[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Good attitude. The only thing that is "breaking" is a web developer's opinionated view of how to present information. As we all know, that view is not always a reasonable one. The web developer does not work for you, the user. She works for advertisers or advertiser-funded organisations. IME, pages that are almost wholly JSON can easily be "redesigned" on the client side by the user (me), to present the information in a format that is most pleasing to the user (me).

Having a company that has chosen online ads as its "business model" sponsor researchers to "improve privacy" is inherently flawed. If this company was serious about user privacy they would not show ads. Today's online ads imply data collection and as such are are not compatible with privacy. Companies want (need) to know who looked at an ad and when. That conflicts with privacy. Solve the problem by not showing ads. Brave's customers are advertisers. Make users the customers not the targets. Forget about ads.

Will not happen. When users are not willing to pay for whatever "service" the tech company can offer, privacy problem cannot be solved.

This publication is a nice bit of "submarine PR" as PG would call it.

[nyanpasu64]

> IME, pages that are almost wholly JSON can easily be "redesigned" on the client side by the user (me), to present the information in a format that is most pleasing to the user (me).

What's a page that's made of JSON? And isn't it less semantic and more dependent on JS to convert the page into a readable representation, than a pre-rendered static site?

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

YouTube, i.e., a video page or a search results page, is one example of a page that is mostly JSON.

These YT pages rely on automation. The browser runs Javascript to format the page and to make HTTP requests that send data back to Google (privacy violation, no user benefit). The browser loads thumbnail images, automatically. There are many steps that have been automated. The JS is of course not written by the user, but by Google to support its data mining and advertising business.

However, it is also possible to retrieve a web page and perform the necessary steps manually, without Google's "help". Instead of letting a browser do whatever the website's Javascript programmers want it to do (to suit advertising interests, not user interests), the user controls the process, performing the steps manually.

This is how I approach YouTube and other convoluted websites. I retrieve the page to memory (tmpfs), using a relatively simple TCP client + local TLS proxy (no gigantic web browser is needed for such a simple task). I do not retrieve the separate Google Javascript files (which a Js-enabled browser will automatically request. There is no need for them; they are used to manipulate the user for Google's interests. (I am not interested in commercial videos nor am I interested in Google's JS "video player"; I do not use a mouse.) As the page is mostly JSON, it is not formatted to be easily readable on the screen. I reformat it manually, using tr and sed. Then I extract the bits I want from the text, i.e., playback URLs, and various metadata such video IDs, descriptions, durations, suggestions, views, likes, channels (if any), time since upload, thumbnail URLs, continuation token, etc. Then I make a subsequent HTTP request if I want something further.

By contrast, using a "modern" Javascript-enabled browser controlled by an advertising-funded organisation to retrieve a page from YouTube will result in all manner of privacy intrusion. Even just leaving a page open in the browser, without interacting with it at all, the Google JS will trigger constant HTTP requests, some empty (zero benefit to the user, the user would never intentionally make such requests).

The amount of code needed for the fully automated Javascript-enabled browser is gigantic. The program is a security nightmare. The amount of code need for youtube-dl is also relatively large; IME the distributed binary can take over 7 seconds to start up. The amount of code I need is, by comparison, tiny. I only need sed, tr and a TCP client. Everything fits on a single page. Fast and reliable.

[EMM_386]

> These YT pages rely on automation. The browser runs Javascript to format the page and to make HTTP requests that send data back to Google (privacy violation, no user benefit). The browser loads thumbnail images, automatically. There are many steps that have been automated. The JS is of course not written by the user, but by Google to support its data mining and advertising business.

This is overblown.

Serious question ... how do you propose these companies that provide these services make money?

It's not free to buy yottabytes of space to archive every video we're uploading. Somebody has to send a paycheck to all the employees who make this happen.

If the response is "pay for it", the entire business model collapses because the vast majority won't pay for it.

And I'm no apologist here. I'm running uBlock Origin in Brave and similar things for a reason.

[mathnmusic]

Advertising does not require tracking. See TV and Radio.

[mateuszf]

> Serious question ... how do you propose these companies that provide these services make money?

How about micropayments per article / video / whatever? e.g. using bitcoin lightning network.

I'd choose that over ads without doubt.

[acceit]

> Fast and reliable.

Is it really? I don't doubt it's fast, but in my experience it's very hard, if not impossible, to scrape these "mostly JSON" services without the whole thing failing spectacularly as soon as the site shuffles their data model a bit.

Maybe YouTube is more amenable to this than the services I'm thinking of -- I personally have no qualms deferring to youtube-dl so I wouldn't know -- but for things like my university's lecture recordings my efforts seem to consistently be mooted within a matter of months or weeks.

[maccolgan]

Why don't you just use a locally hosted alternative YT client (web or otherwise) like FreeTube, Piped or Piped-Material?

[userbinator]

Look into Invidious if you haven't already.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Originally the web browser was free (Mosaic). The project name "Mozilla" stoood for "Mosaic killer". Then Netscape tried to charge for their web browser, something like $39 for businesses to use it. They also tried to license web server software. Microsoft supplied IE and IIS for free with Windows and the rest is history. Yet people are still trying to find ways to make money from a browser. No one is going to pay for a web browser, so they try to sell out the users of the software to advertisers. Not much of a value proposition for users. Today, so much great software has already been written and is free. No advertising needed. The reason for all the surveillance, the ads and tracking, is greed. The software for using the web has been written already, many times over, it does not need financing. Sadly, the "modern" web browsers have become tools of manipulation and surveillance, too large and complex for any web user to build themselves. It is a travesty. These gigantic kitchen sink programs are written for advertisers not users, because users, including businesses, will not pay for new web browsing software. What they have already works.

[ngold]

The thing I find crazy is every news publication all the way up to the new york time's, fired there century old ad department, overnight.

In favor of third party ads.

If they kept their ad department. Ads would be native with the article.

[jefftk]

This is completely wrong. At publishers like the NYT a large majority of their ad revenue comes from direct deals with advertisers.

[BrendanEich]

Brave's customers are users. Ad model is opt-in, users get 70% without privacy loss, advertisers have to come because such users are valuable but off the grid due to blocking in all browsers they use. We also have paid ad-free search coming fast, so you can put your money where you mouth is.