To me the current option is no participation because I see no explicit ads. The web is pull and not push, and my browser renders whatever I want it to. As for the revenue, they can keep it for all I care, why would I want to make money browsing the web? It'd be like making money for talking a walk in the park
Yes and Brave's argument is that if everyone acted like you, the web as we know it would collapse. Perhaps it's an argument worth taking seriously. And I say that as someone who acts like you.
The only thing that would be particularly at risk is stuff funded exclusively with display ads, but where users don't care enough about it to support it. Or, put differently, we'd lose sites that people don't like much, but that survive through manipulating people into buying things. Doesn't sound like much of a loss to me.
When the Tivo was new, it was argued that it would destroy television, because people could now skip ads. 20 years later, TV is doing better than ever as a medium. Why? Because a lot of us are now paying directly for the things we like. I think the same thing would happen with the web.
I think it is. I've used Google search, gmail, youtube, and Google docs since they've existed. I've paid $0 for them. My understanding is that these services are paid for by ads but I've had an ad blocker most of that time. If everyone started using an ad blocker, what would happen to Google/those services? I don't know, but I feel uneasy about the fact that services that I use depend on people not doing certain things that A. seem rational and B. I have been doing for years.
> When the Tivo was new, it was argued that it would destroy television, because people could now skip ads. 20 years later, TV is doing better than ever as a medium. Why? Because a lot of us are now paying directly for the things we like. I think the same thing would happen with the web.
It seems to me that Brave is attempting to make it so that people "pay directly for things they like" and they're attempting to solve that problem generically, in the browser. Maybe it would be better if this problem wasn't solved in the browser. Maybe all the companies providing free services funded by ads should solve this problem individually, by charging a monthly fee. But that solution:
1. Leaves out individuals who make a living providing "free" entertainment who are funded by ads (so-called content creators)
2. Requires people to juggle many monthly subscriptions
3. Will cut out people who cannot afford subscriptions
4. Will never happen unless something forces these companies to change (maybe something like a browser with a built-in ad-blocker gaining market share...)
Brave's approach is interesting. I have no idea if it will pan out but I think they've identified a real problem.
Google makes money by collecting behavioral data generated by its users, which it then uses in the form of raw materials to create products for its actual paying customers: advertisers.
Whether you're using an ad-blocker or not, you're still contributing to the advertising machine by using its products, you can't stop Google from crunching your personal behavioral data on their platform.
I have no interest in Brave and I still use Google products (for now), I just wanted to point out that what's really happening is a bit more sophisticated than you may think.
What are you on about, TV is essentially dead as an over-the-air/cable-bundle medium.
The only reason "TV" survived, is because it was reimagined by streaming services who charge a monthly fee. That model has certainly been going through a golden age, but the story is far from finished there and things are about to get very very bad with dozens of streaming services on the horizon, all wanting 5-10$/month.
We have yet to see what's going to happen when consumers rebel against their content needing 100s of $/month to access. The Tivo of the 2020s will involve VPN, or Piracy with a new face, or some form of account sharing, and will be resisted just the same.
So blocking ads is an effective way to enact social change? Great!
Maybe the people that rely on the ad supported, user data selling model that primarily destroys the privacy of technologically less advanced users should have thought about that before they started the invasive ad arms race?
So fewer people will make money unethically on the web. If we adopted Brave's point of view then making money from cryptolocker ransomware would be okay because only ignorant users would not have anti-virus and backups in place, so it's really the users fault.
?? I don't understand this logic or analogy even remotely. I would love to make money by doing things I already do for free
It'd be like taking a walk in the park and paying/supporting the park - by having a salesperson walking beside you trying to pitch some product - if you feel the need to.
Hosting costs money. Design costs money. Maintenance costs money.
If the internet is to stay as alive and as open/accessible as it currently is for the public at large (despite increases in censorship), there needs to be more effort put into high availability and accessibility by more people than the enthusiasts who run revenue free sites/businesses that have other revenue streams.
People have been trained not to accept paywalls. But they do tip, as we see with patreon, superchats, etc, and and they do accept some modicum of ads and freemium services.
Brave provides options for all of those things; what I like most about brave is not its ad model, but its site donation model. It’s a very direct form of person to site donations that is built to be extremely convenient. I don’t know how it’s implemented, but if it's sufficiently decentralized (which I think it is, unless the BAT crypto currency is just a distraction from some centralized mechanism required for donations), that’s a potentially very valuable/difficult to censor/easy means of direct value exchange. Plus you don’t have the privacy concerns you do with ads.
My hope is that it becomes so convenient and popular to send money to sites via Brave and potential future competitors that the ad revenue model can be mostly replaced. That might be pie in the sky, but it seems plausible to me.
I also think it’s great that users get a big chunk of ad revenue. That percentage may change in the future, but for low income people who can get a few extra bucks by browsing normally/might be less likely to use ad blockers, something like Brave seems way better than seeing ads and not getting any revenue.
> Hosting costs money. Design costs money. Maintenance costs money.
Then maybe we'll get less blogspam and have a higher signal-to-noise ratio of sites run by people who are passionate about things and know what they're doing, instead of crap trying just get clicks to get paid.
Maybe videos would be 1 minute of quality content rather than 10 minutes of "be sure to click subscribe". Etc.
* Google Chrome: mandatory
* Firefox: opt-out [1]
* Brave: blocked
That's the primary issue.
It's great that Brave is pioneering a new opt-in, privacy-respecting funding model for the web - we need innovation here - but it's a secondary issue.
[1] Thanks to Google $, slowly changing presumably thanks to forcing effects of Apple's increasing privacy defaults in Safari
In the case, it's a bit tricky, but "surveillance" is acting as an adjective, more specifically a noun adjunct
You can have a positive view of each separate word (depending on context) and the term still works perfectly in describing the business model society is beginning to reject, through mechanisms like the GDPR and CCPA.
