[HN Gopher] The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and insert...
___________________________________________________________________
The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate
codes
Author : davidgerard
Score : 245 points
Date : 2020-06-06 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (davidgerard.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (davidgerard.co.uk)
| oftenwrong wrote:
| How could they not realise this would turn away their target
| audience?
| arez wrote:
| You have become the very thing you swore to destroy!
| Koshkin wrote:
| Yeah, that's the thing with trust: you shouldn't.
| Havoc wrote:
| Wow. They appear to have a death wish.
|
| If your entire raison d'etre is privacy and clear stated model
| then one covert shady move like this can wreck trust irrevocably.
|
| If they had just declared that their model includes inserting
| affiliate codes then that would all be fine.
|
| The codes aren't the issue here its a violation of trust. If I'm
| OK with mystery monetization stuff happening behind the scenes
| I'd be using Chrome.
| phnofive wrote:
| > However, Eich is very sorry that Brave got caught -- again --
| and something will be changed in some manner to stop this
| behaviour, or at least obscure it.
|
| No surprise there.
|
| > There is no good reason to use Brave. Use Chromium -- the open-
| source core of Chrome -- with the uBlock Origin ad blocker [...]
| or use Firefox with uBlock Origin -- 'cos it blocks more ads than
| the Chromium framework will let anything block.
|
| Is this true? I assumed the functionality would be the same.
| stonogo wrote:
| Despite repeated requests, Chrome and Chromium still
| misclassify certain requests in order to hide them from content
| filters. Here is one example:
| https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=611453
| davidgerard wrote:
| Nope! I routinely run Firefox and Chromium, both with uBO on
| default settings - and Google results on Chromium always have
| three ad-link results inserted at the top, lazy late-loading
| via JavaScript. Google know what they're doing there.
| drannex wrote:
| You need to install some filters then! I have all the top
| featured ones installed and haven't seen a single
| advertisement on Google (which I only use <20% of the time,
| DDG gets the rest).
| GraemeL wrote:
| The Firefox version has the ability to block third party
| scripts masked as first party ones through the use of CNAMEs.
| Chrome doesn't expose APIs to let extensions do it.
| close04 wrote:
| Also this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173
|
| > The blocking ability of the webRequest API is still
| deprecated, and Google Chrome's limited matching algorithm
| will be the only one possible, and with limits dictated by
| Google employees.
|
| Firefox + uBO + uMatrix will block everything you can
| reasonably block without making your internet life miserable
| in the other extreme (although uMatrix can be a pain
| sometimes).
| molticrystal wrote:
| How is the android scene for Chromium based browsers that
| either have extension support or adblockers?
|
| I am aware only of Yandex & Kiwi as Chromium browsers that
| support extensions that allow you to install an adblocker. So
| perhaps Brave is trying to integrate itself there somehow by
| having it built in.
|
| Anybody know a better breakdown than this for mobile browser
| market share? https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-
| share/mobile/world... It says Chromium is 61% and Yandex is
| 0.1% but it would be nice to see if Brave was included or not.
| aasasd wrote:
| Yandex is the company whose sites actively fight ad-blocking
| more than anyone else of whom I know. Afaik Yandex is just
| not in the uBO lists anymore, because it was no use changing
| the filters again and again. So I guess Yandex _might_ allow
| installing filters which can 't catch it anyway, but I wonder
| if it won't cripple the extension somehow for good measure.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Brave's whole business model is flawed, even ignoring shenanigans
| like this.
|
| They claim they want to fix everything wrong with today's web
| (annoying and privacy-invasive ads, etc) by replacing them their
| own ads backed by a shitty cryptocurrency. While this might work
| in the short term while the browser is niche, they will have no
| choice but to deploy the same techniques once it goes mainstream
| and ad fraud goes up, removing their only selling point.
|
| The only real solution here is to just admit that view-based or
| click-based advertising on the web is flawed (and will always be
| vulnerable to fraud) and get rid of it, replacing it with time-
| based advertising where you pay for an ad to stay up for a
| certain period of time regardless of how many clicks or views it
| gets, making it immune to fraud and reducing the need for
| privacy-violating analytics because the only analytic that
| matters is "do we make more money?". Of course, this _real_
| solution wouldn 't allow opportunistic middlemen to make money
| out of thin air, so that's why we have Brave instead.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I'm going to have to switch browser AGAIN? Dammit.
|
| Is Opera safe or what shady shit have they done? I haven't used
| Opera since Opera back in 2006. God I miss the Presto engine and
| dragonfly.
|
| Can I go back to them or they doing shady stuff?
| Priem19 wrote:
| May I suggest using Vivaldi browser?
| https://medium.com/@Priem19/how-to-use-the-web-properly-f98f...
| Koshkin wrote:
| Are we supposed to "trust" this one now?
| searchableguy wrote:
| Their code for the full browser isn't open source. Only the
| chromium code is. Although it's mostly UI related code that
| you can inspect but just be aware.
| kick wrote:
| Opera is still proprietary, and, uh, also they got caught doing
| some stuff involving predatory short-term loans to the
| impoverished in African countries, not to mention their CEO was
| _also_ involved in an entirely different Chinese conglomerate
| that was also involved with fraud and some lending thing.
|
| Oh yeah and if you haven't used it since 2006: Opera is
| Chromium now, and the company behind it got sold a time or two.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| what the fuck, whats happening in the tech scene :(
|
| what should I use if I _dont_ want to be in the botnet or
| scammed and outside of google's mesh
| coryrc wrote:
| Firefox, like always.
| superkuh wrote:
| I used Opera from 5 to 12, then Firefox till v37, and it's
| been Pale Moon ever since. Check out the latest release
| notes. I know I'm not the only one that likes things such
| as,
|
| >Removed more telemetry code
|
| >Removed the in-browser speech recognition engine and API
|
| >Removed support for the obsolete and unmaintained NVidia
| 3DVision stereoscopic interface.
|
| Palemoon is Firefox if it were still Firefox instead of
| feature-for-feature chrome copy for watching encrypted
| netflix.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I would love to be able to use Palemoon, but I just can't
| get over the fact that it's a single main developer
| trying to maintain an entire web browser.
|
| That seems like a security nightmare waiting to happen.
| If I'm wrong about this, please let me know, I really
| like the idea.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Except they don't "maintain the entire browser," rather,
| they "maintain" a trimmed-down build.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification, that makes more sense. I'll
| download it and give it a shot.
| csunbird wrote:
| What is wrong with firefox?
| Paul_S wrote:
| Oh, let me count the ways... or let me just refer you to
| waterfox's website: https://www.waterfox.net/
| csunbird wrote:
| Only advantage I see is "No telemetry" option, which you
| can disable in firefox.
| drannex wrote:
| They were sold to a chinese consortium, so take that as you
| will.
|
| Vivaldi is an excellent alternative, and the latest versions of
| Firefox are far superior imo.
|
| Vivaldi is essentially Old Opera 2.0 in terms of features,
| focused on power users, created by the same guy as the original
| Opera, and runs on Chromium.
|
| Still putting my vote in Firefox though.
| toyg wrote:
| I keep Vivaldi as my "test in Chrome" browser, but their
| business model is not the most transparent from a privacy
| perspective (at one point it looked like they were
| aggregating browsing stats to resell).
|
| Firefox is still my main driver. They make the occasional bad
| choice but their overall business model is basically the best
| we can hope for in a browser, these days.
| SamWhited wrote:
| Just use Firefox (or one of the forks that removes builtin
| extensions and the like). For all of its problems, Mozilla is
| still probably the best bet we have at building a web browser
| that won't do shady things (it will do some annoying things,
| like having Pocket built in by default, but for the most part
| they still try to protect your privacy, don't force you into
| creepy payment models and things like Brave tries to do, etc.)
| christophilus wrote:
| Typing this on Brave for iOS. What is the best browser for iOS
| from a privacy standpoint? Firefox doesn't have uBlock Origin. I
| don't trust Microsoft Edge or Chrome. What do you suggest?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| When someone tells you who he is [1], believe him.
|
| [1] https://readwrite.com/2014/03/28/brendan-eich-mozilla-ceo-
| pr...
| buboard wrote:
| bit overblown. It's not all "links", they did the redirect for
| the autocomplete of "binance.us" and they are correcting it.
|
| https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201
| s_y_n_t_a_x wrote:
| It's not just "binance.us", it's common terms like "bitcoin",
| "btc", "ltc", "eth", etc.
|
| https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/components/o...
|
| Eich's tweet worsens things as it omits that fact.
|
| I see there is already a user submitted PR to remove this code:
| https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/5759/files
|
| We'll see how that goes.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Wow... that looks to me like they're injecting their
| affiliate code to some URLs which the user would have to type
| in manually, like "binance.com", "coinbase.com/join", or
| "trezor.io/product/trezor-one-metallic". _That 's affiliate
| fraud_ -- Brave is not responsible for referring the user to
| those URLs, so it's inappropriate for them to claim credit
| for the referral. I'd be shocked if the parties involved
| didn't terminate Brave's affiliate account upon discovering
| this.
| [deleted]
| weare138 wrote:
| > _and they are correcting it._
|
| Only after getting caught. It's not like you can 'accidentally'
| write a bunch of code and push it out.
| skissane wrote:
| He says "We are a Binance affiliate, we refer users via the
| opt-in trading widget on the new tab page, but autocomplete
| should not add any code."
|
| Charitable interpretation: It is possible that he told the
| development team to add the affiliate code on the new tab
| page, and someone in the development team decided to add it
| to the autocomplete code as well, without him realising. I've
| certainly seen it happen when developers are told to do X and
| then they decide "oh since we are doing X we should do Y
| too". It isn't even always a bad thing, but sure sometimes it
| is.
|
| Of course, the charitable interpretation could be wrong.
| Maybe he is actually being deceitful here. But, I prefer to
| assume the best of people rather than the worst.
| s_y_n_t_a_x wrote:
| It was the co-founder & CTO that authored the commits, not
| a rouge engineer:
|
| https://github.com/brave/brave-
| core/commits/master/component...
|
| https://github.com/bbondy
| plerpin wrote:
| The commit creates a new class "SuggestedSitesProvider"
| which looks like a generic system for detecting pageloads
| and automatically inserting affiliate IDs. So perhaps
| this is a nascent revenue stream for Brave that will be
| applied to more sites than Binance in the future.
| skissane wrote:
| Two possibilities:
|
| (1) CEO tells CTO to do something nefarious. CTO does
| what he's told. CEO gets caught out. Publicly, CEO spins
| it as an innocent mistake.
|
| (2) CEO tells CTO to do something more innocent. CTO
| decides to do something more nefarious instead (maybe
| entirely intentionally, maybe simply by misunderstanding
| the ask.) Either way, the doing something more nefarious
| wasn't intentional by the CEO.
|
| Which of the above two possibilities is true? I don't
| know. But I don't think you know either.
| davidcbc wrote:
| Who cares which C-level exec is doing something
| nefarious?
| s_y_n_t_a_x wrote:
| Two possibilities now since your last hypothesis was
| proven wrong with a simple git blame?
|
| But sure, maybe the CTO/co-founder went rouge, lol.
|
| What's the difference at that point? Both are
| leaders/founders of the company.
|
| Either way, I don't want to use a browser that either
| someone is implementing affiliate links in the omnibar
| because they were stupid, or because they want $$$$.
|
| The traffic and 99% of the browser code isn't theirs, why
| do they deserve affiliate money?
|
| Btw there's a difference between being charitable and
| being naive. It's obvious this was intentional.
|
| What really happened was the CEO and the CTO sat down
| with these crypto companies and sketched this deal out to
| the T.
|
| They hijacked the search terms "btc", "ltc", "bnb", etc.
| and herded users to those sites for a fee.
|
| Could you imagine your scenario though? The CEO just woke
| up and was like WHOA where'd all this money come from, so
| the CTO says well I accidently added too many affiliate
| links, but the CEO was like ehhh keep it like that for a
| few months until people make a big deal about it, then
| I'll act surprised and remove it.
| this_user wrote:
| I'm surprised people are surprised by this. Brave have said from
| the beginning that this is how their business model works. What
| I'm even more surprised about is that Brave has gotten any
| traction at all, as there is really no reason to use it instead
| of a normal browser with regular ad blockers.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Does anyone use Brave on the desktop? I thought Brave was only
| relevant on mobile, since mobile Chrome doesn't support
| extensions, and for some reason unknown to me people don't want
| to just use Firefox there.
| mmcru wrote:
| I use it on iOS because its an easy solution for ad-blocking.
| Is there a good ad-blocker for Safari on iOS?
| lyonlim wrote:
| I use Ad Guard and it works!
| Shank wrote:
| > Brave have said from the beginning that this is how their
| business model works.
|
| This sounded like a pretty surprising claim. I looked at the
| terms of use (https://brave.com/terms-of-use/) and the privacy
| policy for the browser (https://brave.com/privacy/) and I
| wasn't able to find any reference to the notion of
| automatically inserting affiliate or referral links. Do you
| have a more specific source on this? I'm really curious about
| when and how this has been communicated. I'm not trying to
| accuse you of anything, I just want to make sure I'm
| understanding the situation correctly.
| toyg wrote:
| The substance of their business model has always been "we
| fight advertisers because money should flow to websites
| through _us_ ". They changed actual terms a few times when
| called up on their tactics being shady, but that's always
| been the end goal. In that framework, hijacking referral
| links is par for the course.
|
| I don't blame them - a man's gotta eat, and they're not doing
| anything illegal or dangerous - but I've always found very
| curious that some people actually believe using Brave might
| be an "ethical" choice. It just isn't, it's simply a better
| mousetrap.
| noxer wrote:
| Collecting sh*tcoins is a reason for a lot of the crypto
| people. Also many many people put brave download ref links all
| other their web-presents to generate revenue. Even people who
| do not use it and openly admit that, still gladly collect the
| bucks form other downloading it. The whole ref thing is the
| classic ponzi and it always works for a while because people do
| whatever you want if the work/reward ratio is good.
| flarex wrote:
| You can get paid for using the browser by being shown
| replacement non-targeted ads. Although it's a trivial amount.
| drummer wrote:
| They began sucking pretty fast. Good riddance.
| meerita wrote:
| Being a happy Firefox user and watching all the browser drama
| from the backyard. I still don't understand why people uses
| Chrome or Chrome variants claiming privacy things.
| Sevaris wrote:
| I'm quite happy with FF on desktops, but the mobile version is
| just ... overall a miserable experience compared to Brave.
| After using it for a while, going back to FF constantly makes
| me feel like useful QoL features are missing and I end up going
| back to Brave.
| drannex wrote:
| If you have Android try the new Firefox Preview, best browser
| I've used on mobile so far. Complete rewrite.
| Sevaris wrote:
| Which is missing nearly all of the addons that I use and
| which don't seem to be a priority for Mozilla. Their whole
| strategy regarding addons is incredibly frustrating.
| neiman wrote:
| True dat.
|
| Personalization is super important (in any software),
| it's a shame that in general, it's not being the focus of
| most of them.
| meerita wrote:
| Using FF on mobile, I have no complains.
| _puk wrote:
| I recently tried moving from mobile Brave to Firefox as
| I've used desktop FF for years, and wanted cross platform
| bookmarks.
|
| The experience was incredibly sub par on Android. I tried
| browsing a video heavy subreddit, and FF just hung (well,
| all videos stopped playing, which is what I was there for).
|
| I want to use it, but if it can't manage my base use case,
| I can't warrant it.
|
| I will try again one day, I'm sure.
| Sherl wrote:
| Bromite?
| echelon wrote:
| Firefox on Android has a much poorer UX than Brave, which is
| the only thing that keeps me from using it.
|
| Pull to reload, tab accessibility, and other performance and
| rendering oddities need to be fixed before I switch back.
|
| I'm happy with Firefox on Linux though.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Do you find that there are irritating glitches?
|
| A lot of the web doesn't officially support Firefox anymore
| (Groupon, Airbnb, my organization).
| slipheen wrote:
| Are use Firefox for my primary browser, but there are certain
| sites (made by google primarily) which work much better in
| chromium based browsers.
|
| Whether Google is intentionally degrading their performance in
| Firefox or simply doesn't care is an interesting technical
| detail, but from a practical standpoint I need to use these
| sites for my job, so I also need to keep a chromium-based
| browser around.
| drannex wrote:
| Agreed, I haven't seen or heard anything off kilter with
| Firefox in a very very long time and they have always been on
| the forefront of privacy and development features.
| toyg wrote:
| Mozilla make their fair share of fuckups and bad moves, but
| they're still on a different level from these niche Chromium
| derivatives that invariably come with ugly business models
| attached.
| doc_gunthrop wrote:
| With Chrome taking the lion's share of the browser user market,
| you end up with a lot of sites that work well in Chrome but not
| so well with other browsers.
|
| So even if you use Firefox as your main driver, you'll still
| want to have a Chromium-based browser as a backup.
|
| Now the problem for Android users is that, in light of this
| news, there's now one less (seemingly) viable option if you're
| using Google Play services.
|
| If you're using F-droid, however, you have Bromite and
| ungoogled-Chromium as prime candidates.
| SSLy wrote:
| Somehow Samsung Internet and Vivaldi, both closed-source
| chromium skins available on the Play Store, have always
| sparked more trust in me than the seemingly open Brave ever
| did.
| ifdefdebug wrote:
| > So even if you use Firefox as your main driver, you'll
| still want to have a Chromium-based browser as a backup.
|
| Nope. When something doesnt work in my FF then good bye. I
| cant be bothered to do extra work like switching browsers for
| to support their incompetence. It'been rare though.
| mixedCase wrote:
| Firefox's performance on Linux is markedly worse than Chrome's.
| 8192kjshad09- wrote:
| How ironic
| rpdillon wrote:
| This has never been my experience, FWIW.
| alexruf wrote:
| Agree. Not sure what else needs to happen to encourage Chromium
| users to finally give Firefox a try.
| tygrak wrote:
| I still don't understand why everyone moved away from Firefox
| back in the day. Is it really just the fact that Google put
| up so many ads everywhere?
| waheoo wrote:
| Chrome had v8, it was fast. Forefox sort of got left behind
| performance wise.
|
| You could still have a million tabs open, something chrome
| struggled with, so it kept some users.
|
| But it took quantum to get users back.
| meerita wrote:
| Yes, my experience resumes like this: breakthrough
| browser, adoption, bloating experience, adopt next fast
| breakthrough browser.
| dmantis wrote:
| First, old firefox (pre-quantum) really started to be slow
| and non-competitive.
|
| Second, Google actually were caught on making their
| resources work worse on firefox and other competitors with
| some hacks.
|
| E.g. https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-
| google-has...
|
| Assuming that literally everyone use gmail, youtube, etc -
| it had looked that mozilla doesn't work reliably for end
| users.
| moooo99 wrote:
| I switched for that exact reason - Firefox was starting
| to become really slow. After a few years of exclusively
| using Chrome, Firefox (thanks to Quantum) became my
| default browser again. It still sometime feels slower
| than Chrome, especially on Google sites (YouTube and
| GMail are incredibly slow). But that could just be my
| current pc starting to show its age.
| meerita wrote:
| I moved because Chrome shown a nice promise in speed,
| standard support and features, it seemed a good move. Same
| move I did back in the day when Microsoft released Internet
| Explorer 4, it was so good in comparison with Netscape 3-4
| than it was too late when i got tired of it.
| milankragujevic wrote:
| I gave it a try tens of times, and continue trying to switch
| every major release, but keep going back. Too many things are
| just not right, and can't be fixed for me because I am not
| ALL of the users + not even the most vocal part of the user
| base + some things are just meant to be like that in Firefox
| and that's their "thing" that I don't like. It's pointless to
| list it here, but I really do continuously try it in good
| faith and hope to switch someday.
| andai wrote:
| Have you written about your experience with Firefox
| somewhere else? I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
|
| I just wrote another comment here about its performance,
| about how I _want_ it to succeed, how I donate to Mozilla,
| and yet still use a Chromium-based browser due to the
| performance issues.
|
| At this point (I mean, they've literally _invented a new
| programming language to make it faster, and it 's still
| slow_) I think the only thing left to do is to learn C++
| and Rust and fix it myself...
| andai wrote:
| Latency. Just tested with a "hello world" page (18ms ping).
|
| Chrome takes 102-200ms to render the page, Firefox takes
| 150-400ms. 1.5 to 2x slower -- and that's after all the
| performance upgrades they've done with Rust and Quantum.
|
| Network inspector says Firefox is spending 150-270ms
| "blocked" before it even initiates the connection. On Chrome
| the block is 3-18ms (15-50x (!!) faster).
|
| There's also UI lag. When I press Ctrl+N, I expect a new
| window to open immediately. Chrome and Chromium based
| browsers do that. I cannot even perceive the delay between
| pressing Ctrl+N and a new window appearing. With Firefox it
| takes about 0.5-1 seconds before anything happens at all.
| This seems to be another 10-20x difference (though I'd have
| to record my screen and measure the difference).
|
| Curiously, Re: UI lag, I think the actual time until the
| navbar is usable is about the same. But Firefox waits until
| the whole window is built before it displays it, while Chrome
| opens the window immediately and fills it in. From a user
| experience (I do command, I expect feedback) this makes a
| _huge_ difference.
|
| I switch back to Firefox roughly once a year after reading
| how fast it's gotten. But I have been disappointed on this
| front every single time. I want Firefox to succeed, I really
| do. I am donating to Mozilla every month. But as it is right
| now, I can't tolerate such lag, for a trivial action I
| perform thousands of times a day.
| dsissitka wrote:
| I try it regularly but it just doesn't work for me. Here are
| just a few of the reasons why:
|
| 1. Chromium based browsers give me control over extensions
| that require access to everything.
| https://imgur.com/a/ENZkQyc
|
| 2. Firefox doesn't support media keys.
|
| Edit: Turns out it does if you enable them in about:config.
| See bad_user's comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442732
|
| 3. There are still some areas in which Firefox's performance
| isn't competitive. Try using it with something like Rainway
| and it will completely fall over.
|
| #3 isn't that big of a deal to me. #2 I could probably adapt
| to. #1 makes Firefox a non starter for me.
| bad_user wrote:
| Firefox does support media keys, but it's experimental and
| you have to enable them in about:config:
|
| - media.hardwaremediakeys.enabled
|
| - dom.media.mediasession.enabled
|
| #1 seems nice. Note however that Firefox was safer even
| before they introduced their permissions system simply by
| having a review system that works.
|
| The review system of Chrome Web Store is broken, there's a
| lot of malware on it, extensions bought and turned malware
| and then you've got completely legitimate extensions being
| banned due to some automatic process flagging them. And
| then it's really hard to get in touch with humans. All the
| while reported malware take months to be taken down.
|
| Of course, it's also true that Chrome is simply the bigger
| target. And what Mozilla is doing now probably doesn't
| scale. But for now Firefox's ecosystem of add-ons is much,
| much safer (and arguably more useful). Has been that way
| for some time.
|
| I used to complain that it doesn't have a permissions
| system, I then complained that you can't disable add-ons in
| private mode. But it keeps evolving and I'm sure it will
| implement your favorite too, if useful.
| dsissitka wrote:
| > Firefox does support media keys, but it's experimental
| and you have to enable them in about:config:
|
| Nice! Thank you. :)
| gnicholas wrote:
| Bummer! I got the Tracking Token Stripper [1] to help remove
| stuff like this. Wonder what the result is if I use this and
| Brave -- which one wins?
|
| 1: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tracking-token-
| str...
| gridlockd wrote:
| This is a nothingburger. Brave adds its own referrer code to a
| handful of crypto-related websites, if you type them into the
| address bar. It doesn't modify other affiliate links, as far as I
| can tell.
| [deleted]
| warranty wrote:
| That is discrimination and you should be ashamed of it.
| srich36 wrote:
| This is similar to when Pinterest did this back in 2012 and very
| quickly made large amounts of money but were crushed by public
| opinion and quickly shut the practice down. It'll be interesting
| to see how Brave responds.
|
| 1.
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...
| lexs wrote:
| Ironic that you posted an AMP link
|
| https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2012/2/8/2783807/pintr...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's as if Brave is performance art put on by Mozilla's
| advertising department.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I seem to collect browsers like some people collect pokemon.
| Right now I am typing this in firefox and have twitch open in
| chrome in my second monitor. I use Edge for work accounts,
| Waterfox for times when I want to use a couple old addons that
| were never ported over, and opera and vivaldi around just to see
| how they measure up.
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| I am an enthusiastic Brave user - but seeing stories like these
| make me wonder if I'd be better off configuring Firefox to be
| more secure/private and using that.
|
| As a privacy and transparency advocate, it disappoints me to see
| Brave fail to pass the the test, especially considering that
| privacy and transparency are supposed to be the browser's MO.
| thezdroids wrote:
| I support businesses that don't support bigotry toward me- their
| lead dev @jonathansampson is a vocal supporter of Trump. Nah I'm
| good.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Ugh. Between him and Eich's past with opposing the legalization
| of gay marriage, I think I'll stay clear of brave.
| tyingq wrote:
| I would think the affiliate programs wouldn't like this either.
|
| The browser isn't doing anything to drive traffic. It's just
| taking credit for traffic that was coming already.
| jfoster wrote:
| They theoretically could do things to drive traffic. For
| example, if they surface the domain sooner than they might
| surface other domains, or change the way the URL is displayed.
|
| Eg. User types "B" and whilst "bbc.co.uk" might be very
| popular, Brave could instead surface the less popular
| "binance.com" ahead of BBC, and potentially give it a different
| visual treatment, too.
|
| I don't use Brave, so I'm not sure whether they do either of
| these things, though.
| davidgerard wrote:
| They seem to have explicit deals with Binance and Coinbase -
| don't know about Ledger or Trezor.
| javajosh wrote:
| Good point. Maybe brave should make affiliate-able links blink
| and/or respond to clicks in a wider area? (Just to be clear:
| this is satire. Please don't do this.)
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Brave has to pay salaries - I suppose this is better than selling
| user data. Chrome is subsidized by search and Firefox gets money
| from Google.
|
| The revenue model for browsers is fucked up.
| slater wrote:
| Countdown till some Chromium-based browser pops up with adblock
| enabled, but a $10/mo usage fee?
|
| (i jinxed it, didn't i)
| [deleted]
| Sherl wrote:
| fuckin linux is free where the entire business lives serving
| trillions of dollars. $10/mo for a web browser? guess its
| time for another FOSS on browsers this time.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Ironically there's only one browser with a sane business model
| and it's Safari. You have to buy an Apple product to use it.
| Simple.
|
| That's probably why it's the only mainstream browser, outside
| of obscure open source browsers like Falkon and Gnome Web, that
| doesn't have any built-in ties to third party services.
| bmarquez wrote:
| Safari is also mainstream because you have no choice but to
| use it on iOS. Even if you manually install another browser
| (which can't be made default), you're still using the
| underlying Safari engine.
| selykg wrote:
| I think Apple still get revenue from Google (and probably
| Bing?) searches.
|
| Could be wrong but I thought I remember details about Google
| paying Apple for this. But it was years ago I last seen it
|
| Edit: quick search for "safari google search revenue" got me
| a few links from prior years about Google paying to be the
| default search engine. Last mention was 2019 so who knows how
| long that contract is or whatever
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(page generated 2020-06-06 23:00 UTC)