
Brave – A private, secure and fast browser - wewake
https://brave.com/index/
======
BrendanEich
Users banding together to send crypto anonymously toward their favorite sites
and creators is not "parasitic" \-- you and your browser are the host, already
colonized by tracking scripts for ads if you don't use a no-compromises
blocker such as uBO.

Users' right to block is well supported by web standards and case law. Adding
a separate, direct to creator funding option is not parasitism, it is found
money for creators.

To see someone here call our opt-in (meaning that each user consents without
duress) anonymous micro-contributions and (coming up fast) private ads model
layered on top such a name tells me that person has confused host and
parasite, or is working for one of the parasites.

It was never a given that your browser should become a blind and passive
servant to surveillance super-companies either wholly or partly dependent on
ads, but such companies did capture arguably 3 of the top 4 browsers.

Now is the time for users to push back, whether by Brave if you like it, a
blocker such as uBO on a browser that doesn't track you by default (perhaps
when "logged in"; whatever), or another method that works for you. I hope
those who have not yet will give Brave a try. [https://brave.com/download-
dev](https://brave.com/download-dev) for the chromium-extensions-ready new
version.

~~~
mswift42
> Users banding together to send crypto anonymously toward their favorite
> sites and creators is not "parasitic"

True, but replacing ads you don't get compensated for with ads you do, is.

~~~
BrendanEich
We don't replace ads on publisher sites without that publisher as partner;
they get 70% of the gross revenue, user gets 15%.

No point repeating something you heard a while ago from the NAA when they
wrote a "Cease and Desist" letter to us that did not contain those words
(because we weren't doing anything to cease or desist). All our opt-in models
require consent.

User-private ads go in user-owned channels (notifications and tabs), not in
publisher inventory, if the user opts in. User gets 70%.

~~~
lern_too_spel
You've given them the choice of not monetizing their content or paying you.
It's the slimy Mafia business model. There is nothing decentralized about
this.

------
highace
I know Brave has their own arguably evil agenda, but their Android browser
right now is simply amazing. It blocks all ads and trackers, without needing
to set up VPNs or proxys or companion apps that mess with your settings and
don't always work. If you prefer Chrome over Firefox on your Android then for
ad-free browsing it can't be beat.

~~~
androidgirl
Slightly off topic, but if you're okay with a bit of setup, there's a cool
F-Droid app called Blokada that's like a personal pi-hole.

I had an issue where my firefox browser was great, but the other apps on my
phone were extremely noisy with ad networks. This would compliment an ad
blocked Brave/Firefox browser nicely.

~~~
3PS
I second this. I've tried Blokada and DNS66 via F-Droid, and Blokada in
particular has worked wonders. It blocks ad hosts at the DNS level, which is
more battery-efficient than a traditional adblocker, but that also makes it
necessary to clear out your DNS cache. I've only had one notable issue that
required me to disable Blokada - adding a bank account to Venmo wouldn't work
for some reason.

~~~
BrendanEich
Domain blocking is still crucial, absolutely necessary -- but in our
experience no longer sufficient. The adversary has wormed its way into 3rd
party domains that sometimes must be allowed in certain 1st parties; it has
even wormed its way into 1st parties via actual inside-1p-firewall code, or
CNAME hacks to hide in subdomains.

Nothing against Blokada, but as a realist using ad blockers (not just Brave),
I need more than domain blocking these days.

------
androidgirl
I want to like Brave, but I just can't get past the planned ads, the crypto
stuff, how memory intensive chromium is, and, well, I really like Firefox.

My browser is for reading docs, for JS/WASM development, and the occasional
Gmail or HN visit, so maybe I'm not their target market.

~~~
BrendanEich
Anything above baseline blocking, protection against fingerprinting, etc., is
optional and must remain so or our core users would bolt. So please feel
welcome to use in default mode.

BTW, chromium bloat rep in part comes from Chrome not blocking ads and
tracking well. Extensions must use JS and so use more memory. Brave uses C++
in the network threads of the browser process.

~~~
18pfsmt
Are these C++-based browser improvements being made public? Is this a library?

~~~
BrendanEich
All client source is open under
[https://github.com/brave/](https://github.com/brave/).

------
mswift42
The first time I heard of Brave, I thought Oh cool, a privacy focused,
chromium based browser. But I must say I'm honestly appalled by its parasitic
business model.

Content creators are strong armed into becoming verified publishers, while
users have to trust Brave that their data is handled properly and carefully.

~~~
arjbah
What're you talking about? Their content creator program is completely
voluntary, and their business model (and the Basic Attention Token) is
designed to serve content creators, and is not driven by ads or data
collection (like Chrome is).

Brave is the only hope I see for a strictly "privacy-by-default" browser,
which is not powered by an ad-based business model. Brendan Eich isn't a
dumbell, he knows what is wrong with broswer-based privacy and what needs
fixing.

PS: I use Brave on Android and the experience has been better than Chrome.

~~~
user812
Edit: Sorry for not following the rules

~~~
joshuamorton
While I "technically" have a conflict of interest, when brave launched I had
some concerns about how and when creators were paid, and the responses
amounted to brave stealing from them unless they signed up.

Unlike patreon (or Google contributor), if the page doesn't sign up, brave
still replaces the ads, but they end up keeping the money.

In those cases, their business model is much closer to a Comcast than an
uBlock, and it certainly appears like strong arming creators/sites into
joining, or forcing them to forgo revenue _and_ donate it to the browser. If
you can't see why that would be upsetting to content creators, idk.

~~~
gingerlime
That's a very interesting point.

I think there are some subtle, but important, differences though.

Brave users by default block all ads. So those users won't see the ads on
content creators sites anyway. Content creators shouldn't feel outraged
towards those more than they can feel outraged about any other ad-blocking
users.

Some of those Brave users might opt-in for ads that are promised not to
compromise their privacy.

So I totally understand that some creators might feel strong-armed if they
already use ads. But they shouldn't feel any worse than when faced with ad-
blocking users. They do have the chance to opt-in and rely on privacy-
respecting ads and get some revenue that they otherwise wouldn't get.

I guess if there was an alternative ad model that was less intrusive, and
content creators relied on it, they might have a much stronger reason to be
upset. I'm not aware of many creators that use privacy-friendly ads, and it
seems like Brave is at least attempting to create this model?

No affiliation with Brave whatsoever. Only found out about it a couple of
weeks ago.

~~~
joshuamorton
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15730294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15730294)

See this comment and the surrounding chain.

Assuming I'm a creator, the ussue is that brave is monetizing my content and I
get nothing unless I opt in to brave, instead of the system that I already
have set up to monetize myself.

Ad blockers don't make money by replacing the ads. Brave does. That's why it's
more similar to an isp hijacking ads than ad blocking, it's just happening in
the browser instead of in the network.

~~~
gingerlime
Brave isn't making money if its users choose to block ads.

Users now have the choice to make money from opting-in to ads. But only ads
that protect their privacy. Brave enables this, and takes a smaller cut than
the user.

Sites choosing to monetize themselves are doing so at the expense of the user,
whose privacy is compromised in the process.

I don't think Brave or the User is hijacking things here more than you can say
that monetizing sites are hijacking user privacy.

Monetizing sites don't give the user the option to pay for content via other
means, or ads that protect their privacy (or even the awareness of what
transaction takes place). At least Brave and its users are giving sites the
option to get revenue here (revenue that otherwise would be lost if users opt
for ad-blocking instead).

N.B. Looking at [0], Brendan Eich stated that "We don't replace ads on
publisher sites without that publisher as partner; they get 70% of the gross
revenue, user gets 15%.".

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18155869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18155869)

~~~
joshuamorton
>Brave isn't making money if its users choose to block ads.

Correct. I don't disagree at all with this statement. In the context of _just_
blocking ads, Brave is doing approximately the same thing as any number of
other browsers or ad blockers which aren't really objectionable.

>Sites choosing to monetize themselves are doing so at the expense of the
user, whose privacy is compromised in the process.

Sure, ok.

>Sites choosing to monetize themselves are doing so at the expense of the
user, whose privacy is compromised in the process.

If as Eich claims, they have permission from all publishers, than this is more
ok. But if not, the difference is that in one case, the reader, the ad
company, and the publisher all get something of value (an article, money &
data, money respectively). But if Brave is actually replacing ads without
publisher consent, then the user and brave get something of value, and the
publisher gets nothing.

>Monetizing sites don't give the user the option to pay for content via other
means, or ads that protect their privacy (or even the awareness of what
transaction takes place). At least Brave and its users are giving sites the
option to get revenue here (revenue that otherwise would be lost if users opt
for ad-blocking instead).

Depends, Brave actually explored an option to monetize in a patreon like
fashion [0]. Which sounds great, but there's a huge caveat that makes me less
inclined to believe Eich elsewhere. Specifically, The "Payments" tool allows
any user to donate to any creator or site. Then Brave sends an email _to the
webmaster address for that internet site_ (which often doesn't match the
publisher: think subdomains). Then, if people continue donating and the site
owner never registers, brave will eventually just keep any money donated to
the site[1].

In other words, if I run a popular hosted blog (yes these exist, and are
probably some of the best candidates for patreon-like funding), I can't
actually get verified because I don't control the DNS records for my site, and
I will have to sit back and watch as people unknowingly donate money to Brave
instead of me.

They then market this as

>Brave even lets you contribute to your favorite creators automatically

So color me suspicious.

[0]:
[https://brave.com/publishers/#getverified](https://brave.com/publishers/#getverified)

[1]: [https://brave.com/faq-payments/#unclaimed-funds](https://brave.com/faq-
payments/#unclaimed-funds)

------
mkeyhani
I really like the idea behind Brave.

However, I think a fundamental issue arises if you are going to pay people to
see ads: What if someone forks Brave, and creates a browser which blocks all
Brave ads, while pretending to click on them?

Neither of the two solutions I can think of are pleasant ones: you either need
to somehow verify that that ads are viewed by a human (i.e. CAPTCHAs), or use
DRM-like mechanisms to hide a token in Brave’s brinary, so that only “honest”
browsers can get paid.

~~~
BrendanEich
Any network with grants or revshares of tokens or other units of account that
might exchange to money, and humans in the loop, will have fraud. Blockchain
cannot stop it and has really nothing to offer yet on this front -- reputation
on chain is a hope, some say a vain dream.

What Brave offers that's far better than today's joke of an antifraud system
for ads is as follows: 1/ integrity-checked open source native code, which
cannot be fooled by other JS on page; 2/ looking at all the sensors, even the
ones without web APIs, to check humanity.

(1) requires SGX or ARM equivalent, widespread on mobile. JS by contrast
cannot be sure of anything unless the antifraud script knows it runs first,
and publishers cannot guarantee this in general or easily.

(2) is a material advantage over JS, which has only some but not all sensor
APIs.

For more on the joke of antifraud adtech today, please see
[https://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/state-of-digital-
ad-...](https://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/state-of-digital-ad-
fraud-q2-2018/) and [https://twitter.com/acfou's](https://twitter.com/acfou's)
other work.

------
herf
I use pinch to zoom all the time, but Brave (and Firefox) don't seem to
implement it (please?)

~~~
majewsky
Firefox for Android supports pinch-to-zoom, but only on certain sites (maybe
it's disabled by a certain setting of `<meta name="viewport">`).

EDIT: Tried just now. Pinch-to-zoom works fine on HN.

~~~
superflyguy
Settings/accessibility/always enable zoom.

~~~
Filligree
Why is disabling it even possible?

~~~
floatboth
You can't pinch to zoom the UI of native Android/iOS apps. Makes sense that
web apps with "native-like look" might want to behave similarly.

~~~
kwhitefoot
It's my device, I should be allowed to pinch to zoom, etc., regardless of what
the website or app wants.

------
hazz99
What are the benefits of using Brave instead of Firefox?

~~~
spooneybarger
I've looked at using brave instead of Firefox because I'd install fewer
extensions to get what I want in terms of ad blocking and privacy. Fewer
extensions is a regular goal of mine. That said, Brave isn't quite there yet
for me on the desktop but based on the roadmap, I'll be checking it out again
in a few months. In the meantime, Brave is my primary mobile browser.

~~~
superflyguy
How about Firefox Focus?

~~~
spooneybarger
It was a little too limited for me. I have 3 sites I visit regularly and have
tabs open for each makes my workflow a little easier.

I liked focus and the DDG browser but settled on brave as the best for fit for
me.

I don't love any of them but brave works best for the limited way I use my
phone. I do check in on the DDG and focus browsers every 3 months or so to see
if I want to switch.

------
dbielik
> This app has access to: Device & app history Allows the app to view one or
> more of: information about activity on the device, which apps are running,
> browsing history and bookmarks

Why is this required?

~~~
gruez
presumably for bookmarks importing

~~~
BrendanEich
Yes. We are looking into better ways to roll but it's hard on Android because
of course-grained permissions; also you can't have a high-power importer put
the imported stuff in a place the main app can use, as far as I know. Apps are
not allowed by store rules to "interfere" with one another. :-/

~~~
allenbrunson
hey Brendan,

I can see you're getting a lot of negative feedback here, so as a hopefully
countervailing force: this was the thread that finally got me to try Brave on
my iPad, iPhone, and mac. I like it so far!

I never thought I'd use any ad blockers, purely on moral grounds. But so many
sites have gotten completely unusable in the last year or so: half a dozen
auto-playing videos, some of which follow you around the page, text that won't
stop flying around the screen long enough for you to read it, etc. It's
starting to seem like there is no other choice. If I used it for nothing else,
Brave is a whole lot better than Safari on iOS for blocking unnecessary crap.

You really shouldn't get into it with trolls, though. You've had quite a few
comments in the last day or so that ended up flagged dead. Not a good look for
a CEO.

~~~
BrendanEich
Negative? This thread is _nothing_ in terms of negative feedback, and just by
counting handles (not counting comments, esp. the now dead ones -- btw that
flagged subthread was a net win too), I see way more positive than negative.

Questions are never negative and all good if not loaded/trick. Anti-ads or
anti-token politics, not so much -- but part of the package deal. The
ohmygodel comments were quite good and I'm grateful for them - hope to connect
by email.

Thanks for trying Brave!

------
ohmygodel
I support Brave's vision for the Web, but it currently seems to represent a
step _backwards_ for privacy. Making payments to providers essentially
involves sending your Web browsing history to Brave. The FAQ states that "we
do not know which BAT wallet is associated with the lists of sites that you
choose to support". I believe that is false.

I think it works like this: (1) Brave Browser submits its transactions to a
Brave server to exchange a BAT for an Anonize ballot (anonize.org), (2) each
ballot has the name of a site you visited randomly added by the browser with
probability proportional to the frequency of site visits, and (3) the ballots
are sent to a Brave server. Key here is that the token and ballot submissions
are sent directly (e.g. not through a proxy or Tor). In addition, I believe
the ballots may be submitted as a batch (i.e. at one point in time).
Therefore, it is easy for Brave to see your votes for your visited websites,
all coming at once, all from your IP address. That IP address may well be the
same one used to exchange the BAT for ballots as well.

There are additional problems regarding visits to unusual and identifying
websites that I feel like Brave hasn't begun to consider, either. Suppose that
every and only time that Brave receives a ballot for your personal website,
they also receive a ballot for some unpopular and sensitive website. They can
then conclude that the owner of the website also visits that sensitive site.

These problems must be addressed before Brave can be considered seriously by
privacy-conscious users.

~~~
BrendanEich
No history sent to Brave - did you assume this, or read it somewhere?

We use ANONIZE2 based on [https://anonize.org/](https://anonize.org/) to blind
ourselves to your history. Can’t be evil > Don’t be evil. We see only zero-
knowledge proofs that say how many votes go to sites or YouTube or Twitch
accounts. These proofs do not link to user id or to ine another (so no
fingerprint by clustering). They go over an IP address masking service to our
accounting server, while your monthly budget goes in a single token
transaction.

Note Google and other ad tech powers do track your history. Logging into
Chrome even gives your history over for ad targeting. Blendle, Flattrplus,
other such services also see your history. But we do not.

~~~
ohmygodel
I understand that Anonize is used for anonymous ballots. I understand that
Brave _used to_ submit its ballots via a single-hop proxy. My understanding is
now that Brave no longer uses this proxy, which wasn't a good solution anyway
because the proxy sees the user's entire set of ballots (aka browsing
history). Thus Brave is now given all the ballots directly from the user, and
thereby learns the user's browsing history. I do agree that other browsers and
services also track users around the Web. Eliminating that is a goal that I
support and that I think Brave does as well. I think that it is failing to
achieve that goal. Either you don't realize the technical reality of your
solution, or you are being misleading.

~~~
BrendanEich
No, we do not see any user id. IP address we do see for any “tokens sent to
user wallet” cases, for antifraud and per terms & privacy policy, but that is
not a useful id and (more important) we do not use it for other purposes per
GDPR. See GDPR’s “purpose limitation”. We would face 4% of global revenue fine
if we violated this, and we are holding FB, G, and others to same standard.

For IP masking in the case where you buy your own tokens, we have two options:
1/ relaying at IP level where we would not see your IP address and the partner
would not see any encrypted payloads; 2/ Tor, which is already integrated.
More to do but you led with “we see user history” and that is just false in
all these cases. We do not see history of sites visited or supported on a
linkable to user basis.

~~~
ohmygodel
An IP address is an identifier. If it weren't, there would be much less reason
to use a VPN or Tor.

Suppose I understand you correctly and you do see the network IPs and
timestamps of submitted tokens and ballots. Is your argument then that you can
be trusted to follow your privacy policy? If we rely on trusting you to follow
policy, then why not get rid of your zero knowledge proofs entirely?

By saying that you "have two options", it sounds like you are saying that
there are two mitigations for the privacy problem that you could use but do
not yet.

(1) is the one-hop proxy, which used to be used in the form of Private
Internet Access service, but it seems like it is not currently being used by
Brave. If you did use such a service and encrypted the publisher identities
under Brave's public key, then that would be a improvement, although still not
really private because Brave would receive the results in a batch from Private
Internet Access. Browsing histories are essentially fingerprints for each
user. The ten sites I visit each week are almost certainly not shared by any
other Brave user on the planet, and moreover they are frequently identifiable
(consider sites for individuals, companies, sports leagues, scohols, etc.).
From [0]: "Our results show that for a majority of users (69 %), the browsing
history is unique and that users for whom we could detect at least four
visited websites were uniquely identified by their histories in 97 % of
cases."

(2) has the same batching problem as (1). It would be superior, though,
because it would be harder for Brave and the proxy system to collude or (more
likely) be forced to cooperate with some authority.

To handle the batching problem, you should at least choose to upload each
Anonize ballot at a uniformly random time in each month and on a separate
connection (i.e. TCP connection or Tor circuit). You should also explain how
this works in a technical document to give people the ability to understand
what exactly they are signing up for when they enable payments in Brave.
Ideally you would use a cryptographic protocol more suited to strong anonymity
than a proxy network, such as a verifiable mix network or a secure-multiparty-
computation protocol.

[0] Olejnik et al., "On the uniqueness of Web browsing history patterns",
2014,
<[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12243-013-0392-5>](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12243-013-0392-5>)

~~~
BrendanEich
Please read up on GDPR "purpose limitation". We cannot use IP address except
for antifraud, so it is not legally viable for us to try to link zero-
knowledge proofs into a profile based on IP address. Also, my home AT&T IP
address wanders often, so do many others; mobile is even more variable. But my
main point here is purpose-limitation where we take IP address for antifraud.
Which we must do, or our user growth pool would be quickly taken by
fraudsters.

As we are all open source and will get annual audits when scaled beyond
trials, I think you are mistrusting prematurely.

On linkability for users who buy their own BAT and so do not require the
antifraud terms: as noted in my item 1, we are talking to PIA about using an
IP relay (not full VPN). This got delayed by their work on handshake.org but
we're restarting it.

Tor (item 2) is better and batching is not an issue. We do not make cross-
site/channel linkable batches in any event. Each ANONIZE session paying a
given domain or YouTube/Twitch account is separate from every other. Putting
these through separate Tor circuits is possible, as we also randomly space
them out in time.

I don't know why you are telling us to do things we already do. Did you find a
bug in the open source? We pay bounties.

~~~
BrendanEich
Separate thing, not promising it on a schedule yet so really FWIW: our BAT
roadmap's "Apollo" phase aspires to decentralize as much as possible. This
could certainly include p2p flows with ZKPs in state channels or better. We
are looking at OMG's Plasma implementation.

So the ultimate goal is to get away from ANONIZEd traffic to a blind
accounting server. But as I say, lots of problems to solve before promising
this. Yet with Ethereum scaling and anonymity support, for users who buy their
own BAT (where I claim your objection to IP address has most merit), we could
go p2p on-chain for decentralization w/o fraud risk for bring-your-own-BAT
users.

~~~
ohmygodel
Interesting, but decentralization does not equal privacy. Indeed, it might
make privacy worse by sharing the data more widely and making it even easier
to get copies of the data. Consider, for example, BitTorrent, which has a
pretty decentralized distribution protocol that also makes it easier for third
parties like the MPAA to observe who is sending and receiving the files.

Even using a privacy-enhanced blockchain isn't necessarily sufficient.
Blockchains do not provide anonymous messaging. Therefore, a recipient R of a
transaction can identify the sender S if R can observe S sending the
transaction. Yes, this problem affects Bolt, Zcash, Monero, etc.

~~~
18pfsmt
What if one were to run one of these "privacy-enhanced blockchain"s from a VPS
(paid for with these same anonymized tokens)?

In case it's not clear, I'm earnestly asking this question

~~~
ohmygodel
That's basically using a proxy, and so it has the same security. If the proxy
is/geos bad (say, your VPS provider reveals your IP to some interested guys
with guns), then you lose (anonymity). If your proxy remains good, then all
that can be learned is the transactions originated at the proxy. However, the
proxy does serve as a potential pseudonym, and so if the collection of
transactions reveals something identifying, even if any one transaction
doesn't, then you lose.

------
sinuhe69
Brave claims to be 2-8 times faster than Chrome & Firefox on popular news
sites. If Brave is based on Chromium, no ways it can be twice faster than
Chrome. If it based on a new developed browser kit, it’s too fantastic to be
true. It’s already a respectable performance if a new browser kit can come
close to the unicorn browsers like Chrome & Firefox (Quantum). The whole thing
is too fishy for my taste.

~~~
sleavey
I guess they're comparing stock Brave (which blocks ads and trackers by
default) to stock Chrome / Firefox (which don't - well, Firefox does block
some trackers now). Blocking ads categorically improves page load time.

~~~
johntash
I agree. I'd like to see a comparison of stock Brave vs Chrome/Firefox with
UBO or some other adblocking extensions configured.

Otherwise, I could say links is a superior browser because it loads pages even
faster than Brave.

------
mdimec4
In the face of youtube demonetizing vidos, which advartising companies don't
like, this is in theory much more Democratic system.

------
dxhdr
Block current ad tech and replace it with their own. Where does Brave hope to
be in 10 years? Controlling the internet ad marketplace via their BAT token
platform. Once the initial creators have earned their take and lost their will
the platform values will be slowly (rapidly?) eroded and we'll be right back
where we are today.

How is this appealing?

------
owly
Firefox and Firefox Focus are awesome on mobile. Can even block web fonts. I
don’t see the point in supporting brave.

~~~
auslander
Focus app even contains a iOS Content Blocker which you can enable in Safari.
Now you have Safari with adblocker.

------
andreygrehov
When I use Chrome, what does Google do with my data?

~~~
mda
They actually explain what exactly is stored and what it is used for. You can
see and control it as well. But on hacker news and this is an unpopular
opinion.

~~~
robin_reala
True, but you can’t stop them collecting it (at least as far as I can see).

~~~
mda
You can for almost all of it. Don't sign in, or disable all kind of
personalization and storage from your account settings. You can alao delete
all your history, forever.

~~~
brandnewlow
The problem with this approach is it feels like there are teams of smart
people at Google with all of these "outs" in a shared doc and a timeline to
slowly close them off one by one. There's no way to "win" in the longrun
against that.

------
emersonrsantos
There’s adaway for Android (needs root) that downloads, merges and replace
/etc/hosts with your favorite hosts blacklists, working system wide and not
consuming extra battery: [https://adaway.org](https://adaway.org)

------
unstuckdev
I respect the CEO's right to keep details of his opinions on other people's
rights to himself. Unfortunately, the appearance of his Prop 8 donation makes
me not want to send money his way. There are plenty of browsers out there.

------
mping
Installed brave on Linux, the autocomplete is sluggishly slow which I guess is
due to history search but makes it completely unusable. There's an open issue
for that, but I wished they didn't market it with such a critical bug.

------
pcunite
If anyone from Brave is here, I look forward to customizing the install
location on Windows. I need to install to a secure area, not my user
directory. I look forward to giving it a good test when I can.

------
jazoom
Does brave sync bookmarks and passwords between desktop and mobile yet? I
don't get why this is such a low priority for new browser vendors.

------
unrealchild
i have lot count of the number of browser projects that positioned themselves
as an alternative to XYZ existing product. not saying it doesn’t happen
(chrome) just that there are often several attempts made that rise and fall
quickly. adding cryptocurrency may be an interesting spin...but in the end
it’s just a spin and the core loop is not much different. best of luck to
them!

------
znpy
Brave on mobile us the best browser out there.

------
agrippanux
I want to like Brave, but dealbreaker for me is I'm on Linux and 1Password X
extension isn't supported.

~~~
spooneybarger
The beta builds support all chrome extensions.

------
crag
Mac version coming? I use AdGuard now, on Mac. But I'd like this on Mac as
well. Safari I won't touch.

~~~
cfitz
Just downloaded this on High Sierra (10.13.6) and having no problems so far.
Did you see their downloads page [1]?

[1]: [https://brave.com/download/](https://brave.com/download/)

------
runn1ng
Do they still have the stupid ICO token for advertisments? Or did they get rid
of that

------
threatofrain
For iOS, how does Brave compare to using content blockers, such as Firefox
Focus?

------
the_clarence
Still no tabs on the side?

------
stevenicr
Just need to say that I really appreciate different people taking different
approaches to ad security and privacy enhancement. I have so distressed by the
amount of malware that has been infecting people's networks from mainstream
sites it scares the dickens out of me.

The privacy things also really disturbs me.

I don't mind seeing an ad and you getting paid for it when I read the latest
changes to the HPV guidance from the FDA for example, but I don't want
multiple evil places like "addthis" "add-to-'any" and the likes to be creating
some kind of profile and selling it.

The newspaper ads did not tell others that I read the "whatever article" in
the paper.

I also can not stand moving ads. SO many really good articles are ruined by
animated gifs/mp4s jumping for attention. It saddens me, and likely the
authors of really good long form articles, I think from the Atlantic and
NYTImes recently I was taken out of the feeling and captivating moments of
articles to look at the moving distractions next to them many times.

This not only made articles take twice as long to read, but made them much
less impactful, and harder to remember.

These are some of the reasons I posted a while back
([http://www.ideasandwritings.com/2016/adblock-into-
fairblock/](http://www.ideasandwritings.com/2016/adblock-into-fairblock/) )
the desire to have an ad-blocker with some 2 way communication so I could have
settings that block all third party ads, and moving ads, but would gladly
accept static self served ads from sites that had reasonable privacy policies.

I would take it further and offer up some extra data points to those ads the
were guaranteed secure so you could make more money and "i could get awesome
ads relative to me" \- I imagine many others would be happy to offer city,
sex, and age for example, if privacy was controlled by "reputable publisher on
list here" for example.

For these reasons I seriously applaud this project. It's not perfect, but it
seems to be the closest to what I wrote about some time ago - and I think it's
a huge jump in the right direction.

I applaud all the attempts, ad blockers, micro payments, different models for
payments and attention - lets try everything and find what works for different
people.

So glad to see publishers jumping on board to get some ad revenue from those
who would choose to block privacy stealing, possible malware sending ads. Now
if we can fine tune it a bit more I'd love to see some back and forth
discussion between my browser and the ad server. (no alcohol ads, yes to tech,
static only please, male, etc)

Heck I might actually click and buy to support more if the ads get better, not
just more attention stealing which seems to be the race to the outrageous that
clickbait and such is going.

Maybe this will start to force some changes.

------
xaduha
I'd rather use Opera.

------
the_other_guy
Brave, DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi, etc... are examples of the parasitic products that
are trying to make use of the current privacy paranoia to earn a very tiny
market share while they aren't any different from the big players. They only
look innocent because they are small not because they are different.

~~~
prepend
How do you think these products are parasitic? And how do you think they add
the same as Chrome?

I’m not familiar with Vivaldi, but DDG has a different business model because
it’s self imposed limitations on user data that has privacy sensitivity.

And Brave is quite different as it eschews ads altogether and rather uses its
Basic Attention Token for users to directly find sites and take a cut [0].
This method requires no user data and is really different that Chrome that
requires extensive user personal data to maintain its desired profit margins.

[0] [https://brave.com/faq-payments/#what-is-brave-
payments](https://brave.com/faq-payments/#what-is-brave-payments)

------
jiveturkey
i had a similar idea. a local client that scrapes (ahem, reads) forum sites
and formats the content in a consistent way. with much more powerful UI. like
tapatalk, but actually good.

oh, and it removes site ads and inserts it’s own. then it holds the forums
hostage to get into its own ads model.

~~~
kodablah
I am going to build something similar to your first part, essentially a
client-side proxy backed by a headless browser that serves up your favorite
sites' content sans crap.

To your second part, I won't be doing any of that ad replacement (consent or
not, just like I don't with my Chromium-based browser with native ad
blocking).

------
terhechte
Is Brave always based on the latest version of Firefox? Or did it branch of at
some point in the past?

~~~
Daedren
Brave is Chromium based

~~~
DavideNL
Note that only "Brave Beta" is Chromium based (and "Brave Dev").

~~~
codehalo
Brave was always based on chromium. The UI was based on Muon, but the upcoming
1.0 release switched the UI back to Chromium.

------
jhabdas
A little awkward to see this here given Brave is becoming fairly mainstream.
You want to lock down the tools you rely on to lock you down.

~~~
grezql
Dont know what you definition of mainstream is but it certainly is not known
to the common people.

~~~
octosphere
The link to brave.com has been around for a while in various incarnations on
Hackernews. Interestingly OP didn't trim the /index/ part of the URL so the
main URL has another chance to be part of the frontpage.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Brave.com&sort=byDate&dateRang...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Brave.com&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

~~~
wewake
> Interestingly OP didn't trim the /index/ part of the URL so the main URL has
> another chance to be part of the frontpage.

Wasn't intentional at all.

------
IvanK_net
The Brave browser loads pages faster, because it completely ignores the web
standards (i.e. it does not show you what the author wanted you to see).
Precisely, it does not load and display some elements, which it considers to
be ads (or at least that is what they want us to believe).

If the page author writes <body id="ads"> ... , normal browsers will show you
the content of the <body>, while Brave will show you nothing (in 0.001
seconds) :D

Personally, I think that using browsers, which add / remove / rewrite (i.e.
censor) the web content for you, is quite dangerous. If it rewrites the Google
Search results once in a while, or rewrites some part of the news, you would
not even notice.

