wanting to post in my list but
| couldn't verify it. And that is that WashingtonPost.com
| is listed as a Brave Creator.
|
| https://bravebat.info/creators/website/31382
| BrendanEich wrote:
| You're wrong, nothing leaves the user's browser for us to
| take a cut in the case of an unverified creator. Those
| tips or donations sit in the browser, and cancel after 90
| days. The user gets the tokens back and can cancel the
| pending tips or contributions at any time.
|
| The ad ecosystem is multisided, not two-sided. We put the
| user in first place and cut out the ad-tech
| intermediaries who raid privacy, enable fraud, and take
| north of 50%, 70% in one case (the Guardian bought out
| its ad space and got 30p on the GBP).
|
| Please check your facts before attacking us. It's one
| thing to operate on misinformation, but another to throw
| "escheated" around like a lawyer. It sounds impressive,
| but it's based on falsehoods all the way down. Again,
| tips from rewards users to unverified sites and channels
| sit in the browser, time out back to the user, and can be
| canceled. Look for "Pending tips" in rewards settings.
| vrc wrote:
| Because you're you and I was basing it on working in the
| space 3 years ago, I admit I was wrong. But I really do
| want to solve this problem. Despite my mistake, the
| spirit of the question is unresolved -- you claim that
| you allow publishers/creators to be paid for their work.
| In the case a pub isn't on your platform, you don't pay
| them -- you return payment to the user. So content
| continues to go unfunded. How do you intend to get
| publishers to hook in to your system and get paid,
| instead of just making users feel like they're supporting
| the open internet and instead not actually funding the
| sites they care about?
| BrendanEich wrote:
| Please be careful with "you". The tokens tipped or
| otherwise contributed to unverified creators never leave
| the browser. We do not track them or intermediate them.
| They stay pending as noted.
|
| It's up to the browser user to notify the creator about
| the tip or contribution they're sending. We don't and
| can't know who the creator is and we wouldn't spam them.
| Fans can and do get creators to sign up. This is the
| clean way to do it, and fits our user-first principle.
|
| If you want a publisher-first play, Scroll (Twitter
| bought it) was doing a portable paywall with publishers.
| Not user-first, no rev share to users, users pay. Not us.
| Have to serve one master or the other.
|
| But I claim our user-first way is best because users can
| then get sites and channels they've tipped to come and
| sign up. Going the other way means getting users to
| subscribe, always a conversion funnel and usually low
| rate.
| tomComb wrote:
| I didn't think they did those anymore. True, though, they've
| tried endless very slimy business models - anything that
| works until they get caught or called out.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| We never replaced ads on web pages. The binance.{us,com}
| auto-complete affiliate code was a bug and we renounced any
| (tiny) revenue that might come from it.
|
| I think it's slimy to do what you just did. Why'd you do
| it? We didn't do the first thing you said, and we shipped
| and then fixed the bug on the second. I don't see how you
| can excuse your action.
| tomComb wrote:
| Because I don't believe you. For example, I followed up
| on your claim about the second when it happened and it
| appeared clear to me that it was not a bug.
|
| I'm now familiar with how you aggressively and
| dishonestly attack people who call out Brave's actions. I
| know I'm not special - that's just how you do business -
| but you aren't going to intimidate me.
|
| I will make one concession to your attack though, I will
| declare that I'm not affiliated with any party in this
| and am simply doing my best to objectively judge the
| facts.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| If you don't believe me, then there's no point in
| talking. But you can verify for yourself that we've never
| replaced ads in publisher pages. On the binance.{us,com}
| autocomplete with affiliate code, it was a blunder where
| two entries in a table had the wrong flag passed in. Not
| sure how to prove intent, so again: no point talking if
| you don't believe me but my work has been in the open for
| 23+ years and I stand behind it.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| I believe you Brendan!
| tomComb wrote:
| I'm not stupid: I'm not going to discard my judgement
| based on careful examination of independent parties in
| favour of how you want me to judge it. (Even if I hadn't
| seen that you are not trustworthy and will aggressively
| attack people for speaking the truth.)
|
| > If you don't believe me, then there's no point in
| talking.
|
| Ok, something we can agree upon!
| BrendanEich wrote:
| I didn't refer you to independent parties. You can check
| Brave (we provide old versions on github) and you won't
| ever find us replacing ads in publisher pages. We're all
| open source on the client side, so you can read revision
| histories too. If you don't check for yourself, then how
| do you know what you said is true?
| tomComb wrote:
| > I didn't refer you to independent parties.
|
| ? I think you're misunderstanding my comment- maybe you
| are going to fast. (I must admit that you've got energy.)
| BrendanEich wrote:
| It would help if you named your "independent parties"
| plural you're relying on. It seems you can't inspect our
| product or code for yourself. Are you sure you have a
| reliable and independent source who has checked our work?
| Hint: not David Gerard.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| It doesn't. But it hopes to insert itself into enough
| interactions to turn the screws on website owners.
| thegabez wrote:
| Easily the best browser on the market and continues to produce
| great features. Very bullish on its crypto token BAT which is
| earned by viewing their ads ($5-10/mo). If you're going to use a
| browser why wouldn't want to use Brave with rewards turned on,
| honestly?
| mNovak wrote:
| I use Brave, but turned off the ads. Only so many times I want
| to see ads for crypto exchanges and such.
| thegabez wrote:
| Sure, I've gotten use to them. Having ads enabled also allows
| for easy donations to Wikipedia, Khan Academy, etc.
| open-paren wrote:
| To start a call, there is a requirement that you are
|
| 1) Using the Brave Browser
|
| 2) Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on.
|
| Not loving that.
|
| Edit: the first one is fine (although a little strange that it is
| a requirement here but not for their other products, like Brave
| Search). I'm irked by the second one.
| peakaboo wrote:
| This is the wrong way for them to do it. It must work on all
| browsers and the they can possibly add features that make
| people WANT to use Brave, not force them to do it.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Brave Talk does work in all major browsers. Initiating a call
| requires Brave, but participation in a call does not.
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| So it works in all major browsers once you redefine "works"
| - got it.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| No, once you start a call, which requires native code for
| the full offering (N>2, any time and duration). See
| TANSTAAFL reply above.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| The first one is because we have to use native code with our
| partner for a user hosting a call to create one. After the call
| is up, any modern browser can be used to join, given the unique
| link provided by the host.
|
| The second one, I addressed directly for all Brave products
| that have significant fixed and per-user/usage costs, the other
| week on Reddit:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/pl2lgi/comment/...
|
| Quote:
|
| "A free browser is a free lunch, and TANSTAAFL. Brave has
| sponsored images on by default, we don't pretend to be free by
| selling default search to Google as Firefox does. Privacy-
| conscious users know that nothing on the Web, no app or
| service, is free.
|
| The salient difference about Brave in this context: we put
| users first and deal them in for >= the revenue we make on any
| attention-based revenue where we take the gross. This can't be
| done with search deals: Google, Bing, and others forbid paying
| users a share of the revenue that the search partner shares
| with the browser maker. But we aim to do it when ready with
| self-serve keywords-at-auction private search ads.
|
| Before then, we hope to offer private ads via a partner, but
| that's not a sure thing. Details if and when we have a deal.
| That's the free leg of Brave Search. The premium is ad-free
| search for a small monthly fee (a few dollars, discounted if
| paid annually).
|
| This is necessary because Brave Search has per-user as well as
| fixed costs, which we must cover with a reasonable margin. I
| think users understand this. In all cases, Brave Search remains
| private: no tracking or use of IP even for short-term query-
| refinement "sessions". But if users won't pay, we will put
| private-until-and-unless-clicked ads in the free leg. This
| freemium model goes for Brave News too."
|
| End Quote
|
| TANSTAAFL = There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
| (popularized by Robert A. Heinlein).
|
| Hackers here on HN may be able to self-host a Jitsi instance,
| even build their own browser. Most users cannot. We at Brave
| aim to provide all users with a truly user-first, privacy-
| designed+engineered-in-&-on-by-default products to take on Big
| Tech with its centralized data collection, surveillance based
| ads, fraud and abuse problems, and monopolistic, user-hostile
| tendencies.
|
| We know TANSTAAFL is true so we don't pretend to offer a free
| lunch and we don't track users. We will work to add more "buy
| out my ad inventory" ease of use, including for Rewards as well
| as News. Those who can't or won't pay can still use Brave as a
| fast, tracking/fingerprinting-blocking browser. We aim to get
| enough of you using Rewards to keep our lights on, and we'll
| have to work on distribution and promotion of search to get it
| covering its costs (premium ad-free or free private ads leg,
| you choose).
|
| I hope this helps explain what we're trying to achieve, and
| that you'll give us a try.
| goldforever wrote:
| Many thanks for the explanation Brendan!
| bool3max wrote:
| I bet you are loving that it's free though.
| open-paren wrote:
| Free is great, free is what they advertise. However, I don't
| personally like Brave Rewards because I am not bullish on
| crypto and I don't think most of BAT goes to creators,
| because Brave Rewards market usage is really, really small,
| so it gets used speculatively. My perfect world solution is
| that they either
|
| a) advertise that Brave Rewards is required ("Brave Talk is
| free, ad-supported), or
|
| b) have a payment tier between premium and free that allows
| me to pay-per-call or something, without the premium
| features.
| deeblering4 wrote:
| It's not free, it just doesn't cost any money.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I was just about to say this. Brave is the opposite of a
| free browser, it just so happens to cost nothing to
| download/use it.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| What browser is different in this regard?
| nicce wrote:
| > 2) Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned
| on.
|
| There are different definitions for "free".
| crackercrews wrote:
| Number 1 is to be expected. Number 2 came as a surprise.
| Doesn't appear to be mentioned anywhere in the launch
| announcement.
|
| I assume someone could turn on Brave Rewards, start a call, and
| then turn it off later?
| gostsamo wrote:
| Yes, many dark patterns use similar justifications.
| zakember wrote:
| Sorry but why is Number 1 to be expected? HN often shows a
| lot of hate when any Google products like Gmail or Google
| Meet works well on Chrome, but not on Firefox.
|
| Web technologies should be browser independent.
| rglullis wrote:
| Would you pay to have a browser-independent version?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| you don't need to pay anything. They've just repackaged
| Jitsi into the browser, which is already free
|
| https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/
| bsclifton wrote:
| There is an alternative option 2 available- you can subscribe
| to Brave Premium for a cost (shows as $7 USD/month). Just
| wanted to share as I hadn't seen it mentioned here
|
| For the no-cost option, enabling Brave Rewards helps Brave to
| cover the costs of video infrastructure
| mraudiobook_com wrote:
| Why irked? Oh, wait that's right, HN hates cryptocurrency,
| sorry I forgot.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| crackercrews wrote:
| Nice that there are no time limits. Not great that passwords are
| only for Premium customers. But if you're just doing 1-on-1 calls
| it's pretty easy to notice if an uninvited guest has appeared.
|
| Does this offer scheduling, or just initiating calls in real
| time?
| html5web wrote:
| you can set a password in the security settings, also there's a
| feature called Lobby which allows to let users to join the call
| html5web wrote:
| Looks like you can bypass Brave browser lock by copying and
| pasting the iframe source url on other browsers
| bserge wrote:
| What does "no tracking" even mean here? Does it include no facial
| recognition?
|
| I mean, ffs, the FBI or Interpol or whoever could release such an
| app using keywords that mean nothing these days. Privacy
| preserving, no tracking, no installation, no special permissions.
|
| We just match everyone on video against a criminal database, but
| it's fine, we don't save your mugshot if you're not a criminal!
| BrendanEich wrote:
| No one in the middle sees unencrypted video. Two-party is fully
| end-to-end encrypted. We avoid overusing that overloaded phrase
| for multiparty and we're working on defenses against active
| (zoom bomb) attacks, that do not require a login. So any face
| scanner on a multiparty call would have to be someone the host
| invited who is doing face scanning at their endpoint where the
| cryptographic session terminates and video gets decrypted.
| jppope wrote:
| damn... Brave is just crushing it. I've been using brave search
| and its amazing for development... the code samples are front and
| center
| nicce wrote:
| It is just very hard to trust them... they get caught on very
| hostile things again and again, when they promise that won't
| happen again. In the end, they are yet another ad based
| company.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| > "they get caught on very hostile things again and again"
|
| This is not the case. The most common claims are "Brave
| accepted donations for others", "Brave replaces ads across
| the Web", "Brave injected/modified referral links"--each of
| these claims are unequivocally false.
|
| You are right that Brave is an "ad based company," however.
| But that needs to be explained a bit, since Brave is unlike
| any other ad-based company you've likely encountered on the
| Web.
|
| When people think of "ad-based company," they often picture
| something like Google. A company that has its hands in most
| of what you do on the Web, existing as a third-party resource
| in most of your traffic.
|
| But compare Brave with Google for a moment. Brave's ad-model
| is consent based, while Google's is not. Brave's model
| follows the user's configuration for determining how
| often/whether ads should be shown, while Google does not.
| Brave's model pays the user 70% of the associated revenue,
| while Google does not. Brave collects [no user data], while
| Google does the opposite. The Brave model is built on
| consent, equity, and privacy. Google's model is the opposite,
| in every regard.
| nicce wrote:
| > This is not the case. The most common claims are "Brave
| accepted donations for others", "Brave replaces ads across
| the Web", "Brave injected/modified referral links"--each of
| these claims are unequivocally false.
|
| How so? For example the case "Brave injected/modified
| referral links" https://github.com/brave/brave-
| core/blob/master/components/o...
|
| The "problem" of open-source is, that you can see what is
| happening.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| No problem here; I'm happy you went straight to the
| source. You can also find this code at code.brave.com in
| the future (to save you some clicks). Note that the
| source to which you linked does not demonstrate Brave
| "injecting" or "modifying" any referral links. What is
| shown instead is our affiliate-code offering, which is
| presented in the UI of the browser itself when the
| participating user searches particular terms via the
| ominibox. We wrote about this here, including screenshots
| of how it appears in-app: https://brave.com/referral-
| codes-in-suggested-sites/
| nicce wrote:
| But that is exactly what injection is. But anyway I'm
| glad you fixed it.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Injection refers to content inserted into a page from
| outside. An example of this would be Brave's "tip"
| buttons on Twitter. The browser [injects] an object into
| the page which can trigger tipping UI in the browser when
| clicked. This feature didn't inject anything; it
| displayed an affiliate-link option in the browser's
| interface.
|
| Others have claimed that Brave modified referral codes;
| this too is false. While some sites have attempted this
| as a support option (Stack Overflow briefly
| considered/experimented-with modifying Amazon links in
| questions/answers, but chose not to continue down that
| path), Brave never engaged in this type of behavior. This
| claim implies that Brave has modified the DOM of pages
| viewed by the user to alter the HREF of links to various
| sites. This is not the case, and never was the case
| either.
|
| Brave simply had a short list of affiliate codes which
| could be presented to the user, if they matched the
| user's search input, as a way of supporting development
| of the project. No network activity involved, no data
| exchanged, no modifying visited pages or anything else.
| It was presented merely as a pre-search suggestion when
| relevant to the user's input.
| nicce wrote:
| > Injection refers to content inserted into a page from
| outside. An example of this would be Brave's "tip"
| buttons on Twitter. The browser [injects] an object into
| the page which can trigger tipping UI in the browser when
| clicked. This feature didn't inject anything; it
| displayed an affiliate-link option in the browser's
| interface.
|
| That is a _one meaning_ for the injection. In this case,
| you _injected_ HTTP GET parameters (referrals) for the
| domain URL suggestion which was written by the user. And
| that you can of course call only as "a pre-search
| suggestion", but in reality user had to remove them by
| hand/typing the whole url in that time to not use them,
| as it was _injected_ into the url.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| Do you want to talk about the very hostile things? We're not
| perfect (neither is Mozilla, people still roast them for
| stuff like bundling Pocket without it being uninstallable)
| but we fix and learn.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Is Mozilla any better? They've lost their way and Google
| remains their largest source of income.
| tomComb wrote:
| Yes, Mozilla is way better - the polar opposite really.
| Judge them on their record.
|
| Your not liking a company that is giving them money and
| Brave's actual record of being endlessly slimy and
| untrustworthy.
|
| Mozilla undermines Google at every chance so clearly the
| only result of Google money is what you see in Firefox and
| that is easily changable.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| I'm glad you like Firefox, I spent a lot of years on it,
| and on Mozilla, Gecko, SpiderMonkey, and the XUL platform
| before it. But Mozilla is currently beholden to Google
| and this has left them with year over year market share
| losses against Chrome. I don't see how they've
| "undermined" Google. If they switch to Bing as scooped by
| TechCrunch, they may start.
| tomComb wrote:
| Yes, I'm quite familiar with your record - you sell it
| endlessly. Your getting in early at Mozilla doesn't make
| up for the damage you've done to the web with Brave.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| "damage"? Be serious. Brave even at 40M users has not
| done enough to the Web to merit such fake-drama langauge
| from you. What's your issue?
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'll gladly explain for the other people who might be
| scrolling by, since time immemorial has proven that user
| feedback falls on deaf ears at BraveCorp.
|
| The internet is not made "good" by by browser
| manufacturers. This is something we fought about when
| Chrome assumed dominance, and it holds true today. The
| thing that makes the internet good is content: a perfect
| browser does _literally nothing_ except format content
| properly into an open window. That 's why power-users
| will still reach for Firefox, Chrome, or god forbid
| Safari before they consider trying "the cryptocurrency
| browser by a guy nobody trusts". Hell, I'd probably
| install the stupid Opera Gaming Browser before I'd be
| caught using Brave. That only leaves you the market of
| people who would like to earn pennies on the dollar
| browsing the web, but also pay for their DSL access every
| month. In all fairness, it's a market you've capitalized
| on very well, which is why it so closely resembles abuse.
| If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and talks like
| a duck... I won't believe you when you're telling me it's
| actually a lion.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Since you claim to be so honest and open and brave, then
| please finally and truthfully answer my questions about
| all the damage you intentionally inflicted on same sex
| couples in California, by donating your money to the
| Proposition 8 campaign, who used your money to produce
| hateful anti-gay propaganda full of outright lies and
| "fake drama language", like this "Gathering Storm" ad:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AzLrn5JVIo
|
| Why did you successfully try to destroy other people's
| marriages by donating your money to support Proposition
| 8?
|
| Please explain why you believe same sex couples shouldn't
| have the same human rights to marry the person they love
| that you presumably enjoy?
|
| Was your own marriage undermined as badly as you
| intentionally undermined many other people's marriages,
| after the Supreme Court declared same sex marriage legal?
| [deleted]
| BrendanEich wrote:
| Never funded NOM or that video, Don. Try not lying so
| much about me. Once again,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28621826.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >Once again,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28621826.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28621826 says:
|
| >[deleted]
|
| That doesn't answer my questions.
|
| You, Brendan Eich, helped fund the campaign for
| Proposition 8, which destroyed many marriages. True or
| false?
|
| Honestly, can you please address those questions
| directly, instead of linking me to a deleted message and
| dodging the questions?
|
| If you don't want same sex couples to get married, at
| least be brave enough to come out and say it, instead of
| dodging and playing semantic word games.
| blitzar wrote:
| Hard to imply they are a paid shill of google when they are
| the only thing stopping us from Chrome browser 100%
| adoption rate.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| No, Apple stands in the way. If you mean browser engine,
| still true: WebKit was forked as Blink on 4/3/2013 and
| diverged on both sides since.
|
| The time for a new engine may come, and I saw a clean
| room one go by on HN the other day. It's very hard to get
| to webcompat. Gecko loses compatibility as Firefox loses
| market share. For now, the more important fight is a
| level up: tracker blocking, users dealt into the
| economics, intermediaries and big tech dealt out.
| nicce wrote:
| It is true that they get most of their income by setting
| Google as default search engine. However, they do not
| promote or support Google's way to do many things, and all
| of the evidence is pointing that privacy is everything they
| have in their brand, and they haven't done user hostile
| things in the past.
|
| They have attempted many kinds of new business models. VPN
| partnership with Mullavad is really promising one, and
| maybe they finally get new source for income.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _all of the evidence is pointing that privacy is
| everything they have in their brand_
|
| That probably explains why their brand is declining.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2020/03/study...
| rvz wrote:
| So Mozilla isn't any better then.
|
| As long as they have Google's money and have them as the
| default search engine, their stance on privacy is a joke.
| In fact, they knew about the joke about 'Mozilla living
| without Google' since 2007 [0] and 14 years later they
| once begged to Google to renew that contract and now they
| continue to bite the same hand that kept them alive.
|
| [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://ww
| w.compu...
| nicce wrote:
| How many shady or user-hostile things has Mozilla done?
|
| Receiving money is not making someone automatically bad.
| You become bad when you do other things than originally
| agreed for receiving the money, in benefit of money
| provider.
|
| > As long as they have Google's money and have them as
| the default search engine, their stance on privacy is a
| joke.
|
| Also to my knowledge, you can change search engine
| anytime you want.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Mozilla has been in hot-water in the past for silently
| installing extensions and more. But to your last comment
| (i.e. users can change their search engine whenever they
| want), consider the 'tyranny of the default'. Most users
| will not make changes to their browser out of the box.
| Most users frankly do not know how, or even know that
| they ought to in some areas.
|
| When you install Firefox, and fire up that first session,
| your keystrokes in the address bar are sent to Google.
| There is no warning, or permission prompt. The same would
| happen if you accidentally pasted-in your social security
| number, or some other sensitive information--it gets sent
| right off to Google. It was this type of behavior, in
| part, that led independent researchers at Trinity College
| to grade Firefox lower than Brave in terms of out-of-the-
| box privacy: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/brow
| ser_privacy.pdf. In fact, Brave was found to be in its
| own class as the most private browser tested.
| jppope wrote:
| sure... but lets remove the whole trust/ ad thing... Brave is
| a faster version of chrome, and Brave search gives me the
| code sample I'm searching for first thing in the
| sidebar...both are major improvements in my life. It's a
| better product.
| nicce wrote:
| > Brave is a faster version of chrome
|
| This line alone makes Brace _insecure_. It relies on the
| upstream project. Whenever the upstream project gets a
| security patch, it will be exploited on the downstream and
| there is X time for the update, unless you have the
| userbase of Edge or something.
|
| But everybody has opinions to prioritize and we can discuss
| about them forever.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| We update within a day of Chrome on all channels. This is
| a piece of work, but much less than creating our own
| engine (which would have its own security bug habitat and
| early bugs to shake out, until maintenance using bounties
| and fuzzing). https://github.com/brave/brave-
| browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
| tomComb wrote:
| > but lets remove the whole trust/ ad thing.
|
| Huh? Trust is what it all comes down to! You are trusting
| them with your data and access to your devices.
|
| Brave is the last browser company I would trust (based on
| their record) and to me that it the key.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I wonder if Brave (the company) is what Mozilla would look like
| if Eich ended up being CEO of Mozila.
|
| EDIT: Some people took offense, so I am more explicit in my
| hypothetical here.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Quite the bullet we dodged. It's a good example for my pet
| theory that seemingly irrelevant (for the work) things like
| homophobia tend to pretty good heuristics for general
| shiftiness (I had a different word in mind, but autocorrect did
| a smart thing)
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| What was the warning sign with Eich back in the day?
|
| Edit: Oh, you meant literally homophobia. Not sure how I'd
| never heard of him opposing gay marriage. Interesting.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| How many times does this need to be repeated?
|
| Mozilla didn't fire Brendan Eich. He resigned of his own free
| will, against the Mozilla board's request that he stay. His own
| words and the Mozilla FAQ quoted below, I'm not just making
| this up. Down the following thread, Brendan suggested googling
| "constructive separation" -- but I'm not sure if he meant for
| that euphemism to apply to how he left his job at Mozilla, or
| to how he wanted to cancel and destroy existing happy same sex
| marriages in California against their consent. All of the
| google results have to do with marriage, not employment.
| Brendan, care to clarify?
|
| As JavaScript proves, Brendan Eich never really understood the
| concept of equality: https://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-
| Equality-Table/
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24127716
|
| DonHopkins 3 months ago | on: Mozilla lays off 250 employees
| while it refocuses ...
|
| Eich was not forced out or fired. In fact, just the opposite:
| the board actually tried to get Eich to stay, but he decided to
| leave all on his own. Don't try to rewrite history to make an
| ideological point. It's all very well and unambiguously
| documented what really happened, and there's no excuse for you
| spreading that misinformation.
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...
|
| Q: Was Brendan Eich fired?
|
| A: No, Brendan Eich resigned. Brendan himself said:
|
| "I have decided to resign as CEO effective April 3rd, and leave
| Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under
| the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader. I
| will be taking time before I decide what to do next."
|
| Brendan Eich also blogged on this topic.
|
| Q: Was Brendan Eich asked to resign by the Board?
|
| A: No. It was Brendan's idea to resign, and in fact, once he
| submitted his resignation, Board members tried to get Brendan
| to stay at Mozilla in another C-level role.
|
| It's a common misconception which is a key part of the
| narrative that Brendan's Alt-Right Incel GamerGate supporters
| were doing their best to spread at the time (GamerGate was in
| full swing when he resigned, and the Alt-Right jumped on the
| issue at the expense of Mozilla), in order to help Brendan play
| the victim (instead of respecting Brendan's own victims and co-
| workers whose marriages he wanted to terminate) and make him a
| martyr. (Not that I think you're one of them, but they
| unfortunately succeeded at spreading the misconception that
| Brendan was fired far and wide, in the service of their
| cultural war.)
|
| Edit: And do you acknowledge that Brendan wanted to cancel many
| same sex marriages in California? And do you agree or disagree
| with him that those marriages should have been canceled?
| Because he got what he paid for, Proposition 8 passed, and
| those marriages WERE canceled. Which is worse: canceling one
| job, or thousands of marriages?
|
| Edit 2: It's pretty rich that Brendan would claim to be the one
| suffering from a hostile work environment, when he was the one
| who wanted to destroy the marriages of his co-workers and
| users. Was it too much for him to bear facing the dirty looks
| of his co-workers who he didn't believe deserved the same
| rights as he enjoyed? Bullies are always playing the victim.
|
| Breaking apart other people's marriages sounds more like
| "destructive separation" to me.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > Mozilla didn't fire Brendan Eich
|
| true ! Mozilla harassed Brendan Eich publicly and he
| resigned.
| nicce wrote:
| They are always two sides for the story.
|
| So how did they harass? They told about harassment against
| their employees by Brendan Eich. I guess the main question
| is whether that is harassing. Brendan Eich did the same
| publicly against his employees.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| I never harassed anyone at Mozilla or anywhere else. You
| wrote "They [Mozilla] told about harassment against their
| employees by Brendan Eich." Where did Mozilla allege any
| such thing?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I am quite interested to see this -- thank you
| BrendanEich
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Why did you successfully try to destroy other people's
| marriages by donating your money to support Proposition
| 8?
|
| Please explain why you believe same sex couples shouldn't
| have the same human rights to marry the person they love
| that you presumably enjoy?
|
| Was your own marriage undermined as badly as you
| intentionally undermined many other people's marriages,
| after the Supreme Court declared same sex marriage legal?
| BrendanEich wrote:
| Hi Don, you shouldn't jump in here to harass me. BTW, I
| still have all those Facebook messages you sent years
| ago, some violent in tone and metaphor, to which I never
| responded (but I did report to Facebook). Should I
| publish them here?
|
| I was not talking to you, for good and now obvious-to-
| everyone reasons. You are so unbalanced when it comes to
| me that you didn't even read the comment above to which
| you copy-pasted the same blob of text that you've spammed
| elsewhere on HN, about how I quit and I wasn't fired. The
| commenter above never said I was fired.
|
| You're wrong on "destroy":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721891
|
| The issue with Prop 8 was the definition of, not right
| to, state licensed marriage (it proscribed bigamy and
| polygamy too). Try not inserting your hostile conclusions
| as premises of your questions. I'm not going to reply
| further to you.
| nicce wrote:
| Harassing can also be considered as opposing the
| "equality". It is a dangerous path to take part for some
| specific politics, when the target of those politics are
| working under the same company. If the employees feels
| that this brings inequality for them inside the company,
| it can be considered as harassment, if it is showing in
| some way. As Mozilla, I referred multiple employees which
| came with above feelings at that time, and I can say only
| based on what I read.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| Use a dictionary and stop lying about me:
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harass
|
| Feelings alone without action cannot be considered
| harassment, legally or by that definition. Words are the
| means to meaning, and if you continue to misuse them, no
| one will talk with you.
| nicce wrote:
| From the dictionary literally:
|
| > to create an unpleasant or hostile situation for
| especially by uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical
| conduct
|
| If the situation is expressed(felt) by employees as
| hostile or unwelcome (those who were target of the
| political view), then by definition it can be considered
| as harassement, if it is visible somehow. It does not
| need to go the court to be.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| I never exhibited "verbal or physical conduct". Why are
| you still lying?
| endisneigh wrote:
| I didn't say Mozilla fired Eich. The reality is, per your own
| source, is that Eich was going to be CEO, and he was no
| longer given that role, so he left. Given that he was already
| CTO before this debacle, the board trying to get him to stay
| in another C-suite role is effectively a demotion.
|
| You also don't acknowledge that half of Mozilla's board
| resigned immediately after his appointment to CEO and one
| board member cited his appointment as explicitly being the
| reason.
|
| No one is going to stay under those circumstances. So his
| choices were basically stay at Mozilla, whose very own
| employees were protesting his appointment, or leave. I'm
| going to stick with "forced out." I find it amusing that
| Mozilla in your source insists that he wasn't forced out,
| when their own recounting of the events only leads one to
| believe he resigned to due the intense organized protests
| surrounding his appointment. Ultimately you'd have to ask
| Eich privately to know for sure. All I'll say is that when
| someone is demoted, they're going to leave. Whether that's
| CEO or Senior Software Engineer.
|
| I don't even agree with Eich's own (former) positions on
| same-sex marriage, but let's call it what it is, yes? Now,
| whether or not his forcing out was good, or just, is another
| matter, and discussion entirely.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I hate playing cards and hate disagreeing with a personal
| hero even more, but as a gay person I frankly have a hard
| time caring. Eich is an idiot on the same level as Rob
| Monster, but he has a right to espouse or endorse whatever
| completely bonkers shit he wants. That's the reason why open
| source exists, and why we reserve the right to maintain a
| fork of someone's software if their leadership comes into
| question. I use Firefox every day, not in tacit recognition
| of homophobia or gamergate, but because I need a good browser
| that isn't made by Google. Mozilla is the second party, the
| leverage I need as an individual, and I _should hope_ that
| they have dissenting opinions in their corporate structure.
| That 's what drives innovation, it only becomes an issue when
| he abuses his power as a CEO to push his personal agenda. He
| didn't though, so I have a hard time pointing out where the
| "abuse" is in this situation. If it makes people
| uncomfortable to know they're constantly surrounded by people
| who disagree with them, maybe developing a web browser isn't
| the right line of work.
|
| I have no dog in the "he quit/fired" race, but I find it
| disappointing that we've stooped to finger-pointing as a
| community. Open source was built to be better than this, not
| stooping to the same level as bigotry.
| soundnote wrote:
| It's probably criminal to be this level-headed nowadays,
| kudos.
| staysafeanon wrote:
| 100%. All the histrionics would be screaming
| ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM! You support the status quo! You're
| alt-right/Nazi adjacent with your complicitness! etc. ad
| nauseam.
|
| smoldesu's take is refreshing, even though he's
| absolutely be skewered for it if he dared to say it on
| the company Slack.
| [deleted]
| silisili wrote:
| I'm not trying to rewrite history or pick sides...but... if I
| remember right wasn't it basically that everyone at Mozilla
| kept calling him a bigot and saying they wouldn't work there?
| And rather than argue back and forth, he realized it would be
| easier to just resign? That's what I remember, at least. It
| is true he wasn't 'fired', but basically pushed into a wall
| and told to do something.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| No one at Mozilla kept calling me anything. You may be
| thinking of
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2014/03/mozil...
|
| None of those people worked for me as then-CEO, they were
| in the arms-length Mozilla Foundation.
| silisili wrote:
| Ah, indeed I was. From the man himself, I'll eat my crow.
| Thank you for clearing that up.
|
| Also, if you read replies, thank you for Brave. Big fan,
| and excited to see what's next.
| [deleted]
| IceWreck wrote:
| > Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on
|
| If this is true then its another shady thing by a self proclaimed
| privacy company.
|
| They used to do the protection racket thing where they indirectly
| threatened website owners with the ultimatum that if they don't
| work with them, they will man-in-the-middle them to replace the
| website's ads with their own and not give them a cut of the
| profit.
|
| Also, Brave has been caught modifying URLs and adding its own
| affiliate links in them compromising user privacy to earn $$$ for
| itself.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| They are the self-proclaimed "brave" company. Which is enough
| reason to avoid them.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I don't understand why Brave Rewards needs to be enabled, but
| it seems very normal for the company operating a service to
| require some kind of account or membership. If you don't trust
| Brave this is probably not the service for you.
| tsumnia wrote:
| Here is their Reddit response: https://www.reddit.com/r/brave
| _browser/comments/ptbf7e/brave...
|
| In a nutshell, enabling Rewards is their incentive for giving
| the product away for free, otherwise they charge via Premium.
| kf6nux wrote:
| It's even more mundane than that.
|
| They just require you to allow their ads during your call.
| It's privacy preserving ad tech in exchange for 1:1 video
| calls.
|
| That's way better than sites requiring you to allow 3rd party
| ads to use their site.
|
| EDIT: I just saw they let you set your ads to "0 per hour"
| and still let you use this service. I wonder if that's an
| oversight.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| No, it's intended that a rewards user can turn off ads.
| Some users who turn off ads then self-fund (via a custodian
| such as Gemini) to support their favorite sites and
| creators, even automatically via private browser-only
| analytics (so-called Auto-contribute mode).
| [deleted]
| tibyat wrote:
| Where is your quote from? I cmd-f'd for "Rewards" and it
| doesn't turn up anywhere. Maybe the page has been edited?
|
| Also, your same accusations are made in every single HN post
| involving Brave. If you would develop the discussion and
| actually bring forth a new idea, maybe by acknowledging the
| company's response to your claims and responding to that,
| rather than parroting the same thing over and over again, our
| discussion here would be more fresh and useful.
|
| If you insist on rehashing the same argument, maybe you could
| at least bring your sources along each time as well.
|
| Hey, just an idea from a guy tired of reading that Brave is
| hitler and DDG is just Bing, over and over and over.
|
| Here is one article from them on the subject of referral codes:
| https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
| Spivak wrote:
| I do think that Brave would be 100% in the clear (same with any
| browser or extension) to "MiTM", modify, or refuse to display
| any part of any web page.
|
| I don't really want to set any kind of precent that browsers
| should somehow be forced to display web pages exactly as sent.
| throwdecro wrote:
| > I do think that Brave would be 100% in the clear (same with
| any browser or extension) to "MiTM", modify, or refuse to
| display any part of any web page.
|
| Taken literally this would mean that browsers would be
| allowed to re-write, either actively or by deleting sections,
| the actual content of articles. Surely there has to be some
| expectation that what a person publishes on the internet will
| be faithfully represented? And if faithful representation of
| the original is respected for the writing, why shouldn't it
| be respected for the writer's business/advertising
| arrangements?
| Spivak wrote:
| I feel like I'm taking crazy pills in this thread. Are we
| all suddenly against ad/content blockers and the built-in
| tracking protection that Firefox/Safari have?
|
| Do you all not not feel that the browser is ya know the
| user's agent?
| throwdecro wrote:
| > Do you all not not feel that the browser is ya know the
| user's agent?
|
| Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, depends on what the
| browser developers want.
|
| That said, there is something dubious with how ad
| blockers take an author's written content, "liberate" it
| from the ads that pay the author's bills, and make it
| available for free.
|
| I sense Brave is trying to solve that problem, but
| everything I've read about it seems weird.
|
| (Separately I see nothing dubious about tracking
| protection. I wish tracking were less inseparable from
| the advertising; I'm perfectly willing to see ads as long
| as I'm not being shadow profiled).
| jjulius wrote:
| >Are we all suddenly against ad/content blockers and the
| built-in tracking protection that Firefox/Safari have?
|
| No, but the point is that it's a bit more nuanced than
| your original post suggests. Users should have the
| control over how a page is displayed to them. I want to
| tell my browser to block ads, and which ads to block. I
| don't fully trust it to make the same exact decisions in
| that area that I might want, or to not selectively block
| ads based on an agreement it may or may not have with
| advertisers.
|
| >Do you all not not feel that the browser is ya know the
| user's agent?
|
| It is the user's agent, and as the user, I want the
| control. I want to make the decisions.
| antonok wrote:
| > It is the user's agent, and as the user, I want the
| control. I want to make the decisions.
|
| What kind of decisions do you want to be able to make?
| Unless you're writing all your own filters (in which
| case, kudos to you!), you're still ultimately delegating
| these decisions primarily to a handful of filter list
| maintainers you've probably never met. Brave's source
| code and filter lists are all developed in the open and
| are heavily customizable, as well.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Brave's ... filter lists are all developed in the open
| and are heavily customizable, as well.
|
| As are so, so many of the filter lists developed by
| "maintainers [I've] probably never met." Every list I've
| added to my pihole is fully readable and customizable.
| aeturnum wrote:
| > _I don 't fully trust it to make the same exact
| decisions in that area that I might want_
|
| This is a very reasonable desire, but Brave also seems
| clear that their service does something different. Where
| other tools focus on blocking ads, Brave is more about
| their hybrid blocking of 'bad' ads (whatever that means)
| and replacing those ads with theirs.
|
| Are you saying that you feel like Brave is deceptive in
| describing how their service works or that the entire
| idea of a tool that blocks some subset of ads that the
| user cannot configure and replaces them is fundamentally
| unethical?
| Closi wrote:
| > Are you saying that you feel like Brave is deceptive in
| describing how their service works or that the entire
| idea of a tool that blocks some subset of ads that the
| user cannot configure and replaces them is fundamentally
| unethical?
|
| My personal issue is that Brave is an advertising company
| which is blocking competitor ads where content-creators
| are getting paid (the company which the content-creators
| chose to partner with), and replacing them with ads of
| their own (regardless of the format of them).
|
| It's a great business model - but IMO it's just stealing
| or subverting ad revenue from the people who actually
| generate the content you are reading and maintain the
| infrastructure.
|
| Hate ads? Get Firefox and block them.
|
| Don't mind ads and are happy for the revenue to go to the
| content creator? Get Firefox, it blocks most tracking
| anyway.
|
| Don't mind ads but hate the idea that the revenue will go
| to the content creator, and you would rather give it to
| some random shady company that might give you a cut of
| their subverted/stolen revenue in crypto? Get Brave!
| jjulius wrote:
| Just in case there's any confusion, I've been speaking
| broadly about browsers in general, not Brave
| specifically.
|
| I genuinely don't have an opinion regarding whether or
| not I think Brave is being deceptive. Rather, I've always
| been generally untrusting of bodies such as Brave making
| "it's cool, trust us" claims. It could be that they're
| being 100% honest and that's great, but I just can't get
| my own pessimism to get on board, particularly when
| there's money/profit involved.
|
| Ultimately, yeah, I would say that the idea of a tool
| that doesn't allow me to eliminate ads entirely as it
| substitutes ads _it_ says are "OK" is unethical (for/to
| me - if others are fine with it, cool, use Brave!). Going
| back to my lack of trust, I can't trust that they won't
| make a user-hostile decision around ads in the interest
| of their own bottom line down the road.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| ... I don't know how to approach that statement. You prefer
| arbitrary invisible changes by actors unknown? Or is it a
| part of some elaborate Phillip-K-Dick art project about
| unreliable narrator and "what is truth anyway"?
|
| If Bob sends me a letter, I expect Postal Service to deliver
| it to me exactly as sent.
|
| If Bob sends me an email I expect email service to deliver it
| to me as sent.
|
| If Bob sends me a webpage I expect it to be delivered as
| sent.
|
| We can discuss changes & preferences on _presentation_ layer,
| but invisible, uncontrollable substitution of _content_ , I
| have no idea how they're either justifiable or desirable.
|
| I am likely not interpreting your comment correctly. Perhaps
| if you elaborate it may become clearer.
| jjulius wrote:
| >I don't really want to set any kind of precent that browsers
| should somehow be forced to display web pages exactly as
| sent.
|
| That's... exactly what I want.
| barnabee wrote:
| Reader mode proves that "exatly as sent" is the opposite of
| what I want.
|
| I would like browsers to reinterpret what is sent for me
| (and noone else, definitely not for the browser maker) and
| display something more readable and useful (lightweight,
| queryable, cross-referenced, hyperlinke, actionable, etc.).
|
| I'd love to never see the site owner's design or interact
| with their UX 95% of the time (if you're an artist or
| musician I probably want to see what you designed, that's
| about it). Reader mode probably makes it 50% but is not
| designed for any kind of interactivity so I still have to
| use horrible booking pages, shopping sites, etc. I'd love
| my bropwser to extract the ueful and completely standardise
| the UI every time.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| what impossible fantasy! you expect software you use,
| which a for profit company made to,, lemme get this
| right,, respect your requirements, wants and make your
| life less terrible? and not distract you? make things
| easier? hah! if only our big tech overlords meant what
| they said about caring for us /s
| barnabee wrote:
| I'm not dead set on it being made by a for-profit company
| but otherwise yeah, that's about right.
|
| Dream big, they say :)
| jjulius wrote:
| I actually largely agree with you. I should clarify my
| original comment a bit, I think.
|
| I want my browser to display the page exactly as sent
| _until I tell it not to_. It should be serving pages to
| me as-is, and things such as ad /content blockers, and
| reader mode, should be my choices. I don't want the
| browser making those decisions for me ahead of time and
| without my input.
| barnabee wrote:
| This is fair, or at least, if they do make those choices
| ahead of time they should be well publicised and
| configurable, or it should be a specialised, single
| purpose browser.
|
| To that extent, I think if Brave is open and honest and
| says "we're a browser that reformats pages in this way"
| that is ok. It's sneaky shit, dark patterns, bundling
| things you want with things you might not, etc. that make
| me distrusting of them.
| zormino wrote:
| I think it's one thing to strip out content or ads, but
| an entirely different beast to replace ads with your own.
| There are arguments for blocking ads, both ethical and
| security based. But replacing the ads with your own is
| basically the same as stealing the content for your own
| profit. Brave is a shitty company with no moral leg to
| stand on.
| sodality2 wrote:
| This is the crucial part. Is brave inserting ads on the
| SAME PAGE that it stripped out of? If so I agree
| completely. I thought brave had some sort of notification
| system though, which is a bit different IMO.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| No, Brave does not display ads on publisher properties.
| Brave blocks trackers (which impacts most third-party
| ads), but does no in-situ substitution. First-party ads
| are generally untouched. Brave acts as a content-filter
| out of the box (similar to uBlock Origin), protecting the
| user and their data from third-party harvesters and more.
|
| Brave does offer an optional feature called Brave Ads,
| which enables users to view privacy-respecting ads (as
| notifications, and high-quality New Tab Page wallpapers)
| for 70% of the associated revenue. This revenue (in the
| form of BAT rewards) can then flow out to verified
| publishers as a form of support. No user data is
| collected; ad-matching happens on-device, and in
| accordance with user-specified constraints.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Brave does not replace (meaning, display in-situ) third-
| party ads. Those are blocked, as you stated, for ethical
| and security reasons. Brave offers an opt-in feature of
| the browser called 'Brave Rewards' and 'Brave Ads'. This
| feature enables users to opt-in to ad-notifications
| (displayed as native prompts on the device; not shown on
| the pages you visit). Ads are displayed on every 4th new
| tab page for participating users (again, no ads on
| publisher properties). The user consents to these,
| receives 70% of the revenue for their attention, and sets
| threshold limitations for how many ads can be displayed
| in a given period. Brave has never replaced ads on pages;
| that would be highly unethical.
| sneak wrote:
| How many times have Brave pivoted at this point?
|
| First it was ad replacement, then it was a patreon thing that
| took donations (illegally) for third parties that didn't want it,
| then it was ad blocking, then it was a search engine, then it was
| videoconferencing....
|
| What exactly is their revenue model?
| tolien wrote:
| > How many times have Brave pivoted at this point?
|
| On one hand, the features are at least somewhat adjacent to
| their core business of building a web browser. On the other,
| whenever Mozilla did something like this they were panned for
| spreading themselves too thin and diverging from their core
| mission.
| sneak wrote:
| Mozilla is a nonprofit. Brave is not.
| soundnote wrote:
| Mozilla, the foundation, is a nonprofit. The Corporation is
| a for-profit entity (though it apparently invests all its
| profits back into the company).
| tolien wrote:
| Good point, Brave's responsibility as a for-profit
| enterprise is to attempt to go full Paperclip Game and grow
| to consume the entire universe.
|
| More seriously, I don't think for-profit/non-profit really
| matters here. Mozilla's reasoning was pretty clear (for
| better or worse) that they saw these adjacent services as
| helping to break into the lock-in of Apple/Google/MS who
| used either their own browser-adjacent services to push
| their own browsers, or to provide privacy-respecting
| versions of services (in an attempt to displace, say,
| Zoom).
| jonathansampson wrote:
| A nonprofit where the people at the top have multi-million
| dollar salaries (see https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html)
| Yes, Brave is for profit, but not at the cost of user data
| and/or trust. Brave doesn't collect or exchange your data.
| Firefox, on the other hand, transmits your keystrokes to
| Google right out of the box. Leith did a great side-by-side
| comparison of various top browsers (including Firefox and
| Brave), finding the latter to be in a class of its own in
| terms of privacy out of the box: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Do
| ug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf.
| soundnote wrote:
| On the other hand, Mozilla fans are mostly morons who are
| actively hostile to success and want a pristine FOSS project
| funded entirely on donations. (I was one of those morons back
| in the day)
|
| I think initiatives like Pocket, Brave Search, Brave Talk, a
| privacy-respecting ads ecosystem, Vivaldi's Mail/Calendar/RSS
| setup and integrated barebones Notes module are all pretty
| much exactly what should happen. There was an article about
| how using Firefox alone is meaningless:
| http://dpldocs.info/this-week-
| in-d/Blog.Posted_2021_09_06.ht...
|
| I'm drawn to agree: The browser alone is a hard sell, a bit
| like how Steve Jobs said that Dropbox is not a product, but a
| feature. A browser company needs to provide services for
| users to stay relevant. Search, notes and communication tools
| are part and parcel of that. If you're just a window, you're
| going to die.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| No pivoting; just an incremental realization of a better Web.
| We never replaced ads. Brave blocks trackers, and their
| associated third-party ads for privacy and security reasons--
| we've done this from the start. But when you block third-party
| ads, you cut into the revenue of publishers, creators, and
| other content makers.
|
| Cutting revenue for those who make the Web wonderful is not
| ideal, so an alternative approach was needed to help those who
| creator the content that keeps us 'coming back' to the Web.
| This is where Brave Rewards came in, and Brave's User Growth
| Pool. We distributed BAT to our users, inviting them to ear-
| mark it for the creators they appreciated most. Some of those
| creators signed-up to claim our tokens, while others didn't.
|
| From the start, Brave has been focused on privacy, security,
| and sustainability. In the vein of privacy, we introduced Brave
| Search. An engine with its own index, not connected to you or
| your online activities, existing only to help you find what
| you're seeking on the Web.
|
| Our revenue model is largely ad-based, but quite different from
| the ads we all have come accustomed to on the Web. Brave's Ad
| model is consent-based, user-configurable (you control ad-
| frequencies, etc.), and private-by-design. Rather than sending
| your data off to third-parties, we send regional ad catalogs to
| you. These are studied in the private enclave of your machine
| so that your data is never transmitted elsewhere. When users
| participate in Brave Ads, they receive 70% of the associated
| revenue (for their attention). Brave gets the remaining 30%.
|
| I hope this helps
| opheliate wrote:
| > We never replaced ads.
|
| How can you be so disingenuous? You removed ads, then
| introduced your own advertising. You may see those as two
| separate events, but the consequence is the same as if you
| had chosen to replace ads.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Replaces implies in-situ substitution (i.e. ads on pages,
| etc.); in fact this is often what is explicitly stated when
| the claim "Brave replaces ads" is made (see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28619682 for a local
| example). Brave blocks harmful ads and trackers, and
| introduced an alternate model to supply missed revenue for
| creators. Brave Ads (desktop notifications) are off by
| default in Brave; users must opt-in. So there is no
| replacement (in-situ) of ads, but there is blocking (of
| necessity, for security and privacy reasons) of third-party
| trackers/ads.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I can't help but wonder if you were in politics at some
| point in your career, being able to hinge on a very
| strict and literal definition of "replace" and missing
| the entire spirit of topic at hand.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Words have semantic range, and this is no less true for
| "replace" than for any other word. In 2016 there were
| reports that Brave would replace ads [meaning in-situ,
| in-page substitution] with its own ads. This never
| happened. Yet the claim continues to live on (see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28619682 for a local
| example). But anybody who downloads and uses Brave for a
| few seconds can quickly tell that this is not the case.
|
| But perhaps this first reading wasn't the proper
| exegesis; perhaps the author meant only "Brave blocks
| Google's ads, and has created its own advertising model
| in its place." If that's the intended understanding, then
| yes, that's correct. Google's ads are privacy-leaches who
| parasitically attack to non-consenting hosts, sucking as
| much data out as possible.
|
| Brave Ads replaces Google Ads. Brave Ads is based on
| consent, privacy, and equity. With Brave Ads, you have to
| opt-in to participate. If/when you do, you receive 70% of
| the revenue, and you share [no data] in the process.
| Google's model is quite the opposite; you don't opt-in,
| you don't get revenue, and your data is piped out to a
| third-party where it is sold, rented, and/or amended onto
| whatever profile exists for you on the Web.
|
| Yes, Brave replaces Google
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Words have semantic range, and this is no less true
| for "replace" than for any other word._
|
| I agree. Although I'm sure it's clear that I believe
| "replace" is semantically compatible with "remove
| advertisements from X, instead serving ads from Y in a
| different location".
|
| > _perhaps the author meant only "Brave blocks Google's
| ads, and has created its own advertising model in its
| place."_
|
| This was my interpretation.
|
| > _Brave Ads replaces Google Ads._
|
| I guess we both agree that "replace" is within the
| semantic range. Which is why "We never replace ads."
| didn't sit well.
|
| For what it is worth, I'm neither for nor against Brave.
| Just surprised about how vigorous Brave employees are
| being in the thread.
|
| > _Google 's model is quite the opposite_
|
| Don't worry, I'm not on the Google train either.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| See my later edits to those comments, wherein I shared an
| example from another user in this thread accusing Brave
| of in-situ ad-replacement. That is usually the claim
| being made (first seen in 2016, and refusing to die
| since).
|
| Brave is definitely working hard to replace that which
| doesn't work on the Web, advertising being one such
| thing. We're pushing for a model that is based on
| consent, equity, and an a priori commitment to privacy
| (don't touch the user's data). If we can successfully
| replace (however you wish to interpret that) Google with
| such a model, then I'm content
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| > What exactly is their revenue model?
|
| Seems they're still trying to figure that out.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| No, we are transparent about it. https://brave.com/brave-
| rewards https://brave.com/transparency and premium products
| such as VPN, Talk, more to come.
|
| EDIT: some of you think we should do only a browser, but we
| also have a search engine now (https://search.brave.com/).
| We're going big across privacy and user-agent models that fit
| together well and provide our users with value in the form of
| products, also in revenue shares including >= what we make on
| any opt-in attention economics. Think big, avoid pigeonholing
| us as some of you did and still do Mozilla. My advice!
| babbledabbler wrote:
| This is really neat to see. I'm actually working on an idea
| that involves conferencing and have been using jitsi's open
| source solution for the POC. I've been impressed with the
| openness and flexibility of the platform.
|
| Are there any plans to enable installable third party
| app/extensions with talk.brave like zoom is currently
| rolling out their app store?
| BrendanEich wrote:
| App stores require curation for safety properties
| (security, brand, abuse). We're not ready to take those
| on. But Talk's HTML-based web app can be user-scripted.
| Let me know if you develop anything.
| babbledabbler wrote:
| That makes sense. App stores add a lot of cost both on
| the platform and developer side, and I think in this case
| a straight forward scripting api with some well thought
| security/privacy protections would probably be easier to
| integrate with.
|
| Will definitely shoot you a note when we've got something
| built. Thanks!
| zormino wrote:
| Their business model is theft by another name, however they can
| manage to swing it. When they get caught, pivot and steal
| content for profit a different way. Repeat.
| billiam wrote:
| Saint Joseph on a hot plate, the intolerance and rigidity of
| thinking of people on this web page is too much. Hacker News
| and FB and Twitter and a million other things we use every
| day are also guilty of theft, theft of our time and attention
| and ability to think slowly enough to not just reinforce our
| own preconceived notions. Yes, those Brave people are
| shifting their model all the time. Eich and team saw first
| hand that a browser company is almost impossible to run for
| profit unless you own your own multibillion dollar ad network
| or half the global phone business. Eich got to learn that
| first hand at Mozilla. He's trying to find an audience and
| offer what he considers innovative products. He's no more
| deceptive than Google or Amazon or Ycombinator are about what
| gets done with the attention and clicks.
| slenk wrote:
| https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ for the ability to do it with any
| browser and not having to opt in to their ads.
| olah_1 wrote:
| Brave is technically using this SaaS solution from the company
| that develops Jitsi: https://jaas.8x8.vc/#/
| blitzar wrote:
| So it is just Jitsi with a shitcoin scam attached?
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I think jitsi as a service is not free. So Brave is at
| least covering the cost of leveraging the service.
| blitzar wrote:
| https://meet.jit.si/ _Start & Join meetings for free - No
| account needed_
| runawaybottle wrote:
| At scale, nothing is free. They are offering this free to
| everyone via their browser.
|
| https://jaas.8x8.vc/#/pricing
| [deleted]
| kube-system wrote:
| And self-host it for the ultimate in privacy:
| https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-gu...
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| See also Linphone: https://www.linphone.org
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| > Brave Talk is powered by the Jitsi as a Service open source
| video meeting platform from 8x8, a leading integrated cloud
| communications platform provider (NYSE: EGHT), using WebRTC
| open source technology that enables developers to embed HD
| video directly into the browser.
| marban wrote:
| Every program attempts to expand until it can host video
| conferences.
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