By replacing ads on websites with their own, and url hijacking for referral profits. They are not a good service, they're content thieves with a mask on.
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.
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.
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.
It doesn't? It adblocks ads like uBlock Origin and tracking blocking tech in other browsers (except the shields are not an add-on so they can exceed the Manifest v3 type limits). There are entirely separate channels (toaster popups, start page backgrounds) that they use to deliver their own ads.
I get the crypto stuff is not everyone's cup of tea (certainly isn't mine) but get the basics straight, at least?
uBlock origin is the only ad blocker worth trusting. Privacy Badger is fine but breaks things too often. PiHole is good but requires too much know-how for most. ABP and Brave both do the same garbage ransom-taking with their ad replacement schema. So few publishers have an account with them that the monies supposedly going to support content sits (at best) in an escrow account that is escheated at some point.
Brave rewards is opt-in. If you don't want to receive ads, just don't turn it on.
If you still want to support creators but do not want to receive any kind of ads, just buy some BAT at any exchange, load your wallet and schedule monthly contributions.
If you want to support a publisher who is not on the creators program - send them a message and let them know they have another income alternative.
Right. You’re missing my point. From the consumer side that makes sense. Very few publishers (ie those that are high quality and you’d happily spend on) are hooked up to receive funds from Brave, or will ever choose to receive funds from Brave. So lots of these transactions leave your wallet, Brave takes a cut, and then the remainder sits in limbo or is escheated to the state. The ads ecosystem is a 2-sided marketplace, and Brave really only supports/is supported by 1 side.
You're wrong, nothing leaves the user's browser for us to take a cut in the case of an unverified creator. Those tips or donations sit in the browser, and cancel after 90 days. The user gets the tokens back and can cancel the pending tips or contributions at any time.
The ad ecosystem is multisided, not two-sided. We put the user in first place and cut out the ad-tech intermediaries who raid privacy, enable fraud, and take north of 50%, 70% in one case (the Guardian bought out its ad space and got 30p on the GBP).
Please check your facts before attacking us. It's one thing to operate on misinformation, but another to throw "escheated" around like a lawyer. It sounds impressive, but it's based on falsehoods all the way down. Again, tips from rewards users to unverified sites and channels sit in the browser, time out back to the user, and can be canceled. Look for "Pending tips" in rewards settings.
Because you’re you and I was basing it on working in the space 3 years ago, I admit I was wrong. But I really do want to solve this problem. Despite my mistake, the spirit of the question is unresolved — you claim that you allow publishers/creators to be paid for their work. In the case a pub isn’t on your platform, you don’t pay them — you return payment to the user. So content continues to go unfunded. How do you intend to get publishers to hook in to your system and get paid, instead of just making users feel like they’re supporting the open internet and instead not actually funding the sites they care about?
Please be careful with "you". The tokens tipped or otherwise contributed to unverified creators never leave the browser. We do not track them or intermediate them. They stay pending as noted.
It's up to the browser user to notify the creator about the tip or contribution they're sending. We don't and can't know who the creator is and we wouldn't spam them. Fans can and do get creators to sign up. This is the clean way to do it, and fits our user-first principle.
If you want a publisher-first play, Scroll (Twitter bought it) was doing a portable paywall with publishers. Not user-first, no rev share to users, users pay. Not us. Have to serve one master or the other.
But I claim our user-first way is best because users can then get sites and channels they've tipped to come and sign up. Going the other way means getting users to subscribe, always a conversion funnel and usually low rate.
Can you give an example of publisher/creator that you support directly, and that is not interested in joining Brave Creators?
If I am a popular creator who relies on, e.g, Patreon or Ko-Fi for some sustained income, and I learn about a platform that gives people money and it makes it easy for them to pass along that money to me... why wouldn't I be interested?
FWIW, these sites are all setup on Brave Rewards to receive funds via Brave Rewards contributions. I got this list from my history by going to brave://rewards/ in Brave:
>Privacy Badger is fine but breaks things too often.
I know it's a bit of a tangent from the topic at hand, but I'm really curious what Privacy Badger has broken for you? I (and all the staff at my office) have been using it basically since release, and not once has the root cause of a website not working properly been Privacy Badger.
So I couldn’t tell you all of them because I don’t keep track of when I need to disable it and refresh to make a page work (and that’s not that big an inconvenience for me). But I used to have to travel a lot for work with strict travel caps. Working within those, I had perfected a few strategies to really get the lowest fares available. On one specific planning adventure, I found a way to book a business class flight through Air Canada’s website that took me through Europe and back across the US for the price of the standard economy fare for the same trip. Privacy Badger killed the payment flow, and I could never get that rate back. I ended up on over 30 hours of flights in economy, and I’ll never forget the refreshed faces of the business class travelers… But more seriously, that and similar situations were the only really bad ones. Many times it’s just disabling and reloading a page. But for a casual Internet user, identifying that fix might be too much.
I have 17 exceptions in PB that I've setup, including my ISP, my broker, and my local utilities. Those would all be since I switched to firefox (2-3 years ago now?). It used to be worse, I'm pretty sure I had many dozens of exceptions on my old chrome settings.
They block their rival's ads and bring their own instead. It might be visible on a little different location, but in the end the result is the same; replacing ads from the websites.
> Rather than displaying Ads on web pages, Brave Ads appear as push notifications on your device that you can choose to engage with or dismiss.
I did not say it is a default behavior, but in the end you are blocking ads and bringing new ads, hence replacing. Just an another way to provide ads. Just a different way of seeing the concept as a whole.
"They block their rival's ads and bring their own instead" would be taken by most people to mean replacement in the page, and no opt-in. It's misleading with a purpose. Brave is providing users a private (no tracking) ad option with 70% of the gross paid to the user. If only a "rival" did that. But they don't, and we block tracking scripts more than ads (this kills the whole waterfall so blocks most ads). Note we don't block Google or other search ads, or first party ads that don't depend on tracking scripts.
I've been using Brave for over a year now. I don't use the opt-in Brave Rewards Ads but do use the Brave Rewards Auto-Contribute. I love Brave and think it is actually going to save the web from becoming a shitty, slow experience over the years to come.
My only gripe is that the crypto integration with Uphold to pay creators is/was hard to use. I love the idea that I can pay $20/month to use the web and that money is disbursed to the sites I visit most!
Update: This motivated me to login to Uphold again and relink Brave Rewards so I can use the auto-contribute feature. Uphold didn't have recurring transactions for debit/credit cards originally so it was too much friction to use, but it is all working now.
Off topic but please shoot me a message (I'm easy to reach, first at company dot com) with what you find hard to use. I may agree and we're working on better ways to support creators, but I hope to capture your specific issues. Thanks.
I didn't think they did those anymore. True, though, they've tried endless very slimy business models - anything that works until they get caught or called out.
We never replaced ads on web pages. The binance.{us,com} auto-complete affiliate code was a bug and we renounced any (tiny) revenue that might come from it.
I think it's slimy to do what you just did. Why'd you do it? We didn't do the first thing you said, and we shipped and then fixed the bug on the second. I don't see how you can excuse your action.
Because I don't believe you. For example, I followed up on your claim about the second when it happened and it appeared clear to me that it was not a bug.
I'm now familiar with how you aggressively and dishonestly attack people who call out Brave's actions. I know I'm not special - that's just how you do business - but you aren't going to intimidate me.
I will make one concession to your attack though, I will declare that I'm not affiliated with any party in this and am simply doing my best to objectively judge the facts.
If you don't believe me, then there's no point in talking. But you can verify for yourself that we've never replaced ads in publisher pages. On the binance.{us,com} autocomplete with affiliate code, it was a blunder where two entries in a table had the wrong flag passed in. Not sure how to prove intent, so again: no point talking if you don't believe me but my work has been in the open for 23+ years and I stand behind it.
I'm not stupid: I'm not going to discard my judgement based on careful examination of independent parties in favour of how you want me to judge it. (Even if I hadn't seen that you are not trustworthy and will aggressively attack people for speaking the truth.)
> If you don't believe me, then there's no point in talking.
I didn't refer you to independent parties. You can check Brave (we provide old versions on github) and you won't ever find us replacing ads in publisher pages. We're all open source on the client side, so you can read revision histories too. If you don't check for yourself, then how do you know what you said is true?
It would help if you named your "independent parties" plural you're relying on. It seems you can't inspect our product or code for yourself. Are you sure you have a reliable and independent source who has checked our work? Hint: not David Gerard.
