
Brave Browser and the Wayback Machine: Working Together - edward
http://blog.archive.org/2020/02/25/brave-browser-and-the-wayback-machine-working-together-to-help-make-the-web-more-useful-and-reliable/
======
FillardMillmore
Opinions are obviously split here among HNers about the merits of Brave and
what it's actually trying to achieve.

I can only speak for myself but I find that Brave as a daily driver is a
wonderful browser. Since it's built on Chromium, it has all the common
extensions I use with Chrome (Dark Reader, uBlock Origin, etc.). It has built-
in Tor and a rich set of default privacy features. The ads it provides are
opt-in and the way that it allows the user to choose which website/content
creators to reward allows a level of freedom to users that other browsers
typically don't.

I don't know about the ethics behind everything Brave is doing - but this
built in functionality of 404 redirects with the help of the IA/Wayback
Machine is, to me, an interesting and welcome feature. I did not know, before
reading this thread, that other browsers had plugins/extensions available for
this. The fact that Brave is simply building it in natively seems to be a bold
move. If other browsers adopt similar functionality natively, we'll know that
it was a winning move. When all is said and done, despite any missteps Brave
may be making, it is trying a different approach, and I think that in the end,
whether or not Brave succeeds, that's healthy for a competitive browser
ecosystem.

Edit: One thing I'd really like to see for Brave's mobile browser in the
future is the ability to use Chrome extensions - it seems completely strange
to me that this hasn't been implemented yet (if I'm slow on the uptake and
this capability has been added, please correct me)

~~~
redsolver
I want to use Chrome desktop extensions on mobile, I recommend trying out Kiwi
Browser. It's open-source.

~~~
redsolver
*If you want

~~~
nougatbyte
I'm not sure if it changed, but last time I checked kiwi was not open source.
There is a GitHub repo but it contained only part of the code

------
katsura
I used Brave for a couple of months, but in the end I had to switch, because
it is just not ready to be used in everyday situations.

I actually tried their crypto ads, out of curiosity. I had some BATs
collected, then I reinstalled my machine, used their backup code to import the
wallet again, but it showed zero value. I contacted them about this, never got
an answer.

The sync was causing a crash for some people, so they turned it off for
everybody. It was off for at least a week, and maybe even now. But even when
it was turned on, it didn't sync properly between my iPhone and my laptop.

The browser frame is rendered weirdly both under xfce and kde. I had to resize
the window and maximize again, to get the min/max/close buttons properly
rendered, and make some random border disappear.

There were sites where I couldn't log in even after turning off the shield.

On my iPhone for some reason when I searched something in DDG, clicked on it,
then went back, DDG was rendered, then tried to scroll, and the previous site
started bleeding through from the bottom of the screen. The URL bar showed
DDG, but nothing was clickable. Refreshing the page didn't work, so I had to
force close the browser and open again to see my search query. Interestingly
Google seemed to be working, although I only use it for like 1-2% of my search
queries, so I cannot be sure.

In the dev tools the audits tab didn't work at all. Couldn't connect an
Android device for remote debugging.

In the end all the little annoyances just made me uninstall it, because for me
it is just too much to put up with all these. It definitely has some
interesting ideas, but I cannot recommend it just yet.

~~~
sjtindell
As a counterpoint to this I use Brave on my iPhone, Windows home PC and Mac
work laptop. It blocks all ads, I don’t use the crypto at all and never have,
and it works for 99% of the sites I visit including ones for various services
around work. I never opted in or out of anything, it just works and because it
blocks so much nonsense it’s fast. Frustrated by all that negativity when it
works great for me as a “download and forget” drop in replacement for Chrome
without all the Google tracking.

~~~
petecox
After reading an article here on HN, I gave Brave a crack for a week but
returned to my regular browser. The thrill of dopamine hits from earning a BAT
oken for viewing a brave-blessed ad for the underprivileged wasn't worth
changing a browser for.

A "drop in replacement for Chrome" just isn't my thing as a Firefox user - I
just didn't love the browsing experience otherwise.

If the company were to expand their market for postive-ads and crypto coins by
releasing a Firefox plugin as a "drop in replacement for uBlock Origin" it
might tickle my fancy.

~~~
thekyle
Yeah I never understood why Brave rewards only works in their own browser.
Seems like they're kinda limiting their userbase with this all-or-nothing
approach.

~~~
naasking
Their goal is to change the incentives around web browsing and privacy. It
becomes much harder to do that if they help other browsers retain their
marketshare.

------
ddevault
Can we not work with the Brave browser? Technologists like us and archive.org
should be boycotting it. Cryptocurrency nonsense, swapping ads with their own,
soliciting donations for creators without their permission... Brave is a known
bad actor in the browser market.

~~~
justsee
As a privacy-minded, ethically-motivated technologist I support Brave for
their strong position on privacy - a position in which they are peerless
amongst other browser vendors.

I am always open to changing my mind, yet when I see the same untruths
mustered to poison-the-well ('swapping ads with their own' \- not true) I
wonder why the same dishonest and distorted talking points come up instead of
any valid criticisms.

What you call 'cryptocurrency nonsense' is a model that potentially threatens
to overturn Google's ad model, and with it the current ad-tech ecosystem.

That obviously means there's a huge number of high-stakes players who are very
keen for this particular model not to 'take' in the online world, and so we
see the same untruths constantly amplified.

Brave must be doing something right, and even if there's a purist's position
which says their model is not the holy grail, I'd prefer innovation and
disrupted business models over a continuation of the current ad-tech status
quo.

~~~
andreareina
> 'swapping ads with their own' \- not true

Only by the strictest definition of swap. They block ads and show ads from
their own ad network, which they collect revenue on. That the Brave ads don't
appear in the same place as the blocked ads doesn't impact the ethics of it.

~~~
justsee
Very happy to engage in an ethical debate on this one.

This line about 'swapping ads with their own' has been an attempt to imply in
the reader's mind that Brave was / is nefariously replacing actual ads with
their own, which is not true.

The truth is Brave blocks all ads by default, and nothing more.

Do you believe it's ethical for a user agent to block ads, or that it's
unethical and a form of theft?

I'm with gorhill of uBlock on this [1]:

    
    
      That said, it's important to note that using a blocker is NOT theft.
      Don't fall for this creepy idea.
      The ultimate logical consequence of blocking = theft is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy.
    

Separate to this, Brave has a rewards system users can choose to enable which
can show OS-level notifications of advertiser content in a privacy-respecting
way.

The ethics around this are clear:

* if a user wishes to opt-out of an insecure, fraudulent and privacy-harming ad-tech ecosystem for content on the open web that is their right

* if that same user wants to opt-in to a privacy-respecting alternative ad model which operates in a very different way, that's also their right

Attempting to claim the combination of these optional user choices is 'ad
swapping' in a nefarious, unethical sense is simply dishonest.

A more accurate phrase considering the individual user choices involved might
be 'model swapping'.

As a user I deliberately choose to swap the current ad-tech model with a new,
innovative model. That model may have to evolve, but from a technical and
human perspective appears to be much better than the current status quo.

[1]
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy)

~~~
jshevek
Thank you for taking the time to explain this in a careful and thorough
manner. You are absolutely correct to say:

> Attempting to claim the combination of these optional user choices is 'ad
> swapping' in a nefarious, unethical sense is simply dishonest.

...

(For the benefit of anyone else on mobile who finds HN's quotation style
unpleasant, here is the gorhill quote:

"That said, it's important to note that using a blocker is NOT theft.

Don't fall for this creepy idea.

The ultimate logical consequence of blocking = theft is the criminalisation of
the inalienable right to privacy. ")

~~~
Stratoscope
> _For the benefit of anyone else on mobile who finds HN 's quotation style
> unpleasant..._

Code blocks are definitely not HN's quotation style and not recommended for
quotes. They are often used for that purpose by mistake. It is an
understandable mistake considering the lack of formatting options here.

A common quotation style that works on all devices is what I used above, a
leading '>' followed by the quoted text enclosed in asterisks, like this (with
code formatting here to show the special characters):

    
    
      > *For the benefit...*
    
      > *Blank line between paragraphs*

------
8bitsrule
This add-on for Firefox works well. Accessible from toolbar and (most-used
options) from my context-menu.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-
machi...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-
machine_new/?src=search)

------
jshevek
Which browser is best for respecting user privacy?

"""

We study six browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Brave
Browser, Microsoft Edge and Yandex Browser.

For Brave with its default settings we did not find any use of identifiers
allowing tracking of IP address over time, and no sharing of the details of
web pages visited with backend servers.

Chrome, Firefox and Safari all share details of web pages visited with backend
servers. For all three this happens via the search autocomplete feature, which
sends web addresses to backend servers in realtime as they are typed. In
addition, Firefox includes identifiers in its telemetry transmissions that can
potentially be used to link these over time. Telemetry can be disabled, but
again is silently enabled by default. Firefox also maintains an open websocket
for push notifications that is linked to a unique identifier and so
potentially can also be used for tracking and which cannot be easily disabled.

Safari defaults to a poor choice of start page that leaks information to
multiple third parties and allows them to set cookies without any user
consent. Safari otherwise made no extraneous network connections and
transmitted no persistent identifiers, but allied iCloud processes did make
connections containing identifiers.

From a privacy perspective Microsoft Edge and Yandex are qualitatively
different from the other browsers studied. Both send persistent identifiers
than can be used to link requests (and associated IP address/location) to back
end servers. Edge also sends the hardware UUID of the device to Microsoft and
Yandex similarly transmits a hashed hardware identifier to back end servers.
As far as we can tell this behaviour cannot be disabled by users. In addition
to the search autocomplete functionality that shares details of web pages
visited, both transmit web page information to servers that appear unrelated
to search autocomplete.

"""

From:

[https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf](https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf)

(Paragraph breaks added for readability)

------
jshevek
There is some valid criticism made of Brave in this thread, which seems to
ignore that those additional features are opt-in. In my experience, Brave is
the best browser for empowering the less technically literate to protect their
privacy. Until Mozilla ships Firefox with more aggressive, integrated, on-by-
default privacy protection, Brave is the best browser to advocate for non-
techies.

~~~
gnusty_gnurc
Yea the OS/free-software zealotry is annoying. I use Brave and it’s been great
so far. Even the UI is nicer than Firefox imo.

~~~
jshevek
There may be zealotry involved in the attacks on Brave, but I don't think it
is essentially OS/free software zealotry. Brave is open source, after all.

Edit: I am a passionate advocate for freedom, privacy, and free software and I
like Brave.

~~~
gnusty_gnurc
It feels to me like even a nice comment about Brave is an outright threat to
openness and virtue. IMO it’s the same bizarre Manichaean zeitgeist that pops
up in so many other aspects of life and discussion.

~~~
jshevek
Yes, I think we agree about the fact of an ideological bias, just not the
underlying motive for, or nature of, the ideological bias.

------
jvehent
Mozilla did this a couple years ago. [https://medium.com/firefox-test-
pilot/test-pilot-no-more-404...](https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/test-
pilot-no-more-404s-graduation-report-22e65f62b2b1)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Perhaps something a Brave Browser dev was involved in at Mozilla? Seems useful
but probably is rightfully in plug-in territory IMO.

~~~
zitterbewegung
Not sure if you are being sarcastic but the Brave browser was made by Brendan
Eich one of the cofounders of Mozilla .

~~~
mafm
Brendan Eich was also the guy who created javascript.

(In 10 days, which probably explains a lot of the warts.)

~~~
techntoke
He also donated money to prop 8 to oppose gay marriage.

~~~
dannyw
Hopefully this is one of the things that we stop bringing up in the future.
This donation was made by him, in his personal capacity. We only know about it
because of political donation disclosure laws and it was dug out 4 years
later.

There have been zero accusations or complaints that Brendan Eich harmed
inclusivity as part of his job. It's a shame he was forced to step down, but
we don't need to be bringing this up like it's a mark of shame on his part.

~~~
herpderperator
I didn't know much about him and Googled him out of curiosity to read about
his affiliation with Mozilla. It is rather eye-catching to see "Known for:
JavaScript, opposition to same-sex marriage[1][2][3][4]" under his photo.[0]
Seems very easy to "bring up" unwillingly.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich)

~~~
BrendanEich
Check the wiki history, there's an edit war ongoing.

------
IAmEveryone
This sounds like exactly the sort of feature that usually triggers an online
Lynch mob when it's Mozilla doing it: It's not part of the core feature set
people expect from a browser, and it seems eminently possible to do it in a
plugin?

I also find the self-acclaimed "Brave" browser company an odd partner to work
with for an organisation dedicated to the open web like IA. This browser has
exactly one purpose: to make money. In terms of the people working on it, it's
arguably more commercial than Chrome, Safari, or Edge.

The proposition "Brave" is making is: "Don't you also feel what this world
needs is an intermediary between you and the people creating what you like,
skimming from both sides whenever money is involved?"

~~~
alwillis
_This browser has exactly one purpose: to make money. In terms of the people
working on it, it 's arguably more commercial than Chrome, Safari, or Edge._

Chrome is the only one of these browsers that is produced by a company where
at least 80% of its billions of dollars of revenue is generated by monetizing
the personal identifying information of web users using ad tech.

It’s also the only major browser without built-in support for mitigating
tracking cookies and scripts.

What Brave is trying to do is bootstrap an ecosystem where users can use a
utility cryptocurrency to reward content creators they like while optionally
getting paid to view ads that related to sites on the web they visit without
leaking personal information due to zero knowledge proofs.

Brave really wants to increase the value of the Basic Attention Token by
flipping the current business model of the web on its head.

That’s not a bad idea.

~~~
drusepth
>Brave really wants to increase the value of the Basic Attention Token by
flipping the current business model of the web on its head.

It's not a bad idea, but IMO it's a bad execution.

They're effectively running a business based on extorting everyone building
anything for the web (everyone from big businesses to small hobbyists trying
to make something new) by flat-out replacing the most common form of
monetization (ads) with their own monetization and saying, "Hey developers, I
know you worked hard on that website, so if you want that money (or, at least,
a cut of it we feel is fair), sign up for our platform instead".

~~~
songshuu
1st party ads aren't blocked. So if that developer wanted to monetize with
ads, they're totally free to do so.

The dividing line is privacy invading third-party ads.

At a whole 12M users, they're hardly extorting anyone at this point. Let's
back the hyperbole train up a bit.

~~~
drusepth
>1st party ads aren't blocked. So if that developer wanted to monetize with
ads, they're totally free to do so.

They're only free to do so in Brave's eyes if they roll their own ad solution,
which is an option but not _always_ the best option. The "easy" (and,
arguably, more featureful/secure/"better") route to monetize across the
Internet (especially on hobby projects and small businesses) is third-party
ads. There's lots of reasons someone might weigh the options and make the
decision to go with a third party ad provider; Brave takes that decision away.
Whether that's better or worse for the Internet as a whole is debatable.

~~~
songshuu
Your response did not address privacy which was the main thrust of my point.

wrt third-party ads being more secure...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising)

You also point the arrow of causality in the wrong direction. It's not as
though Brave magically shows up on devices. The current ecosystem and its host
of problems (including privacy and security) are precisely why users are
choosing adblockers of all stripes.

In Brave's case, at least they're conscientious enough to provide an
alternative path to monetization for creators.

------
justlexi93
The Web is fragile. The average life expectancy of a single Web page is
anywhere from 44 – 100 days. We’ve all hit the dreaded error code 404 “Page
Not Found”. As of today, Brave Browser users can heal many of those broken
links with one click.

Now this is interesting.

------
brokensegue
is Brave paying the Internet Archive as part of this deal? surely this will
increase load on the wayback machine.

~~~
markjgraham
No. No $ is changing hands.

To be clear... we are super happy that Brave values helping to make the Web
more useful and reliable.

We welcome other browser companies joining them and working with us as well.

The extra load on our servers is not that significant. At this point we
support thousands of request per second, we can take on a few more.

Having said that... we always appreciate the support and love from the
community to people (and companies) who use and appreciate our services.

We are adding more a billion URLs/day to the Wayback Machine these days...
that is a LOT of hard drives :-)

~~~
ketamine__
I tipped 10 BAT to the Wayback Machine today. I'm going to make it recurring.

------
kristianp
Surely the pages that go down quickly are less likely to be in the archive?
That limits it's usefulness.

------
kunglao
What saddens me about the threads here is that it seems that some paint a very
deliberate picture of Brave as a bad actor worse than other browser vendors.

I was using Firefox and then I switched to Brave. None of their
featyres/business model is shoved down my throat. I just use it to browse the
Web, I do not see ads, I do not participate in their crypto currency program.
Heck I don't even see their icon for crypto currency on my browser UI.

I found Brave to be faster and more user friendly than Firefox which is why I
switched. What I meant by user friendly is not just the UI components but also
requires a minimal setup effort. I would like to hear more about technical and
privacy related merits/demerits of Brave as I feel that's more pertinent at
the moment when it comes to browser. However, the hate I hear about their
business model/crypto currency somehow is baffling and ironically it seems to
come from Firefox users. Can anyone point out some interesting technical and
privacy related drawbacks of Brave? That'd be useful for a lot of us.

~~~
Nursie
>> a very deliberate picture of Brave as a bad actor worse than other browser
vendors.

They have been at times.

Particularly in the period during which they solicited funds to "help support"
blogs and pages by people who had not signed up (and did not want to sign up
when they found out about Brave and BAT).

I'm not saying they're all bad, but they've overstepped the bounds of good
behaviour at times.

~~~
steerablesafe
> Particularly in the period during which they solicited funds to "help
> support" blogs and pages by people who had not signed up

IANAL but this sounds like straight up fraud, not just "overstepping the line
a little bit".

~~~
Nursie
I agree, they seemed to be scraping author images from blogs, and putting
messages up saying "You can support the site by sending a tip!"

There's a screenshot here -
[https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-
br...](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-browser-no-
longer-claims-to-fundraise-on-behalf-of-others-so-thats-nice/brave-tom-scott-
donation-page-december-2018/)

Tom Scott was alerted to this when someone sent him a tweet asking if he'd got
thte tip, and was annoyed because he had no intention of monetising anything.

It does indeed look fraudulent to me. They have changed the behaviour now
IIRC.

------
lhuser123
Is Brave the only iOS browser with fingerprint protection? Does that really
works?

------
mantap
Not sure how I feel about this. A lot of people don't know about the wayback
machine. This may incentivise people to send deletion requests to internet
archive.

~~~
kylebenzle
I think that is called "concern trolling" right?

------
enitihas
Brave is a wonderful browser on android, the best in my opinion. Ad blocking,
plus one click javascript global blocking, and easy enabling for selected
sites, make it a joy to use.

Also, since it uses chromium, performance on android is way better than
firefox. Android firefox is too slow.

