6 ms·

Does Brave actually block ads now? Or does it still replace them with ads for scanmy cryptocurrency?

by awnird 8mo ago

skaul 8mo ago
> Or does it still replace them with ads for scanmy cryptocurrency? Brave never did that. Brave blocks third-party ads & trackers by default. (disclaimer: I lead privacy and adblocking at Brave)
- weedhopper 8mo ago
  lead what? https://archive.is/W0k4j https://archive.is/W0k4j (disclaimer: people remember how sketchy Brave is)
  - someotherperson 8mo ago
    That was just a concept, it never made it to a live build AFAIK. What they should have done instead is just take hundreds of millions of dollars from Google, like a non-sketchy browser.
  - fenwick67 8mo ago
    Don't forget when they took donations on behalf of other websites and kept the money unless the operator went to the "escrow account" to collect it
    - ikekkdcjkfke 8mo ago
      Jesus dont you see they are trying atleast an alternative to non consensual anal probes by other ad companies?
    - BrendanEich 8mo ago
      The grants came from our token fund, not users' tokens (no way to buy BAT then). The issue which I found out about late, and fixed right away, was infringing on right to publicity, nothing to do with donations from users' own tokens.
  - bsclifton 8mo ago
    Already shared, but that (what you linked to) was a proposal and no deliverable was ever publicly released. A simple prototype was made and tested by a limited number of employees - instead of showing an ad, it would show a picture of a mustachioed man as a placeholder. That silly picture would be replaced with real code if the idea panned out. It didn't. The idea and the code was canned before I joined Brave and I've been here for almost 10 years (I joined August 2016). Disclaimer in case it's not obvious: I am a Brave employee
- VladVladikoff 8mo ago
  I definitely tried out brave several years ago and legit got lots of crypto ads. I really don’t know how you are getting upvoted for lying about this.
  - jamesnorden 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - VladVladikoff 8mo ago
      Wild accusations considering this stuff still exists online as direct evidence: https://brave.com/blog/binance/ https://brave.com/blog/binance/ Also attacking the person instead of the ideas is really not in the spirit of HN.
      - BrendanEich 8mo ago
        That blog post is about a partnership (which ended), but you probably saw some sponsored images at the time, in new tab pages (1 of 4 then, I think; the rest are just art images). These are non-tracking, carefully designed (including vetting by Brave), brand advertising images. They are not ads (we never did this) inserted into publisher pages, or (opt-in only) push notifications. Brave has been working to find ways to sustain ourselves, and these sponsored images are still a good revenue line, although lesser now vs other lines. If you want, turn them off. Free riding is always an user right, we don't try to stop it on principle, as if we ever could with open source. But there's no free lunch: if you use Firefox, you are Google's product. If you use a Firefox fork, you're free riding on Gecko which costs a lot to maintain. HTH
        VladVladikoff 8mo ago
        “Sponsored images” What exactly do you think an advertisement is?
agosta 8mo ago
Unlike other reply, I do not work at Brave, and I can also confirm that Brave never did that. They do have their own ads but those have always been opt in (you are not opted in by default), and they do pay some small amount of USD in their crypto token for opting in to those - it's pennies. People scoff at the pennies but guess who pays out nothing to show you ads against your will - literally everyone else. What you may be thinking of was at one point, when you went to a URL (for some URLs), the browser would rewrite the URL to contain their affiliate link. There was blowback for doing that. They quickly removed that/haven't done it since as far as I know
- morshu9001 8mo ago
  Important part missing here, they didn't tell anyone about the affiliate URL rewriting and only removed it when caught.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- esperent 8mo ago
  > the browser would rewrite the URL to contain their affiliate link In fairness, that is incredibly shady and they deserve this mistrust even years later because of it.
EbNar 8mo ago
This never happened.
mikkupikku 8mo ago
It's incredible how people can hallucinate nonsense like this out of nothing, simply because their hatred for Brendan Eich drives them insane.
- Dah00n 8mo ago
  Maybe what GP remember is the VPN they secretly installed, the affiliate links they silently added, the donations they took for other companies and kept for themselves, or one of the other times Brave was caught. It is a wonder people think the code base is trustworthy when we know for a fact how they behave with stuff we can see. But sure, try to make it look like it has anything to do with a person hardly anyone have ever heard of.
  - mikkupikku 8mo ago
    With the number of times the above lie has been repeated and corrected, virtually every single Brave thread for several years straight now, I am inclined to think it's actually maliciousness which is motivating people to continue posting it.

Does Brave actually block ads now? Or does it still replace them with ads for scanmy cryptocurrency?

by awnird 8mo ago

Does Brave actually block ads now? Or does it still replace them with ads for scanmy cryptocurrency?

skaul 8mo ago

> Or does it still replace them with ads for scanmy cryptocurrency? Brave never did that. Brave blocks third-party ads & trackers by default. (disclaimer: I lead privacy and adblocking at Brave)

weedhopper 8mo ago
lead what? https://archive.is/W0k4j https://archive.is/W0k4j (disclaimer: people remember how sketchy Brave is)
- someotherperson 8mo ago
  That was just a concept, it never made it to a live build AFAIK. What they should have done instead is just take hundreds of millions of dollars from Google, like a non-sketchy browser.
- fenwick67 8mo ago
  Don't forget when they took donations on behalf of other websites and kept the money unless the operator went to the "escrow account" to collect it
  - ikekkdcjkfke 8mo ago
    Jesus dont you see they are trying atleast an alternative to non consensual anal probes by other ad companies?
  - BrendanEich 8mo ago
    The grants came from our token fund, not users' tokens (no way to buy BAT then). The issue which I found out about late, and fixed right away, was infringing on right to publicity, nothing to do with donations from users' own tokens.
- bsclifton 8mo ago
  Already shared, but that (what you linked to) was a proposal and no deliverable was ever publicly released. A simple prototype was made and tested by a limited number of employees - instead of showing an ad, it would show a picture of a mustachioed man as a placeholder. That silly picture would be replaced with real code if the idea panned out. It didn't. The idea and the code was canned before I joined Brave and I've been here for almost 10 years (I joined August 2016). Disclaimer in case it's not obvious: I am a Brave employee
VladVladikoff 8mo ago
I definitely tried out brave several years ago and legit got lots of crypto ads. I really don’t know how you are getting upvoted for lying about this.
- jamesnorden 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - VladVladikoff 8mo ago
    Wild accusations considering this stuff still exists online as direct evidence: https://brave.com/blog/binance/ https://brave.com/blog/binance/ Also attacking the person instead of the ideas is really not in the spirit of HN.
    - BrendanEich 8mo ago
      That blog post is about a partnership (which ended), but you probably saw some sponsored images at the time, in new tab pages (1 of 4 then, I think; the rest are just art images). These are non-tracking, carefully designed (including vetting by Brave), brand advertising images. They are not ads (we never did this) inserted into publisher pages, or (opt-in only) push notifications. Brave has been working to find ways to sustain ourselves, and these sponsored images are still a good revenue line, although lesser now vs other lines. If you want, turn them off. Free riding is always an user right, we don't try to stop it on principle, as if we ever could with open source. But there's no free lunch: if you use Firefox, you are Google's product. If you use a Firefox fork, you're free riding on Gecko which costs a lot to maintain. HTH
      - VladVladikoff 8mo ago
        “Sponsored images” What exactly do you think an advertisement is?

agosta 8mo ago

Unlike other reply, I do not work at Brave, and I can also confirm that Brave never did that. They do have their own ads but those have always been opt in (you are not opted in by default), and they do pay some small amount of USD in their crypto token for opting in to those - it's pennies. People scoff at the pennies but guess who pays out nothing to show you ads against your will - literally everyone else. What you may be thinking of was at one point, when you went to a URL (for some URLs), the browser would rewrite the URL to contain their affiliate link. There was blowback for doing that. They quickly removed that/haven't done it since as far as I know

morshu9001 8mo ago
Important part missing here, they didn't tell anyone about the affiliate URL rewriting and only removed it when caught.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
esperent 8mo ago
> the browser would rewrite the URL to contain their affiliate link In fairness, that is incredibly shady and they deserve this mistrust even years later because of it.

EbNar 8mo ago

This never happened.

mikkupikku 8mo ago

It's incredible how people can hallucinate nonsense like this out of nothing, simply because their hatred for Brendan Eich drives them insane.

Dah00n 8mo ago
Maybe what GP remember is the VPN they secretly installed, the affiliate links they silently added, the donations they took for other companies and kept for themselves, or one of the other times Brave was caught. It is a wonder people think the code base is trustworthy when we know for a fact how they behave with stuff we can see. But sure, try to make it look like it has anything to do with a person hardly anyone have ever heard of.
- mikkupikku 8mo ago
  With the number of times the above lie has been repeated and corrected, virtually every single Brave thread for several years straight now, I am inclined to think it's actually maliciousness which is motivating people to continue posting it.