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by BrendanEich 1726 days ago
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.

1 comments

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.

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.

If I take your laptop and put a different one two meters away, I've still replaced it. If I take your glass at the bar to fill it up, is there a requirement that I place it in the exact same position as your previous one, or is there a pretty big margin of error? What makes screen estate different than that?

In general, I'm all for the concept of micropayments to websites. But your implementation, weasly language (like here), and of course your homophobic donations makes Brave pretty unappealing to me. I'd rather choose freaking Chrome with a stripped down ad-blocker than it.

...I mean, using Brave is still using Chrome(ium) with a different skin on top, leaky Tor integration, and your own coin that you own... how much of?

Between Brave Rewards being opt-in, our putting ads into the user's -- not the site's -- "inventory", and private matching on-device/in-browser with anonymous confirmation, I think we are nothing like a "replaced" ad in a publisher page. If you don't agree, I won't try further to explicate your category and concrete errors -- just don't use Brave! But be careful what you do use. uBO recommended.