[xNeil]

I used to use Brave a lot, not so much now. They seem to be trying to become a privacy-friendly alternative to Google, which I respect, but I'm not sure why, I thoroughly dislike their Brave Ads.

Not because their (edit:they're) intrusive, but they're basically saying "We're going to block ads from Google, but we're going to show you our own ads, because ours are privacy-friendly!" They are adding a subscription feature though, so that might hopefully be a solution.

[jarenmf]

But you can easily disable the ads if you don't like them

[xNeil]

Of course! And while that is a valid point, my issue is not that you can turn them on or off - it's the fact that they are there.

Again -I totally understand they have to make money. This is only my opinion - that's all - but it just seems wrong to replace someone else's ads with your own.

[eredengrin]

> it just seems wrong to replace someone else's ads with your own.

I can see how it might feel scummy to do this, but on the other hand, from a rational perspective I'm having a tough time seeing what's wrong with it. If it's because it's taking away revenue from the party serving the ads, then replacing the ads is no worse than blocking ads entirely. If it's because the organization blocking the ads is directly benefiting as a result, I'd argue that's already happening just by blocking ads, just not necessarily in a direct monetary manner.

[jay_kyburz]

> I'm having a tough time seeing what's wrong with it

I block ads so that I will not be manipulated into buying things I don't want or need. I'm defending myself from an assault on my ego and self worth. I'm not making money, I'm just consuming content that people have chosen to make public.

When Brave replaces the ads of a website they are just stealing the content and selling it.

[eredengrin]

Blocking ads and serving up new ads are entirely different procedures. It would be entirely technically possible for brave to show brave ads in addition to the existing ads on a page. It is also possible for users to turn off ads entirely (including the brave ads). You can't just lump these two separate steps together, they are independent, and the only part of it that might directly harm the original site/page creators is blocking the original ads. Serving up new ads is no different than what the site creators themselves are already doing for their own work.

[jay_kyburz]

>Serving up new ads is no different than what the site creators themselves are already doing for their own work.

It is different because you are collecting money that would otherwise have gone to the sites creator?

(assuming a non ad blocking reader)

Update: I think I see where you are coming from, that as a _reader_, blocking ads in Firefox is the same as choosing to use Brave and willing watching Brave ads so that the Brave company can make money that would otherwise not have gone anywhere. The _reader_ generates no money for the content producer.

But as a _publisher_, an ad blocker reader in Firefox is just somebody who chooses to ignore the ads, but the Brave company is directly monetizing your content without your consent.

I my mind, the difference is that in scenario A. the use wants to be free of ads, in scenario B. the user doesn't mind ads, just not the ads you have chosen to show. And Brave is making money from that.

[xNeil]

That's a very fair point, I had not thought of it in that way at all. I guess they are two ways of approaching it -

1. Brave is replacing Google Ads with their own ads. 2. Brave already blocks Google Ads, they might as well make some money while doing so and add their own.

Funnily, I don't find either of these wrong, so I'm not sure which one to believe. I'd love to hear your opinion on it though!

[eredengrin]

There's a lot of ways to look at this and I could easily write a few essays on it. At least for myself though, I don't personally view it as a bad thing. Blocking ads is the only questionable part of the story, but in my view that's just a matter of not displaying the full contents of the page so I find it hard to incriminate. Anything after that (including displaying other ads) is unrelated.

At the end of the day I hope the brave model catches on - not only are the brave ads more ethical since the ads are served locally (ie no user tracking server side), but my understanding is you can also fill up your wallet with your own money and then use that for the micro-transactions given to each site you visit, which gives you the choice to still support the ecosystem but without ads being necessary. Unfortunately brave is not easy for me to use for other reasons but if it ever got big enough maybe they'd make a Firefox extension or something so I could at least plug into the payment system without all the other blocking/brave ads features.

[waltherg]

I thought the point of those ads wasn't that Brave make money but that you accrue those Brave tokens as a representation of your attention and get to send those tokens to publishers of your choice via the browser?

Also, I turned them off as these ads are quite annoying and have a "cheap feel" to them.

[xNeil]

Brave does make money off of them - they get 30%, you get 70%, I believe.

And yes, the idea of sending BAT to websites directly was excellent. The website needs to have registered for the BAT wallet though. (Not a big deal, of course)

[imwillofficial]

I think it’s a matter of perspective.

Those who serve ads might see them as a way to fund their services.

However, we see this being abused on a near daily basis, by not only service operators, but by ad networks themselves.

The flip side is, from a user perspective, nobody has a right to run ads on my machine I don’t want.

Brave solves for that. Shows me ads I opt into, and gives a mechanism for service operators to get paid.

Is it perfect? No, but I think it hits close to the target.

[jarenmf]

I think it's a valid point for discussion but they deliver the ads through a different mechanism (system notifications). So it's a bit different than replacing the ads of other web pages.

[xNeil]

Not disputing your point at all - genuinely! But would you be fine if Google started serving you ads in your notifications?

I'm just rephrasing it, because for some reason it would be creepier for me if Google served ads in notifications - but that may just be me.

[Apocryphon]

It seems pretty common for tech companies/projects touting openness and freedom becoming that which they fight against. Witness all of the issues Firefox have fallen prey over the years. I remember a decade ago when Ubuntu first added Amazon integration into search results. CyanogenMod losing its way, the company behind it commercializing it and signing the partnership with Microsoft. Seems like it happens a lot.

[xNeil]

Absolutely - I have noticed the same in effectively all startups. I'm not even out of high school yet, so take my words with a pinch of salt, but my guess would be all companies may start out as 'enthusiast' brands, of sorts. Since their market is well defined and not very large, once they outgrow their market, investors who want higher returns and more revenue probably push them to expand outside their original market, thus reducing their focus on the original market.

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Also, what is CyanogenMod? And why did Ubuntu add Amazon products to its search results?

[Apocryphon]

https://www.cio.com/article/3167530/lessons-from-the-rise-an...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/shuttleworth-defends-ubuntu-li...

[no_wizard]

Put bluntly: We live in a world that success is most often, and routinely, measured in currency. If a company can't convert users into direct paying customers (e.g., I give them money, they give me a service, not talking about ads means you the product type customer) in one way or another, they may instead either turn the customer into the product (ads, for instance) or seek profitable partnerships to sustain the organization and themselves

I can't always blame them, really, families need to be fed, people need to feel like it's worth it, and so on. In so many ways, it really does suck because I feel like it stifles innovative ideas, particularly ones that need long term execution. Look at Redis and licensing, it's the same thing, really, in terms of struggle.

If we had a separate way for engineers / companies to fall back where they did not have to worry about this in the same way, then I believe this wouldn't happen the same way, if at all, in many of these circumstances.

[Apocryphon]

It's just jarring because a lot of these projects I'm talking about straddle the line between mission-driven nonprofits and companies trying to monetize that space. Mozilla is both. Canonical is a company, it just happens to be based around a mission-driven open source product. Ditto for CyanogenMod, or Brave.