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Mozilla Co-Founder's Ad-blocking Brave Browser Will Pay You Bitcoin To See Ads (pcworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Brave, a new privacy and speed focused web browser for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android, backed by Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich, will pay its users in bitcoin to watch ads. From a PCWorld article, 'Under this plan, advertisers pay for a certain number of impressions, and Brave aggregates those payments into one sum. Websites that participate in the scheme get 55 percent of the money, weighted by how many impressions are served on their sites. For both users and publishers, Brave deposits the money into individual bitcoin wallets, and both parties must verify their identity to claim the funds. This requires an email and phone number for users, and more stringent identification steps for publishers. Users who don't verify will automatically donate their share of the funds back to the sites they visit most.' It appears Brave's strategy hinges on, among other things, collecting your browsing data to display relevant ads. The aforementioned article also says that users will have an option to block all ads by paying a monthly subscription to Brave. Not sure how many people would want to buy that.
i'll bite. still won't watch the ads, though.
This is something. I don't know if I should find it interesting, laudable, or horrifying.
I bet it would take less than 10 hours, for someone to be heavily abusing the system.
I'm not enabling the ability to see ads for the sake of bitcoins when doing so is a potential avenue for malware. You want to vet the advertisers and take on full liability in case of wrongdoing then maybe I'll consider it.
I love this flipping of the equation! I can't imagine it's a lot of money but I like it putting the control to default off but letting me decide if I want to opt in. then compensating me. the feeling would be more important than the cash. and if it works we could have a world where it's default-off without an arms race in ad-blocking software. Ad blocking software is broke as a model because the ad blockers themselves track me, and it makes browsing unstable when it doesn't work right. Worse ad blocking is all or nothing. Sure you can limit by web site but you can't limit it by avertiser type. I'm happy to have some advertisers I'm interested in funnel interesting ads regardless of what site I visit.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If only I can access my so-called "preferences" profile to edit the categories I'm actually interested in instead of letting ad companies "guestimate" my interests from websites I'll only visit once in my lifetime.
Oh, so I can get called by telemarketers? Sorry but you lost me with this requirement.
Why does this parse as "scam" to me?
What exactly would I, a "subscriber," be subscribing to? "Look at all this lovely personally identifiable data we've collected. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it..." Yeah, the word "subscription" doesn't properly describe that kind of transaction...
And what's to prevent me from launching a phalanx of Brave browsers and have them randomly surfing the Web and accumulating Bitcoin for watcching ad impressions? Sockpuppetry is still trivial. Hell, why would I need to use the Brave browser at all; I could just emulate the protocol and then install the client on millions of compromised Windows machines...
This strikes me as really goddamned dumb...
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
1. Create a bot to randomly crawl pages. 2. Profit?
This is a good idea, and it's fair. If you want me to hear/watch a sales pitch then it makes sense that I get something up front for the time spent. The only problem that I see is that it's not going to attract people who actually have money to spend. They've got better ways to make money then get paid to watch advertisments.
The fact that it uses Bitcoin makes it a non-starter for most normal people. Not only does it require people to adopt Brave, but it also requires them to adopt Bitcoin, too! Normal people don't care about Bitcoin. They don't want to waste their time with it. They don't want to bother learning it. If they can't pay for it with cash or their credit card, then they won't bother with it, and never will.
Too complex. Too arcane.
Bitcoin doesn't have the awareness, utility, or acceptance to be mass market.
Even if 40% or more of your adds are blocked in Firefox, Chrome. IE, Safari and Edge, you're still getting a pretty good bang for your buck.
The "we'll pay you to watch ads" businesses was one of the signs before the DotCom crash.
This is scary as hell.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't want to be paid to watch Ad's, I don't want to see them at all ever, and yes I am willing to pay an annual subscription for that privilege if someone can make a browser and websites behave well with Ad Blocking (I doubt this project is it though).
If this is what Mozilla is bringing to the table I think it's pretty safe to say it's nearly dead.
Yeah, sure. Like Netscape users had the option to 'legally' purchase the browser.
Unless they make it free, a latter day IE (this time, funded by Google) will show up to eat their lunch.
The Gecko engine was never Mozilla's selling point. That part of Firefox was never better than ok and sometimes caused issues. Everything built around it was what made it worth it. Then they went overboard and started adding every bell and whistle that most people never wanted and slowed it down and caused issues for users. Now, they're working on cleaning it up. I wish them well as I would like to see a viable competitor to Chrome again.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
The whole ad blocking is up for debate as it does prevent the publishers from receiving revenue, but ads have become malicious and extremely annoying. I do use ad blockers except I turn it off on some sites to show support. But this is just wrong, because instead of giving the publishers revenue for the ads that they post, the browser will inject their own ads to moreso benefit "brave" and the users. If you are down to viewing ads, you might as well help out who ever publishes it instead of this. Sigh, not to mention this reminds me of the whole "pay to surf" era back in the late 90s.
How efficient is Bitcoin at handling micropayments?
See, Mr. Eich, we can reach equitable terms. Give me all your bitcoins! I will fund the gay agenda! Bwahahahaha!
"Brave"? Getting a crypto virus from malvertising is stupid, not Brave.
My price is $1000/month, no less.
A little bit of bitcoin is deducted from your account for viewing content you're interested in? Is their plan to completely monetize the Internet?
So a privacy-focused browser has code specifically written to send all your browsing history to a wide variety of third parties? Something's wrong there...
Like, it's not exactly click fraud, because you're not clicking, so the advertisers aren't paying for that. But an ad you're paid to watch is one they know you're explicitly not interested in, so I thought they didn't like that, either?
In order to receive the payments, the browser requires that you register three things: a bitcoin wallet [otherwise you won't get paid] an email address and a phone number. In the small print you can bet that you are signing away permission for this company to "sell on" your activity data. How would you like to be plagued by telephone marketing? Worse, the way this is going to work is by use of things like session cookies, because this browser is going to need to have a way of identifying itself to participating infrastructure. What this does is "expand the identity attributes" [i.e. add to the vectors] by which you can be identified as a real person. This is very much like that ultrasonic audio trick that was recently banned [that allowed a smartphone app to figure out what channel and what TV commercials you were watching]. In other words, you are giving away FAR, FAR more than just the time and intrusion that these ads will cost you. Seriously, don't do it.
Check out webpass.io. It's designed to work alongside your adblocker, as a way to financially support websites via a subscription. Those sites that receive money from the subscription have to voluntarily remove their ads, and your adblocker will continue to block ads on all other sites.
I've never seen an ATM Bitcoin in person.
nice idea but far too limited website support and far too limited browser support for it. If they get it to a point where they support more platforms and browsers and websites I would be happy to fork over a subscription each month. I won't fund their efforts until they have a service that is worthwhile. Perhaps they need to change their subscription model to cents per ad free page served until they can show good website support..
So, let me get this straight. Brave will either collect money from advertisers and maybe pay some of it to Web site operators based on delivered impressions; or Brave will collect money from users under the guise of a "subscription."
Why does this parse as "scam" to me?
What exactly would I, a "subscriber," be subscribing to? "Look at all this lovely personally identifiable data we've collected. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it..." Yeah, the word "subscription" doesn't properly describe that kind of transaction...
And how exactly does all this fit into the business of "a privacy and speed focused web browser"?
Sorry, but speed and privacy are incompatible with advertising.
Sure, if you want to commit fraud in a detectable and prosecutable form.
My Mom installed one in her basement.
The money has to come from somewhere. The ROI of online advertising is already iffy at best. Now you want to add an additional cost by charging for viewability? Please. You can't change the math just because it sounds good. The only way that can possibly work is for even less money to go to publishers who are already on their last legs.
Besides, this system will be *instantly* gamed by browsing bots that surf 24/7 on multiple virtual machines making the ROI of online ads rapidly approach zero.
I, for example would donate to wikipedia.
FRA: STFU GTFO
if you have content compelling enough to monetize (which is very few sites these days, as they are all click-bait designed to shove ads down your throat), do the fucking leg work to secure a few sponsors for the site
What resources can you recommend for someone looking into getting into ad sales for the first time? Even if you have a platform that lets advertisers upload creative, specify start and end dates for campaigns, and lets the site owner approve them, how is such leg work done? And how can such a platform reassure advertisers that view and click statistics are genuine as opposed to fraudulent?
God, it's sad how quickly Firefox has become such a joke. It wasn't all that long ago that it was the best browser around. Now it's so far back it will likely never catch up. And Servo? LOL! It makes Firefox look superb, Servo is so frigging awful!
Peak Firefox happened with Version 4.0. It was all downhill from there:
Firefox Popularity trend. Relative peak at March 2011
Firefox Release history
I remember huge excitement around Version 3.0 release (which corresponds with the absolute peak in the trend in 2008)
Then they started going on a 45 minute release cycle, moving menus around randomly, and adding Hello, Pocket, and other useless addons. Now I dread Firefox updates.
I deploy an image with Firefox (company standard), think I set all the required defaults: Clear history on exit, don't remember passwords, etc.
Restore the image and I get "You haven't used Firefox in a while, do you want to reset it and restore defaults? Do you want to use Reader view?" WTF? Get out of the way!
If one of these ads infects my computer in a drive by download attack?
When are television advertisers going to complain that nobody watches their commercials and ask TV makers to build a detector to sense when people watching TV leave the room during a commercial break? Aren't these TV advertisers in the same boat as internet website advertisers. If everybody is using commercial breaks to use the bathroom or do something else other than watching TV nobody watches their commercials and they have wasted their money paying to have a commercial aired on network TV. Advertisers and site who use flash animation also need to realize that users often block flash animation for security reason and because they are annoyed when they go to a website to read and some obnoxious video starts to play distracting their attention. In addition, if a person has a low bandwidth connection (some have as slow as 1.5 Mbps internet speeds and some rural users are using dial-up). If they allowed these bandwidth stealing ads to load, they would be waiting 10 or 15 minutes for each website to open. Why should a user be forced to have an advertisement steal their own bandwidth, run on their own computer, and even put their computer at risk of infection? I often use the 10 second rule when I go to a website. If it takes more than 10 seconds for a website to load I simply go to another site. There are many sites out there who have so much bandwidth stealing ads that I gave up trying to use their sites until I was able to block ads.
How much do I get to allow those malware-laden ads? Hope it's enough to fix the resulting damage!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Welcome to Capitalism. You say 'scam'; they say 'innovative idea'! I say 'potato'
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
I remember when I was a teenager running an auto-mouse script to take full advantage of "All Advantage, Get Paid to Surf!". Made a killing (for 14) before they went under. Tech has improved 100x but advertising tech not so much. I see the exact same arms race taking place here... I'm out this time though ;)
I read about the concept of the brave browser when it was first announced, and I think there are a few important points that you have to understand. Their plan is to have the browser watch your activity and serve ads according to that activity. But it is the browser doing this not some centralized server. So your private data stays on your machine and their algorithms run in the browser turning the local tracking data into requests to their ad providers for ads that fit your profile. The ads they serve conform to some guidelines as far as quality e.g. good performance (no flash), no deceptive tactics. And because they are providing a more centralized route of the ad content you don't have 15 separate requests for ad content when you try to load a page.
There are probably many ways this idea can fail, but it is, at least, a novel approach to preserving privacy while also meeting the needs of content providers.