16 ms·

Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup

667 points by Seldaek 11y ago

abhv 11y ago
How will Brave prevent anti-ad-blocking mechanisms from interfering with the page? For example, cbs/abc/nbc seem to detect muBlock and then stop serving content.
- kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
  This is the most annoying thing about ad blocking going mainstream. It was a rare site that bothered to detect us before Apple got into the game.
  - Nursie 11y ago
    Personally I think it's very healthy and marks the beginning of the next stage of the web - how does it work in a post-advertising world?
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      If the various stages of the arms race have been any indication so far it tends to get worse rather than better with every stage so far, which does not lead me to believe there will be a 'post advertising world', only a 'more annoying and harder to get rid of / ignore advertising world'.
      - Nursie 11y ago
        Well it's true, it has been an arms race, but until recently it's been between relatively small numbers of blockers and the advertisers. Now that Apple have taken it more mainstream it's going to be interesting to watch what happens. But you might be right, sadly. More of the same and worse...
    - woah 11y ago
      Randomized ad unit class names?
      - Klathmon 11y ago
        and/or ad-proxies that run off the same domain, more integrated and less "blockable" ads (like sponsored stories and in-content ad reads), complicated and bloated JS ad-blocker-blockers (or ad-blocker-detectors), even more complicated ad-blocking code (which can already have a pretty significant performance impact on some sites), and more. It's a race to the bottom now boys, and the most invasive ad companies are going to win!
    - sevensor 11y ago
      Ads become integrated with, and indistinguishable from, copy.
  - lmm 11y ago
    I found web adverts got a lot more annoying after Firefox started including a pop-up blocker by default. That was when we started seeing pop-unders, animated Flash ads and all that.
    - Klathmon 11y ago
      I've been saying for years that blockers just remove the good guys. What's the point in trying to make a safe, non-tracking, curated ad network when you will just be blocked by everyone anyway? All adblockers do its turn the game into a race to the bottom. Whoever can get the most invasive ads past the most blockers is the winner. Any company that isn't willing to play dirty will be left behind. Content creators won't push for the good guys because they need money, ad networks are between a rock and a hard-place, and users will say they want "nice" ad networks while simultaneously blocking all ads regardless of where they come from (and will fight against things like the "allow acceptable ads" checkbox in adblock)
      - rockdoe 11y ago
        I think you just described why Mozilla was pushing for Tracking Protection (blocking only "bad" ads) and didn't do Brave.
        Klathmon 11y ago
        even widespread Tracking Protection isn't the answer IMO. I personally want to be tracked on some things. I want ads that are relevant to me instead of ads that cater to the lowest common denominator. I want websites to be able to view my usage and cater to my wants/needs without me having to spend time trying to fill out surveys on how i use their service (and probably remember things wrong), I want automated recommendations for things that i might like without me having to spend hours curating my own content. I don't want invasive 3rd parties getting ahold of my information, "push" advertising like cold-calls, emails, push notifications, or physical mail, and i don't want sensitive information being collected and shared. Sadly nobody ever tries to make that distinction, it's always "everything" or "nothing".
- notahacker 11y ago
  Presumably it makes it easier to do so. To be honest, if I was running a media company I'd be rather more inclined to block/redirect users of browsers designed to inject replacement "good" ads into my page than worry about users on a mainstream browser who happen to be using a plugin.
rockdoe 11y ago
https://github.com/brave/browser-ios https://github.com/brave/browser-ios "Firefox for iOS" They forgot to remove the branding from their "new" browser.
- m52go 11y ago
  It's not a mistake. Firefox is referenced throughout the documentation. Looks like Brave is built on top of it.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    Venturebeat claims it's based on Chromium, but they also seem to be pretty confused because they're calling it "a brand new browser, because (builing on top of existing browsers) would imply limited functionality by virtue of their application programming interfaces (APIs) and less impressive performance gains" http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/20/brave-browser/ http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/20/brave-browser/ So it's Chrome on Desktop, Firefox for iOS on iOS?
    - reubenmorais 11y ago
      It's based on GitHub's Electron (Chromium) on desktop, and Firefox for iOS on iOS: http://www.brianbondy.com/blog/172/brave-software http://www.brianbondy.com/blog/172/brave-software
    - ainar-g 11y ago
      Firefox on iOS is built with WebKit, not Gecko [1]. IIRC, it's because Apple doesn't like engines that are not WebKit. Chromium uses Blink, which is a fork of WebKit, so Firefox for iOS and Chromium are relatives in a sense. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS.
  - sp332 11y ago
    Mozilla is very protective of their trademark though. You're supposed to replace their branding with your own before distributing your modified code.
indus 11y ago
This para from their home page could be akin to legalizing marijuana! "The new Brave browser blocks all the greed and ugliness on the Web that slows you down and invades your privacy. Then we put clean ads back."
- kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
  Sounds more like substituting "clean" methadone in place of heroin.
jorangreef 11y ago
I would much prefer a new browser that makes true native web apps possible with a one-click install to indicate trust. A browser built with Electron that exposes Node.js and otherwise keeps away from the HTML5 kitchen sink, in order to push innovation away from the spec committees and back out to the community. Vital technology like TCP, UDP, DNS, and the filesystem is being locked up behind a fascade of poorly implemented APIs. A browser with a small, efficient core, optimized for rendering, and with a brilliant app install system, and brilliant native cross-platform integration. The time is ripe.
- srpeck 11y ago
  Agreed on the idea, not necessarily the implementation. I have 2 modes when browsing - reading (docs, news, etc.) or using an application (Gmail, banking, etc.). I do not want to download a >2MB application just to read 1000 words (hence why I wrote this Chrome extension https://github.com/srpeck/readingmode https://github.com/srpeck/readingmode). And when I am using a web application, I would like more say over what it can do and when/if I have to update it - more the Chrome app/extension model. Plus, as a developer I would really like this model, as it allows the browser to open up even more of the operating system functions, especially the file system, leading to less workarounds.
- matthewtoast 11y ago
  Are you aware of any existing, serious effort to build such a thing? I love the idea - and it strongly appeals to me as a developer - but what would make the average user switch to it?
  - jorangreef 11y ago
    Developers would drive adoption. I think adoption of new browsers has usually been driven by developers.
  - meanduck 11y ago
    > Are you aware of any existing, serious effort to build such a thing? NaCl (>90% of native performence) comes to mind. Too bad NaCl apps can only be downloaded via chrome web store not by visiting url like PNaCl (~10% of native performence).
chejazi 11y ago
Haven't looked at the source but worth noting there's a Bitcoin logo on the homepage near "Browse Better."
deleted 11y ago
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- jacquesm 11y ago
  Pet peeve: accounts with < 10 karma and 1 submission to their name that complain about what is news and is not news.
Touche 11y ago
The scrolling on this website is janky as hell. Looks like they are using some "Smooth scrolling" plugin that makes scrolling not smooth at all. Not sure why native browser scrolling was insufficient for them, I'm scrolling here in HN all the time and it's perfectly smooth.
- Jgrubb 11y ago
  Smooth scrolling plugins are vastly more offensive to me than most advertising.
  - patates 11y ago
    I really wonder who thought adding lag to a primary browser interaction would make your pages better.
- davnn 11y ago
  True.. smooth scrolling is only useful for the 5% of users that have a broken or bad touchpad. The dev had one of those I guess :-)
- frou_dh 11y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739
  - Touche 11y ago
    I disagree, in this case. This website is from the creator of JavaScript, about a product that is meant to solve, in his words: But the Web today faces a primal threat. And that threat is the web's ad-driven monetization. This site suffers from the same fundamental problem; the owners of it don't care too much about it. It has 114 requests , 3.8MB of content and takes 4 seconds to load. I can't imagine Eich had anything to do with this site or even approved it. I'm guessing he is focused on the company's core product and let Marketing or someone else take care of the site. They then hired the cheapest design firm they could find on Elance, who then outsourced the work to an even cheaper freelancer who took the requirements and plugged together a dozen different jQuery plugins that he/she uses on every project and shipped it as quickly as possible. Because in that business you don't make any money if you spend any more than the absolute minimum amount of time on a project. I mean, they didn't even concat any of their javascript or css. This is web development from the mid-2000s. It truly saddens me that a company with a noble vision couldn't afford to hire a single web developer who is up on modern practices and has good judgment on quality to put this together; would have taken then a week, tops.
deleted 11y ago
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hapless 11y ago
It sounds like their plan is to block all ads, then sell the new ad inventory created by all the blank space on pages. Why on earth would users want this browser?
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Well, the logical extension of that is that you actually get paid to browse, that might be a gamechanger. Keep in mind that the supply side right now ends at the owner of the web property that starts the ball rolling when in fact it actually starts with the person sitting behind the computer looking at the page. So this is a giant cut-out-the-middle-men opportunity and Eich is fairly uniquely positioned to take advantage of that. Wonder if that rev-share idea is part of the long term plan.
  - strictnein 11y ago
    We tried the "paid to browse" thing 15-20 years ago. Didn't go so well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_to_surf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_to_surf
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      Times have changed since then and it definitely would not be the first time that something that fell flat out of the gate the first time became a success the second time around. Lots of current successes are actually just warmed over past failures. That's not proof in any way that this might succeed now but there is something to be said or giving that a shot with the number of eyeballs available today (and the harder to advertise to markets that have been unlocked by the web but where ad agencies are not yet capable of selling inventory). If you could centralize that through the browser it would be a fairly powerful strategy if adoption would be large enough (that's the crux), which is why I wondered if it was on their roadmap.
      - lsc 11y ago
        huh. See, I thought the reason it failed last time,besides fraud[1], was a broader reason - it's the same reason paid surveys aren't worth very much. the idea is that the people you want to advertise to are precisely the people who are willing to trade money for their time; the opposite of the people you get when you pay folks to watch advertising. [1], in 1998, I seem to remember that one of my co-workers had installed a thing on his work computer that would move the mouse and "browse" the internet when he wasn't there, getting paid for seeing ads.
st3fan 11y ago
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." To be fair, Firefox for iOS is open source. Take it, remix it, improve it. It is all good. Mozilla Public License.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
Its by the same guy who donated to causes doing their best to make sure two people in love can't get married due to their gender. Sociopathy has many forms and its obvious to me that Eich is just an untrustworthy guy with a lot of bad ideas. Low-rent projects like these is just further evidence that you need a founder/leader you can trust. Its clear he's exhausted his social capital and at age 54 is far away from his innovative days. This seems like a low-class cash-in now that ad blocking has gone mainstream, like a world-class athlete now a spokesperson for payday loans or basic car insurance. Replacing ads with your own is something we fought against ISPs doing, yet somehow when Eich does it, everyone is enamored with it? Come the fuck on. This was a bad idea in the past and its a bad idea now.
- rmc 11y ago
  The percentage of sociopathy does not match the percentage of homophobes opposed to marriage equality, a number which has changed a lot in living memory.
  - LordKano 11y ago
    Virtually no one was opposed to marriage equality. Many people were and are opposed to the judicial redefinition of marriage.
    - coldpie 11y ago
      Uh, no, don't try to rewrite history. The attacks were directed at gay people. Quoting this article: Early on, Prop 8’s supporters decided to focus their campaign primarily on children, stoking parents’ fears about gay people brainwashing their kids with pro-gay messages or, implicitly, turning their children gay. Another notorious commercial shows an earnest school administrator fretting that a “new health curriculum” that mentions gay marriage will “mess up” children with reference to “gay attraction.” This message of belittlement cut across pretty much every pro-Prop 8 ad—ads that ran incessantly in the state for months. The campaign’s strategy was to debase gay families as deviant and unhealthy while insinuating that gay people are engaged in a full-scale campaign to convert children to their cause. http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_supported_prop_8_which_was_worse_than_you_remember.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_s...
tomp 11y ago
I don't see any reason I would prefer this over the native iOS ad blocking (with an appropriate blacklist).
linksbro 11y ago
Please fix the links to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. These should always be the first documents working on your startup's website. And can anyone find this 'roadmap' that Eich talks about in the post?
RobertDeNiro 11y ago
I wonder how much they paid for the domain name.
mirap 11y ago
Have you seen git of desktop version? It seems it's completely written in JavaScript: https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop Could such thing be secure?
- tdb7893 11y ago
  It could be. Whether it is is very suspect, though
- rockdoe 11y ago
  JavaScript engines have to run untrusted code from the web 24/7. They're some of the most secured software in existance.
iza 11y ago
> With Brave, you can choose whether to see ads that respect your privacy or pay sites directly. Either way, you can feel good about helping fund content creators. How do they plan on doing that? Not like it hasn't been tried before. The problem is you can't collect money on someone's behalf without them opting in, and if it is opt-in only you get the chicken and the egg problem for adoption.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  >or pay sites directly. Call me crazy, but if I wanted to "pay the site" I'm using I'd just allow their ads. This company is really sleezy. Its playing the "replace their ads with ours" game and trying to make it sound like some wonderful moral position against advertising. People aren't this stupid. This thing isn't going to catch on.
  - michael_h 11y ago
    If you allow the site's ads, you are also allowing the ad network they use to track you. The point of this browser is to factor out random third-party ad networks. If you elect to see ads on the site, they are presumably served by Brave. The site still gets paid (so it's not like the ISP's replacing ads on the fly), but you don't have to worry about unknown trackers following you around the internet and putting a strain on your CPU. Whether it will catch on is another question...
anotherhacker 11y ago
I'm doubtful of this taking off. People stick with the default apps and settings. The average person just really doesn't care that much about this kind of thing. Maybe enterprise or businesses will like it - so they can avoid their employees visit whitelisted sites that mistakenly have malicious code in the ads. Eg. Flash
- rockdoe 11y ago
  I'm doubtful of this taking off. People stick with the default apps and settings. Firefox overcame that disadvantage about 10 years ago. You could say Chrome did too (though nowadays Chrome is bundled so much it no longer applies).
  - anotherhacker 11y ago
    Overcame...and then lost it. "Firefox's total user share -- an amalgamation of desktop and mobile -- was 9.5%" Firefox gained marketshare 10 years ago b/c most internet users were still early adopters. There people were more tech savvy and into open source. Source: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2893514/an-incredibly-shrinking-firefox-faces-endangered-species-status.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2893514/an-incredibly-s...
    - rockdoe 11y ago
      Firefox gained marketshare 10 years ago b/c most internet users were still early adopters. There people were more tech savvy and into open source. That's a really interesting point. Makes it clear how high the bar is for new entrants.
- roneesh 11y ago
  I'm not so sure that the average person won't care. They are increasingly aware of how much they pay for data on their phone plans, and how crossing limits decreases their speeds. After a big bill or two, people start looking for options.
  - 11y ago
vladikoff 11y ago
From a quick glance: 1) Desktop browser is an electron app with ad tracking injected into your app via http://cdn.brave.com/ http://cdn.brave.com/ (via https://sonobi.com/welcome/index.php https://sonobi.com/welcome/index.php which promises "EFFECTIVELY PLAN AND SOURCE MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES WITH QUALITY AND VIEWABILITY FROM PREMIUM PUBLISHERS" 2) iOS browser is a fork of Firefox iOS - https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios 3) Android browser is a fork of https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linkbubble.playstore&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linkbubble...
- linksbro 11y ago
  Looks like Eich is on the Advisory Board of sonobi. [1] [1] https://sonobi.com/welcome/company.php https://sonobi.com/welcome/company.php Edit: Removed comments about the diversity of sonobi, as they're not really relevant to the discussion.
  - dominotw 11y ago
    not this garbage again.
  - StavrosK 11y ago
    ELEVEN people in tech being white males?! Whew, what are the odds of that!
  - jhawins 11y ago
    They're just trying to make more money... Go figure!
- drdaeman 11y ago
  Is Linkbubble free software, or they just made some agreement with author to use/rebrand it? (I always assumed it's proprietary, but seeing that others are FLOSS forks, would love to be wrong about this one.)
  - david2777 11y ago
zmanian 11y ago
The biggest challenge of micropayments is how to minimize the cognitive load of making many tiny payments. How should the user agent decide when to alert the user?
jscheel 11y ago
Can they block scroll-jacking too?
jordigh 11y ago
I will repeat this one more time, because Eich seems to be missing the point.[1] I don't adblock for privacy, security, or speed. Those are just nice-side effects. I adblock because I do not want to be manipulated into buying things I do not need. I wonder what would happen if, as a society, we said, "enough, no more ads". Would it really be the capitalist apocalypse that the ad industry is trying to make us believe it would be? -- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10244964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10244964
- needz 11y ago
  I'd rather have ads I can block than "sponsored content" which may or may not even be labelled as such.
- FredFredrickson 11y ago
  If this were attempted, I think we'd have a LOT of talk about what truly is an ad and what isn't. I mean, the web banners and billboards we see every day don't do a lot to actually sell products. But your friend telling you they really love a particular product helps a lot. But in a society where a movement such as you've described was in motion, would both be equally as bad? Are both not manipulative in their own way?
  - jordigh 11y ago
    I'm thinking something like what São Paulo implemented, https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/73/Sao_Paulo_A_City_Without_Ads.html https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/73/Sao_Paulo_A_City_Witho... Or, perhaps, you only get ads when requested. "I'm in the market for a new refrigerator. Please show me ads for refrigerators." But still, I have a fundamental problem with how all advertising has a slant, and at least a hint of a lie or manipulation. I do not like being lied to or manipulated, but I don't know what the alternative would be.
    - lmm 11y ago
      The followup article I saw here a few months ago suggested that Sao Paulo hasn't found that entirely successful, and has allowed a significant amount of advertising back.
jsvaughan 11y ago
Surely we are soon going to see server side ad-injection and the end of ad blocking
- anonx 11y ago
  That doesn't work well with AD networks though. Site owners will either have to use links of the form: siteOfAdNetwork.com?id=smthhere and it still will be possible to block them. Or AD network will be unable to check the number of clicks.
  - jsvaughan 11y ago
    ad links could be via redirects from the hosting site, intercepted by the web server plugin. personalisation would be a problem, because you won't have a cookie, but there is always device fingerprint etc I agree it isn't quite as good but it is possible to make ads indistinguishable from legitimate site content.
    - anonx 11y ago
      Will the site redirect to AD network? If so, it is still easily blockable. AdBlocker can preload suspicious links and if they redirect to siteOfAdNetwork.com block them. The only option I see here is to have some kind of click counter both on the web-master's (who monetizes) and client's (who advertises) web-sites. And the counters' numbers will be sent (using server-side) to the AD Network. But that doesn't work if the client wants to advertise not his/her web-side (where AD network's script can be installed) but Facebook profile or something like that. Alternatively, AD network can charge not for number of clicks but for alternative parameters (e.g., number of days AD is published). Though, still not easy (no guarantees) to check whether web-master who's monetizing his/her web-site doesn't cheat.
xyzzy4 11y ago
But I want to block all advertising, not just harmful advertising.
- whyagaindavid 11y ago
  100 % agree. I have been using webview or Chromewebview to whitelist all the sites that I browse. See https://github.com/tobykurien/WebApps https://github.com/tobykurien/WebApps I can browse with 56Kbps on the way to my work even in suburbs with poor 2G.
smanuel 11y ago
Someone should make a browser that blocks "Everybody can earn xxx$+ daily... You can earn from ..." spam comments. I think I've seen those mostly through the FB comments plugin. Obviously FB can't / doesn't want to fix that.
orliesaurus 11y ago
hahahahahahaha and this is why I use the meanest adblocking oss software i can find on my devices
runjake 11y ago
The first question that pops into my head is "How is Brave going to monetize?". They've received substantial investor money, so apparently they have something lucrative in mind. And it's probably not good for privacy-conscious end users.
- chippy 11y ago
  They are monetizing by....advertising! They substitute bad ads for their ads.
- devopsproject 11y ago
  They seem to be swapping invasive ads for non-invasive ones or giving you the option to pay sites via a micro transaction?
Brakenshire 11y ago
I was just reading some web performance audits by Paul Irish: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K-mKOqiUiSjgZTEscBLjtjd6E67oiK8H2ztOiq5tigk/pub https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K-mKOqiUiSjgZTEscBLjtjd6... One of things he mentions on one of the sites, is Adsense looking at every scroll event, and doing tracking work which takes 25ms on a smartphone (his smartphone, likely to be high end). That means your scrolling performance is going to be inherently bad, probably below 30 fps one you take into account other work associated with the browser or the site. Having a browser which takes out this kind of code, but doesn't break the business model of the website owner does seem like an interesting idea. It seems like a major part of the mobile web is half-broken for these kind of reasons.
jensen123 11y ago
It's great to see more people working to solve the problem of intrusive ads! I wonder what exactly they mean by intrusive ads, though? I hope it's more than just ads that don't respect your privacy. To me an ad is intrusive if it has any kind of movement or animation. Anything that moves automatically attracts my attention, so this is very annoying if I'm trying to read something. I don't mind ads in print magazines so much (other than the fact that print magazines are unlikely to write negative stuff about companies that advertise with them). Ads in print magazines are ok with me, because there's no movement on them. So I can easily read one page, even though the next page has a full page ad. They mention standard sized spaces and faster browsing. I actually wouldn't mind large ads - like something taking up my whole screen - that I can scroll through. Back in the 90s, it probably made sense to have small 468x60 pixel banner ads, but as fast Internet connections are becoming more and more common, I don't really see the point of restricting the size anymore. Large full page ads aren't really a problem in print magazines, and I don't think it would be on the web either, if we just got rid of the animations.
- devopsproject 11y ago
  I'm seeing a lot of adds that ask me to rotate my phone so they can show me a video ad. It is getting ridiculous.
- Nitramp 11y ago
  If other companies in the space are an indication (e.g. AdBlock Plus), "intrusive ads" are defined as ads that don't pay them, but somebody else.
devy 11y ago
Due to Brave's ad-block technology, I guess Brendan Eich will be blocked[1] by IAB from their annual conferences. (every pun intended.) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10937704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10937704
shmerl 11y ago
Is it using Servo?
- rockdoe 11y ago
  No, it's using Chrome, Firefox for iOS and LinkBubble.
  - shmerl 11y ago
    That's not fun. But I guess Servo isn't ready yet. But why aren't they using Gecko for example with IPC embedlite?
abercromby 11y ago
Man that logo is similar to Workfront's: https://www.workfront.com https://www.workfront.com
- rockdoe 11y ago
  Workfront's trademark doesn't seem to be an issue for Brave due to different use fields. Looks like Eich can't make a calendaring app though :-)
Kristine1975 11y ago
What's with the requests to static.doubleclick.net on that page?
ifdefdebug 11y ago
My ublock add-on blocks exactly 5 requests from their home page... so why would I want to install their browser?
puppetmaster3 11y ago
This will be banned by app stores and such and quickly.
lumberjack 11y ago
Where is the incentive for the user to use this thing?
- chippy 11y ago
  their pages load quicker on desktop and on mobile saving time and battery
juandazapata 11y ago
It's funny when AdBlock tells you that brave.com has 2 blocked Ads. Oh the irony.
- phaed 11y ago
  ABP > AB.
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  uBlock Origin is blocking 6 assets/sources
- gtk40 11y ago
  I didn't know AdBlock was still out. I've gone from AB->ABP->AB Edge->uBlock->uBlock Origin. The last one blocks three times as many elements.
ebbv 11y ago
This seems awful from a content provider perspective. I no longer get to have control over my own content, Brave gets to decide for me how much my content is worth and what ads appear on my site. This isn't that far removed from coming into a bakery and saying "The Cupcakes are no longer $2, they're $1.50 'coz that's what we think people want to pay." I realize the idea is that this is "better" for the content providers than Ad Block, but both are, IMHO stupid. If a site you visit has ads you don't like, complain to the people who run the site and stop going to it. All Ad Block software has never been a fix, merely a tool in an ever escalating war of ads where users and content creators both lose.
webjprgm 11y ago
A few thoughts: (1) If they block tracking, does it block Google Analytics? Because that would annoy me as a website owner. (2) The reason I don't pay subscriptions to sites like Wall Street Journal and NY Times is that I get my content from aggregators like Hacker News so I only go to one of those paid sites if I follow an occasional link. Micropayments would fix that if I could pay one company a $5/mo subscription to then have payments automatically dolled out to a select list of good sites until my $5 was used up (then maybe ask me each time after that, or something). (3) They talk about avoiding the ad-blocking war, but they are just contributing to it. I guess what they think is that by making a way for the website owner to get paid they avoid some of the war, but many companies like to be in direct control of their money so they might not like a middleman sitting on the high way charging everyone a tax to pass. And if Brave doesn't charge something for its services then it has no business model, so I'm assuming they are not passing 100% of revenue on to the site owner.
- acheron 11y ago
  If they block tracking, does it block Google Analytics? That's one of the biggest trackers out there, so it would be a pretty poor blocker if it didn't.
lossolo 11y ago
You all are forgetting one thing. Without ads google would not exist, without ads facebook couldn't exist and expand, make research. If everybody will block ads then you will see decline in free sites.
- stonogo 11y ago
  I have never forgotten this. It's my primary motivating factor in mercilessly blocking ads and ad servers, both within my browser and at my routers, both at home and at work. If someone wants to make money off of me, they're free to send me a bill. If their content isn't valuable enough to sell directly, why should I waste my bandwidth and RAM monetizing their garbage? A world without Facebook and Google sounds wonderful. Sign me up; I'm willing to pay.
  - petercooper 11y ago
    It was called 1997. You can go back there by connecting over a 56k modem and using Netscape 2.
- devopsproject 11y ago
  You are forgetting one thing: Google ads were simple text and non-invasive. Ads today tell me to rotate my phone to play a full screen video, play noise, track me, hide content between 10 clicks,infect my computer with malware, etc. They can all die, no one will miss them.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  I've never cared about Google ads because they are totally unobtrusive. In fact, I actually have clicked on a Google ad at least a few times in the past. On the other hand, I have literally never clicked on a non-text ad on a browser, except accidentally due to some sort of dark patterns.
joesmo 11y ago
It says 'startup' but I don't see a business model or customers willing to pay for what they can already get free.
metafunctor 11y ago
Is anyone else concerned about the possibility that if ad blocking on the web becomes widespread enough, we will end up with more ads baked into the content itself? Native advertising, ads burned into images, ads burned in the middle of videos? Thinking selfishly, I would much prefer the status quo, where I can block most ads, but the majority of consumers don't do it. Current ad blocking tech is fine, I'm afraid this could become an arms race.
- BrendanEich 11y ago
  Native ads can be, and are today, blocked. Consider those ugly Taboola and Outbrain octoboxes with parasite pictures at the bottom of too many news stories these days. Those are just img in div HTML. But adblockers remove them with HTML rules (Brave will too). In general, you can Greasemonkey anything. Tracker-less first party native ads may be harder to match, but most sites would need tracking to aggregate audiences, to get better ads and revenue, so third party native is on the rise. And it is easy to block.
  - tomcam 11y ago
    Huge fan of Brendan, but this did not really address parent's point--which I think is valid, and unanswered. Most people don't use Greasemonkey-propelled solutions. I wonder if the answer is that highly targeted ads tend to work. When I'm on the guitar subreddit it'd be fine for me to see ads from Fender. And part of what I seek when I read a guitar magazine is ads, because they alert me to things that I sometimes don't find out about any other way. I also like the idea of paying to block ads that aren't relevant to me. I believe in a free market and totally understand that things have to be paid for. Sometimes ads are the answer, but I find many of the interstitials to be irrelevant and sometimes they slow the site down unacceptably. Would be willing to pay for this experience not to happen.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      We can't really have both ad relevance (outside the local context) and privacy. One requires the advertiser know things about me I personally have no desire for them to know. > Would be willing to pay for this experience not to happen. I don't know if I'm in the minority, but I'm honestly not willing to pay for that. Fact is, I use adblock right now, but if I couldn't use adblock on some sites I'd simply stop visiting them. I despise the ad-filled experience. I'm with the current top post and despise the idea of being constantly manipulated into buying things I do not need. If there were less ad overall on the internet, I wouldn't care about blocking them, but that's tragedy of the commons for you.
headgasket 11y ago
This is a worthy endeavour. I want to download and help test and develop this today. Helping deflate this ad-bubble before it turns into the "The Zero Theorem" is worth the effort. This however does not tackle the mindset shift that needs to occur for the masses to start protecting the private information they voluntarily give up on services they are signed in on the social net. We are currently working on a project that will use this information to the marketer's advantage in a way that will make people sick once they realize the extent of the profiling going on, with the ultimate goal of reversing the trend before it's too late. Make people raise their guards, sell some tech on the way.
threesixandnine 11y ago
Am I getting the message from their #about section correctly? They want to block ads that the person running a web site put on their web site with their own (Brave Ads Infused TM Ltd. Inc. - let's make some money while pretending we are freeing the world).
jagermo 11y ago
Playing the devils advocat: How Do you want to finance development in the lang run? It is a nice solution and I'd hate to see it go because of financial problems.
- devopsproject 11y ago
  try reading the "about" section
_pmf_ 11y ago
AdSense was considered the pinnacle of unobtrusive ads in the past.
MisterBastahrd 11y ago
So his business model is to hijack advertising and funnel it through his own little scheme, forcing publishers to pay him in order to get their customer's ads seen. Hope he loves getting his browser's user agent treated like Ebola.
ck2 11y ago
Does anyone else remember when adsense first launched and it was text-only ads? People would actually stop to read the ads because they were interesting and relevant. Then google caved to images and animation and 100+ objects on a page, each with their own tracking scripts to slow browsers to a crawl.
SeanDav 11y ago
If it can add top class security / anti tracking / anti fingerprinting, it would become far more compelling.
radmuzom 11y ago
So some bastard who supported anti-gay legislation has built a browser. And that makes the front page in Hacker News?
- dang 11y ago
  Comments like this are not welcome here, regardless of one's position on any issue. Please post civilly and substantively or not at all.
  - cbd1984 11y ago
    Do you disagree that Proposition 8 was anti-gay? More to the point, do people get flagged for saying it was anti-gay?
    - dang 11y ago
      It really isn't about the subject matter; you could fill in any other issue and the comment would be just as wrong for HN. We want civil, substantive, thoughtful conversation here.
bpodgursky 11y ago
Anyone OK with this business model should also be ok with ISPs stripping out ads and replacing them with their own content (remember that?) On the other hand, if this gets traction (unlikely, admittedly) this may finally force the issue to the courts and get content fiddling declared copyright/TOS violation. Which I'm not sure you all want.
- daxelrod 11y ago
  This is opt-in. I think more people would be OK with an ISP doing it if it were also opt-in.
kybernetikos 11y ago
Confused about this. Does it display adverts on pages belonging to organizations not using its network? That would be pretty ethically dubious in my book.
WhatIsDukkha 11y ago
If we took the name "Brendan Eich" and replaced it with "Comcast" more of us would find this entirely loathsome. Indeed it is a very loathsome business model. People have taken exception to it when ATT and Comcast inject ads into your browsing experience and when Adblock Plus removes and then reinjects them. Why is this not hijacking the web, extorting publishers with buy into yet another ad network and then trying to leverage this into a future payment network?
- CrowFly 11y ago
  I'm not sure Mr. Eich is liked any better than Comcast.
callmeed 11y ago
Maybe this is a stupid question, but ... if ad blocking is such an issue for publishers, why don't they do the ad-serving logic on the server and display locally saved creative assets (from the same host)?
- jrowley 11y ago
  Ads are most effective when they are personalized, and it's hard for site to personalize an ad for you if you don't visit it frequently and it isn't relying on cookies from other sites. It's definitely doable though...
- tomp 11y ago
  Also, an independent third party can't track such ads.
  - callmeed 11y ago
    That's good, right?
    - wsha 11y ago
      It's good for user privacy, but not good for the ad networks wanting to keep an accurate account of how many times their ads are being loaded.
adrianlmm 11y ago
Glad to see you back Brendan!
Animats 11y ago
So why do I have to "sign up" for this supposedly privacy-enhanced browser? They don't have a need to know who I am. "Then we put clean ads back". This is open source, right? It's on Github. Can someone fork this and remove all the ads? Thank you.
- tomp 11y ago
  Well, given that's it's a fork of Firefox itself, you could just un-fork it :)
  - Animats 11y ago
    Their site doesn't even mention that it's a fork of Firefox. I thought it was based on WebKit.
    - wldcordeiro 11y ago
      It's an electron shell app from looking at the desktop repo.
grizzles 11y ago
I'm the founder of a competitor in this space called Paymail.net. We're looking forward to battling it out in the marketplace with Brave and the traditional ad networks. I posted an intro on Hackernews 2 days ago, but we didn't make it to the front page. Our difference to Brave is that we give free ads to everyone, the advertiser only pays if the end user makes a purchase. Similiarly the display site gets nothing if there was no economic exchange. Capitalism is supposed to be a machine for you getting what you want. We want to help that process along. I have an uncompromising attitude that web/world ads should be for things that you really want to see, and then they become content. That might be a utopian vision today, but I have strong belief in the power of people's self interest to drive positive change. Edit: chrispm reposted the link here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10940684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10940684
dbg31415 11y ago
I really like just replacing my hosts file to block ads. http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts But I can't do that on my phone without jailbreaking it. Stupid phone.
e15ctr0n 11y ago
Though the team working on Brave seems to have a few ex-Mozilla engineers, they have chosen to fork browsers other Firefox. (Also, nice to see so many Canadians!) 'Brave browser promises faster Web by banishing intrusive ads' | Jan 20, 2016 http://www.cnet.com/news/ex-mozilla-ceo-try-braves-new-browser-for-a-faster-private-web/ http://www.cnet.com/news/ex-mozilla-ceo-try-braves-new-brows... > Eich and his team built Brave out of Chromium, which is the foundation for Google's Chrome browser, which leaves most of the actual development and security support to Google. Why not use Firefox, into which Eich poured so much effort? Because Chrome is more widely used and therefore better tested by developers who want to make sure their websites work properly, he said. "Chromium is the safe bet for us," he said. * The desktop browser is a cross-platform desktop application created with a fork of Github's Electron framework that is itself based on Node.js and Chromium. https://github.com/brave/electron https://github.com/brave/electron https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop * The iOS browser is a fork of Firefox for iOS, which is a Swift app developed from scratch by Mozilla. https://github.com/brave/browser-ios https://github.com/brave/browser-ios * The Android browser is Link Bubble, which is a wrapper around the default Android browser https://github.com/brave/browser-android https://github.com/brave/browser-android Previous HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7453897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7453897 Australian developer Chris Lacy announced its sale in Aug 2015: http://theblerg.net/post/2015/08/05/ive-sold-link-bubble-tappath-and-all-related-assets http://theblerg.net/post/2015/08/05/ive-sold-link-bubble-tap... * The ad blocking technology is courtesy a Node.js module of Adblock Plus filter that uses a bloom filter and Rabin-Karp algorithm for speed. https://github.com/bbondy/abp-filter-parser-cpp https://github.com/bbondy/abp-filter-parser-cpp * The database is MongoDB. https://github.com/brave/vault https://github.com/brave/vault Past news coverage: Mystery startup from ex-Mozilla CEO aims to go where tech titans won't | Nov 17, 2015 http://www.cnet.com/news/mystery-startup-from-ex-mozilla-ceo-aims-to-go-where-tech-titans-wont/ http://www.cnet.com/news/mystery-startup-from-ex-mozilla-ceo... Use Link Bubble to open links in the background on Android | Aug 26, 2015 http://www.cnet.com/how-to/use-link-bubble-to-open-links-in-the-background-on-android/ http://www.cnet.com/how-to/use-link-bubble-to-open-links-in-...
wespad 11y ago
That's funny. I also use NoScript, just to be extra cautious, and when I go to Brave.com, I don't see ANYTHING. I would hope that somebody claiming to want to fix the web would be able to serve up a page that doesn't need permission to execute a script.
CaptSpify 11y ago
Why a new browser, instead of plugins for existing browsers? I dislike ads, but there are already solutions for blocking them. Although I do like the premise of this, I'm not eager to switch browsers just to start supporting advertisers.
melted 11y ago
It is very brave of Brendan to pursue such an obviously dead-end idea.
pussinboots 11y ago
patreon but it allocates a percentage of however much you want to pay per month to the sites you visit relative to how much time you spent on them
desireco42 11y ago
I think this is great thing, it is right thing, that is coming from trustworthy person/company. Now, time will tell how things will play out, but I believe I can count on Brendan to make the right choices when it comes to features, compromises.
vhold 11y ago
> We make sure you aren't being tracked while you shop online and browse your favorite sites. That's not a realistic claim. Nothing is stopping publishers and advertisers from sharing back end data.
return0 11y ago
Sounds like a brave plan indeed. Good luck to them!
bootload 11y ago
"Brave is open source!" Wow, new browser technology that is open source, this is good news. I'm hoping the development focus is flexible, remember flock? [0] [0] https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/flock+browser https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/flock+browser
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
wildmXranat 11y ago
u
Plough_Jogger 11y ago
The surfer in the main slider has had his fins completely adblocked. https://www.brave.com/assets/img/sliders/revolution/surfers_bluewash_tan.jpg https://www.brave.com/assets/img/sliders/revolution/surfers_...
xjay 11y ago
Brave seems to acknowledge a smaller part of Ted Nelson's "Project Xanadu" [1], where you're paying to access content. From the Project Xanadu Wikipedia article: "9. Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies ("transclusions") of all or part of the document." Ted's approach is (in my view) also a deduplication effort, as you're citing the original content, tracing it back to its origin by reference. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
willherschel 11y ago
Brave wants to save me from intrusive 3rd-party trackers... but uses Chartbeat and Doubleclick on Brave.com?
CrowFly 11y ago
I don't mind ads. I block because they can and have been used as vectors for drive-by and zero-day attacks, even on otherwise reputable sites. I enable ads back on sites I trust thoroughly.
LeicaLatte 11y ago
Looks great! I have been running a open source blocker since WWDC and it is the right way to do things. Especially considering the state this space is in right now.
buro9 11y ago
Urgh, what happens for a site when there are no adverts on the site? Are "clean adverts" then placed on the site? If the answer to this is yes, I'll be blocking the user-agent from my sites. I serve cache:no-transform and HTTPS to specifically prevent people mucking around with the page. I already deliver a fast and clean website. This reminds me of when Virgin Media in the UK (an ISP) wanted to put adverts on pages without my permission. It really isn't a help.
Fice 11y ago
I do not use ad blockers because I want to see how the owners of a website I'm interacting with really treat their users. I do not want to help some crappy web site to look better and more trustable to me than it really is. Don't like ads on a website — just go elsewhere.
rameshvel 11y ago
There is no mention about licences.. For desktop/iOS, it uses chrome(electron)/mozilla(firefox-ios).. But no mention about the android one (linkbubble) It would be great if they clarify the terms & licences in the FAQ
tincholio 11y ago
So, creating Javascript, hating on gay people, and now an ad company... this guy really wants people to hate him!
outsidetheparty 11y ago
The more I read through the Brave website the more it feels like this is actually vastly worse than the status quo. All quotes are directly from the FAQ: "We do not even have access to identifiable user data". Except for the "in-browser targeting engine" which has "substantially more information about the user's activity available to it than traditional tracking methods", which are stored in the browser and then exposed to advertisers "to maximize user, publisher and advertiser value." "Each ad request is anonymous, and exposes only a small subset of the user's preferences and intent signals to prevent 'fingerprinting' the user by a possibly unique set of tags". Except that the only reason advertisers need to fingerprint the user is in order to collect enough information to decide which ads to serve to them, which is precisely what they'd be getting from Brave (and then some.) Great, that information is stored in the browser instead of the cloud, and only subsets of it are exposed to the advertisers for each request -- but that doesn't benefit the end user at all. It benefits Brave, by maintaining their middleman position as the de facto controller of which advertisers gets access to that data. "We block trackers, that’s a big win compared to the status quo." It is! For Brave. Because the whole browser is now an ad tracker. Ok, the data is keyed to a UUID instead of a name or other "personally identifiable information". How does that benefit the end user? In no way at all. Throughout the site is repeated handwaving about how nothing is sent in the clear, they don't even have the encryption keys, nothing is personally identifiable, but none of that matters, because the end result is the same. It's still an ad tracker designed to enable targeted advertising. But with much, much more data to work with than in existing browsers. Offloading the tracking work into the client instead of doing it server-side is just misdirection. And how about those content creators? "Our goal is to make better revenue for all publishers," they say, but I see no explanation of how stripping out websites' individual ad sales and replacing them with Brave's benefits the publishers. Congratulations! Brave's "revenue sharing" program means your ad space is worth 55% of what it used to be! [1] Oh, don't worry, they'll get around to building a micropayments scheme someday, which they'll also take a share of. This is just. I mean. Gah. Flames. On the side of my face. [1] (I can't find that figure on their site, but it's quoted here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/267089/new-browser-offers-brave-solution-to-ad-blocking.html http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/267089/new-bro... "...revenue derived by selling ads through Brave will be split four ways: 15% each will be distributed to the user, to Sonobi and to Brave, with 55% allocated to publishers.")
privateproperty 11y ago
I do not trust them. If they really cared about privacy they woul d not have pulled scripts and fonts from bunch of 3rd party sites. Sorry Brendan you failed the first test. I wont adapt to Brave.

667 points by Seldaek 11y ago

abhv 11y ago

How will Brave prevent anti-ad-blocking mechanisms from interfering with the page? For example, cbs/abc/nbc seem to detect muBlock and then stop serving content.

kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
This is the most annoying thing about ad blocking going mainstream. It was a rare site that bothered to detect us before Apple got into the game.
- Nursie 11y ago
  Personally I think it's very healthy and marks the beginning of the next stage of the web - how does it work in a post-advertising world?
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    If the various stages of the arms race have been any indication so far it tends to get worse rather than better with every stage so far, which does not lead me to believe there will be a 'post advertising world', only a 'more annoying and harder to get rid of / ignore advertising world'.
    - Nursie 11y ago
      Well it's true, it has been an arms race, but until recently it's been between relatively small numbers of blockers and the advertisers. Now that Apple have taken it more mainstream it's going to be interesting to watch what happens. But you might be right, sadly. More of the same and worse...
  - woah 11y ago
    Randomized ad unit class names?
    - Klathmon 11y ago
      and/or ad-proxies that run off the same domain, more integrated and less "blockable" ads (like sponsored stories and in-content ad reads), complicated and bloated JS ad-blocker-blockers (or ad-blocker-detectors), even more complicated ad-blocking code (which can already have a pretty significant performance impact on some sites), and more. It's a race to the bottom now boys, and the most invasive ad companies are going to win!
  - sevensor 11y ago
    Ads become integrated with, and indistinguishable from, copy.
- lmm 11y ago
  I found web adverts got a lot more annoying after Firefox started including a pop-up blocker by default. That was when we started seeing pop-unders, animated Flash ads and all that.
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    I've been saying for years that blockers just remove the good guys. What's the point in trying to make a safe, non-tracking, curated ad network when you will just be blocked by everyone anyway? All adblockers do its turn the game into a race to the bottom. Whoever can get the most invasive ads past the most blockers is the winner. Any company that isn't willing to play dirty will be left behind. Content creators won't push for the good guys because they need money, ad networks are between a rock and a hard-place, and users will say they want "nice" ad networks while simultaneously blocking all ads regardless of where they come from (and will fight against things like the "allow acceptable ads" checkbox in adblock)
    - rockdoe 11y ago
      I think you just described why Mozilla was pushing for Tracking Protection (blocking only "bad" ads) and didn't do Brave.
      - Klathmon 11y ago
        even widespread Tracking Protection isn't the answer IMO. I personally want to be tracked on some things. I want ads that are relevant to me instead of ads that cater to the lowest common denominator. I want websites to be able to view my usage and cater to my wants/needs without me having to spend time trying to fill out surveys on how i use their service (and probably remember things wrong), I want automated recommendations for things that i might like without me having to spend hours curating my own content. I don't want invasive 3rd parties getting ahold of my information, "push" advertising like cold-calls, emails, push notifications, or physical mail, and i don't want sensitive information being collected and shared. Sadly nobody ever tries to make that distinction, it's always "everything" or "nothing".
notahacker 11y ago
Presumably it makes it easier to do so. To be honest, if I was running a media company I'd be rather more inclined to block/redirect users of browsers designed to inject replacement "good" ads into my page than worry about users on a mainstream browser who happen to be using a plugin.

rockdoe 11y ago

https://github.com/brave/browser-ios https://github.com/brave/browser-ios "Firefox for iOS" They forgot to remove the branding from their "new" browser.

m52go 11y ago
It's not a mistake. Firefox is referenced throughout the documentation. Looks like Brave is built on top of it.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  Venturebeat claims it's based on Chromium, but they also seem to be pretty confused because they're calling it "a brand new browser, because (builing on top of existing browsers) would imply limited functionality by virtue of their application programming interfaces (APIs) and less impressive performance gains" http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/20/brave-browser/ http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/20/brave-browser/ So it's Chrome on Desktop, Firefox for iOS on iOS?
  - reubenmorais 11y ago
    It's based on GitHub's Electron (Chromium) on desktop, and Firefox for iOS on iOS: http://www.brianbondy.com/blog/172/brave-software http://www.brianbondy.com/blog/172/brave-software
  - ainar-g 11y ago
    Firefox on iOS is built with WebKit, not Gecko [1]. IIRC, it's because Apple doesn't like engines that are not WebKit. Chromium uses Blink, which is a fork of WebKit, so Firefox for iOS and Chromium are relatives in a sense. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS.
- sp332 11y ago
  Mozilla is very protective of their trademark though. You're supposed to replace their branding with your own before distributing your modified code.

indus 11y ago

This para from their home page could be akin to legalizing marijuana! "The new Brave browser blocks all the greed and ugliness on the Web that slows you down and invades your privacy. Then we put clean ads back."

kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
Sounds more like substituting "clean" methadone in place of heroin.

jorangreef 11y ago

I would much prefer a new browser that makes true native web apps possible with a one-click install to indicate trust. A browser built with Electron that exposes Node.js and otherwise keeps away from the HTML5 kitchen sink, in order to push innovation away from the spec committees and back out to the community. Vital technology like TCP, UDP, DNS, and the filesystem is being locked up behind a fascade of poorly implemented APIs. A browser with a small, efficient core, optimized for rendering, and with a brilliant app install system, and brilliant native cross-platform integration. The time is ripe.

srpeck 11y ago
Agreed on the idea, not necessarily the implementation. I have 2 modes when browsing - reading (docs, news, etc.) or using an application (Gmail, banking, etc.). I do not want to download a >2MB application just to read 1000 words (hence why I wrote this Chrome extension https://github.com/srpeck/readingmode https://github.com/srpeck/readingmode). And when I am using a web application, I would like more say over what it can do and when/if I have to update it - more the Chrome app/extension model. Plus, as a developer I would really like this model, as it allows the browser to open up even more of the operating system functions, especially the file system, leading to less workarounds.
matthewtoast 11y ago
Are you aware of any existing, serious effort to build such a thing? I love the idea - and it strongly appeals to me as a developer - but what would make the average user switch to it?
- jorangreef 11y ago
  Developers would drive adoption. I think adoption of new browsers has usually been driven by developers.
- meanduck 11y ago
  > Are you aware of any existing, serious effort to build such a thing? NaCl (>90% of native performence) comes to mind. Too bad NaCl apps can only be downloaded via chrome web store not by visiting url like PNaCl (~10% of native performence).

chejazi 11y ago

Haven't looked at the source but worth noting there's a Bitcoin logo on the homepage near "Browse Better."

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

jacquesm 11y ago
Pet peeve: accounts with < 10 karma and 1 submission to their name that complain about what is news and is not news.

Touche 11y ago

The scrolling on this website is janky as hell. Looks like they are using some "Smooth scrolling" plugin that makes scrolling not smooth at all. Not sure why native browser scrolling was insufficient for them, I'm scrolling here in HN all the time and it's perfectly smooth.

Jgrubb 11y ago
Smooth scrolling plugins are vastly more offensive to me than most advertising.
- patates 11y ago
  I really wonder who thought adding lag to a primary browser interaction would make your pages better.
davnn 11y ago
True.. smooth scrolling is only useful for the 5% of users that have a broken or bad touchpad. The dev had one of those I guess :-)
frou_dh 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739
- Touche 11y ago
  I disagree, in this case. This website is from the creator of JavaScript, about a product that is meant to solve, in his words: But the Web today faces a primal threat. And that threat is the web's ad-driven monetization. This site suffers from the same fundamental problem; the owners of it don't care too much about it. It has 114 requests , 3.8MB of content and takes 4 seconds to load. I can't imagine Eich had anything to do with this site or even approved it. I'm guessing he is focused on the company's core product and let Marketing or someone else take care of the site. They then hired the cheapest design firm they could find on Elance, who then outsourced the work to an even cheaper freelancer who took the requirements and plugged together a dozen different jQuery plugins that he/she uses on every project and shipped it as quickly as possible. Because in that business you don't make any money if you spend any more than the absolute minimum amount of time on a project. I mean, they didn't even concat any of their javascript or css. This is web development from the mid-2000s. It truly saddens me that a company with a noble vision couldn't afford to hire a single web developer who is up on modern practices and has good judgment on quality to put this together; would have taken then a week, tops.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

hapless 11y ago

It sounds like their plan is to block all ads, then sell the new ad inventory created by all the blank space on pages. Why on earth would users want this browser?

jacquesm 11y ago
Well, the logical extension of that is that you actually get paid to browse, that might be a gamechanger. Keep in mind that the supply side right now ends at the owner of the web property that starts the ball rolling when in fact it actually starts with the person sitting behind the computer looking at the page. So this is a giant cut-out-the-middle-men opportunity and Eich is fairly uniquely positioned to take advantage of that. Wonder if that rev-share idea is part of the long term plan.
- strictnein 11y ago
  We tried the "paid to browse" thing 15-20 years ago. Didn't go so well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_to_surf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_to_surf
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Times have changed since then and it definitely would not be the first time that something that fell flat out of the gate the first time became a success the second time around. Lots of current successes are actually just warmed over past failures. That's not proof in any way that this might succeed now but there is something to be said or giving that a shot with the number of eyeballs available today (and the harder to advertise to markets that have been unlocked by the web but where ad agencies are not yet capable of selling inventory). If you could centralize that through the browser it would be a fairly powerful strategy if adoption would be large enough (that's the crux), which is why I wondered if it was on their roadmap.
    - lsc 11y ago
      huh. See, I thought the reason it failed last time,besides fraud[1], was a broader reason - it's the same reason paid surveys aren't worth very much. the idea is that the people you want to advertise to are precisely the people who are willing to trade money for their time; the opposite of the people you get when you pay folks to watch advertising. [1], in 1998, I seem to remember that one of my co-workers had installed a thing on his work computer that would move the mouse and "browse" the internet when he wasn't there, getting paid for seeing ads.

st3fan 11y ago

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." To be fair, Firefox for iOS is open source. Take it, remix it, improve it. It is all good. Mozilla Public License.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

Its by the same guy who donated to causes doing their best to make sure two people in love can't get married due to their gender. Sociopathy has many forms and its obvious to me that Eich is just an untrustworthy guy with a lot of bad ideas. Low-rent projects like these is just further evidence that you need a founder/leader you can trust. Its clear he's exhausted his social capital and at age 54 is far away from his innovative days. This seems like a low-class cash-in now that ad blocking has gone mainstream, like a world-class athlete now a spokesperson for payday loans or basic car insurance. Replacing ads with your own is something we fought against ISPs doing, yet somehow when Eich does it, everyone is enamored with it? Come the fuck on. This was a bad idea in the past and its a bad idea now.

rmc 11y ago
The percentage of sociopathy does not match the percentage of homophobes opposed to marriage equality, a number which has changed a lot in living memory.
- LordKano 11y ago
  Virtually no one was opposed to marriage equality. Many people were and are opposed to the judicial redefinition of marriage.
  - coldpie 11y ago
    Uh, no, don't try to rewrite history. The attacks were directed at gay people. Quoting this article: Early on, Prop 8’s supporters decided to focus their campaign primarily on children, stoking parents’ fears about gay people brainwashing their kids with pro-gay messages or, implicitly, turning their children gay. Another notorious commercial shows an earnest school administrator fretting that a “new health curriculum” that mentions gay marriage will “mess up” children with reference to “gay attraction.” This message of belittlement cut across pretty much every pro-Prop 8 ad—ads that ran incessantly in the state for months. The campaign’s strategy was to debase gay families as deviant and unhealthy while insinuating that gay people are engaged in a full-scale campaign to convert children to their cause. http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_supported_prop_8_which_was_worse_than_you_remember.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_s...

tomp 11y ago

I don't see any reason I would prefer this over the native iOS ad blocking (with an appropriate blacklist).

linksbro 11y ago

Please fix the links to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. These should always be the first documents working on your startup's website. And can anyone find this 'roadmap' that Eich talks about in the post?

RobertDeNiro 11y ago

I wonder how much they paid for the domain name.

mirap 11y ago

Have you seen git of desktop version? It seems it's completely written in JavaScript: https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop Could such thing be secure?

tdb7893 11y ago
It could be. Whether it is is very suspect, though
rockdoe 11y ago
JavaScript engines have to run untrusted code from the web 24/7. They're some of the most secured software in existance.

iza 11y ago

> With Brave, you can choose whether to see ads that respect your privacy or pay sites directly. Either way, you can feel good about helping fund content creators. How do they plan on doing that? Not like it hasn't been tried before. The problem is you can't collect money on someone's behalf without them opting in, and if it is opt-in only you get the chicken and the egg problem for adoption.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
>or pay sites directly. Call me crazy, but if I wanted to "pay the site" I'm using I'd just allow their ads. This company is really sleezy. Its playing the "replace their ads with ours" game and trying to make it sound like some wonderful moral position against advertising. People aren't this stupid. This thing isn't going to catch on.
- michael_h 11y ago
  If you allow the site's ads, you are also allowing the ad network they use to track you. The point of this browser is to factor out random third-party ad networks. If you elect to see ads on the site, they are presumably served by Brave. The site still gets paid (so it's not like the ISP's replacing ads on the fly), but you don't have to worry about unknown trackers following you around the internet and putting a strain on your CPU. Whether it will catch on is another question...

anotherhacker 11y ago

I'm doubtful of this taking off. People stick with the default apps and settings. The average person just really doesn't care that much about this kind of thing. Maybe enterprise or businesses will like it - so they can avoid their employees visit whitelisted sites that mistakenly have malicious code in the ads. Eg. Flash

rockdoe 11y ago
I'm doubtful of this taking off. People stick with the default apps and settings. Firefox overcame that disadvantage about 10 years ago. You could say Chrome did too (though nowadays Chrome is bundled so much it no longer applies).
- anotherhacker 11y ago
  Overcame...and then lost it. "Firefox's total user share -- an amalgamation of desktop and mobile -- was 9.5%" Firefox gained marketshare 10 years ago b/c most internet users were still early adopters. There people were more tech savvy and into open source. Source: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2893514/an-incredibly-shrinking-firefox-faces-endangered-species-status.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2893514/an-incredibly-s...
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    Firefox gained marketshare 10 years ago b/c most internet users were still early adopters. There people were more tech savvy and into open source. That's a really interesting point. Makes it clear how high the bar is for new entrants.
roneesh 11y ago
I'm not so sure that the average person won't care. They are increasingly aware of how much they pay for data on their phone plans, and how crossing limits decreases their speeds. After a big bill or two, people start looking for options.
- 11y ago

vladikoff 11y ago

From a quick glance: 1) Desktop browser is an electron app with ad tracking injected into your app via http://cdn.brave.com/ http://cdn.brave.com/ (via https://sonobi.com/welcome/index.php https://sonobi.com/welcome/index.php which promises "EFFECTIVELY PLAN AND SOURCE MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES WITH QUALITY AND VIEWABILITY FROM PREMIUM PUBLISHERS" 2) iOS browser is a fork of Firefox iOS - https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios 3) Android browser is a fork of https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linkbubble.playstore&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linkbubble...

linksbro 11y ago
Looks like Eich is on the Advisory Board of sonobi. [1] [1] https://sonobi.com/welcome/company.php https://sonobi.com/welcome/company.php Edit: Removed comments about the diversity of sonobi, as they're not really relevant to the discussion.
- dominotw 11y ago
  not this garbage again.
- StavrosK 11y ago
  ELEVEN people in tech being white males?! Whew, what are the odds of that!
- jhawins 11y ago
  They're just trying to make more money... Go figure!
drdaeman 11y ago
Is Linkbubble free software, or they just made some agreement with author to use/rebrand it? (I always assumed it's proprietary, but seeing that others are FLOSS forks, would love to be wrong about this one.)
- david2777 11y ago

zmanian 11y ago

The biggest challenge of micropayments is how to minimize the cognitive load of making many tiny payments. How should the user agent decide when to alert the user?

jscheel 11y ago

Can they block scroll-jacking too?

jordigh 11y ago

I will repeat this one more time, because Eich seems to be missing the point.[1] I don't adblock for privacy, security, or speed. Those are just nice-side effects. I adblock because I do not want to be manipulated into buying things I do not need. I wonder what would happen if, as a society, we said, "enough, no more ads". Would it really be the capitalist apocalypse that the ad industry is trying to make us believe it would be? -- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10244964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10244964

needz 11y ago
I'd rather have ads I can block than "sponsored content" which may or may not even be labelled as such.
FredFredrickson 11y ago
If this were attempted, I think we'd have a LOT of talk about what truly is an ad and what isn't. I mean, the web banners and billboards we see every day don't do a lot to actually sell products. But your friend telling you they really love a particular product helps a lot. But in a society where a movement such as you've described was in motion, would both be equally as bad? Are both not manipulative in their own way?
- jordigh 11y ago
  I'm thinking something like what São Paulo implemented, https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/73/Sao_Paulo_A_City_Without_Ads.html https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/73/Sao_Paulo_A_City_Witho... Or, perhaps, you only get ads when requested. "I'm in the market for a new refrigerator. Please show me ads for refrigerators." But still, I have a fundamental problem with how all advertising has a slant, and at least a hint of a lie or manipulation. I do not like being lied to or manipulated, but I don't know what the alternative would be.
  - lmm 11y ago
    The followup article I saw here a few months ago suggested that Sao Paulo hasn't found that entirely successful, and has allowed a significant amount of advertising back.

jsvaughan 11y ago

Surely we are soon going to see server side ad-injection and the end of ad blocking

anonx 11y ago
That doesn't work well with AD networks though. Site owners will either have to use links of the form: siteOfAdNetwork.com?id=smthhere and it still will be possible to block them. Or AD network will be unable to check the number of clicks.
- jsvaughan 11y ago
  ad links could be via redirects from the hosting site, intercepted by the web server plugin. personalisation would be a problem, because you won't have a cookie, but there is always device fingerprint etc I agree it isn't quite as good but it is possible to make ads indistinguishable from legitimate site content.
  - anonx 11y ago
    Will the site redirect to AD network? If so, it is still easily blockable. AdBlocker can preload suspicious links and if they redirect to siteOfAdNetwork.com block them. The only option I see here is to have some kind of click counter both on the web-master's (who monetizes) and client's (who advertises) web-sites. And the counters' numbers will be sent (using server-side) to the AD Network. But that doesn't work if the client wants to advertise not his/her web-side (where AD network's script can be installed) but Facebook profile or something like that. Alternatively, AD network can charge not for number of clicks but for alternative parameters (e.g., number of days AD is published). Though, still not easy (no guarantees) to check whether web-master who's monetizing his/her web-site doesn't cheat.

xyzzy4 11y ago

But I want to block all advertising, not just harmful advertising.

whyagaindavid 11y ago
100 % agree. I have been using webview or Chromewebview to whitelist all the sites that I browse. See https://github.com/tobykurien/WebApps https://github.com/tobykurien/WebApps I can browse with 56Kbps on the way to my work even in suburbs with poor 2G.

smanuel 11y ago

Someone should make a browser that blocks "Everybody can earn xxx$+ daily... You can earn from ..." spam comments. I think I've seen those mostly through the FB comments plugin. Obviously FB can't / doesn't want to fix that.

orliesaurus 11y ago

hahahahahahaha and this is why I use the meanest adblocking oss software i can find on my devices

runjake 11y ago

The first question that pops into my head is "How is Brave going to monetize?". They've received substantial investor money, so apparently they have something lucrative in mind. And it's probably not good for privacy-conscious end users.

chippy 11y ago
They are monetizing by....advertising! They substitute bad ads for their ads.
devopsproject 11y ago
They seem to be swapping invasive ads for non-invasive ones or giving you the option to pay sites via a micro transaction?

Brakenshire 11y ago

I was just reading some web performance audits by Paul Irish: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K-mKOqiUiSjgZTEscBLjtjd6E67oiK8H2ztOiq5tigk/pub https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K-mKOqiUiSjgZTEscBLjtjd6... One of things he mentions on one of the sites, is Adsense looking at every scroll event, and doing tracking work which takes 25ms on a smartphone (his smartphone, likely to be high end). That means your scrolling performance is going to be inherently bad, probably below 30 fps one you take into account other work associated with the browser or the site. Having a browser which takes out this kind of code, but doesn't break the business model of the website owner does seem like an interesting idea. It seems like a major part of the mobile web is half-broken for these kind of reasons.

jensen123 11y ago

It's great to see more people working to solve the problem of intrusive ads! I wonder what exactly they mean by intrusive ads, though? I hope it's more than just ads that don't respect your privacy. To me an ad is intrusive if it has any kind of movement or animation. Anything that moves automatically attracts my attention, so this is very annoying if I'm trying to read something. I don't mind ads in print magazines so much (other than the fact that print magazines are unlikely to write negative stuff about companies that advertise with them). Ads in print magazines are ok with me, because there's no movement on them. So I can easily read one page, even though the next page has a full page ad. They mention standard sized spaces and faster browsing. I actually wouldn't mind large ads - like something taking up my whole screen - that I can scroll through. Back in the 90s, it probably made sense to have small 468x60 pixel banner ads, but as fast Internet connections are becoming more and more common, I don't really see the point of restricting the size anymore. Large full page ads aren't really a problem in print magazines, and I don't think it would be on the web either, if we just got rid of the animations.

devopsproject 11y ago
I'm seeing a lot of adds that ask me to rotate my phone so they can show me a video ad. It is getting ridiculous.
Nitramp 11y ago
If other companies in the space are an indication (e.g. AdBlock Plus), "intrusive ads" are defined as ads that don't pay them, but somebody else.

devy 11y ago

Due to Brave's ad-block technology, I guess Brendan Eich will be blocked[1] by IAB from their annual conferences. (every pun intended.) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10937704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10937704

shmerl 11y ago

Is it using Servo?

rockdoe 11y ago
No, it's using Chrome, Firefox for iOS and LinkBubble.
- shmerl 11y ago
  That's not fun. But I guess Servo isn't ready yet. But why aren't they using Gecko for example with IPC embedlite?

abercromby 11y ago

Man that logo is similar to Workfront's: https://www.workfront.com https://www.workfront.com

rockdoe 11y ago
Workfront's trademark doesn't seem to be an issue for Brave due to different use fields. Looks like Eich can't make a calendaring app though :-)

Kristine1975 11y ago

What's with the requests to static.doubleclick.net on that page?

ifdefdebug 11y ago

My ublock add-on blocks exactly 5 requests from their home page... so why would I want to install their browser?

puppetmaster3 11y ago

This will be banned by app stores and such and quickly.

lumberjack 11y ago

Where is the incentive for the user to use this thing?

chippy 11y ago
their pages load quicker on desktop and on mobile saving time and battery

juandazapata 11y ago

It's funny when AdBlock tells you that brave.com has 2 blocked Ads. Oh the irony.

phaed 11y ago
ABP > AB.
rorykoehler 11y ago
uBlock Origin is blocking 6 assets/sources
gtk40 11y ago
I didn't know AdBlock was still out. I've gone from AB->ABP->AB Edge->uBlock->uBlock Origin. The last one blocks three times as many elements.

ebbv 11y ago

This seems awful from a content provider perspective. I no longer get to have control over my own content, Brave gets to decide for me how much my content is worth and what ads appear on my site. This isn't that far removed from coming into a bakery and saying "The Cupcakes are no longer $2, they're $1.50 'coz that's what we think people want to pay." I realize the idea is that this is "better" for the content providers than Ad Block, but both are, IMHO stupid. If a site you visit has ads you don't like, complain to the people who run the site and stop going to it. All Ad Block software has never been a fix, merely a tool in an ever escalating war of ads where users and content creators both lose.

webjprgm 11y ago

A few thoughts: (1) If they block tracking, does it block Google Analytics? Because that would annoy me as a website owner. (2) The reason I don't pay subscriptions to sites like Wall Street Journal and NY Times is that I get my content from aggregators like Hacker News so I only go to one of those paid sites if I follow an occasional link. Micropayments would fix that if I could pay one company a $5/mo subscription to then have payments automatically dolled out to a select list of good sites until my $5 was used up (then maybe ask me each time after that, or something). (3) They talk about avoiding the ad-blocking war, but they are just contributing to it. I guess what they think is that by making a way for the website owner to get paid they avoid some of the war, but many companies like to be in direct control of their money so they might not like a middleman sitting on the high way charging everyone a tax to pass. And if Brave doesn't charge something for its services then it has no business model, so I'm assuming they are not passing 100% of revenue on to the site owner.

acheron 11y ago
If they block tracking, does it block Google Analytics? That's one of the biggest trackers out there, so it would be a pretty poor blocker if it didn't.

lossolo 11y ago

You all are forgetting one thing. Without ads google would not exist, without ads facebook couldn't exist and expand, make research. If everybody will block ads then you will see decline in free sites.

stonogo 11y ago
I have never forgotten this. It's my primary motivating factor in mercilessly blocking ads and ad servers, both within my browser and at my routers, both at home and at work. If someone wants to make money off of me, they're free to send me a bill. If their content isn't valuable enough to sell directly, why should I waste my bandwidth and RAM monetizing their garbage? A world without Facebook and Google sounds wonderful. Sign me up; I'm willing to pay.
- petercooper 11y ago
  It was called 1997. You can go back there by connecting over a 56k modem and using Netscape 2.
devopsproject 11y ago
You are forgetting one thing: Google ads were simple text and non-invasive. Ads today tell me to rotate my phone to play a full screen video, play noise, track me, hide content between 10 clicks,infect my computer with malware, etc. They can all die, no one will miss them.
chris_wot 11y ago
I've never cared about Google ads because they are totally unobtrusive. In fact, I actually have clicked on a Google ad at least a few times in the past. On the other hand, I have literally never clicked on a non-text ad on a browser, except accidentally due to some sort of dark patterns.

joesmo 11y ago

It says 'startup' but I don't see a business model or customers willing to pay for what they can already get free.

metafunctor 11y ago

Is anyone else concerned about the possibility that if ad blocking on the web becomes widespread enough, we will end up with more ads baked into the content itself? Native advertising, ads burned into images, ads burned in the middle of videos? Thinking selfishly, I would much prefer the status quo, where I can block most ads, but the majority of consumers don't do it. Current ad blocking tech is fine, I'm afraid this could become an arms race.

BrendanEich 11y ago
Native ads can be, and are today, blocked. Consider those ugly Taboola and Outbrain octoboxes with parasite pictures at the bottom of too many news stories these days. Those are just img in div HTML. But adblockers remove them with HTML rules (Brave will too). In general, you can Greasemonkey anything. Tracker-less first party native ads may be harder to match, but most sites would need tracking to aggregate audiences, to get better ads and revenue, so third party native is on the rise. And it is easy to block.
- tomcam 11y ago
  Huge fan of Brendan, but this did not really address parent's point--which I think is valid, and unanswered. Most people don't use Greasemonkey-propelled solutions. I wonder if the answer is that highly targeted ads tend to work. When I'm on the guitar subreddit it'd be fine for me to see ads from Fender. And part of what I seek when I read a guitar magazine is ads, because they alert me to things that I sometimes don't find out about any other way. I also like the idea of paying to block ads that aren't relevant to me. I believe in a free market and totally understand that things have to be paid for. Sometimes ads are the answer, but I find many of the interstitials to be irrelevant and sometimes they slow the site down unacceptably. Would be willing to pay for this experience not to happen.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    We can't really have both ad relevance (outside the local context) and privacy. One requires the advertiser know things about me I personally have no desire for them to know. > Would be willing to pay for this experience not to happen. I don't know if I'm in the minority, but I'm honestly not willing to pay for that. Fact is, I use adblock right now, but if I couldn't use adblock on some sites I'd simply stop visiting them. I despise the ad-filled experience. I'm with the current top post and despise the idea of being constantly manipulated into buying things I do not need. If there were less ad overall on the internet, I wouldn't care about blocking them, but that's tragedy of the commons for you.

headgasket 11y ago

This is a worthy endeavour. I want to download and help test and develop this today. Helping deflate this ad-bubble before it turns into the "The Zero Theorem" is worth the effort. This however does not tackle the mindset shift that needs to occur for the masses to start protecting the private information they voluntarily give up on services they are signed in on the social net. We are currently working on a project that will use this information to the marketer's advantage in a way that will make people sick once they realize the extent of the profiling going on, with the ultimate goal of reversing the trend before it's too late. Make people raise their guards, sell some tech on the way.

threesixandnine 11y ago

Am I getting the message from their #about section correctly? They want to block ads that the person running a web site put on their web site with their own (Brave Ads Infused TM Ltd. Inc. - let's make some money while pretending we are freeing the world).

jagermo 11y ago

Playing the devils advocat: How Do you want to finance development in the lang run? It is a nice solution and I'd hate to see it go because of financial problems.

devopsproject 11y ago
try reading the "about" section

_pmf_ 11y ago

AdSense was considered the pinnacle of unobtrusive ads in the past.

MisterBastahrd 11y ago

So his business model is to hijack advertising and funnel it through his own little scheme, forcing publishers to pay him in order to get their customer's ads seen. Hope he loves getting his browser's user agent treated like Ebola.

ck2 11y ago

Does anyone else remember when adsense first launched and it was text-only ads? People would actually stop to read the ads because they were interesting and relevant. Then google caved to images and animation and 100+ objects on a page, each with their own tracking scripts to slow browsers to a crawl.

SeanDav 11y ago

If it can add top class security / anti tracking / anti fingerprinting, it would become far more compelling.

radmuzom 11y ago

So some bastard who supported anti-gay legislation has built a browser. And that makes the front page in Hacker News?

dang 11y ago
Comments like this are not welcome here, regardless of one's position on any issue. Please post civilly and substantively or not at all.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  Do you disagree that Proposition 8 was anti-gay? More to the point, do people get flagged for saying it was anti-gay?
  - dang 11y ago
    It really isn't about the subject matter; you could fill in any other issue and the comment would be just as wrong for HN. We want civil, substantive, thoughtful conversation here.

bpodgursky 11y ago

Anyone OK with this business model should also be ok with ISPs stripping out ads and replacing them with their own content (remember that?) On the other hand, if this gets traction (unlikely, admittedly) this may finally force the issue to the courts and get content fiddling declared copyright/TOS violation. Which I'm not sure you all want.

daxelrod 11y ago
This is opt-in. I think more people would be OK with an ISP doing it if it were also opt-in.

kybernetikos 11y ago

Confused about this. Does it display adverts on pages belonging to organizations not using its network? That would be pretty ethically dubious in my book.

WhatIsDukkha 11y ago

If we took the name "Brendan Eich" and replaced it with "Comcast" more of us would find this entirely loathsome. Indeed it is a very loathsome business model. People have taken exception to it when ATT and Comcast inject ads into your browsing experience and when Adblock Plus removes and then reinjects them. Why is this not hijacking the web, extorting publishers with buy into yet another ad network and then trying to leverage this into a future payment network?

CrowFly 11y ago
I'm not sure Mr. Eich is liked any better than Comcast.

callmeed 11y ago

Maybe this is a stupid question, but ... if ad blocking is such an issue for publishers, why don't they do the ad-serving logic on the server and display locally saved creative assets (from the same host)?

jrowley 11y ago
Ads are most effective when they are personalized, and it's hard for site to personalize an ad for you if you don't visit it frequently and it isn't relying on cookies from other sites. It's definitely doable though...
tomp 11y ago
Also, an independent third party can't track such ads.
- callmeed 11y ago
  That's good, right?
  - wsha 11y ago
    It's good for user privacy, but not good for the ad networks wanting to keep an accurate account of how many times their ads are being loaded.

adrianlmm 11y ago

Glad to see you back Brendan!

Animats 11y ago

So why do I have to "sign up" for this supposedly privacy-enhanced browser? They don't have a need to know who I am. "Then we put clean ads back". This is open source, right? It's on Github. Can someone fork this and remove all the ads? Thank you.

tomp 11y ago
Well, given that's it's a fork of Firefox itself, you could just un-fork it :)
- Animats 11y ago
  Their site doesn't even mention that it's a fork of Firefox. I thought it was based on WebKit.
  - wldcordeiro 11y ago
    It's an electron shell app from looking at the desktop repo.

grizzles 11y ago

I'm the founder of a competitor in this space called Paymail.net. We're looking forward to battling it out in the marketplace with Brave and the traditional ad networks. I posted an intro on Hackernews 2 days ago, but we didn't make it to the front page. Our difference to Brave is that we give free ads to everyone, the advertiser only pays if the end user makes a purchase. Similiarly the display site gets nothing if there was no economic exchange. Capitalism is supposed to be a machine for you getting what you want. We want to help that process along. I have an uncompromising attitude that web/world ads should be for things that you really want to see, and then they become content. That might be a utopian vision today, but I have strong belief in the power of people's self interest to drive positive change. Edit: chrispm reposted the link here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10940684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10940684

dbg31415 11y ago

I really like just replacing my hosts file to block ads. http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts But I can't do that on my phone without jailbreaking it. Stupid phone.

e15ctr0n 11y ago

Though the team working on Brave seems to have a few ex-Mozilla engineers, they have chosen to fork browsers other Firefox. (Also, nice to see so many Canadians!) 'Brave browser promises faster Web by banishing intrusive ads' | Jan 20, 2016 http://www.cnet.com/news/ex-mozilla-ceo-try-braves-new-browser-for-a-faster-private-web/ http://www.cnet.com/news/ex-mozilla-ceo-try-braves-new-brows... > Eich and his team built Brave out of Chromium, which is the foundation for Google's Chrome browser, which leaves most of the actual development and security support to Google. Why not use Firefox, into which Eich poured so much effort? Because Chrome is more widely used and therefore better tested by developers who want to make sure their websites work properly, he said. "Chromium is the safe bet for us," he said. * The desktop browser is a cross-platform desktop application created with a fork of Github's Electron framework that is itself based on Node.js and Chromium. https://github.com/brave/electron https://github.com/brave/electron https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop * The iOS browser is a fork of Firefox for iOS, which is a Swift app developed from scratch by Mozilla. https://github.com/brave/browser-ios https://github.com/brave/browser-ios * The Android browser is Link Bubble, which is a wrapper around the default Android browser https://github.com/brave/browser-android https://github.com/brave/browser-android Previous HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7453897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7453897 Australian developer Chris Lacy announced its sale in Aug 2015: http://theblerg.net/post/2015/08/05/ive-sold-link-bubble-tappath-and-all-related-assets http://theblerg.net/post/2015/08/05/ive-sold-link-bubble-tap... * The ad blocking technology is courtesy a Node.js module of Adblock Plus filter that uses a bloom filter and Rabin-Karp algorithm for speed. https://github.com/bbondy/abp-filter-parser-cpp https://github.com/bbondy/abp-filter-parser-cpp * The database is MongoDB. https://github.com/brave/vault https://github.com/brave/vault Past news coverage: Mystery startup from ex-Mozilla CEO aims to go where tech titans won't | Nov 17, 2015 http://www.cnet.com/news/mystery-startup-from-ex-mozilla-ceo-aims-to-go-where-tech-titans-wont/ http://www.cnet.com/news/mystery-startup-from-ex-mozilla-ceo... Use Link Bubble to open links in the background on Android | Aug 26, 2015 http://www.cnet.com/how-to/use-link-bubble-to-open-links-in-the-background-on-android/ http://www.cnet.com/how-to/use-link-bubble-to-open-links-in-...

wespad 11y ago

That's funny. I also use NoScript, just to be extra cautious, and when I go to Brave.com, I don't see ANYTHING. I would hope that somebody claiming to want to fix the web would be able to serve up a page that doesn't need permission to execute a script.

CaptSpify 11y ago

Why a new browser, instead of plugins for existing browsers? I dislike ads, but there are already solutions for blocking them. Although I do like the premise of this, I'm not eager to switch browsers just to start supporting advertisers.

melted 11y ago

It is very brave of Brendan to pursue such an obviously dead-end idea.

pussinboots 11y ago

patreon but it allocates a percentage of however much you want to pay per month to the sites you visit relative to how much time you spent on them

desireco42 11y ago

I think this is great thing, it is right thing, that is coming from trustworthy person/company. Now, time will tell how things will play out, but I believe I can count on Brendan to make the right choices when it comes to features, compromises.

vhold 11y ago

> We make sure you aren't being tracked while you shop online and browse your favorite sites. That's not a realistic claim. Nothing is stopping publishers and advertisers from sharing back end data.

return0 11y ago

Sounds like a brave plan indeed. Good luck to them!

bootload 11y ago

"Brave is open source!" Wow, new browser technology that is open source, this is good news. I'm hoping the development focus is flexible, remember flock? [0] [0] https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/flock+browser https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/flock+browser

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

wildmXranat 11y ago

Plough_Jogger 11y ago

The surfer in the main slider has had his fins completely adblocked. https://www.brave.com/assets/img/sliders/revolution/surfers_bluewash_tan.jpg https://www.brave.com/assets/img/sliders/revolution/surfers_...

xjay 11y ago

Brave seems to acknowledge a smaller part of Ted Nelson's "Project Xanadu" [1], where you're paying to access content. From the Project Xanadu Wikipedia article: "9. Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies ("transclusions") of all or part of the document." Ted's approach is (in my view) also a deduplication effort, as you're citing the original content, tracing it back to its origin by reference. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu

willherschel 11y ago

Brave wants to save me from intrusive 3rd-party trackers... but uses Chartbeat and Doubleclick on Brave.com?

CrowFly 11y ago

I don't mind ads. I block because they can and have been used as vectors for drive-by and zero-day attacks, even on otherwise reputable sites. I enable ads back on sites I trust thoroughly.

LeicaLatte 11y ago

Looks great! I have been running a open source blocker since WWDC and it is the right way to do things. Especially considering the state this space is in right now.

buro9 11y ago

Urgh, what happens for a site when there are no adverts on the site? Are "clean adverts" then placed on the site? If the answer to this is yes, I'll be blocking the user-agent from my sites. I serve cache:no-transform and HTTPS to specifically prevent people mucking around with the page. I already deliver a fast and clean website. This reminds me of when Virgin Media in the UK (an ISP) wanted to put adverts on pages without my permission. It really isn't a help.

Fice 11y ago

I do not use ad blockers because I want to see how the owners of a website I'm interacting with really treat their users. I do not want to help some crappy web site to look better and more trustable to me than it really is. Don't like ads on a website — just go elsewhere.

rameshvel 11y ago

There is no mention about licences.. For desktop/iOS, it uses chrome(electron)/mozilla(firefox-ios).. But no mention about the android one (linkbubble) It would be great if they clarify the terms & licences in the FAQ

tincholio 11y ago

So, creating Javascript, hating on gay people, and now an ad company... this guy really wants people to hate him!

outsidetheparty 11y ago

The more I read through the Brave website the more it feels like this is actually vastly worse than the status quo. All quotes are directly from the FAQ: "We do not even have access to identifiable user data". Except for the "in-browser targeting engine" which has "substantially more information about the user's activity available to it than traditional tracking methods", which are stored in the browser and then exposed to advertisers "to maximize user, publisher and advertiser value." "Each ad request is anonymous, and exposes only a small subset of the user's preferences and intent signals to prevent 'fingerprinting' the user by a possibly unique set of tags". Except that the only reason advertisers need to fingerprint the user is in order to collect enough information to decide which ads to serve to them, which is precisely what they'd be getting from Brave (and then some.) Great, that information is stored in the browser instead of the cloud, and only subsets of it are exposed to the advertisers for each request -- but that doesn't benefit the end user at all. It benefits Brave, by maintaining their middleman position as the de facto controller of which advertisers gets access to that data. "We block trackers, that’s a big win compared to the status quo." It is! For Brave. Because the whole browser is now an ad tracker. Ok, the data is keyed to a UUID instead of a name or other "personally identifiable information". How does that benefit the end user? In no way at all. Throughout the site is repeated handwaving about how nothing is sent in the clear, they don't even have the encryption keys, nothing is personally identifiable, but none of that matters, because the end result is the same. It's still an ad tracker designed to enable targeted advertising. But with much, much more data to work with than in existing browsers. Offloading the tracking work into the client instead of doing it server-side is just misdirection. And how about those content creators? "Our goal is to make better revenue for all publishers," they say, but I see no explanation of how stripping out websites' individual ad sales and replacing them with Brave's benefits the publishers. Congratulations! Brave's "revenue sharing" program means your ad space is worth 55% of what it used to be! [1] Oh, don't worry, they'll get around to building a micropayments scheme someday, which they'll also take a share of. This is just. I mean. Gah. Flames. On the side of my face. [1] (I can't find that figure on their site, but it's quoted here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/267089/new-browser-offers-brave-solution-to-ad-blocking.html http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/267089/new-bro... "...revenue derived by selling ads through Brave will be split four ways: 15% each will be distributed to the user, to Sonobi and to Brave, with 55% allocated to publishers.")

privateproperty 11y ago

I do not trust them. If they really cared about privacy they woul d not have pulled scripts and fonts from bunch of 3rd party sites. Sorry Brendan you failed the first test. I wont adapt to Brave.