Brave certainly blocks ads by default, I personally don't see a problem with that. Users can't install adblocker addons in browsers, not much different than downloading an adblocking-by-default browser.
I can't immediately find a source for the publisher opt-in thing. But brave definitely hasn't been doing anything like that in 2016 as your articles suggest, because they only just started now with beta testing brave ads[0]. From my personal testing of brave a couple of times, with the ad opt-in activated, I have also never seen this happening.
They could have meant when Brave swapped affiliate links before the backlash had them backtrack. Which was a wild thing to do. Blocking ads in your browser while charging to not show ads is also pretty wild. Why doesn’t their ad blocker block their ads?
No other reason for Brave? Some don’t want to or care for blocking ads and others don’t do it at the browser level. Does Brave have anything at that point?
Except it does. It has the functionality to do BOTH.
The tagline of giving the option to either disable ads or replace ads is to provide a way to enjoy an ad-free experience or to receive only optimized advertisements.
A big reason some users dislike ads isn't because of their entire existance but rather their tendency as of late to be malware-ridden or cause drops in webpage performance. These are the things that cause some users to enable ad-blockers, and Brave is the only way I've heard of that has pushed the envelope of a BETTER ad experience.
From their blog, the first is a great introduction to what Brave is about[1], as well as their response to an attack on their ad-replacement ideology[2].
[The user interface] shows the major choices that Brave enables:
You’re game to try our default mode of operation, for a better ad-supported Web. Just leave the Replace Ads item checked. This is the default mode of operation. We insert ads after blocking without hurting page load speed, and those ads will support the sites you browse. We choose ads based on browser-private user data with no remote tracking — not even by our servers.
You want to block all ads and trackers, but you’re not sure about our plan to insert better ads with high performance and privacy. You can do this with Brave by checking Block Ads. We want you on board even if you’re just blocking everything.
You’d like to try Brave without ad blocking or replacing, to get whatever ads and trackers you would experience in other browsers. Check Allow Ads and Tracking. We still protect you with HTTPS Everywhere and other defense by default.
You're 100% incorrect; the ad blocker is on by default. And Brave doesn't show any ads by default. I would like to invite you to actually download the application before making such egregious claims.
I'm sure you've defined "Brave Ads" such that this is technically true, but calling your approach to ads "opt-in" is terribly misleading. Last time I opened Brave, I was immediately greeted by a full page ad on the new tab page. [1] To be clear, I have never opted in to seeing any ads in Brave.
If you haven't been roasted by your users over this, I suppose that's informative about who the users are.
The Brave FAQ also says
> Are all ads blocked or can users allow some or all? Tracking scripts (trackers) and ads that depend on them are blocked by default.
So this implies that Brave does not even block all ads by default now? If you go back to 2019 [2] the same line in the FAQ says "Ads and trackers are blocked by default".
As far as I'm aware, Brave is the only browser that blocks ads by default. Personally I just use uBO/uMatrix on Firefox, but I can certainly understand why some people might prefer a more streamlined default experience.
The fact that so many people get bent out of shape about Brave blocking ads by default is probably also seen as a positive signal by many people who hate ads. If Brave pisses off people who run ad-supported websites, that's a fantastic endorsement.
I can see that. Perhaps there's social a fix somewhere around messaging or something. Ultimately it's not Brave that's doing this to site owners, it's the users who install Brave for Brave's feature set. I think the elephant here is that it's not really up to site owners to say whether users can use ad blockers or not or which browser they should use. If I install an ad blocker as a user, that's my choice. So installing Brave, essentially an add-blocker-as-a-browser doesn't seem like the thing that site owners should be able to opt out of at all. Allowing publishers to opt-out feels like a tactical compromise.
Of course sites can block requests based on Brave's user-agent string if their business depends deeply on ad revenue and they consider users with ad blockers to be abusing their service. That's their prerogative if this really irks them and it's worth losing the users. On the flip side if this becomes popular enough then site owners see real money on the table and they'll opt in to picking it up. That seems like an easy fix for them. If I was a site contemplating either blocking content to users with ad blockers or allowing cooperative users to opt into a more private client-side ad experience which still gives me the opportunity to collect revenue for their traffic, I'm pretty sure I'd choose the cooperative approach.
Also, as others have pointed out in this thread, they don't replace ads on websites with their own. It blocks ads, and if you want you can view Brave ads in exchange for their cryptocurrency and optionally donate them to participating publishers. I'd say this is no worse than a regular ad blocker, but you at least have the choice to attempt to remunerate the publisher for the lost revenue.
The headline and post title are misleading. Brave is not an ad-blocking browser. It is an ad-replacing browser. Blocking ads is useful and ethical. Replacing ads to capture revenue is bad and unethical.
Correction: they never injected ads, but they do remove ads and replace them with "attention tokens", which is an opt-out system for publishers. See also https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/this-popular-brows.... In short, please look into the questionable aspects of Brave.
Brave is perhaps the most ethically challenged browser out there. Hopefully they have stopped doing this, but they were injecting their own ads instead of what the publisher put on their website.
https://www.businessinsider.com/newspaper-publishers-send-ce...
https://www.wired.com/2016/04/brave-software-publishers-resp...
Where is the opt-in from the website who are getting their ads blocked/replaced?
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