
Brave launches 1.0 - etr71115
https://brave.com/brave-launches-next-generation-browser/
======
judah
I've been using Brave rewards, both as a user and a content maker. It's really
great, and I feel this may be a reasonable alternative to the invasive
trackers+ads we have today.

For the uninitiated, Brave lets users opt-in to Brave rewards:

\- You set your browser to reward content creators with Basic Attention Token
(BAT). You set a budget (e.g. 10 BAT/month), and Brave distributes it the
sites you use most, e.g. if you watch a particular YouTube channel 30% of your
browsing time, it will send 30% of 10 BAT each month to that content creator.

\- As a user, you can get paid in BAT. You tell Brave if you're willing to see
ads, and how often. If so, you get paid in BAT, which you can then distribute
to content creators. Brave ads are different: rather than intrusive in-page
ads, Brave ads show up as a notification in your operating system outside of
the page. This prevents slow downs of the page, keeping your browsing focused,
while still allowing support of content creators. And of course, Brave ads are
optional and opt-in.

~~~
hinkley
You had me...

> Brave ads show up as a notification in your operating system outside of the
> page.

and then you lost me. Hitting people with notifications is an _escalation_ of
ad hostility, not a reduction.

~~~
jonathansampson
Brave Ads are opt-in, and user-configurable. You decide whether or not to
participate, and to what degree (1 to 5 ads per hour). These ads are surfaced
as OS notifications, which means they respect settings like Do Not Disturb,
Focus Mode, etc. And, as always, you receive 70% of the ad revenue for your
participation. Respectfully, that doesn't strike me as an "escalation of
hostility" when you compare against the current option: forced participation,
malicious ads, no revenue share, data leaked to a sea of third parties who use
it for their purposes.

~~~
cyborgx7
I already decided my Ad participation. I block ads, and want the advertising
industry to die. This does not seem like a value add to me.

~~~
asdkhadsj
Yea, I'd be happier if there was some notion of an inherent value in my
eyeballs - and then I could just put that money into the system. Eg, I pay
$5/m or $15/m, whatever, and that gets split up by the number of pages I view
and content I consume.

I'm a firm believer that FOSS and _(Internet)_ Content needs funding. Yet, I
loathe ads. They promote _(but are not solely to blame for)_ behavior that is
a brain drain on society. Ads always seem to boil down to 90s style child
cereal commercials. Loud noises and flashy attention grabbing tactics to pull
you towards it within a tiny, limited window of bought attention.

I'm not convinced society is better because of ads. The dystopian movies with
neons signs everywhere seem shockingly accurate _(and I believe are already
like that in many eastern cities)_.

I like some of Brave's attempt. At least their doing _something_. But Ads
still seem wrong to me.

~~~
harikb
The reality is that your eyeballs are something like $200/month. You are just
not likely to pay that money. When you factor in money thrown away at
bot/fraud, advertisers spend a shit load of money just to reach you (and
indirectly pays for a whole lot of entertainment tv-shows/web-content)

~~~
ubercow13
That sounds crazy if true. The idea that companies are managing to _change_ my
behaviour enough with advertising to drive enough revenue and extra profit,
for purchases that I wouldn’t otherwise have made, to justify $200 in
advertising spend seems absurd. That would mean a significant portion of my
monthly spending (much more than $200) would have to be directly driven by
advertising. Is advertising really that effective?

~~~
aiyodev
The point a lot of people miss is that advertising doesn't just convince you
buy new things. Many advertisements are designed to make you feel good about
the products you already buy so you won't consider trying the alternatives.

When you grab a bottle of dish soap off the shelf, do you select the same one
each time because you prefer it for reasons you can't quite articulate or do
you grab whatever's cheapest because they're basically all the same?

~~~
HeavyStorm
I was about to disagree until I read your example. You're right - I buy a lot
of stuff for reasons that aren't grounded in reason, and, although I usually
relate to stuff such as "my Mom used to have this one at home when I was a
kid", well, who knows if that's the actual reason or just some justification
from my mind.

~~~
askafriend
This is the realm most Car Ads fall under.

Their purpose isn't to randomly convince someone to spend $20-30k on a brand
new vehicle.

The purpose is to convince people who've already bought the car that they made
the right decision and to feel good about it - and to rave about their new
exciting, big purchase to their friends/family.

------
have_faith
If people like Brave's ad model, all the power to them. I would personally
never touch it. I'm not philosophically on board with the idea that paying
people to look at ads is a pragmatic way forward. It doesn't matter if it's
opt-in, free-to-play games with loot crates are opt-in, but the decision to go
down that road will effect their decision making process when designing new
features and I don't want to be part of it even indirectly.

~~~
NelsonMinar
Brave is unethical. The key problem is they insert themselves into the revenue
stream without the consent of the web publishers. It's fine to block ads
entirely, but substituting your own ads and collecting money from that is
wrong.

~~~
fastball
I'm not sure I see the clear cut ethical dilemma you do.

Option 1. block all ads, publishers receive no revenue.

Option 2. block all ads, user opts in to unrelated ads, user can choose to
give some of the proceeds of seeing those ads to publishers they utilize.

How can (2) possibly be worse than (1)?

~~~
lern_too_spel
Because it inserts a middleman who takes a cut that the publisher did not
enter into an agreement with. If it was just users giving to publishers, that
would be fine. Having a middleman hold the publisher's monetization hostage is
ethically dubious for the middleman.

Consider that I could pirate a movie, or I could pirate it and pay the
creators directly, leaving out the distributors the creators contracted with.
I fully agree that the second is slightly more ethical than the first, even
though the creator agreed to neither. The problem occurs when some Tube site
distributes the videos without the creators' consent, collects money from the
viewers, takes a cut, and passes the rest to the creator. The Tube site is
ethically wrong.

~~~
KKPMW
But nobody is holding anything hostage. When you use Brave, you can opt-in to
display ads on your Browser, and while doing so still get ads from Brave. So
the choice to cut-off ads from the content publisher is yours. If you think
it's unethical - just do not block the ads.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Brave is holding the publisher's monetization hostage. Again, my issue is not
with the user but with Brave.

~~~
fastball
But... they're not though.

Ad-blocking in Brave (as it already exists in every other browser via plugins)
is optional.

Brave ads (a paradigm which doesn't exist in any other browser) are optional.

You can disable both, enable both, or disable one and not the other. The
choice is absolutely on the user and Brave isn't holding anything hostage.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Using a piracy tube is also optional. That doesn't make the people running the
privacy tube any more ethical. Brave is replacing a monetization scheme that
the publisher willingly entered into with one where Brave inserts itself into
the existing monetization flow and stops the monetization completely unless
the publisher deals with Brave. Similarly, the tube sites stop monetization
for its users unless the creators deal with them.

You're still confusing who is at fault here.

------
emptysongglass
Two big issues for me that have kept me on Firefox despite being a huge
cryptocurrency nerd:

1\. The decision to base on Chromium is a bigger negative for me than any
feature. We're all going to regret contributing to the One True Engine someday
and it's going to be so painful to fix.

2\. BAT is a pure money play. There's no inherent utility outside buying and
spending. And Ethereum is nothing if not the biggest utility crypto out there.
This is always one of those things in the Ethereum ecosystem where I point out
that you didn't have to make yet another ERC-20 if your only play is money.

It's too late now, of course. But man, it would have been terrific to
recommend a browser that blocked ads out of the box and wasn't part of the
engine hegemony.

~~~
sneak
There is no meaningful technical criticism of Chromium that I have seen. All
of the anti-engine folks’ main argument seems to be “it has the Google stink
on it”, but I can’t see how that is relevant in an application explicitly
designed to avoid their ad/tracking/cloud services. It’s just a renderer.

~~~
hk__2
> It’s just a renderer.

It’s just a renderer that calls home with hardcoded references to Google’s
services. You can’t avoid Google if you use Chromium’s source code without
patching it [1].

[1]: [https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-
chromium](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium)

~~~
Evanito
> It’s just a renderer that calls home with hardcoded references to Google’s
> services.

And unless you believe in ghosts putting the calls home back when you aren't
looking, that isn't a problem for Brave [1].

[1]: [https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-
traff...](https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traffic-
results/)

------
dub
When the Brave folks make their speed claim, it makes me curious if they
genuinely don't understand the difference between above-the-fold page render
time vs how long it takes for the spinner to stop spinning. Maybe they
understand the difference but prefer to point people at the spinner because
it's easier for them to make changes to stop the spinner sooner.

Last time I watched one of their speed comparison videos a few months back, it
had several examples where their browser was actually never the first to
render the useful page content, but was usually the first to stop spinning the
spinner in the top of the UI (which, naturally, is what they choose to measure
and report).

------
_bxg1
I tried out Brave ~3 years ago when it was still Electron-based, and it was
unfortunately too laggy to be a daily driver. Then I tried it out again ~6
months ago after they'd switched it to being a Chromium fork. The speed was
much-improved, but it suddenly started spamming me with push notifications
about various features, Brave rewards, etc. I felt like I was blocking web ads
just to get native ads instead. You can turn them off deep in the settings,
but I got sketched out and stopped using it.

I think Brave's payment model concept is a very interesting idea for freeing
the open web from the need for advertising, but I haven't been impressed with
the way the project has been executed so far.

~~~
BrendanEich
You turned on Brave Rewards at some point, it seems. If you want to tip and
contribute anonymously but not get ads, just turn off ads (upper left of
rewards settings).

~~~
sneak
Did you fix that issue yet where you were fraudulently claiming that you could
receive tips for any content creator on the web but those sent to creators
that hadn’t signed up went to Brave instead?

~~~
dang
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. If people show up here to
discuss their work and get harangued, what incentive do they have to show up
at all? If we allow commenters to disincentivize that, HN will be less
interesting and worse.

It's fine to ask a good-faith question or make a good-faith critique. It's not
fine to cross-examine.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
sneak
I understand and I will endeavor to avoid any comments that may be mistaken as
such in the future.

My question in this instance, although a bit antagonistic, was actually
totally sincere: the fundraising fraud issue was a big legitimate criticism of
Brave a while ago, and I was curious if it was still valid, having not heard
anything more on the matter.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999)

------
Hamcha
I've used Brave since March, and I'm really not impressed. For a browser that
tries to be different, it's incredible how little consideration has been given
to things that annoy users and that could probably be trivial to remove.

To be more specific, my issues with Brave are:

\- Still uses the Chrome Web Store as main store

\- Does not have an easy way to load packaged extensions from 3rd party
sources

\- Even after adding them as unpacked, you still get the same annoying popup
every time you open the browser.

\- I received notices that "My account was waiting for a deposit" the entire
time, even though I never allocated any money to anyone

\- Tipping amounts are fixed

I always saw Brave as "not chrome, and not as much of a change as Firefox",
but their approach seem lazy, features halfassed at best and the sneaky anti-
features that Chrome has been adding to push users to lock into Google stuff
(see all my remarks about extensions) not addressed at all.

I'm using Firefox as main browser now, and I haven't been missing brave once.

~~~
colordrops
It's perfect for my use case: Chrome but with all the google bits removed and
built-in ad-blocking. Can't say any of those things you listed have bothered
me. I don't use BAT.

Edit: Why do so many new accounts (green text) post to any thread about Brave?

~~~
grzte
I was thinking the same. I considered Vivaldi for some time but it was just
buggy. That's a shame because now that Chrome is going to release manifest v3,
many users will look for alternatives. Vivaldi has had years to polish their
UI but they have missed the train. Eventually I'll settle with Brave, I think.

~~~
larntz
I used Vivaldi for a long time and never encountered many UI bugs. About a
year ago I switched to Firefox mainly because I don't want Chromium to take
over the world.

What I miss most using Firefox is the ability to customize almost everything.

------
iseeyou
I use Brave on iOS with javascript blocked as it is the only* iOS browser
which gives me the ability to easily use the Web without JS while giving me
the ability to quickly enable it for the site where it makes sense, and still
retain the ad blocking feature.

A surprisingly big part of the Internet works as well or better and faster
with javascript disabled, but sometimes it is actually needed and useful so I
find this whitelisting method works well.

I tried playing around with the script blocking ability of native content
blockers but never got it working properly, for one I think it can't block
script tags only externa scripts.

But my recommendation, if you are giving Brave a try is to change the default
to disallow scripts, and enable them as needed, it's refreshing to browse the
Web without Popups 2.0 and all the other not so nice uses of JS.

(* only I've found with my limited searching)

~~~
pcnix
You might also like umatrix for this, it gives unmatched control over blocking
resources.

~~~
iseeyou
Yes, there are multiple solutions available for Chrome/Firefox on other
platforms, but on iOS there is only native/apple content blockers and browsers
with built in ad blocking.

------
atombender
I've been using Brave for a few months, and I'm basically using it as an un-
Googled Chrome. Not using the ad rewards system.

It's pretty good, though I sometimes miss Safari with its amazing location bar
autocompletion and ease of syncing with the iOS version. (Brave supports
syncs, but it's not great, and the iOS app is nowhere as good as Safari on
iOS.)

Brave does have some bugs. Since July or so, several sites (including my bank)
don't work because Brave incorrectly [1] blocks their cookies, even with the
"shield" turned off.

[1] [https://github.com/brave/brave-
browser/issues/6099](https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/6099) and
several others.

~~~
csharp
What do you like about Safari that iOS Brave is missing? We are quite a bit
faster than Safari, and our private mode is more aggressive against things
like cookies and writing data to disk.

~~~
atombender
Honestly, I've not found any speed difference.

Things I don't like:

* Autocompletion is much worse than Safari. See screenshot comparison [1]. The results are dinky and hard to read, and rarely include history or bookmarks. For example, in the screenshot, if I type "p", it matches bookmarks and history, but the suggestions disappear if I type anything more, despite the fact that "photothera" is a substring.

* Brave's tabs (though the tab overview is nice). Mobile is just too small to show tabs.

* The fact that the location bar is filled with widgets that give only about 30% of the space to the URL.

* Syncing of bookmarks, history, etc. seems to randomly stop working. It's never really worked for me. Syncing should just work seamlessly with iCloud, and not require the manual step that it currently does.

* "Find in page" doesn't work for PDFs.

Plus, the privacy bugs (see my previous comment) that never get solved. Being
aggressive about cookies is one thing; breaking non-abusive sites without any
workaround isn't acceptable.

I don't really use private mode, so that's not relevant for me. I also don't
use Brave Rewards, so the big icon in the address bar is annoying.

[1] [https://imgur.com/a/nygTJ9f](https://imgur.com/a/nygTJ9f)

~~~
csharp
Thanks for the verbose feedback. We seriously appreciate it. Wanted to respond
to your items:

1\. You are Comparing DuckDuckGo and Google suggestions (search engine), not
Safari and Brave (browser). Change your Brave search engine to DDG, and
results will be the same.

2\. You can turn off the tab bar thing in settings. Safari offers this, just
defaults to off.

3\. We do have a lot of icons, you can hide the BAT icon if you don't use
rewards (see settings).

4/5\. Yes, those are bad bugs, we are currently rebuilding our syncing system.

I will raise this ticket and see if we can get some movement on it.

~~~
atombender
Thanks, didn't realize there were settings for those things.

Not sure what you mean by DuckDuckGo. I don't use DDG in Safari, and changing
to use DDG in Brave doesn't fix the issue.

I'm not sure if you looked carefully at my screenshots. When I type something
in Safari, I get suggestions from searches, web sites, bookmarks, history,
etc., all presented in neat rows. If I've visited a page with the title
"Hacker News", then I can start typing "h", "ha", "hac", etc., and Safari will
most likely suggest it.

With Brave, you provide those really dinky search suggestions, which are
comparable to Safari's larger completions. I'm not happy about the
presentation (small for thumbs, jumbled instead of neat rows), but at least
they're there.

But the other suggestions generally don't come up. There seems to be some bug.
I just tried it out. If I type "h", "ha", etc., I don't get anything at all.
Not even "hacker news". On the other hand, if I type "kurt", I get the Kurt
Vonnegut Museum page I just opened from HN. So who knows what's wrong there.
It seems really flaky.

Edit: Ha, I went back and tried typing "h" again and now Hacker News does show
up (which it didn't, previously; must be some async indexing going on here?).
But not on "ha", "hac", etc. Just "h".

Here are some screenshots:
[https://imgur.com/a/qFJoo6g](https://imgur.com/a/qFJoo6g)

------
neilobremski
Brave is awesome and I'm happy to see them reaching this point. I've been
using this as my primary browser for the past 2 years and my absolute favorite
thing about it is the simple profiles switching. HOWEVER that's also the thing
that's irritated me the most as this software has changed: it started with
person-specific tabs (awesome!) then moved to person-specific windows (okay
...), and now for the third time they've changed the icons available without
letting me specify custom pictures (ugh!). Where is my ability to sync these
PROFILES AS A GROUP? Setting up half a dozen "people" on each new computer
becomes a tiresome exercise.

I tried the rewards/BAT thing for a while but after a few computer changes and
losing my wallet through the process, I gave up and just block everything and
contribute nothing. I'd like to get back into it but all of those transitions
just killed it for me.

All that said, there's a lot of good stuff in here and I'm happy to be using
it as my primary browser. Now that they're hitting 1.0 I may actually be able
to recommend it to non-tech people.

------
viach
> You set a budget (e.g. 10 BAT/month), and Brave distributes it the sites you
> use most, e.g. if you watch a particular YouTube channel 30% of your
> browsing time, it will send 30% of 10 BAT each month to that content
> creator.

If you would own a video streaming service (a startup!) and some company
started to pay your users for viewing ads on your platform in some
MagicMoneyCoins putting your pocket outside the cash flow, what would you do?

If you would want to receive organic traffic from your ads and instead start
to experience crazy stream of incentivized ad clickers with near zero
conversion rate, what would you do?

Imo the answers to these questions are not that pleasant for Brave. Maybe I'm
wrong of course, like the most of times.

~~~
fastball
Yeah, having seen all the useless previous attempts at paying users to
watch/click ads, I'm not particularly hopeful for the long-term prospects of
that system.

Seems like it might be better to just force the user to disburse those funds
to the sites they visit.

------
buboard
Ha , it seems i ve made a few bucks (rather, bats) and didn't even know. I
didn't know you can monetize twitter and reddit, but it makes a lot of sense!
I kinda like the idea of users controlling sites indirectly by rewarding and
punishing them for ads, kind of a direct-to-webmaster upvote button. Not sure
about the way they implement their ad replacement, but if the basic model
works there will probably be more companies that will enter the BAT ecosystem.

------
Angeo34
>Removed Google bits

>Use Google Chrome store so Google still gets every info it ever wanted and
even more than before because your fingerprinting is more unique than with
Chrome i.e. you give away your entire browsing history for free to Google

Whoever uses Brave shouldn't be surprised why advertisers and trackers now
have an even easier time following you

------
abhinavsharma
What is Brave doing under the hood to get these claimed performance
improvements over Chrome, Firefox and Safari?

~~~
Sargos
Probably the built-in ad and tracker blocking. All of those scripts and
content add up.

------
mk89
I don't know if I understood it right, but BATs are only given when users see
the ads, right?

If this is the case, it seems that Brave fosters the use of ads, not reduce
it.

Is my understanding right?

~~~
jonathansampson
Ads aren't inherently bad, but modern digital advertising has been co-opted by
bad actors. Brave offers an ad-free experience by default; this is necessary
for your privacy and safety online.

But users are increasingly more aware that protecting themselves from harmful
ads also means stripping their favorite creators of support. This is where
Brave steps in to offer a complete solution, rather than the partial solution
of "just block and forget".

Brave Ads are opt-in, entirely private (data never leaves your device), and
pay the user 70% of the ad revenue. By default, that 70% will flow out to the
sites/properties you visit on a monthly basis. If you like, you can choose to
keep some (or all) of it for yourself.

So we don't necessarily want a Web full of ads. We want a Web full of
empowered users who have control over their data and attention.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
^ works on Brave

------
fuu_dev
Criticism:

#1 Brave advertise with privacy and speed while all they do is adding adblock.

#2 Brave replaces adds with their own adds. This basically means you get the
same experience but cut off the income of the content creator entirely.

#3 Brave allows you to reward 3rd party sites. This system is so nice they
even got legal issues as it was assumed as fraud.

#4 BAT. Brave advertise with consumer first. The best choice for the consumer
would be Paypal. If there is an incent to stay with crypto currency Bitcoin or
Ethereum.

Given Brave created their own crypto currency and base every model around that
they can profit from Transactions/services with the currency too on top of the
share they take when you use their add platform/feature.

Given the criticism its very hard for me to understand users sympathizing with
the browser.

~~~
fastball
#1 Their ad-blocker is also a tracking blocker and a pretty strict one at
that. They also spend a lot of time optimizing the performance[0] of this ad-
blocking. This improves the browsing experience.

#2 Brave Ads are opt-in. You can alternatively fund the sites you visit on the
web by putting BAT into your wallet directly and having the browser
automatically distribute funds based on which content you spend time on per
month. The entire idea of Brave is that people were already using ad-blockers,
so I'm not sure how this is worse for content creators.

#3 ???

#4 BAT is an ERC-20 token - it exists on the Ethereum blockchain. Not sure why
you think BTC would be better than that. Honestly not sure why you think
Paypal would be better than that. At this point, anyone can transact the
currency easily and quickly without any intervention from Brave. I can convert
BAT to DAI right now on a decentralized exchange in less than a minute and
have a virtual currency pegged to USD even if I don't bank with USD. At the
moment this process is somewhat technical, but it overall seems very pro-
consumer to me.

[0] [https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-
performance/](https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/)

~~~
fuu_dev
ad 2: Brave takes a 30% cut of the add income. The adds you block are targeted
adds, thus they yield a higher income. Besides that there are usually service
fees for converting your BAT to other currencies.

The entire service is opt in making it also not guaranteed for the content
creator to receive the reward.

This should lead even in the best case to a notably worse outcome.

ad 3: [https://outline.com/fJm5C3](https://outline.com/fJm5C3)

ad 4: i explained the issue in my other response.

~~~
fastball
The current case is content creators not receiving any reward because people
are using ad-blockers. I don't see how that can possible be "best case" a
"notably worse outcome". _Worse case_ , content creators get some pittance
where before they were getting nothing. Best case content creators can be
entirely directly funded by the people actually consuming their content.

~~~
fuu_dev
In worst case he still gets nothing. The system is an opt in.

------
astuyvenberg
I've been using Brave for several months. It's exactly what I wanted - A
faster, chromium-based browser with sensible, privacy-conscious defaults.

I don't personally mind the Chrome Web Store default.

------
simon_weber
I used Brave for a while on Android and found it to work well. However, in the
last month or so something changed and it started freezing constantly.

I've since switched to Firefox, which is much better on Android than when I
last tried it.

~~~
mattlondon
I've been using Brave on android for a while now and it has been really good -
it is basically the same as chrome, except with a built-in ad blocker. Highly
recommend it as your daily driver.

I use firefox on desktop, but found firefox on android to be a bit clunky the
last time I tried it (years ago)

~~~
Crisco
Firefox on Android is a bit clunky, but Mozilla is currently working on a new
version that will (hopefully) be much cleaner and faster. You can try it now
as "Firefox Preview" on the Google Play Store.

I use it pretty much exclusively now, and though it doesn't block all ads and
doesn't have addon support yet, it seems to prevent the intrusive ones from
being a problem. I do keep Firefox for Android around with uBlock Origin just
in case, but I rarely have to use it.

------
Lordarminius
Here are two problems I have noticed with brave-browser : The layout is great
on widescreen monitors but breaks on my 15'' laptop. Sites like YouTube render
as a garish mess of incongruously placed whitespace. This is a major issue.
Also, the brave icons for receiving 'rewards', when activated, are too large
obstrusive when displayed on websites. I had to turn them off in settings.

On the good side, I like that I don't have to ever watch pesky ads on YouTube.

Overall however, brave-browser is great and offers a welcome change from
traditional browsers.

~~~
jonathansampson
Thank you for the feedback! Would you be able to share a couple screenshots?
I'd love to share this information with our design team.

------
donatj
My personal site which has never had ads made a couple bucks last year of BAT.
Pretty easy to get set up. Can't complain.

------
paulcarroty
I like their "Shield", looks very well. 128k blocked ads/trackers for ~month
when uBlock/uMatrix are enabled too.

About their Ad program - money are very small yet, for both: site owners &
users.

------
marvindanig
Awesome work, Brave!

We use Brave internally for all our development work and are also a Brave
Certified book publisher for the web [1][2]. Please tip us to support the
books we publish if you are a Brave user too!

I can vouch for the quality of browsing experience and speed that we have had
in the past two years. One of the best features of Brave, which led me to set
the browser as our default, is on a shortcut `Command + Option + N`. This
shortcut opens a private window using Tor which is super useful, handy, fast
and most importantly private. :-)

[1] [https://bubblin.io](https://bubblin.io)

[2] [https://creators.brave.com/](https://creators.brave.com/)

------
lacker
Is Brave making any amount of money from their advertising system? I can't
find any public communications about it, and I would expect them to be touting
if the numbers are good.

The weird thing about Brave is that they raised $35 million from their crypto
ICO, but that isn't like normal fundraising because you can only do it once.
So they really need their real business to kick in and start working before
they run out of that money, more than most venture-backed startups need to
start making money.

Getting paid money to watch ads reminds me of AllAdvantage in the first dotcom
boom. It seems cool at first when the system is juiced by investor money, but
once advertisers realize the ROI is low, the money dries up.

~~~
BrendanEich
[https://brave.com/transparency](https://brave.com/transparency) shows revenue
share BAT buys to pay users their 70% from invoices paid in fiat. Some ad
buyers use BAT, and we do some barters.

------
alwillis
Brave has a series of ads about different aspects of what Brave offers:

Creators: [https://vimeo.com/372813874](https://vimeo.com/372813874)

Speed: [https://vimeo.com/372813765](https://vimeo.com/372813765)

Privacy: [https://vimeo.com/372736442](https://vimeo.com/372736442)

This one isn’t an ad; it’s a video of a speed test of Brave vs. Chrome and
Firefox loading sites that millions of users access every day and doing _much_
faster:

Brave Browser Speed Comparison 2019:
[https://vimeo.com/371512354](https://vimeo.com/371512354)

------
sergiotapia
Already using Brave on my work computer for the past year ish. Infinitely
better than _anything_ out there.

Once they offer browser sync of saved passwords and history, I'm gone for good
chrome/firefox on every other device I own.

------
nicpottier
I'm going to give this a try again. I REALLY want the model of micropayments
vs ads to work. I realize content creators need to get paid, I just refuse to
be subtly influenced by ads in my day to day life. I currently use an ad
blocker in Chrome to get around that but I'm perfectly fine paying $5 a month
to creators I use.

The problem is that I think ads may be worth even more than that to creators,
which if you have any doubt about their efficacy should make you rethink.

------
woodandsteel
There are a lot of negative comments here about Brave. They fall into two
classes. One group thinks the present state of affairs with the web is ok, so
there is no need for Brave. That view is so cracked that I am not going to
bother responding to it.

The other group agrees the web is broken, but then claims that Brave won't fix
things and will even make them worse.

I don't think that is true, but the thing is, we need to have something new
here, and Brave is the only solution out there at present that is developed,
is trying to address all the problems, and is reasonably usable by non-
techies, and so I am using it and I urge everyone else to do so too.

To those people who claim Brave is awful, I say they should be working on
something they think would better. I suspect they aren't doing that because
they are just negative people, or they are trollers who are being paid by the
present internet powers-that-be.

On the latter idea, its not just paranoia. If someone came up with a good
alternative, people like the advertising networks would feel mortally
threatened, and I think it is absolutely certain they would strike back with a
massive disinformation campaign.

------
wheresvic3
This is a pretty cool idea - I'm not sure how intrusive the OS notification
are going to be but I'm willing to give it a shot as long as they don't
collect any personal info on me.

I just signed up as a content creator and added my website as a channel -
interestingly my website already had some bat associated with it. Does this
mean that some people have already donated some BAT to it?

------
maelito
What if I really don't want to see ads at all ? Can I pay Brave in € and let
it distribute this money to the content creators ?

~~~
AgentME
Yes-ish. You can put your own BAT (or Bitcoin or ETH) into your Brave wallet.
You can buy BAT from Coinbase/Uphold/other exchanges.

~~~
maelito
That's cool. I'd use it if I can : \- charge my account by credit card in 1
click \- get the same ad blocking level as mublock

------
MentallyRetired
As a Firefox user, is there a reason to convert? Seems like a step backwards
to me, even though I applaud what they're doing.

~~~
gnicholas
In my experience (2017 MBP running Mojave), it is much, much faster than
Firefox. I have lots of tabs open, and my fan almost never kicks on anymore.
With FF, even using ublock and even a pihole, the fan was constantly at full
throttle. Maybe I was doing other things wrong, but switching to Brave has
made a huge difference for me. I say this as someone who stood by FF for a
decade and a half.

~~~
Lev1a
> With FF, even using ublock and even a pihole, the fan was constantly at full
> throttle.

Is that still the case even with FFs recent update to version 70[1]?

[1]: [https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-
red...](https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-reduced-
power-usage-in-firefox-70-on-macos-with-core-animation/)

~~~
gnicholas
70, yes. Haven’t tried 71.

------
russellbeattie
The other day I tried to look up a recipe for beef stew on my phone. Normally
my web reading experience tends to be limited to big news sites and tech on a
Desktop or Tablet - the ads there are bad, but not terrible. But recipe sites
are a whole different category of horrible. I was shocked.

They are all absolutely PACKED with ads. Try it yourself. It's ridiculous.
Every other paragraph is separated by ads, overlays, click-spam news, auto-
playing videos, etc. I tried easily 7 or 8 different sites before giving up
and installing Brave.

This is just anecdotal, but I think the categories that are targeted at the
broadest category of users, probably scewing towards older and female, are
just being straight up abusive. And mobile seems to be particularly bad.

This situation is untenable. I guess sites and advertisers are just relying on
a continuing influx of newbies to line their pockets, but really it's a
scorched Earth policy that can't possibly continue as is.

------
LessDmesg
Having switched recently from Firefox to Brave, I must say it's a pretty nice
browser but with some unwanted quirks.

1) It tries to also be a bit-torrent client but the downoad doesn't even
survive a tab closing. Pretty frustrating to lose a big long download that
way. 2) new tabs have a weird eye-bleeding background and there's no way to
change it

------
dsincl12
Sorry I've tried to give Brave a shot for a couple of months and the 3-6x
faster browsing is nonsense. It's really slow compared to Chrome or Firefox.
Just do a quick comparison yourself, you can probably count seconds on a
couple of sites you visit regularly whereas Chrome loads instantly.

~~~
Wheaties466
I run a high spec machine with 3 browsers(Brave and Google Chrome, Firefox)
8-10 hours a day every work day. I respectfully completely disagree. I do not
find it slow in comparison to the others, I do find it much much quicker on
90%+ sites.

I do not work for brave, mozilla, google or apple. I also have no stake in any
of those companies nor do I know anyone that works for those companies. I
really wonder how so many people in this thread can have a negative response
when I personally have felt the complete opposite.

I do suspect it has something to do with employer bias.

------
thekyle
I would be more inclined to try BAT if it were just an extension that I could
add to any browser of my choice. Also, having tried Brave it doesn't seem like
you actually have the private keys to your own wallet since I wasn't able to
withdraw any funds without an Uphold account.

------
pushcx
Please return "Brave" to your User-Agent[0] so we can return to opting out of
your cryptocurrency.[1] (Yes, I'm aware of the changes since the scandal
broke[2].)

[0] [https://github.com/brave/brave-
browser/issues/1052#issuecomm...](https://github.com/brave/brave-
browser/issues/1052#issuecomment-549667310) [1]
[https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/issues/761](https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/issues/761)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999)

------
Aaronstotle
I don't understand why they didn't use a stable coin/transition BAT to a
stable coin, the volatility of BAT probably keeps creators uneasy. Why sign up
for a service where contributions can lose half their value overnight.

~~~
jonathansampson
When did you see that type of volatility? Advertiser dollars go into the
system through purchases of BAT by the team. This helps to maintain steady
value. You can see previous transactions (and more) at brave.com/transparency.

------
mind_half_full
Great job Brave! Privacy protecting ads and you get paid to browse. Simply
amazing!!

~~~
Sohcahtoa82
A brand new account praising a business.

This reeks of being an astroturfing account.

~~~
trpc
Almost every post that links to brave.com makes it to the frontpage withing
minutes. And all criticism is buried with lots of shilling. This company has
been compromising HN for years now, as well as other influential online
communites like Reddit and 4chan.

------
Kye
A privacy-focused browser that took money from the Palantir guy. Hard pass.
That's before considering the CEO's past, unexplained donation to a hate
campaign spearheaded by the Mormon church.

------
heimatau
I keep trying to use Brave but I feel that it drops the ball. I think Hamcha
encapsulates most of my grievances.

I'd like to add that if your Browser is trying to add a new dynamic of
economics but your UX is terrible dealing with tips (fixed) and you're
annoying users about needing a deposit. You're doing it wrong.

It's almost like Brave doesn't even believe in it's mission. There should be
an intense focus on their product. That they are relentless at it. Because
right now, it all seems half-baked.

------
greatjack613
Why does this press release feel ike richard hendricks in congress?

------
JohnTHaller
We've still got BAT enabled on PortableApps.com with the standard custom Brave
browser header and donation ask you setup via their program. We got 31.35 BAT
(about $8.08) for around 2.7 million page views in the last month. We also got
a single 0.95 BAT (about 24 cent) donation. It seems that - right now at least
- the only way a site will make enough money to be worth it is via Brave
referrals (advertising Brave to your users to get them to switch).

------
dxhdr
So if I operate a website, Brave can remove my monetization and replace it
with their own, without my consent? How does that work?

------
ropiwqefjnpoa
Did they fix their sync issue yet? I couldn't get my laptop and desktop to
work together so I switched over to Firefox.

~~~
jonathansampson
Happy to help investigate Sync issues. Able to share more details?

~~~
ropiwqefjnpoa
It gives you a password chain you can input into another browser to link it.
It worked on my mobile, but not on another Windows 10 machine.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/dhqvyz/sync_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/dhqvyz/sync_issues/)

------
dkhenry
edit2: Nevermind all this, Brave did in fact implement protected content this
earlier this year

[https://github.com/brave/brave-
browser/issues/413](https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/413)

I still can't use brave to watch netflix on Linux. Its a great product and I
love shifting the incentive of advertising away from intrusive data
harvesting, but treating Linux like its a second class citizen means I won't
use your product. Whats worse is that Firefox is 100% open source and Chromium
is 100% open source and they both manage to get this working out of the box.
There is no reason for Brave to not have working Netflix

edit: Also I know the library that decodes the DRM is proprietary, my point is
the integration with it is open and available, no reason it can't be
duplicated.

~~~
colordrops
Are you referring to Widevine? Brave asks you if you want to install it rather
than just assuming you want DRM out of the box.

~~~
dkhenry
I am, and you are indeed correct.

[https://github.com/brave/brave-
browser/issues/413](https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/413)

The notification if very discreet, but it did have a button in the toolbar to
promp me to install it.

------
83insfnadsjfn
Can you login to the StackDriver metrics console with Brave yet? I had to
disable everything, literally all protections, to get this to non-endless
redirect, its difficult to whitelist as there is dozens of domains from
(gcloud to accounts.google.com, to some sd/stackdrivers one) at this point it
I gave up

~~~
throwaway-9320
I had this issue, but on Firefox and with Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin
enabled. Some cookie seems to get blocked, leading to the infinite redirect
loop. At least in this case I could just disable two addons temporarily and
was good to go.

------
scoutt
> “Either we all accept the $330 billion ad-tech industry treating us as their
> products, exploiting our data, piling on more data breaches and privacy
> scandals, and starving publishers of revenue; or ...

Give Brave a piece of that moist and delicious $330B cake, because...

> That’s the inspiration behind Brave,” he added.

------
mikelward
Just tried it. Still no Android Autofill support.

Don't want to enable less secure legacy accessibility support.

[https://community.brave.com/t/android-autofill-api-
enabled-i...](https://community.brave.com/t/android-autofill-api-enabled-in-
brave/64238/11)

------
emiliovesprini
Eternal reminder by @paulskallas (Twitter):

> there's never been a good ad in the history of advertising. 120 years and
> there's never been an ad that has stood the test of time and was fondly
> remembered like literature or a song. It is a profoundly anti lindy medium
> that exists in the now, forever

~~~
toxicFork
There was a Turkish tv channel that highlighted funny or cool advertisements.

------
teknopaul
Downloaded 1.0, first thing I entered in to the address bar got sent to
Google, doh!

uninstalled, back to FireFox and DDG.

------
pergadad
I used brace for a while on mobile but stopped once brave started to out ads
in the notification bar. I don't remember exactly what they were for -
probably BAT and the browser itself - but I definitely don't need another
pathway to get slammed. Back to Firefox and happy as can be.

------
techntoke
Offers 3-6x faster browsing than what exactly, browsing with IE or Edge
without any ad blocking?

~~~
etr71115
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgl7FLh7QsA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgl7FLh7QsA)

~~~
techntoke
Weird to watch how long it takes to load a single site using their demo video.
Makes me think that they are using some type of preloading, which would mean
that your web requests are actually being sent to Brave. It appears after some
brief research that they are infact precaching, and the other browsers they
are testing against we don't have any details on their configuration but can
clearly see that they do not have uBlock Origin enabled. I wouldn't consider
this a fair test.

~~~
csharp
We don't collect your browsing data, and it isn't proxied through Brave. I am
unsure what preloading information you found. All of our configurations are
open source, so if there is something particular you are looking for, it is
visible. We are also comparing browser defaults here. However, our adblocking
approach is built directly into the browser using a Rust library and can
function faster than a Chrome extension.

------
Spectrum48k
Article here: [https://www.cnet.com/news/brave-browser-1-0-arrives-
bringing...](https://www.cnet.com/news/brave-browser-1-0-arrives-bringing-its-
privacy-first-ads-to-iphones-and-ipads/)

8.7M users!

------
Karunamon
I put Brave on the backburner a while ago because of some random display
glitches, mostly on YouTube, and the built-in adblocker not really being up to
par with something like uBO. but this sounds like a good an excuse as any to
try it again.

------
asah
Not sure about the politics... but it's noticeably faster than Chrome or
Firefox.

------
vini
I'm unable to download, the server is returning 502 - bad gateway

[http://updates.bravesoftware.com/service/update2](http://updates.bravesoftware.com/service/update2)

------
bytematic
Is this the browser that blocks ads unless the website allows brave ads and
get brave crypto. Essentially the same model the mafia uses. I'm sure this
will go great.

------
martindale
General reminder that Brave is a scam; they forcefully converted user funds
that were held in BTC to their own competitive token, BAT, which seeks to
monetize your attention.

Not to mention the massive privacy leak that is a public network of
transactions, revealing browsing habits by way of advertising payments.

------
fareesh
I've been using Brave as a replacement for Chrome for about 3 months now. The
switch has been quite enjoyable.

Lighthouse doesn't seem to work properly, which I use Chrome for.

------
jobseeker990
It's so weird, I had this exact idea when bitcoin came out. But it seemed like
you'd need a money transmitter license to be able to do it? So I gave up.

------
sivalingam
I don't trust anything build on top of chromium web browser developed by
Google. Definitely google will have some way to track user.

I prefer Firefox for trust in privacy.

------
olalonde
Getting a 504 error on
[https://brave.com/download/](https://brave.com/download/)

~~~
jonathansampson
Apologies for that; server is getting a little more attention than we had
expected. Should be working now, though perhaps a bit sluggish at times.

------
jcmontx
I've been using Brave since October 2018 and haven't checked once for updates.
It seems that I've been using v0.7 lol

------
telesilla
How does this compare to Opera? I prefer to use a Chromium browser and Opera
has been fantastic for months as my main browser.

------
radikalus
Great mission, product and vision. Very excited to see more functionality in
browser away from the traditional rails

------
The_rationalist
Source for the performance claims? Are they not upstreaming performance change
for chromium?

------
companyhen
I love Brave, keep it going :)

------
tomaszs
Brave gives life back to the internet, like Daft Punk gave life back to music.

------
miguelmota
Brave: we disable all ads

Brave: hey you want rewards? here's some notification ads

------
xyst
Front end developers: “yet another browser to support”

~~~
cheald
It's just Chromium, so it's not particularly anything new to support.

------
omi2therescue
another option - [https://www.optmein.online/](https://www.optmein.online/)

------
chilighost
Initially I liked the concept of brave, but they destroyed themselves by
bloating it with this coin/payment stuff that is not possible to remove 100%.
Back to Firefox now.

~~~
Sohcahtoa82
Curious why you created an account just to make two comments, both of which
are entirely incorrect.

What's your agenda? Who's paying you to slander Brave?

------
snek
Regardless of Brave's intent, they operate in the advertising industry, and
eventually, if not already, it will become a conflict of interest.

------
egdod
No thanks. Sticking with Firefox.

------
bobowzki
I wonder how much brave.com was?

~~~
bsclifton
I don't think it says a price, but it was previously used by a "nuclear polka"
band :) [https://brave.com/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-
zero/](https://brave.com/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-zero/)

------
piyush_soni
Still no extensions sync?

------
ganitarashid
I stopped reading once I saw it has a way to show advertisements

------
daveheq
1.0 Chrome B

------
dhosek
BLOCKCHAIN! Let's throw money at it!

------
annoyingnoob
Fuck ads. Fuck tracking. Fuck making me part of your 'audience'. There has to
be a better way. I'm going with blocking until there is a better answer. Brave
may be a step in the right direction but its not the solution.

~~~
foob4r
I understand "fuck trackers". Why "fuck ads"?

~~~
mrlala
>Why "fuck ads"?

Because ads are basically useless? I can remember MAYBE a handful of times in
my entire life where an "ad" has actually prompted me to look into/buy
something.

------
trpc
Brave is a scam just like most "privacy centered" parasite products like DDG
and VPN providers. All these companies are run by shameless and aggressive
useless parasites who actually offer nothing but a rebranded product made by
others. It's sad that a community supposedly filled by software engineers fall
for and promote such scams

------
aloisdg
I am all for fighting capitalism, but I wont tolerate any form of ads. Ads are
a threat for free thinking. They are pollution, poison, for the mind. I dont
want to face any form of manipulation.

Beside, Brave is chromium based. If you want to fight the chrome monopoly, go
somewhere else.

I could be fine with a fork of Firefox with a preinstall uBlockOrigin, Privacy
Possum, facebook container, etc.

~~~
topspin
> I wont tolerate any form of ads. Ads are a threat for free thinking.

Then turn off the ad feed in Brave and enjoy the built in ad blocking. If you
would still like to fund participating sites through Brave you can fund your
BAT account with your own money.

~~~
aloisdg
Thank you for pointing this out.

------
mediaserf
Why does the BAT mining extension continue to run even if I opt-out of the
rewards system?

------
johnpowell
They still aren't brave enough to use a unique user agent string. Brave on
left, Chrome on right.

[https://i.imgur.com/aPI776u.png](https://i.imgur.com/aPI776u.png)

~~~
aembleton
Reduces fingerprinting.

------
Angeo34
Whoever uses Brave for "privacy" reasons should understand that Chrome offers
more privacy due to fingerprintability.

I see the downvotes coming yet it is true check it for yourself. Brave is so
easy to fingerprint compared to Chrome it defeats any purpose ever to use
Brave in the first place if privacy is your main goal. Removing all the Google
bits from the Chromium base doesn't help since you are so fingerprintable.

~~~
songshuu
If you're talking about the canvas id fingerprint which is identical across
all instances of the browser, that lets Brave users hide in the crowd, so it's
literally more private.

Panopticlick needs to update their docs to make that clearer.

~~~
Angeo34
There are billion of vectors that are still fingerprintable. Best examples are
fonts and window decorations. And these cannot be fixed by Brave without
increasing entropy. And brave should know this.

------
FpUser
[https://brave.com/malvertising-homeland-
security/](https://brave.com/malvertising-homeland-security/) "Brave warns US
Senate & Congress: foreign state actors can use targeted ads to run code on US
government computers, exploiting conventional browsers"

Oh, my. I am so scared. And Brave is of course a knight in shining armor ready
to protect our shaken foundations.

~~~
300bps
I got a virus from an ad on reddit in 2008.

It actually does happen, and I've used ad blocking software consistently ever
since.

~~~
FpUser
I am not arguing about possibility of getting virus through ad on browser. My
point is that they are using scaremongering in a hope to advance their
product. They have no real proof that it is more secure.

As for ads I am using adblock for ages. Not that I got a virus from internet,
just do not like seeing ads when not asked.

------
chilighost
Brave was initially an interesting browser, but without any options to disable
the credits/money add-ons the browser have no future.

~~~
colordrops
They are opt-in and you can disable them. It seems you never tried the
browser. Odd that you'd need a new account to post this.

