Isn’t it strange that an article that has a very specific title immediately changes the topic and starts promoting brave—a browser that practically nobody uses, and has a controversial business model—while there are companies like Mozilla, that have proven record of protecting users’ privacy online? It’s not the first time I’ve seen this aggressive, misleading, promotional articles, which makes you wonder about if Eich and friends are desperate to hype their Ware by injecting brave into this clickbait articles?
Yeah I'm fed up with unwarranted mentions of Brave. Indeed they are always "aggressive, misleading, promotional", and nothing close to informational. The article was supposed to be about Apple and Webkit, and Brave is just off-topic.
Brave is not a privacy-focused browser. It is an ad-focused browser and the business model of Brave is just this: ads, through Basic Attention Tokens. Privacy and BATs are in conflict and Brave will never be incentivized to respect the privacy of all its users. If you want privacy for you and for everyone, competition except Chrome is already better.
Brave is not a solution for a browser user's problem.
Competition that's preferably not based on Chromium, because Chromium's marketshare gives Google incredible leverage on the market. Witness how they are pushing AMP.
At this point there are only two browsers left: Firefox and Safari.
I’m not seeing the connection between Chromium and AMP.
AMP, for what it’s worth, is based on existing web standards. It’s a restrictive way of using those standards, but it sits on top of existing standard tech. And Google is using their position as a search engine to push that, not their position as a browser vendor (as evidenced by the fact that AMP has the same effect in Firefox/Safari as it does in Chrome).
The connection is this: Google has a large amount of influence in the Chromium code base. Using Chromium, a codebase Google Controls, gives them addition leverage in controlling how the web is viewed and built.
I don’t think anybody is disputing that Google’s influence over Chromium gives them leverage over the browser space. This is evident in things like their changes to how TLS certificate metadata is displayed, support for TLS 1.3, and changes to how content is rendered.
But this comment thread includes the claim that their influence over Chromium is being used to push AMP, and I don’t see how they are using their position with Chromium to push AMP, a technology that uses a specific subset of existing web technology and operates cross-browser already.
Technically correct, but not useful. Three of the seven members of the committee are employed by Google, and the other four members are each from different companies: https://github.com/ampproject/meta-tsc#members. Plus, it's not clear wether each member has the same amount of "power".
> it's not clear wether each member has the same amount of "power".
Each member gets one vote. Membership to the group is decided by the group, with a goal of no more than 1/3 coming from one company. The distinction I pointed out is both technically and practically correct.
There is always something curious about an opinion so strongly held and communicated that is at the same time so wilfully ignorant.
Brave is clearly a privacy-focused browser: it takes very little time for a technically-minded, veteran HNer to kick the tyres on that project's focus and codebase to understand that privacy is their USP.
It's obvious the whole team believes in the idea of a user agent being an Agent of the User.
A little more time reviewing key figures, from Yan Zhu through to Johnny Ryan, reveals the calibre and integrity of people working on this project.
They are attempting to build a model that upsets the current surveillance capitalism status quo, so it's no surprise that there are attempts to spike perceptions around the project.
No sure. I get it. But the seriousness with which you attribute a for profit like brave a benevolent mission, as if. How many times do we need to go down the same road of talking about features vs what really counts: track record and who's actually standing behind the technology? Clue: people. Why would you trust Brave to begin with? Because Brenden Eich is such a role model (a racist homophobe last time I checked)?
As for homophobe, I reject your definition. Call me what you want there, but “racist” is a lie. Either yours or your “last I checked” source’s.
From what you write, nonprofits are innocent and for-profits are guilty. I worked for a nonprofit or its wholly owned for-profit subsidiary for 11 years, and I can tell you that the profit motive does not go away in nonprofits. Check the 2017 form 990 on Mozilla’s site for the top salary, >$2.3m. I never got 1/3rd that and went down to 1/15th to start Brave.
Brave uses all open source for auditability and we pay for audits as well as bug bounties. We pay the user 70% of user private ad revenue. For publisher ads (not yet done, working with publisher partners) we will pay users the same 15% we get - publisher gets 70%. So we won’t make revenue without our users being happy and making more than we make. Let’s see Firefox share Google search revenue (which held up tracking protection in Firefox for years) with its users, giving more to the user than Mozilla gets.
You ad hominem argument against an open source product is absurd on its face. Should right wingers use only software from righties? How many tribes must hive off and build their own software, and reject open source that’s ritually unclean? Judge products on their observable design, implementation, and business properties.
You make it sound like the whole article is a bait and switch. I went to see, and it was two sentences about Brave, right after mentioning Chrome and ad blockers. Then it goes back to Apple. They also mentioned Mozilla towards the end.
Do you think Mozilla, Chrome, and ad blockers were also part of this marketing effort, or is it possible that all this was just normal context?
Brave’s zero market share would suggest to me that if it should be mentioned, it would be more of a side note. For years when dealing with Linux and free software the argument given by these type of publications was that they’re not worth mentioning or considering, because they had no market share. When did Brave (AdBuddy) become the defender of users rights and online safety? And why would a browser with no users be mentioned in every article you read lately about browsers? How can it have such an impact on editors still not on users?
A new browser, a notable founder, a modern technology, a new ad model in an increasingly privacy-focused world. Seems clear why that would capture attention. Whether individually you like it or not.
Mozilla doesn't block ads and trackers by default so I would say Brave takes protecting users privacy more seriously as they block all that by default. They also provide tor browsing as an option for even more privacy with the possibility to browse onion sites. Something Firefox has refused to do for some reasons.
When using Tor it is important to be indistinguishable from other Tor users. If you can be fingerprinted by user agent, screen size, fonts, add-ons, or numerous other indicators, then the anonymity set of your browsing behaviour essentially becomes just you.
That's why the Tor browser is setup to be as homogeneous as possible. Using Tor within Brave does not provide the privacy that users might expect, and Brave even point that out in their website. Hiding your IP is a good start alongside blocking known trackers, but it's only one component of properly avoiding tracking online.
Partially incorrect. The last Firefox release enables tracker blocking by default on new profiles. You can switch it on at any time in your existing profile if you’d rather not wait for Firefox to do so for existing profiles.
You could probably say the same about Apple - iAd was pretty intrusive in terms of the amount of data it collected, especially compared to what Apple allowed from third-party ad platforms at the time, but they failed to make a business out of it.
Mozilla has a proven record of remotely installing extensions on your browser to advertise TV shows[0] and sending your entire browsing history to a third party ad company[1]. A clean record indeed.
Nothing wrong with the first instance. I'd much rather Mozilla have independence and deal with one tiny advert.
At least they were "transparent" about the second one. But sending my browsing history to a company I've never heard of is a big ask. At least I can choose to have Chrome sync with Google, this wasn't ever asked.
You stance regarding mozilla and their willingness to betray the trust of their supporters makes no sense. How exactly is mozilla independent if they have to resort to all sorts of tricks to fund themselves?
All of their efforts to wean themselves of the Google cash have been not only pathetic failures, but also breaches of trust.
Many people and long time Firefox users felt back then that Mozilla did do something wrong.
You'd prefer that Mozilla could install any extension they want? You do realize that sets precedent that they're free to sell forced extension installs that run universally on every page?
Give an inch, take a mile. It's always like that every time by every single company in existence.
Yet you'd trust Chrome which send everything to Google...? Or Brave, which is a for profit in search of a revenue stream? Why? Wasn't AdBlock a good enough lesson?
I also noticed this. To be fair Mozilla is mentioned. I wonder what the motivation is, are they planning on building revenue through Brave’s reward program?
Anyway, I wanted to give this more airtime so I upvoted you ;)
True. Though there’s nothing to suggest the a for profit like brave should be users’ first option in the fight for user privacy online... what’s their record? If anything this man in the middle concept is even worse because it creates an illusion of safety where there’s non. Sort of like Adblock and it’s symbiotic relationship with advertisers. They’re part of the same ecosystem and Mozilla is definitely not part of.
Yes it often feels like fake news/promotion. Question is if any of these companies can be trusted. It is getting increasingly hard for users to make an educated decision about which tools are safe to use (if any) and the consequences associated with such choices in the long run.
