
Brave Passes 10M Monthly Active Users, Sees 19% Growth Since 1.0 Launch - yarapavan
https://brave.com/brave-passes-10m-mau/
======
_bxg1
I think Brave's potentially most important (and least certain) contribution to
the world is its automatic micro-payments system. It's genuinely innovative
and the only viable alternative that anyone has proposed to ads-based funding
for smaller sites. It's also, by nature, incredibly hard to bootstrap. But I
really hope it gets real traction and ends up standardized and/or copied by
other browsers.

~~~
noxer
IMO it misses the point. I don't want ads. Pay me for seeing ads may be better
than just see ads but what I really want is no ads. For now I block them. This
way I get to see nearly no ads. I can't get my head around why I would let
some ads trough to earn some bucks. It totally missing the point.

What we really need is a way to pay for content so content creators can
survive without ad revenue. The internet must transit to a market where people
pay for goods and services just like on literally every other market. There is
money and goods/serviced and they get exchanged. That's how it should be. Now
we have ads and a third-party in between which severs itself plus another
party the advertisers. Brave removes the third-party (kinda) but leaves the
advertiser in the game. Why? No one needs them to be part of a goods/service
<> money exchange.

There is an open W3C standard that can be used for micro-payments it's called
ILP. Not bound to a currency. No token. No scaling problems because it tires
to run everything "on the blockchain". It's just a protocol it can be used
with any token or currency.And Payment providers must compete against each-
other just like it should be in a healthy economy. (At time of writing there
seem to be only one payment provider (Coil.com) but that's just because
someone has to start.)

~~~
buboard
> we really need is a way to pay for content so content creators can survive

So, just buy more BAT and you dont need to see ads. other people may not be
able to afford paying, so they 'll prefer to see ads

> but leaves the advertiser in the game. Why?

The printing press, radio and TV always had ads, why? becuase it's the most
natural fit, and it allows them to have more / better content. ad-supported
content is not going away. A world with more options is always better

~~~
noxer
By buying BAT I support people getting paid for watching ads. Also and open
door for ad-fraud. Bat browser doesn't know if a real user watches the ads. Do
we really need more click farms and all that crap?

The solution to all this is so obvious; the third party must be removed from
the equation.

Local "fee" (ad monetized) prints are horrible. Never used Radio so I can't
say anything about that. TV however has become more and more ad cluttered and
low quality over the last decades to the point where I completely stopped
watching any TV several years ago.

Ads may fit in newspapers and in TV programs. But when newspapers and TV
programs are created for the sole purpose to serve ads it just results in
crap. Ads don't incentive good content. They incentive click-bait titles, fake
news and an anything that maximizes the time an end user waists.

~~~
buboard
> They incentive click-bait titles

that's because in digital, google & FB are gobbling up the bulk of advertising
budgets, leaving little money in display advertising to be shared by hundreds
of media sites. it's not an inherent property of ads that they create
clickbait, it's the need for increasingly more ad views.

~~~
noxer
The inherent property of ads is that a third-party is involved who strives for
maximal profit at the cost of the other two parties. Even the nicest possible
third-party can't make the deal better for the others.

~~~
cookie_monsta
Why at the cost of the other two parties? The publisher profits and the
consumer gets subsidised content

------
feross
Pro-tip: Brave has built in torrent support. You can visit any .torrent or
magnet link and it will load up directly in the browser, no external program
needed!

Click this link from Brave: [https://webtorrent.io/torrents/big-buck-
bunny.torrent](https://webtorrent.io/torrents/big-buck-bunny.torrent)
(Creative Commons licensed)

Disclaimer: I integrated my WebTorrent library into Brave. Sharing this tip
because not enough people know about this feature!

~~~
bufferoverflow
Wow, that's nuts! I just pasted a magnet link into the address bar, and it
started playing the movie.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:02cd53257b68fac90489850be10691df7c42e45a&dn=The+Terminator+%281984%29+1080p+BrRip+x264+-+YIFY&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers-
paradise.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969&ix=0

------
erentz
One of the serious criticisms against Brave was that they were collecting
payments for sites and creators that had not signed up and who did not want to
sign up. That is they were charging for other people’s content, that they
don’t own, under the guise that the money went to those creators when it
didn’t and wouldn’t. Seemed a pretty serious criticism to me. Has this
changed?

~~~
fuu_dev
There where actually 2 critiques and their practice would count as fraud in a
lot of countries.

#1 Money was re-distributed if donated and not claimed -> its not frozen
infinite.

#2 There was no way to opt out -> its now opt in iirc

Besides that there are other critique points.

#1 Brave is controlling the add economy. They do this by blocking adds and
offering their opt in add service(and gain 30% of the add revenue)

#2 Brave is using its own crypto currency to have full control over the money
flow.

What additionally lowers their credibility is that they put false
advertisement on their website.

This makes me wounder whats the incent to use brave.

~~~
Karunamon
I don't quite follow #2. BAT is an ERC20 token like any other and can be quite
easily transacted outisde of the browser and outside of Brave's control.

~~~
fuu_dev
Brave created the currency.

~~~
Karunamon
That doesn't equate to having full control over the monetary flow. They can
mint new tokens, but since the contract doesn't have a self destruct function,
it's out there on the blockchain forevermore, even if Brave were to disappear
tomorrow.

------
anirudh24seven
I have been using Brave on macOS for more than 3 years now. I used Brave on
Android for a while and I am currently using Brave on iOS as my daily driver.
I don't use their BAT system or anything associated with that. I like their
default vanilla experience and the fact that I can install Chrome plugins on
Brave. I still use uBlock origin on top of their default blockers. I use the
built-in Tor experience time-to-time as well.

To me, Brave is what Firefox should have been. Good UI, good defaults, fast
enough, support for Chrome plugins, etc. I am slightly concerned about their
future direction though (if they enforce the BAT system down users' throats).

------
Etheryte
Given there's very clear monetary incentive for the company to hype their own
product, and that these stats can't be externally verified [1], this is
essentially just snake oil. Personally, if anything, I find the constant
forced hype across media and social media to be a red flag. If your product
was really both good and honest, you wouldn't need to try to force it down
people's throats.

[1] [https://community.brave.com/t/why-doesnt-brave-market-
share-...](https://community.brave.com/t/why-doesnt-brave-market-share-show-
up-on-market-share-tracking-sites/75063/2)

~~~
icandoit
>If your product was really both good and honest, you wouldn't need to try to
force it down people's throats.

You do if bad products are spending more ad dollars than you. Being good isn't
enough to capture the market.

------
ganstyles
I've been using it for a bit and really enjoying it. Mobile version anyways.
Only downside is it doesn't seem to be able to autofill all my information for
forms, so I switch back to chrome when I'm making a purchase on my phone or
something like that.

~~~
Elof
I exported all of my chrome settings and loaded them into brave. Easy to do
and all my things are working as expected.

~~~
buboard
oh cool. last version i checked i could not import my passwords

~~~
Elof
Might still be the case. I use 1Password. It’s easy to upload passwords from
chrome to 1Password fwiw

------
napoleoncomplex
Any details from verified creators or Brave directly regarding revenue? Even
if it's tiny right now, it would be great to hear some data from anyone giving
it a real go.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
They did an AMA recently on Reddit where they go into the payment positives in
detail, of course they skipped the negatives like they are playing ads on your
desktop outside of the page.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7l4033/transcri...](https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7l4033/transcript_of_ama_with_brendan_eich_ceo_of_brave/)

~~~
fastball
You can opt out of the notification ads.

~~~
Karunamon
You have to opt _in_ to the notification ads in the first place.

------
sam0x17
Been using it for a month. Have made a little over $2. Loving the BAT stuff.

Also loving profile switching which for some reason I never used in Chrome but
now use in brave like mad because I have several clients with separate gsuite
/ google cloud platform environments.

~~~
degenerate
Does profile switching work similar to Firefox's Multi-Account Containers?

Or can you only be "viewing" one profile at a time?

~~~
erredois
On Firefox you can have multiple containers on a single window. On brave each
profile has its own window.

~~~
qxnqd
I don't think they can be compared. Brave profiles (well, Chrome profiles) are
basically different browsers. They share nothing. They can have different
settings, they can run a different set of addons, etc.

~~~
buboard
you cann probably do the same on ff and chrome by using different data
directories (running with --profile or --user-data-dir options)

~~~
stjohnswarts
Yeah you can create as many profiles as you want with firefox and run
independent processes with the correct command line args but most users aren't
advanced or tenacious enough to set it up. It would be nice if they had a
slicker implementation like chrome.

------
dross
I installed it on my personal laptop due to constant crashes with chrome that
debug logging didn't help to solve. Brave suffered similarly so I stuck with
Chrome. I do extension development so when I saw that they used the same store
I was pleasantly surprised. I couldn't test my extension behaviour though,
because the app it enhances was having issues.

I'll give it a go on the PC I'm using for work(family) until I upgrade. Free
BAT!

------
im3w1l
I recently wanted to play an online game, but hardware acceleration on Firefox
on Linux doesn't work very well (Firefox on Windows is fine though - I've used
the exact same hardware to play on Windows and it was butter-smooth), so I
wanted to get a Chromium-based browser for that usecase. Ended up picking
Brave, and it's worked well for that.

Still using Firefox as my daily driver.

------
BlueTemplar
I might have been interested, but Chrome-based is out of the question, and I'd
prefer to avoid any ties to advertising too - and it's not like other options
aren't available...

~~~
1_player
AFAIK it is based on Ungoogled Chromium

~~~
BlueTemplar
"Ungoogled Chromium" seems like an oxymoron ?

------
Angeo34
So many fake accounts here just wow. HN should genuinely ban Brave posts

~~~
netfl0
How are you determining this?

------
aclelland
I've looked at verify a site that I control through Brave to start earning
some BAT tokens but I'm really not to keen to have to also give PII
(government photo and a selfie) to their only payment processor Upstart.

I'm not familiar at all with this company and I'd really rather not go giving
them data just to earn revenue on my site that Brave has taken away by
blocking ads.

Could someone who's more familiar with Upstart assuage my concerns? Are they
legit, have they got a good track record?

~~~
buboard
all crypto exchanges require such documentation, or worse. you can keep the
BAT there or perhaps transfer it to another exchange to exchange for another
crypto. but always, regulatiosn and stuff

~~~
dessant
They require PII because they can, not because they are legally required. To
accept cryptocurrencies and allow people to withdraw them into a wallet, you
do not need to verify their identity, unless the tokens are exchanged to fiat
on the platform.

There are companies that are more established and popular than Brave which do
not ask you to hold your ID next to your face and take a selfie in order to
withdraw donations to a cryptocurrency wallet.

~~~
buboard
i havent tried them all but afaik, the ones that are in US or EU and which
allow fiat <-> crypto transactions do

~~~
dessant
Of course, but Brave should allow creators to withdraw their tokens, without
converting it to fiat.

Not even users can withdraw their tokens without submitting an ID, let alone
creators: [https://cryptobriefing.com/brave-cash-out-
bat/](https://cryptobriefing.com/brave-cash-out-bat/)

It's actually worse than PayPal, where you can receive and withdraw money up
to a certain amount a year without submitting an ID.

~~~
buboard
oh ok i see. i should be able to withdraw to any BAT wallet, that's weird. but
knowing how much legal scrutiny there is around crypto-enabled companies, i m
not surprised to see restrictions

------
glofish
Looks like it has a builtin Tor based browsing model. Not just private window
(incognito) mode, but Tor based incognito in addition.

(been using it for an hour now, it is kind of neat)

------
kylehotchkiss
> As part of the Brave 1.0 launch, Brave Rewards is now available on Brave for
> iOS, which contributed to the app’s 27% growth in the past month.

I'm a happy Brave user but the "Rewards" are a gimmick. I've made a dollar a
month at best for clicking their amazon/intel/VPN ads. But the actual browser
serves its purpose well as a well supported and actively developed de-Google'd
chrome with pretty good ad blocker baked in.

------
loh
I've been using Brave for a while, maybe a couple of years. Its default ad
blocking doesn't work 100% of the time, so I've installed uBlock Origin. I
don't use the BAT functionality at all, but I think one of the main advantages
to Brave (and likely any Chromium-based browser) is that you get all of the
same fast, consistent rendering, plus all of the same Chrome extensions will
work without any extra effort.

------
jayess
I recently switched to an iPhone from android. Brave seems like the only
browser that allows me to block ads without some sort of external plug-in app.
I miss having ublock on iOS. But brave seems to do the trick for me and its
place.

~~~
nashashmi
Braves filter is much more granularized. Cookies get blocked. Specific scripts
get blocked. I love it.

But it's webkit and I like Firefox.

~~~
jayess
Same here. I'd love ad blocking on firefox in ios but it doesn't seem to be an
option.

------
onyva
Love the innocent “received very positive press reviews”

It remember being force to read about Brave in any article about the web,
especially when the click bait title actually mentioned its competition.

Untrustworthy, and not just In their business model.

------
aloukissas
Brave is the best thing to have happened on the web for a long time. I've used
it since it was in early beta, really happy how far along it's gone.

------
hellofunk
I wish it was easier to get a constant sync between devices for bookmarks, but
other than that, happy user here.

~~~
swozey
Yeah, I enjoy using it but I use 4 different devices throughout the day and
not having sync and the clunkiness of its sync (sometimes it doesnt work at
all for me on my home network between desktop/laptop) actually pushed me back
over to Firefox yesterday when I got a new laptop.

I also finally got sick of the ads popping up as system notifications, which
are far more distracting to me than regular ads, so I disabled that.

------
petre
I use it currently but do not care about rewards and other nonsense features,
just about ads getting blocked.

~~~
babuskov
To counter all those throwaway accounts created to praise Brave, I have to say
that I have no intention to use it because it's based on Chromium. Single-
culture is bad even if your intentions are good. I never used Chrome either
and have lived through ups and downs of Mozilla since 2002 when I ditched IE6.

I wish Firefox tech was easier to integrate into other browsers, so that we
could have a more balanced ecosystem.

~~~
adtac
I don't want to accuse anyone of astroturfing, but the comments in this thread
seem to be eerily positive and very marketing-y. Maybe it's my skepticism of
everything crypto-related being incredibly biased one way or another.

~~~
alwillis
Disclaimer: I’ve been using/testing Brave for the last few years. I've seen it
evolve from what was basically a proof of concept running in Electron to what
it is today.

I believe if you care to do some research, you'll see that the Brave team has
put in the work to be taken seriously.

I get why people are skeptical, especially in this day and age. But the
concept for Brave and disrupting the surveillance capitalism known as ad tech
goes back to 2013; Brave is not a johnny-come-lately thing[1].

This was started by Brendan Eich, the same guy who created JavaScipt and who
started Mozilla which gave us Firefox; it's not like he's someone who doesn't
understand how this stuff works.

[1]: [https://basicattentiontoken.org/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-
ze...](https://basicattentiontoken.org/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-zero/)

~~~
natmaka
Every potentially unpleasant Brave feature is easy to disable (and often by-
default disabled). Is is very good at ad-filtering, snappy and responsive,
stable, can be audited (opensource)... and the underlying ways to provide for
creators/publishers (and also people liking/needing advertising) are clever
and disruptive.

Brave is worth a try.

I'm not paid for this (and there is no 'conflict of interest').

------
fouc
Are there any sites that are only accessible with Brave?

Like a site that has popups with "You are unable to view content without Brave
browser" ?

To make it work, brave would need to support something extra besides html/js
that other browsers don't support.

------
etaioinshrdlu
It would be cool to use [https://www.orchid.com/](https://www.orchid.com/)
(when it's ready) with the Brave browser. Tokens all the way down!

------
CTOSian
Interesting browser, but dear devs we are not in 90s -just a pc for net-
browsing at home - and I am talking about the lack of sync of
extensions/bookmarks.

------
anaganisk
As long as brave android and brave browser doesn't natively support YubiKey
2FA its a no no from me bruh.

------
kentf
Would be curious on how much their Joe Rogan is responsible for their Q4
spike.

~~~
buboard
he s advertising brave?

------
pcdoodle
It's a great browser, I love that tor is integrated and 1 click away.

------
etxm
Does anyone know if the mobile version is a wrapper around safari?

~~~
gilrain
Yes, because that is the only possibility.

~~~
sneak
Safari is not WebKit.

------
adamqureshi
Tor browser works for me.

------
throwaway_0007
Wow. Actual user oriented and ground breaking innovations. This is the future.
And it's beautiful. I'm impressed. Mozilla now looks like a dying swamp.

------
caiocaiocaio
Remember how there used to be pro-gay fried chicken and anti-gay fried
chicken? Now we've got an anti-gay web browser. Amazing how the market
provides. What's next? An anti-Jew web browser? An anti-black web browser? The
only thing I can say for sure is that the next radicalized web browser will
also feature blockchain.

~~~
procinct
Am I missing something? Why is Brave considered anti gay?

~~~
distances
Because Brave's CEO is Brendan Eich.

Fair or not, this is exactly what I think every time I read about Brave, and
truth be told, also the reason I haven't tried it out.

~~~
qxnqd
Don't forget to disable Javascript on your browser too.

~~~
distances
Not sure if you replied on a wrong comment, but I do have JavaScript disabled
by default with uMatrix.

~~~
buboard
i think they re referring to the fact that Eich created Javascript too

~~~
distances
Right, I see.

------
buboard
pity that firefox is not innovating as much

~~~
noxer
They teamed up with Coil which sets on an open standard named ILP. We don't
need more walled gardening. All relevant Browsers support it alredy. W3C is
behind ILP. Doesn't need it's own Token. Supports Fiat an Crypto.

~~~
iudqnolq
Most major browsers support the Web Payments Api, but Firefox still has it
behind a feature flag [caniuse]. The Web Payments API does not enable
micropayments by usage. The W3C is absolutely not (yet) behind Interledger
Payments (ILP), Coil's proposed spec. You can determine this from the fact the
unofficial draft spec has giant red watermarks saying "UNOFFICIAL DRAFT", and
the following disclaimer:

> This document is draft of a potential specification. It has no official
> standing of any kind and does not represent the support or consensus of any
> standards organization. [draft_spec]

It is being discussed on the W3C's Web Incubator forum, which is promising but
not an endorsement by the W3C [wicg].

The Firefox addon, which acts as a shim until they can get native support in
Firefox, may well be in partnership with Mozilla (I couldn't find anything
about it), but the partnership would most likely be in very early stages. When
I click on the link you shared to Mozilla addons I get the warning:

> "This is not a Recommended Extension. Make sure you trust it before
> installing."

It has around 350 users, which includes people who installed the add-on but
didn't setup payment.

In summary, the tech is promising but browser support is a long ways down the
road.

[caniuse]: [https://caniuse.com/#feat=payment-
request](https://caniuse.com/#feat=payment-request)

[draft_spec]:
[https://webmonetization.org/specification.html](https://webmonetization.org/specification.html)

[wicg]: [https://discourse.wicg.io/t/proposal-web-monetization-a-
new-...](https://discourse.wicg.io/t/proposal-web-monetization-a-new-revenue-
model-for-the-web/3785)

~~~
noxer
The Payment Request API is something completely different. Coil is about
webmonetization see
[https://webmonetization.org/](https://webmonetization.org/) Ah and ILP stands
for Interledger Protocol not Payment it's a Protocol

W3C is a consortium (That's the C in W3C) anyone can join and become a member
and join the different work groups to push a new technologies. ILP was
originally created by Ripple and got further developed by Coil. Both are
members of the W3C. W3C isn't some kind of web-overlord to puts a stamp on
things that they like. The consortium creates it they shape it and they
approve it. Everyone can participate but the driving force comes from the
companies who use these technologies. They are the ones who want to shape it.
But as long as a tech isn't widely adopted it will never get the
recommendation status. Even HTML5 existed for at lest 6 years before getting
recommendation status in 2014 but in 2011 every mayor browser had 95% HTML5
covered already. Getting IPL to a W3C REC is a very long term goal not
something people need to wait for to use it.

Nonetheless it should be obvious that this whole tech is at the very start,
far form perfect and may or may not change the web as we know it today. Still
comparable to the Brave tech and I think it tires to solve the problems
instead of re-create different versions of the same problems.

~~~
iudqnolq
I assumed you might have been referring to the Payment Request API when you
said "all major browsers support it" because that isn't true for ILP. Thanks
for the correction on the acronym's meaning.

You're right, Coil is a member of the W3C [members]. You're also right that
W3C approval isn't necessarily necessary for something to become implemented.

However, when I hear "the W3C is behind ILP" I (and I assume many others)
interpret that to mean the W3C as a consortium has taken some step towards
creating a standard, or even that the consortium has issued some statement
that they hope to do so. I don't think that most people would interpret one of
the W3C's 400+ members proposing something and putting it up on a domain they
bought as the W3C being behind it.

HTML5 is a great example of how tech becomes implemented and standardized in
the modern era. HTML5 exists because Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft
agreed on it (through the organization WHATWG) and then implemented it. HTML5
was implemented through an even more centralized process, I wouldn't call
getting something pushed through by the major browser members something anyone
can do just by putting up a good spec.

I agree completely that a W3C spec isn't something people need before they can
use the extension shim, of course. All I meant to respond to was your claim
that browsers and the W3C were behind IPL. A company called Coil is behind
IPL.

[members]:
[https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List](https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List)

------
Yuval_Halevi
Brave is one of my favorite browsers (I'm using it right now) X5 better than
Chrom x100 better than IE

------
robsinatra
That is bullshit. Unless a trusted third party verifies this claim, it must be
considered marketing lies and manipulation to encourage bandwagoning.

------
tomaszs
Brave will be the next browser. No doubt about it. It is made by a genius.

~~~
baal80spam
I hope you are correct as it deserves to be.

