[johnpowell]

I refuse to use a browser with a cryptocurrency attached to it.

It feels like the only reason it is being pushed so hard is so BAT holders can make a buck. It might be a great browser but I will always think of it as onecoin with a some chrome tossed in.

[jonathansampson]

Hello, John! I'm Sampson, a developer on the browser. The BAT component is not on-by-default in Brave. By default, you get a browser that blocks third-party trackers (and the ads that rely on them), prevents fingerprinting, crypto-jacking, auto-play media, and more.

Unfortunately, the ad-system that has become infested with malicious tracking and more is also a means by which creators across the Web find support. This is why Brave introduced the Brave Rewards component. So that we can create not only a safer Web, but a sustainable Web.

Opting-in to Brave Rewards means you're able to earn tokens for your attention. By default, these tokens are then donated to the sites and properties you visit throughout the month. The more you visit a property, the higher their end-of-month contribution will be.

All of this works without violating your privacy, thanks to on-device matching of ads and machine-learning. The token integration is a minimal component, but with a massive impact on the long-term sustainability of the Web. I'm happy to answer any other questions you may have.

All the best!

[JMTQp8lwXL]

Given that IP address, user agent, fonts, screen dimensions, and a few other data points easily found via JavaScript can create a fingerprint [0], isn't a bit disingenuous to suggest any browser can truly block tracking, especially if JavaScript is enabled?

I could use cURL to perform all web browsing, but my IP Address + User Agent could still be tracked by the website I visit.

With time, what seems to be occurring is a game of cat-and-mouse where trackers develop more powerful heuristics for creating fingerprints.

[0]: https://amiunique.org/

[asdkhadsj]

To extend your comment; Even your mouse movements can be used to form an identity of you. Not only that, your mouse movements even correlate to demographic information about you (eg age/gender/etc).

With that said, I think you're correct in that it'll be a game of cat and mouse, but I'm not sure what the alternative is. Are you implying that there is anything that can be done beyond the traditional cat and mouse? Because I feel that's the same with security, crypto, etc etc.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

Browsers need to rethink what is available via JavaScript. Scroll position, cursor location, etc. should not be readable. CSS Media queries for building responsive should still be fine to write, but the JavaScript API should be silent as to what styles are actually applied (to prevent workarounds for say, inferring the screen height/width from media query styles).

If we go back to basics, where I can make a network request, and the body includes a useful response (e.g., no need for running JS to populate the DOM, as is the case with SPAs that aren't server-side rendered), we can free ourselves from those more advanced heuristics.

It will likely always be cat-and-mouse, but we can rethink the universe of data available within the browser (that can be reported back via XHR requests), and make that universe much smaller.

[safeplanet-fesa]

Exactly. I am a big hater of everything that even remotely feels like a shitcoin. BAT is a silly useless project; I would not hate it if there was no conflict of interests, even if it's a silly project; but there is a huge conflict of interest - the developers want to make money out of thin air by issuing their tokens.

I already wrote this before in another comment. Basic Attention Token is not a secure cryptographic system. The idea to pay tokens for shown ads cannot be cryptographically secure. There is no known way to have a cryptographically strong "Proof-of-Watch". All that browser does is, when a user watches an ad, it communicates to its backend and asks the backend to send a token to an address attached to the user. It's not a cryptographic system that mines coins by showing ads.

It's a useless gimmick that has nothing to do with cryptocurrency. The real coins are so valuable because they are cryptographically strong. This thing is centralized and its mechanism of payments for ad views is not cryptographically strong. The token has some value only because of peoples' stupidity.

[jonathansampson]

There seems to be some confusion here; users aren't paid for watching ads in Brave. When an ad notification has been delivered, the user is paid. There's a subtle difference there. Brave (because it is the browser) is able to determine when an ad has been displayed, better than any JavaScript-based client that exists today on the Web. Presently, ads are only shown as desktop notifications (no publisher ads at this time). When the notification is registered, your end-of-month payout increases.

Judging by your choice of words, I assume you're a proponent of using Bitcoin. We did this, originally. Unfortunately, Bitcoin was at that time experiencing serious issues with network congestion and large fees. Our users (who only with to buy $5 or $10 at a time) would often have to pay nearly as much in fees. That clearly isn't sustainable. Introducing BAT (on the Ethereum blockchain) meant we had a faster, more reliable system. It also meant the creation of the User Growth Pool, a reservoir of 300 million tokens that could be gifted to early users to raise this novel apparatus off the ground (and it has been working wonderfully at that).

If there are any questions I can answer for you, I'd be happy to chat further.

[bogomipz]

I applaud all of the privacy efforts by Brave so far. Can you say what the long term business plan is for Brave? At some point you have to monetize it to make it sustainable. Is this where the crypto coin mentioned here comes into play? If so will there be an alternative subscription-based model?

[safeplanet-fesa]

I'm not willing to really try to prove that BAT embedded in Brave is a fundamentally flawed project. Because there are so many project of this kind in the current blockchain industry that I dislike very much, that I don't have enough time and motivation to dispute every such project. People who see what kind of clownade current blockchain industry is, will see it on their own. Those who don't think so, I don't want to convince (I tried before a lot, but marketing of big "blockchain" projects overpowers any words of a couple of geeks).

1. The power of blockchain is in its cryptographic strength. Without cryptographic strength a blockchain is worthless. Strength of a system is defined by the weakest link. The weak link of Brave + BAT is in inability to mathematically prove an ad view. Neither there is a known way to cryptographically mine coins by viewing ads. This means, there are no cryptographically secure methods to pay for ads. What you made is a program that displays an ad and ask your server to send coins to the user. Of course, this can be spoofed. Hackers can reverse engineer how Brave communicates with your backend and spoof it. There is no cryptographic way to prove that an ad has been shown. Hackers can make the windows with ads invisible etc, and still receive reward. And I'm sure they are doing it, but as long as spoofing rates are within your business model, you don't mind because everyone is making money and you don't want to ruin the party.

2. I'm not a proponent of Bitcoin particularly. I dislike everyone who creates a new coin for a fake reason, for something that doesn't need a new coin and issues a trillion tokens. I am for progress, and I don't mind when a new really innovative coins appears with a separate blockchain, but I hate when a new coin is created just to issue a trillion of tokens, give it away for free, and in this way giving it perceivable value. It at least must be mined, and some resources (electricity and hardware) must be spent to back up its value; a trillion token issued out of nothing don't have value. I would not care if it was just a silly useless project, which GitHub is full of, but there is an irresistible temptation to create a heap of tokens, keep a little bit, give the rest away, apply some sleazy marketing and make people believe that there is some value behind the tokens. A decent project must avoid at all cost creation of a new token without a reason that absolutely requires a new token, and instead use an existing token that has value behind it (resources are being spent on creation of that heap of digital money).

I always liked blockchain, I will always like it. I use Monero much. But the current blockchain industry is full of projects that are fake blockchains, centralized blockchains and especially systems where a blockchain and a product cannot be cryptographically linked. Such as reselling electricity through blockchain, track fruits from a farm to a shop through blockchain etc. I only don't understand if people pretend that they don't see this because everyone has a share in the growing industry, or they are really so stupid that they don't see the fundamental problem.

[SomeOldThrow]

Actually this is a missing piece that essentially allows content based micro transactions and allows cutting out ad salesmen. Win for everyone. But ad salesmen.

[teh_infallible]

This seems like a nonsense argument. You prefer a browser that spies on you? Over a cryptocurrency you don’t have to use?

[Spivak]

It’s not really one or the other. Firefox and Safari both exist and the incentives of the companies that run them are reasonably aligned with user privacy.

[jonathansampson]

Our CEO co-founded Mozilla and Firefox. There is still a problem of invasive tracking and surveillance capitalism on the Web, and neither or these are hit as hard in Safari and Firefox as they are in a default install of Brave.

The BAT component is off-by-default in Brave. Only enabled when the user explicitly opts-in to the feature. This is a necessary component, as blocking-alone is not a solution to the sustainability problem. Blocking trackers and their ads means blocking revenue for the content creators and publishers we all know and love. Extra steps have to be made if we're going to continue to foster and grow the Web we have all come to love.

With Brave you enjoy a base-line experience of privacy and security out of the box. Opting into Brave Rewards means you can earn tokens for your attention, without giving up your data. Those tokens are automatically queued up for an end-of-month contributions to the sites and properties you visit most. Or, you can tip those properties in a one-off-manner (like I do every time I land on a Wikipedia page).

I hope this helps a bit. If there is anything further I can address, I'd be happy to chat. Thank you for your time and attention :)

[ignoramous]

I may not necessarily agree with BAT, but I do suggest Brave to anyone who is too flustered to use Firefox with uBlockOrigin and other extensions [0]. It really has a great UX.

As for long term sustainability of the web [1], Brave, imo, has a better idea on their hands than Google's proposed privacy-sandbox [2]. For the sake of competition and innovation, I hope there are many more such initiatives.

Best!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783339

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20809574

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20767891

[brokensegue]

your ceo? the same guy who was kicked out of mozilla?

[esyir]

Yes, the guy who was kicked out of mozilla so they could score political points. Not for technical ability, not for competence, but for politics.

[solidsnack9000]

The issue isn't aligning the incentives of browser vendors with users so much as aligning the incentives of content creators with users.

[tlholaday]

Two comments:

* BAT is a non-financial utility token, not a currency.

* The Brave Referral Program specifically prohibited participants from making statements that BAT is a currency, a store of value, or an investment.

Examples of real-world non-financial utility tokens are amusement-park ride tickets and beer-garden food-and-drink tickets.

[otterley]

If it's not a currency, what value does it have to the holder?

It should also be noted that the law determines what qualifies as a currency, not the issuer. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck - you know the rest.

[solidsnack9000]

Utility tokens are, like arcade game tokens or food and drink tickets at a fair, valuable for their use with a particular venue or service -- not for their exchange value. Generally, the law does not recognise these kinds of things as currency.

[otterley]

I'm reminded of Itchy and Scratchy Money, themselves a parody of Disney Dollars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dErRj6V8_xQ

I'm not sure why Brave thinks the public will seriously value these.

[solidsnack9000]

Purpose specific tokens make sense when the scope is "limited enough". The public does actually use laundromat tokens, food tickets at fairs, arcade tokens and similar things. They wouldn't take them seriously outside of the appropriate context but they definitely take them seriously within them.

[otterley]

Sure, but the world isn't a Chuck-E-Cheese's restaurant. The real world deals in cash, not tokens to be exchanged for trinkets. It stretches the imagination to believe that website purveyors are going to want to deal in Brave Bucks, or whatever they want to call them. And if they can be exchanged for arbitrary goods and services, as opposed to a tightly constrained set of options, it's going to be deemed a currency.

[smitop]

Amusement ride tickets have inherient utility: you can redeem them for a ride. What utility can you get from BAT, other than selling it?

[olah_1]

Attaching a crypt coin to it only makes sense if it's more fully decentralized. The fact that it is centralized is why it's confusing. We run the VPN and they get the money.

In something like Lokinet, the whole thing is distributed and the people that run the service nodes get rewarded with coins. But normal end users don't have to think about the coin at all.

[bufferoverflow]

Who cares? You don't have to use the crypto part of it at all.

[atoav]

Idk – with something as crucial as a browser I want the people who give it to me to have a clear and obvious incentive structure.

[mhluongo]

With other browsers, the clear and obvious incentive is "to get paid to spy on users". I'm not a big Brave fan but saying their incentives are worse than Chrome or even Firefox is ridiculous.

[identity0]

Have you ever heard of open source browsers like ungoogled chromium or pale moon? They have no incentives and are far better than brave’s, who wants to sell you advertising.

[knocte]

> who wants to sell you advertising.

Inaccurate. Brave wants to overhaul advertising: to be able to switch it off completely paying a fee, or earn money by not switching it off (and thus watching the ads), tune it, etc

[spsful]

This is why I happily set Brave Ads to show me the maximum amount of ads per hour. Brave is serving ads in a privacy-conscious implantation which uses local machine intelligence to determine interests. There's no broker trying to sell your data to advertisers and yet personalized ads can still be served. Also, Brave Ads show up as a notification. Much more aesthetically pleasing than those whole-page ads that some websites have unfortunately adopted.

[mhluongo]

Of course. Chromium is still an upstream that has had changes due to Google's interests, right?

[rjf72]

Brave is fully open source. [1]

Brave's model is to try to remove the coercion from advertising. Right now most companies are spending immense amounts of efforts spying on your and then trying to shove ads at you, and fighting every effort to block those ads or to avoid their spying. Brave's model is instead to try to create a more cooperative system. You view ads if and only if you want. The motivations they give you for this is to support the sites you like while also getting a little kickback yourself.

Somewhat analogous business models have failed, repeatedly, in things such as 'socialism restaurants' that tried to operate on a pay-what-you-can scheme since enough people opted out (by paying $0) to make it a losing venture. But I think it's something that will likely succeed here since the purchase price is always $0 - you're paying with attention, not money. Hahah, perhaps one of these socialism restaurants could actually work if they also provided a "free" pay method such as watching an ad!

[1] - https://github.com/brave/

[solidsnack9000]

If only it were possible to have no incentives.

[identity0]

Okay, not no incentives, but incentives that match up with our own. I doubt the maintainers of ungoogled chromium have a secret agenda to take over the browser market. Their incentive is that they dislike google and they want a good browser without google spying on them.

[unicornporn]

> or even Firefox

Please expand.

[mhluongo]

Where does most of the Mozilla Corporation's money come from?

I'm not trying to cast stones here, but they're still primarily (last time I checked) funded by Google- not users. Your incentives are aligned with the people who pay you.

[tlholaday]

Brave Software has a clear and obvious incentive structure. Here is the business model:

1. Build and maintain a browser which creates a local profile of its user, a profile which never leaves the user's machine.

2. Sell ads which can be targeted to users with certain characteristics. Distribute the entire catalog to every user's machine. The browser selects a suitable ad from the catalog and displays it to willing users.

3. Profit.

[trickstra]

I'm not a big fan of BAT, but how much clearer can the incentive structure be? Offering a browser completely for free is actually much more questionable. User becomes the product, but it's never stated anywhere. With BAT it's pretty clear who are the interested parties and why.

[bufferoverflow]

You still didn't explain how a feature that you'd never use affects you in any negative way.

Every browser has features that you don't use.

[johnpowell]

Until that update flips that flag and the opt-in becomes the default. Do you trust Facebook to honor your privacy settings?

[bufferoverflow]

What does Facebook have to do with any of that?

Facebook can't change the privacy rules or the settings of your browser.

[johnpowell]

I consider both companies untrustworthy. I was using a example of a thing nearly everyone shouldn't trust. I could have used Google, Apple, USPS as examples too.

[colordrops]

It's opt-in, and the feature can even be completely hidden in the settings. Brave is an awesome browser. Certainly better than Chrome when it comes to privacy.

[Spivak]

Better than Chrome is such a low bar though. Chromium is better than Chrome, Kiwi is better than Chrome, Edge is better than Chrome.

[colordrops]

Is it a low bar? Chrome has the best JS and rendering engine in existence. Brave has all that, being a fork, and also the best privacy, except maybe the Duck browser. It's only missing the configurability and extensibility of Firefox, but that's arguably a privacy liability.

[bogomipz]

I believe the post was referencing the OP's statement that "Certainly better than Chrome when it comes to privacy.", not any kind of purely technical merits.

[rolltiide]

> I refuse to use a browser with a cryptocurrency attached to it.

The optional rewards program that happens to use a distributed ledger for settlement?

Lets see how that sounds when it is rephrased

“I refuse to use an airline with a rewards program attached to it”

“I refuse to use a credit card with a rewards program attached to it”

But since nobody says that, you lose your mind when a blockchain based one is used? Which is also as entirely optional as the above programs? Which you use as an ad hominem attack to add non-sequiturs to any contribution under the “Brave” brand such as this ZK VPN system which doesn't even use the digital currency? Fascinating, lets revisit this “taboo” next year to see!

[rolltiide]

“I refuse to use an airline with a digital currency attached to it”

“I refuse to use a credit card with a digital currency attached to it”

But since nobody says that, you lose your mind when a blockchain based one is used? Which is also as entirely optional as the above programs? Which you use as an ad hominem attack to add non-sequiturs to any contribution under the “Brave” brand such as this ZK VPN system which doesn't even use the digital currency? Fascinating, lets revisit this “taboo” next year to see if it is one at all!

[eitland]

GP didn't say digital currency but cryptocurrency.

[rolltiide]

what difference does an optional rewards program make when its on a blockchain and also has nothing to do with the article?