Brave Browser is taking the web by storm

3jckd 7 years ago |

I don't get what "Browser Publishers" have to do with Brave taking the web by storm. To me it seems obvious, that as soon as a new medium arises and gets at least some popularity, everyone who is interested in online advertising will spend some money on having a spot there as well. It's not related to the sheer awesomeness of the scheme/solution but rather having a chance of getting another pair of eyeballs somewhere.

liamcardenas 7 years ago |

As someone who works in a similar space to what Brave/BAT is trying to do... I would like to point out that it’s very easy to sign people up to receive payments in your scheme.

It’s another thing to (1) get users to actually use your system the way you want them to and (2) get publishers to base their revenue model, at least in part, around your system.

I am not really impressed by these numbers because they do not include any usage statistics of BAT itself and there are no examples of it actually helping publishers.

That said, they are setting out to do something very difficult so we should respect what progress they have made.

msvan 7 years ago |

My problem with Brave is that the BAT incentivizes publishers to grab as much of my attention as possible. More attention, more money. If Brave becomes successful, expect the internet to become even more addictive and abusive of human psychology.

linuxftw 7 years ago | |

In what way is that different than the current state of affairs?

msvan 7 years ago | | |

Not at all. This is portrayed as a way of fixing the incentive structure of the web by making people pay for content, but it only fixes part of the problem. Time tracking is not the same as users making an active choice about what contributes value to their lives (e.g., choosing to pay for a subscription). I would hate to see this compensation mechanism become widespread.

1_player 7 years ago | | |

I'm not a fan of time tracking, but I like current subscription models like Patreon or Youtube's even less.

There's about 30 content creators I'd like to support, but in no way I'd pay $5 each, which is the standard contribution proposed by e.g. Youtube. In fact, I'm not supporting anybody at the moment, except seldomly donating money with Paypal.

I budget my salary every month, and I'd like to give, say $50 a month to the creators I follow. Perhaps in different percentages. Next month I'm more generous, here's $200, please divide it accordingly.

It's easy for us with a decent salary, but many, if not most people I know have $10 to spare. It's about 2 Youtube subscriptions. What to support more people? Get a better job or turn off your ad blocker and give your data and privacy away.

Time tracking might not be optimal, but the killer feature to me is "this is what I have, split it and donate it, even if it's just a few pennies."

Grangar 7 years ago | |

The pay-per-view ad model does the same, but if anything it wastes that attention time.

outside1234 7 years ago |

The browser itself is pretty great - it exactly what I want - Chromium without the spyware and a decent user interface.

1_player 7 years ago | |

To voice the opposite opinion: if I could have the Brave payment system as a plugin to Safari or Firefox I would install it in a heartbeat.

I don't like Chrome, nor care for Brave as a browser. I use Safari for my daily browsing, or Firefox on Windows. And I really like Brave's system for supporting content creators, it's miles ahead than everything else IMO.

LUmBULtERA 7 years ago |

I like the concept of Brave browser, but the severe lack of extensions make it a nonstarter. Loading Chrome extensions into Brave looks complex to the extent where I'd rather just load up Chrome or Firefox.

lawl 7 years ago | |

You're probably talking about their electron version. They're in the process of switching to their chromium fork, where you should be able to just run all chrome extensions no problem.

See: https://brave.com/new-brave-browser-release-available-for-ge...

barrongineer 7 years ago | |

Brave is now based on Chromium. You can install extensions from the Chrome web store just as you would in Chrome.

To me, Brave is just Chrome without all the Google stuff and a built-in ad-blocker. It's fantastic.

NichePzza 7 years ago |

I didn’t even know that was Brave’s business model. I recently started using it for sites that I want to visit on my phone but crash or chug Safari on iOS. It’s been working like a dream so far.

Nelkins 7 years ago |

I would use this if it were somehow integrated as a Firefox extension.

prepend 7 years ago |

I don’t use the coin but really like the browser. Faster than chrome, ff, safari on OS X. Still run chrome and safari for some plugins but about 99% of my useage is through brave.

theamk 7 years ago |

Does anyone know how much do BAT publishers get paid, compared to regular ads?

How much of that money comes from VCs (in form of "BAT monthly giveaway") vs from the actual advertisers?

ethana 7 years ago |

I really hope this type of payment system become a standard and adopted by other browsers. It's really close to what Ted Nelson tried to do.

scooke 7 years ago |

Why use this? Just give it time, something will arise from this that will have terrible ramifications. Either a privacy breach, or malware insertion, or key logging, or hidden coin mining... something. Mark my words.

woah 7 years ago | |

I don’t understand this. Is this your response to any successful software? It has nothing to do with Brave, and you provide no explanation.

vfulco2 7 years ago |

What a shame, almost completely useless in China

realusername 7 years ago | |

China is basically an intranet anyway, nothing you build elsewhere is going to work there.

maxencecornet 7 years ago |

This article is plagiarized on my Hackernoon article :

https://hackernoon.com/brave-browser-is-taking-the-web-by-st...

escape_goat 7 years ago | |

The account which posted this link to HN seems to have a posting history that includes at least one other Medium article by a one-time 'author' plagiarized from Hackernoon.

sctb 7 years ago | |

Eeek! We've updated the link from https://medium.com/@sburner1000/brave-browser-is-taking-the-....

escape_goat 7 years ago | | |

Please take a look at o_wilson's posting history, as I have found another link to a plagiarized article on Medium, and the situation doesn't pass the smell test.

lostmsu 7 years ago | | |

Shouldn't you avoid adding that link to Medium to not give them free ranking?

noonespecial 7 years ago | |

Really? That sucks. If this is true, a mod should change the URL post haste.

Good article. Well done.

username3 7 years ago | |

The link at the bottom is different. Is that an affiliate referral link?