
The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Surf the Web - wakahiu
https://www.wired.com/story/brave-browser-will-pay-surf-web/
======
manigandham
Brave is just an intermediary that replaces ads with other ads. It's an
adnetwork delivered as a browser that creates ad inventory _on top_ of the
page instead of within it.

That being said, the tokens are basically worthless. This is not what the
digital advertising industry wants and Brave is not going to get any decent
advertisers with this. They'll end up with the same shady
affiliate/performance marketers running CPA ads currently infesting all the
'content recommendation' widgets.

~~~
sbarre
This was tried during the first dot-com boom as well!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllAdvantage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllAdvantage)

~~~
nostrademons
It's different from AllAdvantage with the addition of market mechanisms to
correctly price the attention consumed by ads.

That's why users get tokens for viewing, why users can turn the ads off
entirely, and why the tokens are tradeable on exchanges. It creates a built-in
feedback mechanism. If BAT is priced too low, then everybody will opt out of
ads (because it won't be worth it to them), very little BAT will be available
on the market, and advertisers will have to bid up the price of BAT to run
their ads. If BAT is priced too high, there will be excess ad inventory, no
advertisers will buy in, and the price of BAT will fall until it reaches an
equilibrium.

AllAdvantage.com failed in a large part because they mispriced the rebates
going back to users. They burned through all their VC cash, didn't provide
enough value to advertisers, and went out of business. Brave avoids that by
letting the market make the pricing decisions.

This is something that couldn't have been done at all before cryptocurrencies,
which is what makes this project somewhat interesting.

~~~
manigandham
Why would advertisers bid higher when this is not the only channel and comes
with less targeting and increased fraud potential?

Why would users opt-in at all to see ads when they're already blocked?

There seems to be missing component of _why_ both sides want to interact
through the Brave network.

~~~
nostrademons
> Why would advertisers bid higher when this is not the only channel and comes
> with less targeting and increased fraud potential?

Brave's model - like all ad-supported ones - depends upon them getting very
big, enough that they get a substantial fraction of total user attention.
They're going for this by blocking all existing ads, which in today's web
makes the browser significantly faster and less annoying. They're at about
5.5M users as of January 2019, up from 3M in July 2018. That's still a long
way to go, but it's growing fast.

> Why would users opt-in at all to see ads when they're already blocked?

Because they get money for it.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Because they get money for it.

When that becomes a real motivation, it'll collapse the system, because view-
fraud will either overwhelm honest views or Brave will be forced to take
invasive measures to try to prevent such fraud.

~~~
rchaud
I believe view fraud is exactly what happened to the dotcom-era company that
offered to pay users. I recall reading about it in Michael Lewis' book
"Panic!"

No wonder Brave is trying to pay people with a useless e-token.

------
justsee
I think the privacy crowd drawn to Brave couldn't care less what the (current)
digital advertising industry wants.

Anyone who's been involved in the current ad-tech industry knows it's a total
tire fire of fraud, technical incompetence and deep hostility to end-users.

Brave's model is very interesting and also a threat to the current ad-tech
cesspool, so there should be no surprise to see attempts to misinform people
about the model.

Brave doesn't replace ads with other ads.

Brave is a browser first, with an economic layer that will support all sorts
of opt-in economic activity in a privacy-respecting way.

The tokens have a market price of more than zero.

Advertisers already include brands like Vimeo and Vice, and many within the ad
industry appreciate the model Brave is attempting.

Using on-device machine learning to deliver relevant ads, while at the same
time protecting privacy by not sending that data over the wire is a rather
brilliant idea.

It certainly remains to be seen what advertisers are convinced to trial this
approach, but predictions based on a very wonky understanding of the Brave
model aren't particularly interesting.

~~~
manigandham
If you want advertisers, you need to care about what the industry wants.
Obviously that's for Brave to deal with, not the users, but showing ads for
money is an ad network.

Microtransactions have been tried many times. I spent half a million testing
it. Didn't work because of user behavior. And unless users are buying with
their own money, it's just converting the BAT they earn from ads into BAT they
pay the publisher. This is an ad network.

Even the block-and-replace-ads model has been tried before. Everything from
iframes to browser toolbars. Again, this is an ad network.

If you have to use language like "economic layer" to describe your business
model, you're either hiding something or you don't have one. Or we can just
use the standard definition: brave is a browser-based ad network.

~~~
PudgePacket
Brave doesn't need advertisers though, it needs users. Once it has users then
advertisers need Brave.

I don't see how Brave has to win over advertisers at all, they'll come around
when Brave can offer some non-insignificant amount of money to them.

~~~
manigandham
Advertisers have several supply paths to inventory and what gets chosen is a
complicated series of decisions. Brave is just not very enticing. Having a
large user base isn't useful if there isn't effective delivery and
performance. It's always possible to get the low-end performance marketers
because they'll buy anything if it works but it won't be good quality.

Also the current trade of content for ads makes sense. When it's opt-in, I
fail to see why users would enable ads if they can get the content for free
anyway. And if the ads are all low-end spam then I definitely don't see why
they would choose them.

It's a very tough 3-way marketplace to bootstrap where the user has all of the
control and none of the incentive.

~~~
ignoramous
> Brave is just not very enticing.

Sure, but folks I know use it because it has other utilities than just block
ads (like use less power, for instance) whilst retaining the compatibility
that comes with being based on Chromium.

> Also the current trade of content for ads makes sense.

When the rate of folks blocking ads keeps increasing, does it though, in the
long run?

> When it's opt-in, I fail to see why users would enable ads if they can get
> the content for free anyway. And if the ads are all low-end spam then I
> definitely don't see why they would choose them.

I hope you do realise the number of ifs and buts in your assumptions?

> It's a very tough 3-way marketplace to bootstrap where the user has all of
> the control and none of the incentive.

I realise that you are intimately familiar with the industry, but it takes a
substantial rethink to overhaul something as entrenched as the online ad
business.

There's novelty to Brave's approach, I don't think anyone can deny that.
Browsers are gateway to the web, equally how Google (homepage) is, and folks
are right to take that market on, instead of taking the giants like Facebook
and Google at their own game.

I would like to refer you to how telegram has replaced browsers for most folks
I know (they literally use it to search memes, videos, photos, links); and how
WhatsApp has replaced email. The ads would be where content is. If browsers
increasingly act as arbitrators of that content, then they're best placed to
monetize it, as well, imo.

It is another matter for folks who simply detest ads, they're not intended
users Brave is targeting, but some folks do feel guilt blocking them and
wouldn't mind a middle ground. Also, you must realise that a large portion of
the internet don't use any form of ad-blockers whatsoever, and when they
stumble on Brave (because it is great for battery life and other features),
they'd be more than happy to keep seeing ads that aren't all encompassing and
privacy respecting, I'm sure.

------
arcticbull
My understanding is they’ve been taking money “on behalf of creators” who
never signed up and pocketing it. That’s reason enough for me to not use the
product. Sounds like it could be construed as fraud. Eich got pretty defensive
on Twitter and this whole thing came up here before too [2].

[1] [https://www.theblockcrypto.com/2018/12/24/brave-browser-
is-c...](https://www.theblockcrypto.com/2018/12/24/brave-browser-is-
collecting-donations-on-your-behalf-did-you-know/)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736759)

~~~
justsee
Actually that's not true.

An earlier version of the browser let early adopter users direct where Brave's
own marketing budget of BAT tokens was sent to, including sites that hadn't
yet signed up.

If those sites didn't sign up, the tokens would eventually go back into the
marketing budget pool of tokens, to be distributed to other sites (not to
Brave).

That's very different to the mischaraterisation you mention above, but no
surprise as Brave's model is a threat to the current fraudulent ad tech
ecosystem.

They did make changes to the product immediately after that episode though.
Now if you want to donate to a site that hasn't registered your browser will
try for a period of time, and if the publisher doesn't sign up the tokens are
returned to you to distribute elsewhere.

~~~
arcticbull
Sounds like it wasn’t much of a mischaracterization if there was a bunch of
outrage and then they backtracked completely.

~~~
justsee
The mischaraterization, which you seem determined to double-down on, was an
attempt to paint Brave as a fraudulent company trying to build a 'patreon for
thieves'.

Any honest onlooker doing the barest of research would understand the
absurdity of the claim, but the amplification of that mischaracterisation was
(and is) clearly aimed at herd programming to try to suppress Brave's growth.

~~~
arcticbull
I can see how you might view it that way. On the other hand, let's say Chrome
started replacing all non-Adsense ads on every site you visited with Adsense
ads -- without notifying the webmaster no less. Then, if the content creator
decided they'd like their cut of the revenue, they had to sign up for Adsense.
And if they didn't, Google would just pocket it 90 days later. I don't think
you'd be as sympathetic to Google in this situation? Would the courts? Just
because it's a small up-start business, or just because it's crypto related,
doesn't make it exempt from fair dealing.

I'm not saying its a Patreon for thieves, and that doesn't make what they did
less unsavory IMO.

~~~
justsee
Your scenario doesn't reflect how Brave's model works at all - it just
reflects various misconceptions on your part.

Brave does not replace publisher ads with their own.

Brave does not block first party ads. Google's search ads display. Facebook's
ads display. Twitter's ads display.

Brave does block other ads by default, and as a user agent, it's reflecting
the valid, ethical choices of the user not to load the untrustworthy content
and scripts from these poorly-coded, user-hostile third party ad networks.

If a user opts-in to Brave's ad ecosystem, then they've also made a decision
about what content funding model they want to support.

There are many browsers out there, but till now there's really only been one
privacy-invading ad model.

Now we have not just another browser, but another ad model which respects
privacy, and after all we've learned about the current ad-tech ecosystem I'd
prioritise user agency over all other considerations.

If the primacy of user agency begins to take hold, then the market will adapt
and survive and even thrive within this new model.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Brave does not replace publisher ads with their own.

It absolutely both blocks (many) pre-existing ads _and_ places its own ads.
Those are both overt features of the browser.

> If a user opts-in to Brave's ad ecosystem, then they've also made a decision
> about what content funding model they want to support.

It's not really a content funding model, since whether Brave shows (and
derives revenue) for ads or not (and whether it blocks the ads the content
supplier has decided to place or not) has nothing to do with any agreement or
payment to the content source; it's a browser funding model.

The _content funding_ model it (indirectly) promotes is the covert “organic”
advertising model, where rather than being separated and distinguished from
the editorial content, the promotional content is integrated with and
inseperable from the organic content.

~~~
maxencecornet
>and places its own ads.

No it does not, I've been using the Brave browser for over a year on desktop,
with the users ads activated

This is the most common seen misconception on HN about Brave, Brave is not
replacing ads with it's own ads

It just doesn't work like this

A great comment from a Brave team member about that misconception on Reddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/bby4um/the_la_ti...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/bby4um/the_la_times_latimescom_one_of_the_largest/ekn0706/)

------
winningcontinue
former user of their product. originally presented to me as a chrome
alternative with the ad-block built right into the browser itself and not as a
javascript extension. But as the product has evolved, they've changed in ways
to monetize it themselves. While they still block ads, they're deciding which
ads they want to block now based on how sponsors compensate them. As a bonus,
they're throwing you back a bone to put up with their new business model.
Brave has inserted itself as a new middleman between the advertisers and web
users.

~~~
hinkley
Someone else accused this of being a pyramid scheme.

But this sounds more like a protection racket.

Beautiful ads, govnah. Would be a shame if somfin' 'appened to 'em.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
That's what AdBlock Plus did...

~~~
zenexer
And still does.

------
woodandsteel
There's a lot of negativity here about brave. But the fact is that the web
desperately needs a new financial model, and as far as I can tell brave is a
lot further along on that than any other project.

Would anyone like to argue that the present web financial model is fine? Or
would anyone like to point to someone else who has an alternative that would
be workable and is anywhere near usable?

And let met add one more point. Any workable alternative is not going to be
perfect, so the fact one is not is not, at least alone, a reason to not use
it.

But again, let me ask all the brave critiques, what is your alternative? And
by that I mean that can be used by your average user, not something only a
techy can make work.

~~~
intopieces
>The web desperately needs a new financial model

I don’t agree that the web needs any financial model at all. Content creators
want a financial model and advertisers wants to continue to be in business,
but neither of those desires indicates a “need” for a single financial model
for the web.

~~~
woodandsteel
No, content creators don't want a financial model, they need one. If they
don't get money from creating content they have to spend their time doing
something else. And today they get that model from the centralized advertising
model. Until someone comes up with a different financial model, that is where
they will stay.

~~~
intopieces
Before the centralized advertising model, the web existed and had content.
There are ways that people get paid without advertising, including donations
and premium content subscriptions.

The mother of a friend of mine lives in a low cost of living area and makes
her entire living from writing gay BSDM anime fan fiction. She has more than
1k monthly subscribers, no ads.

The web does not need attention merchants.

------
fenwick67
"Today, there’s no way for users who receive BAT for viewing ads to swap their
digital currency for dollars, but Eich says Brave will partner with
cryptocurrency exchanges to make that possible."

So people can pay to buy tokens but can't sell them, seems legit.

~~~
streptomycin
You can buy and sell them on exchanges like Coinbase. It'd probably be a bad
idea for Brave to get into the cryptocurrency exchange business - it's a
tricky business, and it's not their core competency.

~~~
Lucadg
Also Coinbase is giving away 10 U$ worth of BAT if you look at the videos
about Brave and reply to questions in a test correctly.

------
ignoramous
I think what Brave is doing might be misunderstood: it seems like a brilliant
take on the current problem facing content creators... I think of Brave as
trying to reach a common ground-- help content creators make a profit, put the
consumers out of the current dragnet misery. That said, there might still be
opportunities for different (not necessarily controversy-free) solutions, like
the ones that are set in motion:

\- Net Neutrality violating deals by ISPs/BigTech.

\- Users forced to install apps (in a bid to escape the browsers).

\- Native advertising, where ads are indistinguishable from actual content.

...and so on. Is Brave's model any worse [0]? For better or for worse, things
will continue to change.

[0] IIRC, they have more than 10M installs. I reckon, if they hit 100M or so,
they'd be _fatal_ to the ad-networks. I don't see any other tech today
wielding that kind of threat? Adblockers might have higher installation
numbers, but they don't solve the problems for the content creators, so they
are not really the solution to this mess we are in, imo.

------
Element_
I have been using the brave browser for a few months now. I think the concept
is great, and possibly one of the best uses for crypto currency. In my case I
want to disable ads entirely and use the auto-pay system to pay publishers
directly when I read their content. It also has a "tip" button so you can send
extra with one click if you really like the content.

Edit: There seems to be a ton of negative comments in this thread from people
who have never actually used the Brave Browser. I would encourage anyone who
is interested to actually install it and try it. The ads section is completely
opt-in. The "auto-contribute" and "tips" features can be used without the ads.
I feel the "auto-contribute" and "tips" features are what would really appeal
to most HN readers.

------
m52go
This seems like one of those ideas that's great in theory but not in practice.
I don't care about paying or even being paid when browsing the web...I just
want to be left alone.

Also this particular implementation is rather shady.

See podcast:

[https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/francis-pouliot-on-
th...](https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/francis-pouliot-on-the-network-
effect-of-money-and-why-tokens-are-scams)

~~~
DennisP
I frequently find myself confronted by paywalls and demands that I turn off my
ad blocker. I can usually find a way around it, but things would be so much
simpler if I could just click a button to pay the site a fraction of a penny.

~~~
quickthrower2
That’s a neat idea. Could be a YC startup idea. A subscription service that
gives you access to all the paywall content let’s say 10/month for 50 articles
and you don’t even click a button just read. Rather than seperate paywalls,
ads etc.

~~~
Wehrdo
Are you describing Blendle[0]? Access to paywalled content on a pay-per-
article basis.

[0] [https://launch.blendle.com/](https://launch.blendle.com/)

~~~
quickthrower2
I didn't know about them, but looks like they are doing exactly this.

~~~
m52go
I remember getting on their beta list 3 years ago. Seems like they're still in
beta...that cannot be a good sign.

From what I remember, they're a closed platform. One must use their apps to
get access to full article content. That's a nice solution for their partners,
but not for the broader web (85%+ of the websites you stumble across that are
not TIME, NYT, Economist, etc).

Blendle is a nice experiment, but I wouldn't consider it a solution to the
problem being discussed here.

------
Lowkeyloki
So, let me get this straight. If I set up an old computer in the corner and
script it to just meander around the web 24/7 using Brave, I can rack up a ton
of useless BAT tokens/currency/whatever?

~~~
hellllllllooo
Like crypto mining through a third party? Does Brave even care as long as the
person paying them thinks it's real?

~~~
ChrisCinelli
Probably not but only until "they keep thinking it is real"

------
vincent-toups
Looks bad to me.

I'll be 100% frank: I never want to look at another advertisement again and
I'm ok if the entire economy tanks because of it.

------
hellllllllooo
They've literally selected for a userbase of people who dislike advertising
enough to go out of their way to find and use a largely unknown browser.

I doubt that the people who downloaded it to avoid advertising will sign up
for this without paying them a lot.

~~~
justsee
Most people are sold on Brave due to privacy / speed / battery life.

Baking a transactional layer into the browser allows things like rewards for
ad participation, but I think microtransactions to pay for gated content will
be the more interesting aspect over the longer term.

I only use and recommend Brave now, but have no intention of turning on ads.

~~~
vkou
> Baking a transactional layer into the browser allows things like rewards for
> ad participation, but I think microtransactions to pay for gated content
> will be the more interesting aspect over the longer term.

People have tried microtransactions in lieu of ads, many, many times over the
past decade. Hardly any users are interested, and those that aren't don't want
to pay enough to keep the lights on at the websites they are visiting.

This is an idea that's incredibly popular in techie circles, and falls flat on
its face with the rest of the world (Along with 'floss twice a day', 'just run
your own mailserver', 'manually updating my OS/browser/dogsitting app is
better, because I can control what runs on my computer', and 'compile all the
software you run from source'.)

~~~
justsee
Integrating a digital wallet into a browser elevates money to a first-class
citizen on the web.

That changes everything about microtransactions.

I now have one location to top up and manage my wallet and can effortlessly
pay for content across the web in a consistent, familiar way.

The historical approach of endlessly getting out a plastic card and typing
private information into a multitude of different forms will seem terribly
old-fashioned.

~~~
vkou
People have tried this too, and it has failed.

~~~
justsee
Which other browser has done this?

~~~
TylerE
Remember Flooz?

~~~
nilkn
Was Flooz a browser or just a digital currency? 1999 was a very different time
as well for the internet. In particular, ads and trackers were not even
remotely as pervasive and invasive.

~~~
TylerE
It was an IE Toolbar, like everything back then

------
MarcScott
I don't think that this kind of thing is the solution, but when I click on a
link on HN, in a browser with no blockers installed, and I see this -
[https://ibb.co/jhDfC5k](https://ibb.co/jhDfC5k) I can't help but believe the
web is broken, and we need some sort of fix.

~~~
krapp
I hate ads as much as any reasonable person, but I don't think this is an
example of the web being broken. Wired is a magazine, it shouldn't be at all
surprising that they would try to monetize their content. They have the right
to be as obnoxious as they like about it.

What's broken is the model of advertising on the web, the unregulated cesspool
of greed, malware, tracking and dark patterns that led the public to
inevitably reject ads wholesale as soon as it became widely known that it was
possible to do so, and easy to implement.

It's business and corporate interests that have to find a way to survive on
the web, but the web itself will be fine with or without them.

------
turdnagel
I find these kind of bait-and-switches to be really tasteless. Company X is
created originally with the sole purpose of blocking ads and privacy trackers
- and then decides to monetize using some kind of "good" ad. (I'm looking at
you, AdBlock Plus.)

~~~
rjf72
This has always been Brave's monetization strategy. And it's also completely
opt-in. By default the software simply blocks ads, runs incredibly performant,
and has a large number of built in privacy respecting features which can be
toggled on a per site basis (scripts, tracking, etc). If the user wants to see
native ads, they can. If they want to see 'cleaned ads, they can. If they want
to see no ads, they can.

------
mindfulhack
This idea is very interesting. It reminds me of how YouTube shares their ad
revenue with content creators, and that in turn grows YouTube's network and
business.

Similarly, the act of web browsing is content creation. It's data creation.
Very valuable data.

If users are currently blocking ads in their power, why not entice them back
by allowing them to make an appropriate amount of money from the data that
only they have the power to give to others? 'Sell your data.'

The more one browsed or shared of their data, the more one would get paid.
It's simple business.

It sounds like a model that would bring diversity to the economy.

------
mud_dauber
I started using Brave a few weeks ago. Not because of privacy concerns -
mainly out of curiosity.

One thing I did NOT expect is the noticeably faster performance. (Presumably
due to the lack of ad content loading.)

This is a big deal at my house. We turned off wired Internet service to save
money during a job search. (There's only one HS vendor in our neighborhood.
(And this is in Austin. Go figure.) We're tethering our phones and foregoing
any high-bandwidth use cases.

Has anybody published performance benchmarks?

------
MagicPropmaker
According to the article, Eich will pay you in a "cryptocurrency" which cannot
be exchanged for cash.

> Brave will give users a 70 percent cut of its advertising revenue, which
> Eich estimates could work out to about $5 a month. Brave will pay users with
> its own bitcoin-style "cryptocurrency” called Basic Attention Tokens or BAT,
> which has traded for as little as 12 cents and as much as 46 cents over the
> past 12 months, according to CoinMarketCap. Today, there’s no way for users
> who receive BAT for viewing ads to swap their digital currency for dollars,
> but Eich says Brave will partner with cryptocurrency exchanges to make that
> possible.

~~~
xur17
> Today, there’s no way for users who receive BAT for viewing ads to swap
> their digital currency for dollars, but Eich says Brave will partner with
> cryptocurrency exchanges to make that possible.

I'm confused by this statement - there are currently several exchanges you can
use to trade BAT for USD. Is this suggesting that the UI will be made more
clear in the future, or are users actually blocked from withdrawing BAT from
their wallet?

~~~
sirn
Right now Brave require a creator account to be linked to Uphold which
automatically exchange BAT to USD (at a 1.95% fee). Uphold balance can also be
withdraw to a bank account in the US or to other cryptocurrency.

~~~
rchaud
I remember simpler times of the Web 1.0 age when Epinions would just mail me a
check every few months. Outside of the reviews I wrote on their website, I
didn't have to lift a finger to get paid.

~~~
xur17
But you did have to share your address.

------
rchaud
Brave Browser on Android has been my goto since 2017. It's the Chrome browser,
but with an adblocker, which obviously the main Chrome app doesn't support.

That said, I really don't like this scheme. Paying users with a worthless
e-coin while putting your own ads on top of blocked ads? Why would site owners
opt in to this? So they can monitor 2 different ad systems present on their
site?

Not to mention, the conversion probability of a user who blocks ads is much
lower than that of someone who sees ads daily. So how much would you really be
earning by serving ads to people who specifically downloaded an adblocking
browser?

------
phoe-krk
FTFY: _The Brave Browser Will Pay You to Watch the Ads_

If you do not want to watch any ads on the Internet, period, here's nothing
the Brave browser can offer you than uBlock Origin cannot.

------
numbers
Currently, there is no way to actually make money by using Brave, it's
essentially Chrome with some adblocker pre-installed.

~~~
techntoke
I'd rather use Chromium with uBlock than install Brave.

~~~
RandomBacon
I'd rather use Firefox with uBlock Origin installed.

Remember, uBlock still displays ads, uBlock Origin does not display ads.

~~~
techntoke
Thanks for pointing that out. I actually use uBlock Origin as well myself. I
prefer Chromium because it supports hardware acceleration on Linux, which
Firefox doesn't consider to be important enough (even though they pride
themselves on open source).

------
tlrobinson
I'm a fan of Brave's mission, and the browser itself is great (basically
Chromium but faster), but the practice of hiding publisher's ads but showing
their own, which may or may not end up compensating the publisher, seems
fairly unethical.

I think a couple things would make it less objectionable and more awesome:

1\. don't block verifiably "clean" ads by default, which basically means
lightweight, no JavaScript, etc. Something like AMP for ads. If a publisher
wants to show their own ads, given them a reasonable way to do so without
buying into the whole centralized Brave/BAT system.

2\. don't allow users to keep the money they "earn" from viewing the
replacement ads. Ideally hold it in an escrow smart contract that
automatically sends it to a charity if the publisher doesn't claim it after a
certain amount of time.

3\. come up with a way for publishers to easily allow users to pay per-
article. I don't pay for a WSJ subscription but occasionally I want to read an
article. Let me easily pay, say, $0.25 per article, otherwise I'll continue to
find ways around your paywall.

------
TwoNineA
Can't wait until someone automates it.

~~~
justsee
I'd say good luck with that.

To acquire BAT at scale fraudulently from rewards will likely cost more than
it's worth, and to convert it into fiat will require going through KYC / AML
processes AND avoiding being flagged by Brave's fraud analysis.

I don't think they've published anything on fraud analysis, but what their
research team has published is indicative of the calibre of Brave's team:
[https://brave.com/research/](https://brave.com/research/)

~~~
xur17
> to convert it into fiat will require going through KYC / AML processes AND
> avoiding being flagged by Brave's fraud analysis.

Are they going to require KYC to withdraw from your wallet or something?
Otherwise I'm not sure what keeps people from withdrawing and trading on
whatever sketchy exchange they want.

~~~
tinodotim
> Are they going to require KYC to withdraw from your wallet or something?

yes, afaik.

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Jemm
Sounds interesting but I just do not want to support a company with Brendan
Eich at its head.

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danielcarvalho
Kinda reminds me of Ad Buddy from the series Maniac.

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superconformist
NetZero is back, baby!

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sonnyblarney
"All Advantage" circa 2000. If anyone cares to recall.

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mmagin
I'm still waiting for Brendan Eich to apologize for donating $1k to the
campaign to to pass Prop 8 which held up same sex marriage in California for
five years.

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xrd
Brave got to where it is because Brendan Eich is the face of it.

Everything I've seen about the browser seems tied to him, and generally his
interactions with people seem testy and confrontational.

It's ironic that Google owns the browser and ad network. Brave wants to change
that by creating a new browser and ad network. But until they can make brave
less tied to him it'll be hard.

~~~
atomical
You could say the same about Apple and Steve Jobs. Please post legitimate
criticisms for Brave/BAT. Your comment reads like a hit piece.

~~~
xrd
I stand by that I wrote 100%. He is a polarizing figure and that is impacting
Brave. The early adopters they need care about this facet of the founder. If
you don't recall his financial support of that controversial anti-gay ballot
measure in California, you are either being ignorant or dishonest, I'm saying
the people they need to adopt Brave care about this, not just me.

Full disclosure: I'm working on an alternative to Brave in the crypto space.
But I'm not shilling it here.

But speaking about disclosure. What I find interesting about discussions of
Brave are that many people chime in here without specifying their positions. I
don't have BAT nor shorts on them. Do you have positions, do you own BAT or
have a financial interest in their success?

~~~
emanreus
Polarizing figure can be a good thing, especially for early adopters and
getting a foothold in the market.

------
sergiotapia
I stopped using Brave because of this exchange:
[https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1118689481777766400](https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1118689481777766400)

>Our value add is free speech. A free speech browser. With a free speech app
store. With free speech money. (Bitcoin.) We don’t care about saving
advertising. We care about saving free expression. Fundamental difference.
Fundamental USP.

Edit: Not talking about anyone's politics here, I'm talking about Brave's
focus on advertising - not end user's freedom.

~~~
vlunkr
Looking at that exchange, The person who said that is making a fork of Brave,
so...

