Co-founder of Mozilla, Brendan Eich, creates new browser paying users to view advertisements

[nobelharvards]

NakedSecurity article

 

DigitalJournal article

 

PCWorld article

 

Browser website

 

Quote from DigitalJournal:

Quote

Brendan Eich, the co-founder of Mozilla, has invented a new browser which is a lot nicer to online users, safer, and may even solve the Adblock problem for advertisers. He may also have saved Internet advertising from itself.

 

Quote from PCWorld:

 

Quote

First announced in January, Brave is a web browser for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android that has ad blocking built in. But instead of eliminating ads entirely, Brave wants to replace them with speedier, non-intrusive ads from its own network. Users who agree to see these ads will then get paid in bitcoin.

 

The idea of this browser is to block websites' own advertisements, and replace them with internal, carefully screened, supposedly "speedier" and less intrusive advertisements from its own network.

 

I am anticipating abuse... some basic script forcing this to run on 100 000+ instances, every 10 seconds...? Fairly certain someone like Eich would have already thought of that and have countermeasures in place.

 

Also, I am uncertain about how ... the article claims this has "saved Internet advertising". I cannot see anyone using this. This seems more like a volunteer opt-in sort of thing.

[zacRupnow]

I just want an adblock that can't be detected by sites.

[spartaman64]

how much does he pay? like 0.0001 cent worth of bitcoin per ad

[RexinOridle]

But is it good though?

[FakezZ]

The way I see it, this solves nothing... The websites still won't get revenue from this. The problem was not the advertisers not showing their ads, but websites not getting paid... So, unless I'm missing something, this is absolutely useless, unless you like getting paid 10^-1000 cents for every 1000 ads shown

[dalekphalm]

This seems more like stealing Ad Revenue than anything else...

 

I mean, look at it this way. If your website hasn't opted into his Ad Network, then the plugin will DISABLE your ads, and REPLACE THEM with ads from his Ad Network. Is this even legal? I suppose so, not sure what law it would violate...

 

But it's shady as fuck.

[theninja35]

Are you sure this wasn't an April Fool's joke?

[Lukiewookie]

I'm viewing this site on Brave right now - thought I might give it a try.

 

I'm using Linux, so the UI looks out of place, but I have to give them one thing; it is quite fast. I notice the difference a lot.

 

That being said, the only adverts that I saw being replaced were replaced with a banner that read "Better ads here soon" (or something along those lines). 

 

I don't see this browser replacing my 'daily driver'. An interesting experiment though, however I would be surprised if trouble didn't come out of it.

[Exhilarare]

15 minutes ago, Lukiewookie said:

I'm viewing this site on Brave right now - thought I might give it a try.

 

I'm using Linux, so the UI looks out of place, but I have to give them one thing; it is quite fast. I notice the difference a lot.

 

That being said, the only adverts that I saw being replaced were replaced with a banner that read "Better ads here soon" (or something along those lines). 

 

I don't see this browser replacing my 'daily driver'. An interesting experiment though, however I would be surprised if trouble didn't come out of it.

Your account is less than 5 hours old, and this is your only post. I honestly can't trust your review, so I will wait for others to come out. Thanks though.

[TetraSky]

On 2016-04-06 at 1:27 AM, huilun02 said:

Its called Hostsman I think 

That's just a HOSTS file editor, I personally have a few HOSTS list directly in my router's firewall to block ads before they ever reach my computer and I've encountered some websites that says I have adblock enabled and wouldn't let me access them. So it really depends on the type of "anti-adblock" type of detection a website uses.

[Lukiewookie]

8 hours ago, Exhilarare said:

Your account is less than 5 hours old, and this is your only post. I honestly can't trust your review, so I will wait for others to come out. Thanks though.

Not meant to be a review, and I must start somewhere :P.

 

However, I do feel obliged to point out that under the tab 'Bravery' (fitting, eh :P), you have the option - amongst other things like https - to a) replace adds, b) block adds, and c) allow adds. This might maybe provide a workaround to some of the legal issues people mentioned earlier.