I notice you didn't address one important part of my comment, that Brave is attempting to monetize other peoples intellectual property by stripping it of ads.
There is a big moral difference between a community of people blocking ads for their own protection, and a company blocking ads for profit.
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When somebody reads a web page, but blocked the ads, I like to think the reader is saying, I'm interested in what you have to say, but I'm not spending money today.
When somebody uses the Brave browser and has opted in to other ads, I can only think the reader is saying, I'm interested in what you are saying, but fuck you, I'm not buying what you are selling, I'm going to check out these other ads, make some money for myself and for Brave, and If I see anything I like I'll buy there instead.
> Brave is attempting to monetize other peoples intellectual property by stripping it of ads.
Brave doesn't make money by blocking third-party ads; that's a privacy and security decision. Brave could default to no-blocking (which would be unwise, given the threat to users), and still have its own ad model of displaying ad notifications.
> …people blocking ads for their own protection…
This is why people install Brave; for the privacy and security benefits. This is the baseline experience in Brave.
> When somebody uses the Brave browser and has opted in to other ads…
Why do you assume people aren't using Brave for their own protection? For many people, including myself, advertising isn't the motivator of installing an ad/content blocker. The primary reason is the security/privacy risk of running a small app (which is what modern third-party digital ads are) on my machine.
So if the problem is security and privacy, and not advertising, it makes sense why somebody would opt to participate in an alternative advertising model which does not have the same security/privacy risks, and even rewards the user (with 70% of the ad revenue) for their attention.
> I'm going to check out these other ads, make some money for myself and for Brave…
And for the publisher, since the default configuration of Brave is to queue up auto-contributions for the verified sites you visit.
>Why do you assume people aren't using Brave for their own protection?
OK, sure, lets rewrite it as "Brave is attempting to monetize other people intellectual property by striping it of ads for the protection of readers."
And sure, you could argue that you are providing a service to readers. Unfortunately, in order to provide tha service you must harm the content providers by denying them ad revenue, whether or not they are actually doing any harmful tracking.
This is why I believe content providers will come after you once you get big enough.
And you might be able to scare users, but I doubt you will be able to convince a court that just collecting the data is harmful in any meaningful way.
But come on, we're all tech folks here, Brave is only blocking 3rd party tracking, the 1st parties are still tracking what pages on their site you are reading. Facebook knows what you see on Facebook. Newscorp and Tencent and Apple all know what you are reading across their own IPs. Netflix knows what you are watching and Spotify knows what you are listening to. You have to be logged in after all.
And anyway, I'm sure 3rd parties have started serving up scripts that run 1st party now, just proxxied through the first party server.
Update: And to be clear, if you were doing this all for the good of society alone I would cheer you on, but because you are doing it for profit it becomes unethical in my mind.
Now I know nobody asked, but if I were Mr Eich and I wanted to do this is a way that _was_ ethical, I would attempt to create a parallel internet that was attractive to both users and content providers. I think both parties need to opt-in to this new trackingless internet.
I have a lot of crazy ideas for making this crazy parallel internet good for everybody, but I would be here all night.
There is a big moral difference between a community of people blocking ads for their own protection, and a company blocking ads for profit.
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When somebody reads a web page, but blocked the ads, I like to think the reader is saying, I'm interested in what you have to say, but I'm not spending money today.
When somebody uses the Brave browser and has opted in to other ads, I can only think the reader is saying, I'm interested in what you are saying, but fuck you, I'm not buying what you are selling, I'm going to check out these other ads, make some money for myself and for Brave, and If I see anything I like I'll buy there instead.
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