Is this crazy or am I missing something?

[Thehandyman1957]

Brave browser is going to start paying you to look at ad's.
https://governmentslaves.news/2019/04/2 ... ve-browser

I'm not sure how you would stay anonymous if they need to know who you are to pay you?

[Nigaikaze]

Here's the full article:

https://www.wired.com/story/brave-brows ... -surf-web/

Here's my favorite bit:
"Brave will pay users with its own bitcoin-style 'cryptocurrency' called Basic Attention Tokens or BAT, which has traded for as little as 12 cents and as much as 46 cents over the past 12 months, according to CoinMarketCap. Today, there's no way for users who receive BAT for viewing ads to swap their digital currency for dollars, but Eich says Brave will partner with cryptocurrency exchanges to make that possible."

Yeah, it seems counterintuitive, since they'll need to know who you are in order to pay you and they'll need to know which ads you've interacted with in order to know how much to pay you.

Plus, this bit ...
"Eventually, the company plans to offer a service that will replace any blocked ads on a publisher's site with ads placed by Brave and give those publishers a cut of the ad revenue. Eich says Brave will only replace ads on sites that opt into its service."
... implies that they'll need to know what sites you're visiting in order to know what ads to feed to you. I don't see how one could retain their anonymity under those circumstances.

[Thehandyman1957]

Plus, this bit ...
"Eventually, the company plans to offer a service that will replace any blocked ads on a publisher's site with ads placed by Brave and give those publishers a cut of the ad revenue. Eich says Brave will only replace ads on sites that opt into its service."

Isn't this basically what Google is trying to do, except not pay anyone but themselves
by creating an add monopoly with their browser?

[New Tobin Paradigm]

This is worse than blocking ads. This is using other's work and brands to make money. For them and you get a fraction too.

This can't be legal and even if it is it isn't moral. It would be like your television playing its own commercals over ststion's and Panaphonics, Magnetbox, or Sorny gives you some tokens you can redeem for cash.

It seems like they are gonna do this and companys and creators are gonna be outraged and some jackass legislator will then create and get passed laws and regulations preventing browsers from allowing content manipulation thus making a profit in the short term and ending adblockers in the long term. All while collecting even more valuable user identifiable data to sell..

What a scheme if it plays out that way. Remember, if I can think it it could happen and in the end it almost certainly will even if you don't actually like me So be warned.

[billmcct]

This is worse than blocking ads. This is using other's work and brands to make money. For them and you get a fraction too.

This can't be legal and even if it is it isn't moral.

I don't see this succeeding. I also don't think it could be legal.

[vannilla]

I'm with Tobin on this.
It's all a step in a giant scheme to pass some funky laws benefitting no one but some large company who managed to corrupt enough politicians.

[Moonchild]

In case people forgot, the idea behind Brave is:

• Block in-page ads
• One of two modes:
  1. 1. Replace those ads with Brave approved/vetted ads
     2. Share the revenue from those replaced ads with website owners.
  2. 1. Brave users pay for ad-free experience.
     2. This pay is directed to website owners.

Now, this would not be so bad, if it were not that this whole cryptocurrency thing makes it a lot more complicated, less transparent, and in the meantime advertisers still pay real money to Brave for having "Brave ads". It also doesn't fit in the whole idea outlined above as users should not be getting any sort of reward aside from better or no ads, and knowing that money flows to website owners directly and not advertising giants. So... it seems a desperate move to try and get momentum by handing out virtual tokens that have no value unless it becomes a big success.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

This scheme of theirs just seems like another cash grab like their "Tip Content Creators" that puts money in escrow in the creator's name and on their behalf and the creators are never notified that Brave has done this, users have donated money, and how to collect just this time they are gonna steal ad revenue and then likely do the same thing.

It smells of deception and abuse.

[Moonchild]

I looked into how it works before. The way this is done is that if enough money is generated from people paying or from ads on a certain website, Brave will notify the website/domain owners about available payment that can then be claimed. Of course that leave a large "but in the meantime" question, and very little way to actually verify Brave's sincerity or trust in the matter.

[Frasier]

I have to go along with New Tobin Paradigm on this. When ever schemes like this are implemented, someone always manages to get their fingers in the till. Hence the legislators get involved and really make a mess of things.

[CharmCityCrab]

They announced that they were planning to do this since before the general public availability of the browser. It's one of two reasons that I have never installed and never plan to install the Brave browser.

I guess there are some weird possible future scenarios that might "force" me to give it a try, but they seem unlikely since at least for the present there are tons of browsing alternatives out there. Brave isn't even the best Chromium-based browser other than Chrome or Chromium for the way I like to use the web, let alone the best browser in general.

People can use what they want to use, and I guess it's good to have as many browsers on the market as possible for the sake of competition (Though Tobin is correct in pointing out that this specific scheme Brave is using could in theory backfire so dramatically that it could hypotherically even have negative repercussions for users of other browsers or all browsers) but I'm going to continue to give the Brave browser a wide berth.