[ishan1121]

If this becomes a reality, we as a tech community must do our part. We must personally leave chrome, ask all our friends and family to stop using chrome and switch to Firefox or Brave. Really show Google what we as a community can do.

[morganvachon]

Agreed, except Brave is a closed source wrapper for Chromium and you can't be sure if it's really as safe and private as they say. Also, it's married to a cryptocurrency scheme and that alone is reason to stay away.

[sanxiyn]

Which part of Brave is not open source at https://github.com/brave ?

[morganvachon]

Thanks, I wasn't aware they had finally produced source code with an open source license for the wrapper code. Still, I don't see anything on their Github about the servers that run the backend of their ad-serving and cryptomining services. Until I see otherwise I'll assume that is closed and proprietary and that all browsing activity is monitored, logged, and monetized per their advertising model.

https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/a2y9iv/is_br...

[xur17]

Isn't it open source? https://github.com/brave/brave-browser

[filesystem]

Brave is seeking to raise a traditional series A: https://www.coindesk.com/brave-browser-to-raise-over-30-mill... (ironically you'll only really find this news on cryptocurrency news sites).

I think the mindset that crypto = stay away when looking at Brave is silly. The idea is novel, they have a working product, and IMO they really aren't "locked in" to crypto. I imagine they could pretty easily transition the ad payouts, tipping, and auto-contribution features from BAT to traditional currency. Building the platform around BAT to start just allowed them to cash in on an ICO at the peak of the craze.

[ishan1121]

Brave's co-founder is the guy invented JS. I use Firefox often only use Brave to test whether my website will run on Chrome.

[magnamerc]

I tip content creators that I enjoy with BAT. How is that a bad use case? This blind hatred for anything crypto is toxic to this community.

[tomstockmail]

If they aren't opted in to the program then you're not giving them anything. As far as I know Brave is still accepting tips on behalf of people even if they're not opted in. Also, these tips are in an altcoin that Brave created and not the currency of the content creators.

See also: https://twitter.com/tomscott/status/1076160753793683456?s=19

[Dylan16807]

https://twitter.com/tomscott/status/1085242421817102336

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/wp-content/uploads/2019...

They fixed the issues.

[magnamerc]

Everyone I tip to is verified. And the BAT sits in an address until that creator does verify. And yeah of course the tips are in BAT, the whole point is to increase the value of the network. Also, people are donating BAT that they've gotten from ads. No one is tipping people with BAT that they've bought with their own money as far as I'm aware.

[tomstockmail]

>And the BAT sits in an address until that creator does verify.

To my point - you're not tipping the content creator at all until they claim (edit: although as you say, tipping to verified does tip them). Also, these tips that are done with BAT that came with the promotion of Brave is sent back to Brave if they remained unclaimed for a set amount of time. Seeing as Brave has complete control of the tips they can change the rules and take the BAT back at any time.

>the whole point is to increase the value of the network.

This is kind of a pain point, isn't it? Many content creators have established ways to donate (Patreon, Twitch built in methods, Paypal, etc). Why should they opt-in to an altcoin created by Brave? There's no incentive for content creators to "increase the value of the network."

[magnamerc]

>Also, these tips that are done with BAT that came with the promotion of Brave is sent back to Brave if they remained unclaimed for a set amount of time. Seeing as Brave has complete control of the tips they can change the rules and take the BAT back at any time.

That's true for unclaimed tips. I don't believe they have any control if someone is verified, but I could be wrong.

>This is kind of a pain point, isn't it? Many content creators have established ways to donate (Patreon, Twitch built in methods, Paypal, etc). Why should they opt-in to an altcoin created by Brave? There's no incentive for content creators to "increase the value of the network."

I'd imagine the incentive to grow the network would be more tips through Brave. I don't donate through patreon or paypal since I find that to be a personal pain point. But I will be using Brave. I'd imagine there are others like me.

[crowbahr]

I've tipped with my own money in BAT. I like the system and hate ads. So I put a small amount of Eth into it instead of cashing out entirely.

[magnamerc]

That's interesting. Can you withdraw? I was under the impression that withdrawals are disabled for now.

[elcapitan]

The same friends and family that we convinced a couple of years ago that they should stop using that shitty Firefox and switch to Chrome, which is so much more performant and don't worry about Google?

[sanxiyn]

I never did that, I continued to recommend Firefox to everybody. If you recommended Chrome, now is the chance to repent your sin.

[CrazyStat]

Firefox was in a pretty bad spot when I switched about 10 years ago. I would not have recommended to anyone who didn't have an excessive amount of RAM.

[cr0sh]

I only switched from firefox to chrome, many years ago, for two reasons:

1. Better dev tools 2. Better WebGL performance

But today, Firefox has upped their game on both, and really, I don't play much with WebGL anymore so it doesn't matter that much to me.

I am kinda sick of this whole back-and-forth thing, though. I'm also getting tired of seeing the way the web is going; monetized and walled off. More and more, I'm starting to look into and toward distributed solutions.

Give me back the internet I remember from the early 90s. If I can't have that, then I might just return to BBS-ing over ssh...

[derefr]

The “back and forth thing” is the market force keeping the browsers from stagnating. Even though it’s a hassle, you really don’t want the world where it doesn’t happen.

[ishan1121]

Actually, the internet has become too commercialized. But the problem is the top 1% driving all the revenue. And they are using this revenue to shape the web which is profitable to them.

[roboyoshi]

We all make mistakes, don't we? I'd rather tell them now to switch back as long as they can before we're stuck with google.

[burtonator]

Like we did our part to ask people to leave Facebook?

We need a more effective strategy than this...

[ishan1121]

People don't really have an alternative to Facebook currently. Even if I leave Facebook, I still am tied to their ecosystem - Instagram, Whatsapp. And let's be honest, everyone is there. If you want to be in touch with someone you need to be on Facebook's platform. But Google is much easier to leave. Make Firefox your default browser and make DDG your default search engine.

[type0]

> And let's be honest, everyone is there. If you want to be in touch with someone you need to be on Facebook's platform.

Did everyone just got rid of email and phone numbers?

[marines]

You can always send a letter, right?

[burtonator]

Instead of complaining I'm going to make a suggestion.

What if we had a middle ground where we build a browser to fight ads by putting forth responsible ads with responsible tracking and used the revenue to fight for a responsible web.

[cr0sh]

I don't know if this is what you're getting at (probably not), but I've often thought a lot of the "ills" we see with the current web ecosystem (particularly so-called "fake news", disinformation campaigns, propaganda, etc - the whole stinkin' mess) could be solved if it were required that everyone identifies themselves - almost like a driver's license to use the web.

Make people truly responsible for their words and actions online, and maybe politeness and civility might return. Let anonymous actors still communicate, but they would be known as such, and the browser or whatnot could identify that and mark them as such, so that others can know whether or not to put their trust in them.

But then - that also goes against my real belief that the internet should be free and anonymous; it also goes against reality, as we've seen real-life examples of people who are toxic, divisive, insincere, hateful, etc - being perfectly forthright with their identity online and people flocking toward them by the thousands. Conversely, there are also plenty of completely anonymous personas and characters out there that people also believe and hold their words to be true; in some cases more true than objective reality.

I don't know what the real solution to all of this is, at least in the short term. In the long term, better education for everyone would be the ideal solution, but with that also being vilified and worked against by individuals and groups who have an agenda to prevent such betterment, pushing that solution and having it work long term is increasingly becoming seemingly non-viable. Even in a perfect world, though, where such a thing weren't being molested, it might still take a generation or two before any results were potentially seen.

I think long before this is solved, the solution may present itself in the utmost form: A worldwide civil war, that'll make both WW1 and 2 look like skirmishes.

[DJBunnies]

Isn't brave just chromium though?

[tedivm]

Yes, but chromium isn't removing the feature completely- since it's still allowed to be used in enterprise versions the code is all still there. Brave has already committed to making sure it continues to work.

[arkades]

> If this becomes a reality

If?

They’re acting in keeping with their business model. There’s no “if,” just “when.”

I’ve already started reaching out to all the people that I’m family-and-friends tech support for and begun pitching a transition to FF.

[s3r3nity]

Or Safari, which, for my family that uses iPhones, is completely sufficient for their needs - and has good privacy settings (AND sane default privacy settings.)

[781]

People warned for years here that exactly this was going to happen. But the HN tech community was "no, no, you are just a hater, Google IS GOOD, it's a company run by engineers, not by suits, they will NEVER betray us, this is totally different than the IE situation"

[MentallyRetired]

Dilly dilly.

I'm sharing the Firefox link on Facebook right now. Not a huge deal but I guess I haven't advocated for it yet.

[JustSomeNobody]

The same community that got us into this mess?