I don't agree here with your premise. You claim not to care if people block ads, but that's the default behavior. "Brave Rewards" is opt in.
Additionally, as they show ads as system notifications, I've never equated them whatsoever with what I'm browsing, and I'd assume that's by design.
I use Brave because (for me) Firefox is slow, and Chrome is Google. As someone who's quite fond of you for example on HN, I'd love to not be blocked, but I'm not switching browsers for the privilege...
Do you have a citation for this? Why would brave users be less likely to click on ads than a normal user if they weren’t using a browser that blocked ads?
I guess we disagree, since to me, serving ads with my page is making my position about wanting to show ads with the page pretty clear.
But even if it wasn't, Brave has special filters for sites that have anti-adblock measures, and it's spoofing the user agent to make it seem like regular Chrome.
Many people don't like ad blockers that let in ads. That's the obvious issue with the brave browser. The shocking thing to me is that some people tolerate this behavior. I'll take an ad blocker that blocks all ads myself, not one coming from the ad industry itself. Nowadays, this applies to chrome and safari too if they've gotten rid of their old plugin apis that enabled ublock (hard to keep track of spyware features).
I want to say exactly the same thing. I block ads because I don't want to see ads at all. As long as there is the ad blocker, I don't want to use brave.
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 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.
It is the users who are censoring the pages by choosing to use an ad blocking browser. I don't think the fact that Brave is offering an alternative revenue stream taints their browser's ad blocking capabilities. It is a feature that is available on almost all other browsers, natively or through a plugin.
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.
Blocking Brave's ads is literally three clicks. I don't care if I don't get paid if I block ads. What I don't want is to lose the ability to block ads or to allow websites to block me for using an unapproved system. Google seems to be working for both of those things while I don't see any chance Brave ever allows either.
What's the idea here? I was under the impression that one of the selling points of Brave is that you don't get ads when browsing. Doesn't this go against that?
That's what I did before I knew about Brave. If I don't have a choice I'd use whatever browser provides adblocking, but with a choice I'd prefer a Chromium-based browser.
Additionally, as they show ads as system notifications, I've never equated them whatsoever with what I'm browsing, and I'd assume that's by design.
I use Brave because (for me) Firefox is slow, and Chrome is Google. As someone who's quite fond of you for example on HN, I'd love to not be blocked, but I'm not switching browsers for the privilege...
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