know about the brave browser?
https://brave.com/
Is it a browser you have used and think is
good? Thank you.
It is on some systems at work and I've used it there. It's very fast, faster than Chrome in my experience and in benchmark tests I've seen. It has freedom problems as it accesses the proprietary add-ons from the Chrome web store. I wouldn't recommend it as any kind of seriously libre-friendly browser.
Beside freedom issues, Chromium-based browsers are bloated and inefficient.
Since Google disallowed third-party to distribute browser add-ons, it's impossible for us in China to access add-ons for any Chromium-based browser. So I don't even bother to take a look at them.
> Beside freedom issues, Chromium-based browsers are bloated and inefficient.
Except ungoogled-chromium which is even faster than the original Chromium. Not only it has any binary blobs removed but also makes zero background connections. Also with it you cannot install any extensions from Google's repositories because all internal connections to Google's sites are totally removed. You can install extension only manually.
You can side load Chrome extensions to ungoogled-chromium. But you are right, direct connection to the web store is disabled last I checked.
Unfortunately, we still cannot obtain Chromium extensions from China.
Some extensions, like ublock, have github repositories where you can grab the extensions to side load. I just do a web search for the name of the extension I am looking for and "github", and seems like about half the time I find what I am looking for.
> Chromium-based browsers are bloated and inefficient.
I have to disagree. Most of the time I do my work on less powerful hardware, and my experiences tends to be opposite. For example Firefox is practically useless on Raspberry Pi, especially on 1GB models, while Chromium runs fine enough on them.
Anything chromimum or with web extensions I avoid. That being said, even the current firefox is better than chromium/googleware...
Although, that also being said, I realize that some people here like rust, though not sure why
but yeah, a libre firefox based web browser if possible, is way better than google chrome and chromium based web browsers.
Ram gets eaten up quickly and security is hardly their thing. ;) ;/
My point is, Brave is not worth much to me and its not libre. Even if they do things to make ads go away, they probably dont do anything about trackers. Which is more problematic in my opinion.
> Even if they do things to make ads go away, they probably dont do anything about trackers.
Brave does block ads... in order to replace those ads with its own ads and attempt to rope users and websites into participating in Brave's cryptocurrency and ad network in order to generate value for investors. If you don't want to see ads, install an ad-blocker for your preferred browser. If you want a privacy-respecting Chromium derivative, use ungoogled-chromium. If you want to sell your brain cells to venture capitalists, then I guess use Brave.
> Brave does block ads... in order to replace those ads with its own ads and attempt to rope users and websites into participating in Brave's cryptocurrency and ad network in order to generate value for investors. If you don't want to see ads, install an ad-blocker for your preferred browser. If you want a privacy-respecting Chromium derivative, use ungoogled-chromium. If you want to sell your brain cells to venture capitalists, then I guess use Brave.
I've seen you say this type of thing before, but from my limited experience Brave's ad system is opt-in, and the ads themselves do not appear to be personalized or targeted in any way. If you were going to design an ethical ad system for a browser, I think this would be a useful model to look at.
I am less concerned about ads and more concerned about trackers...
But I know that malvertising is unfourtunately a common practice. So there's that...
> from my limited experience Brave's ad system is opt-in
I was not sure whether it is opt-in, but the fact that it is does not change anything for me. If someone were to create a rebranded derivative of Brave which completely removes BAT integration and distribute it only as free software, I may consider trying/recommending this fork (though I wonder what advantages if any it would have over ungoogled-chromium). However, recommending Brave as it currently stands would likely lead users to download Brave's non-free binaries (it can only be used under the terms of the MPL if compiled from source) and might imply that I approve of their business model.
> and the ads themselves do not appear to be personalized or targeted in any way
I never said they were. Companies who participate in the attention economy often resort to surveillance, but not always.
> If you were going to design an ethical ad system for a browser, I think this would be a useful model to look at.
I'm not looking to design an ad system for a browser. Every browser I have used works just fine without one, and I don't see what's so ethical about a system which wastes it users' mental and literal bandwidth in order to create short-term profit for middlemen and speculators.
> I don't see what's so ethical about a system which wastes it users' mental and literal bandwidth in order to create short-term profit for middlemen and speculators.
These are very small ads. I doubt they use up any noticeable bandwidth. I'm sure it's an imperfect system, but it is one that is well worth studying for anyone who would want to do ethical advertising.
Also, the ability to target some of the ad revenue toward your favorite websites is an interesting concept that they've come up with.
You can see an example of a Brave ad here: https://media.wired.com/photos/5cbf973f74a13c799083e0cf/master/w_2400,c_limit/BraveAds-Inline.jpg
It's the little box in the lower right-hand corner that says "Ternio BlockCard". They all seem to use the same format and size.
> It's the little box in the lower right-hand corner that says "Ternio BlockCard". They all seem to use the same format and size.
Interesting. It looks like a desktop notification. Does it actually integrate with the desktop environment?
> Interesting. It looks like a desktop notification. Does it actually integrate with the desktop environment?
I don't recall. I think it's some type of a small popup browser window. I do recall it makes a little notification sound if you have your sound on. And the ad stays on your screen for around 30 seconds if you don't dismiss it. And you can sign up for increasing frequencies of ads, which will give you more of the Brave attention tokens. I signed up for the highest frequency just to see what would happen, and ended up seeing about 3 ads per hour. They were almost always for a VPN service or an antivirus product or similar simple tech ads. You would see the same ad quite often - I think it was for a VPN. They were small and simple and not bothersome to me. I usually glanced at it for a moment and then ignored it or dismissed it. I tried it out for about 3 days on a work computer that already had the browser installed.
> These are very small ads. I doubt they use up any noticeable bandwidth.
Do you mean that they are smaller than normal ads, or that you don't consider ads to be a significant use of bandwidth in general? In any case, that's only a small part of what I am talking about.
> I'm sure it's an imperfect system, but it is one that is well worth studying for anyone who would want to do ethical advertising.
That depends on what you think that the ethical issues are with ads. Surveillance is one issue I'm considered about, but I am also concerned about other issues that go back much further. However, even if you are only concerned with tracking, Brave is not needed in order to have ethical ads. Such ads don't need to be served by the browser. Websites can just as easily serve static ads based on the content of webpages rather than user data. Overall, increasingly aggressive surveillance has not really made advertising more effective. Novel advertising models, many but not all (see Brave) involving increased surveillance, lure in investors but won't prevent the online advertising bubble from eventually bursting. I highly recommend reading [this speech][1] by Maciej Cegłowski (he has some other good articles and speeches on the same blog).
> Also, the ability to target some of the ad revenue toward your favorite websites is an interesting concept that they've come up with.
Indeed. When a cryptocurrency takes off, the early adopters (the developers and speculators) get rich, but in order for this to happen they need a way to get people to adopt their cryptocurrency instead of one of the gazillion others made by people trying to do the exact same thing. Brave blocks ads and then tells websites that they can have some of their diverted ad revenue back, if they sign up for "Brave Rewards" and accept it in the form of BAT. I don't a ton of sympathy for websites which track their users, but a racket is a racket.
[1]: https://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you.htm
> I highly recommend reading [this speech][1] by Maciej Cegłowski (he
> has some other good articles and speeches on the same blog).
[This][2] post is relevant too (and shorter).
[2]: https://idlewords.com/2015/11/the_advertising_bubble.htm
> [1]: https://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you.htm
Good articles! I disagree on one thing - regulation won't work if all other aspects are left in place. As I said on another comment, unless you centralize control of the ads through something like DNS or the browser, there's no way to regulate a hundred million different misbehaving website operators.
Of course there is. You are aware that labor laws are enforced, for instance. Hundreds of millions of companies are regulated in this way. And although it is much harder to look into companies' walls than to visit public websites, regulation significantly reduced slavery or child labor, minimal wages are mostly respected, so are maximal numbers of working hours a day/week, job applicants cannot be discriminated on race/religion/sex, the safety of the workers is controlled, they cannot be fired without a legitimate reason, etc. Nowadays, neoliberalism keeps pointing at the cost of such regulations, which would make the companies less competitive. That is what slave masters were arguing too, before abolition. Individual rights regress in many of those neoliberal countries.
> Websites can just as easily serve static ads based on the content of webpages rather than user data.
You and I both know that 99.9999999999% of website operators can never be trusted to serve up ethical advertising. 26 years online have taught me that lesson the HARD way.
I think if you ever are going to have ethical advertising, it would have to be controlled through the DNS or the browser or some central system. I give Brave credit for at least trying something different, and as I say, something that we can at least observe and think about.
I feel like you are only responding to minor side points and ignoring the concerns I'm expressing, but I'm also not in a great mood today and might just be overly irritable and prone to frustration.
> And you can sign up for increasing frequencies of ads, which will give you more of the Brave attention tokens.
This sounds like something that belongs in a Black Mirror episode, not a browser.
If Brave really was trying to do this, I don't think chromium is the right base. Although I also don't trust Brave anyways.
But if they were serious about doing this securely, it would be either a firefox base or a palemoon/basilisk base.
But in either case, especially the second case, I don't think it would work.
Because if their model required insecurity it would not stun me... And Palemoon/Basilisk are debloating firefox and removing a lot of stuff that tracks the user. such as telemetry...
But yeah, like I had said though, ads are not my biggest concern, its the concern that trackers and other malware might lie within the ads themselves.
Not that I want to see sexual ads or tv show ads i dislike. CGI should be considered a dead end at this point except for those without imagination. :/
Actually back on topic though...
I only currently trust Palemoon/Basilisk Forks that are libre. Such as Iceweasel-uxp. No libre palemoon forks yet though... ;/
I know that I personally block all ads. I tried the Brave ads for a few days just to see what they were all about. But otherwise I've blocked them all, using multiple tools to do the blocking. If nearly everyone blocked all ads, it would force website operators to change their methods. Possibly the best thing that could happen to make advertising more ethical would be for the majority of people to block all ads for awhile.
I don't think the advertising companies will ever, ever change their spots. They just greedy to the max man...
> I only currently trust Palemoon/Basilisk Forks that are libre.
I will allow myself to comment this in relation to your similar thoughts in the thread about HyperbolaBSD.
You need to understand that security (including privacy as a personal security) is not a thing to be evaluated in isolation. Security is always something to be evaluated in relation to something else.
Example: not being connected to the network gives a great level of protection to network attacks. But it does not protect you from physical attacks, power surges, eavesdropping, earthquakes, nuclear bombs or asteroid strike. So even if you have your perfect "libre" dream - that is not absolute security. As explained in the other thread - something being "libre" simply opens the door to better community control. It is not a guarantee of security. It is free in the sense of development and distribution. That's all.
> They just greedy to the max man...
It is easy to be judgemental to others. But think: are you not greedy by expecting the perfect comfort and security given to you by others for free? (yes, as in gratis too). Technology is not a given. It takes the time and energy of generations.
Suppose for a moment that there is the perfect computer: 100% "libre" everything (hardware, software), very secure too but you must pay (say) $100K to have this wonder. Would you pay to support the project? - No. You would say "That is too much, I can't afford it. I am not ready to work N years for this". But the fact is that developing a browser like Chrome, Firefox, Safari or IE costs much more than that. How would you do it if you were the head of such project? Would you just explain to programmers that they are too greedy to want high salaries for their expertise? Or that they must not use any non-libre hardware because of thousand "valid" reasons, so they should recompile 50 times more slowly on an old RYF laptop, just in order to conform to the ideals of someone?
So you see: shouting around "freedom" or "security" or "How dare you" won't make anyone more free or secure. Only understanding can change things. Sadly too many fall for beautiful words and forget to look at facts.
I am a member!
On 2/13/20 4:34 AM, name at domain wrote:
> You need to understand that security (including privacy as privacy as a
> personal security) is not a thing to be evaluated in isolation. Security
> is always something to be evaluated in relation to something else.
This is very much correct, and absolute full security would be very
boring. It reminds me of this song "YOLO".
https://invidio.us/watch?v=z5Otla5157c
--
Caleb Herbert
KE0VVT
(816) 892-9669
https://bluehome.net/csh
> I don't think the advertising companies will ever, ever change their spots. They just greedy to the max man...
Doesn't Google make the majority of all online advertising money? You could just say "I don't think Google will ever, ever change its spots. They just greedy to the max man..."