Brave Browser Passes 20M Monthly Active Users and 7M Daily Active Users

by 0xedb • 6 years ago

433 250 6 years ago

bmarquez• 6 years ago

Brave recently became my default browser, but I personally don't care for the crypto stuff.

The current iOS beta allows users to sync their bookmarks with Windows and iOS privately, and it's what convinced me to switch. I didn't need to create an account with my email address, or install iCloud...just scan a QR code.

I wish they'd fix the captcha problem though, a lot of sites that use ReCaptcha think Brave browser users are bots (due to the security).

colordrops• 6 years ago

I appreciate that you can turn off all of their additional features pretty easily.

bsclifton8• 6 years ago

Fix for the CAPTCHA issue coming! There's a pre-release version out which you can try: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.16.71

Shooting to have the official version out today or tomorrow

ffpip6• 6 years ago

Hello! The android browser has another captcha issue for a long time. The captcha is partially rendered outside the screen. I tested this on multiples devices.

On Brave Nightly since 6 months. block ads, Fingerprinting - aggressive , 3rd party cookies blocked,

bsclifton8• 6 years ago

CAPTCHA fix released just a few mins ago! :)

KMnO4• 6 years ago

Interesting that a browser designed to block analytics has built in analytics. Is this enabled by default?

renewiltord• 6 years ago

I was curious too and so I looked it up. I believe it's opt-out https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/

Here's a list of the telemetry https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/P3A

fastball3• 6 years ago

Pretty sure the goal is to block 3rd party ads and tracking scripts. The goal was never "block all analytics". For example, I don't think Brave will by default block 1st party analytics either.

d0gbread• 6 years ago

Brave blocks Google Tag Manager completely and that doesn't drop any cookies at all, and Google Analytics which drops first party cookies.

pkulak2• 6 years ago

Use Firefox, people. Brave is shady as hell. I'll use Chrome or Edge long before I use Brave.

lenitabinol• 6 years ago

please elaborate

amitport• 6 years ago

Can you elaborate?

coolspot3• 6 years ago

Probably reference to all crypto-coin related stuff in Brave.

jolmg• 6 years ago

Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999

fuu_dev• 6 years ago

Have fun:

https://rudism.com/the-brave-browser-is-brilliant/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027

pkulak2• 6 years ago

Replacing ads on sites you visit with their ads, wrapped up in a cryptocurrency scheme, like you'd expect from a literal virus, brought to you by a guy too homophobic to be on Mozilla's board.

Plus, and I have no evidence of this apart the synchronized hype they do for the browser, but I'm pretty sure Brave is secretly bankrolling those very... political... Linux YouTubers.

satysin3• 6 years ago

Do you have anything to back that up?

I ask because I feel the same but don't actually have any proof that things are shady. It is just a feeling which obviously isn't enough to convince others but is enough to put me off using it the few times I've tried.

Something about all this 'rewards' stuff just feels dodgy. No idea why I feel this, I probably read something at some point but don't recall now.

sam0x174• 6 years ago

I've used it for over a year and yeah it's nothing more than a feeling -- experience has just been better than anything else in terms of the default ad blocking. "Disable your ad-blocker" things also leave you alone because they know if you are using Brave you aren't going to budge.

redvenom• 6 years ago

Brave by default collects telemetry data. It is anonymized but any security researcher will tell you that metadata of this nature over time can be more revealing that is claimed. It's right their in their FAQ.

Brave's primary customers are advertisers. While this is not evidence in itself, it is certainly something to be wary of.

Aaronstotle2• 6 years ago

They lost a lot of credibility when they put an affiliate links automatically without any disclosure.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-aff...

tomxor• 6 years ago

https://rudism.com/the-brave-browser-is-brilliant/

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22510008

TL;DR It's an ad company posing as a privacy company. Brave replaces other ads with Brave's, created a crypto currency for the purpose of sharing profits with website owners, but in reality pockets almost all of the money since site owners rarely become aware of it [0] or more likely because it's spread so thin across the web that few sites reach the 100$ threshold.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999

romanovcode• 6 years ago

Closed Source.

24t• 6 years ago

Microsoft and Google are proven bad actors. I'm not much of a believer in 'the devil you know'.

wnevets• 6 years ago

I rather have google track me than infest my machine with cryptominers.

Karunamon2• 6 years ago

That's not how Brave works.

ReptileMan• 6 years ago

Great - tell me how to make mouse gestures work on ALL pages - that include new tab page/speed dial and firefox internal and I am sold. Unfortunately I don't think that anything short of messing with the code and rebuilding makes it possible.

atraac• 6 years ago

Yup, I use touchpad a lot and lack of proper gesture support on precision touchpads on Windows makes it unusable to me. To this day all bugs regarding this are open and only chromium based browsers support it nicely.

wussboy• 6 years ago

The important thing is that we punish companies that are actively trying to fix the problems we all care about because they didn’t fix them perfectly the first time or in exactly the way we would prefer.

Sometimes the users on this site sound like they are drowning, but when you throw them a like jacket, they push it away as they complain about the colour.

mustuhfa4• 6 years ago

No, we punish them when they have fraudulent practices and when the product is a scam, like brave is. They modify user's input without their consent, they accept money with no guarantee of delivering to the intended target and talk about privacy as a selling point when they run an ad network . I cannot believe how much people turn in to a cult like fanboy for a product they understand very little about.

ekianjo4• 6 years ago

Use Firefox, people. Brave is shady as hell. I'll use Chrome or Edge long before I use Brave.

Firefox feeds itself in the hand of Google. They won't do anything that will make Google less dominant.

voidpointercast• 6 years ago

And brave doesn’t even attempt that. They perpetuate the Google monopoly and bolt on their own monetization schema as a ‘feature’ toward the user.

chaBha• 6 years ago

I recently moved away from datahogger chrome. Google is throwing me captcha every single time I use Brave browser, but same thing does not happen when using Safari browser. Why is that?

coolspot3• 6 years ago

User agent string, among orhers, affects how often you get captcha.

For example Tor Browser with default user agent gets all the captchas, many rounds per. Same Tor Browser with manually overriden normal Firefox UA barely gets any captchas.

axaxs3• 6 years ago

Brave uses Chrome's user agent string.

ffpip6• 6 years ago

Tor Browser uses Firefox UA. Brave browser uses Chrome's UA.

pgm8705• 6 years ago

I'm guessing 3rd party cookie blocking being on by default.

tinodotim2• 6 years ago

That's not the problem. Even if you allow them you'll get scrutinized by recaptcha currently. Seems like a fix is on the way though.

gnicholas3• 6 years ago

See upstream thread about a coming fix for this (search on page for “GitHub”).

satysin3• 6 years ago

The one feature I wish any other browser would do as well as Chrome is on-the-fly translation. I think Microsoft Edge does this using Bing Translate but I guess as none of the other browser makers have a translation service they can use they instead rely on a wonky extension that uses Google Translate which isn't anywhere near as smooth as the built-in translate in Chrome (naturally).

If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them as it is the only thing keeping me on Chrome these days.

sam0x174• 6 years ago

Because Brave is chromium-based I believe you can actually use that exact feature in Brave if you install the Google Translate extension.

satysin3• 6 years ago

Not my experience a few weeks ago when I last tried. It prompts you to install a Google Translate extension that basically just sends the URL to Google's web translate service rather than translate 'in place' like Chrome does.

ColanR2• 6 years ago

I imagine that google can do on-the-fly translation because they can eat the cost of the servers running the translation. Best I've seen for firefox uses deepl, which I've heard (on HN) is better than google translate.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/to-deepl/

pbhjpbhj2• 6 years ago

https://Deepl.com/translator is really good IME. It provides more fluid translations and some better, more precise use of terms for me when translating technical documents (mechanical engineering) from French/German.

thekyle• 6 years ago

I think Apple added translation to their latest Safari too. They recently introduced their own translation app.

TheArcane• 6 years ago

This is the only reason I have chrome installed alongside my default Firefox

bsclifton8• 6 years ago

This would be extremely cool - and we (at Brave) did put in work to get a solution working (huge kudos to Jocelyn Liu who did the work). Repo up at https://github.com/brave/go-translate

However, the problem comes to licensing costs :( Setting aside the privacy implications of sending content on a site (since you opt-in), the content needs to be fed to a service. Microsoft and Google charge a per-transaction fee on each of these service calls and it can end up being quite expensive

sam0x174• 6 years ago

The opt-in ads are a bunch of shady crypto-currency things, but I love it. I've actually been making like ~$5/month from ads consistently for almost a year now.

sjtindell• 6 years ago

Can you elaborate a bit? I'm obviously interested. I just turn on Ads normally?

topspin2• 6 years ago

Here it is in a nutshell:

By default (you can turn this behavior off if you wish,) Brave will periodically (every 120 minutes or so) popup an ad. The ad doesn't appear 'in the browser window.' On Windows 10, for instance, it pops up in desktop Notifications. The ad is a sentence of text and a button, full stop. No video, audio, animations, or anything creepy. Just a little dialog box you can click or dismiss.

Every time that happens you receive BAT, a cryptocurrency, that accumulates in your automatically created BAT account. You do with it what you will but, by default, it is periodically distributed to sites that opt-in to accepting BAT.

topspin2• 6 years ago

Yes, 90% of the ads are 'shady crypto-currency things.' I've seen ads from Amazon in Brave though. I click on those (and some others,) not because I need reminders of Amazon's 'deals' and whatnot, but to support Brave.

yabones• 6 years ago

Brave is interesting because its users fall for the 'VPN' fallacy.

Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever.

Or - with browsers - rather than install and configure Firefox to disable the (very limited) telemetry and configure ad blockers etc, you install a chromium derivative with all the Google pieces replaced with a different flavour of mystery sauce. You're still having all the analytics captured, it just goes to somebody with far less scrutiny than Google.

varispeed2• 6 years ago

Is Google actually under any scrutiny? I get an impression that they can pay their way out of anything or get a slap on the wrist.

I agree though that you cannot check if the VPN provider logs your traffic or not even if they claim they don't log it.

xyzzyz• 6 years ago

Did Microsoft pay its way out of antitrust back around 2000?

The thing with being protected through paying off politicians is that it works, until it doesn’t.

andirk2• 6 years ago

I rarely use the Tor feature which is the VPN "fallacy". It's a widely successful anonymity network w/ no relation to Brave. If you have issue w/ Tor, then dont use Tor.

msvan• 6 years ago

But people don't use Brave because they care about privacy. It's the whole monetization angle that appeals to people, right?

dsissitka2• 6 years ago

I use it because it seems like it might be our only hope for a Blink based browser with minimal Google nonsense. For example, see how Brave, Edge, and Vivaldi (And Mozilla, even though they're not Blink based.) responded to Manifest v3.

crocodiletears3• 6 years ago

Tech illiterates tend to think of privacy first, when discussing Brave. Go into any geeky subculture not full of programmers, and ask about a privacy browser. Brave always comes up, the monetization model rarely does

petre• 6 years ago

I use it because it blocks ads and it isn't Google Chrome, meaning no forced logins, not much BS except for the rewards which I disabled and hidden. I can also block scripts with two taps. Didn't know it had a VPN. On the desktop I use FF, on mobile the UI is quite underwhelming.

axaxs3• 6 years ago

You may overestimate some people, for example myself. I don't like firefox, and I don't like ads. Brave is superb for that use case.

Miner49er2• 6 years ago

How is Brave better than Chromium with uBlock Origin, in this case?

ldiracdelta• 6 years ago

Hear, hear. The block chain stuff is for the birds, IMO. And I don't do the VPN stuff. Not google, but still chromium , with ad-blocking is fantastic.

tomComb• 6 years ago

I'm being nit picky, but I keep seeing people write that they "don't like ads", which seems silly because nobody likes ads, of course.

fullstop2• 6 years ago

Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever.

Is this in reference to tor?

I use brave because it's fast, compatible with chrome extensions, but a least a little bit disconnected from Google. Trackers and ads are blocked by default, and it's generally a nice browser.

Miner49er2• 6 years ago

No, OP is comparing VPNs to Brave. With a VPN, you don't actually gain privacy, you only replace your ISP with some foreign-country entity that operates under foreign laws.

Brave is like that, but a browser. You replace Google/Firefox with a smaller, maybe slightly less watched, browser that still does the same stuff.

naringas• 6 years ago

with no oversight whatsoever.

for many of us who grew up in 'third world' (and/or 'developing') economies, this is not in any way better to "heavily regulated". I expect that people from very corrupt ex-soviet states will agree with this sentiment.

weavejester• 6 years ago

Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country

That's nice if you live in one of those countries. Some countries have very little privacy regulations for data collected by ISPs; others actually mandate collection and storage of data.

layoric• 6 years ago

If you’re in Australia, no fallacy imo, government mandated data retention laws in place. I believe started that very few gov departments could see this data but has increased over time to the point I believe is accessible for some civil cases and to organisations [0], so please don’t dismiss VPN privacy use case as it is very applicable for some. I don’t use Brave and there are a lot of problematic VPN providers which makes it complicated for those who want to use them.

[0] https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/02/25/data-retention-scheme-a...

sneak• 6 years ago

Not everyone is perpetually stationary. IP geolocation amounts to city-level coarse location, and accessing a service over time basically shares with them your travel habits: at which dates and times are you in which places?

Using a VPN is a good way to obscure that information. Not every website you visit or app you use needs to know that you're in city X on Monday and Tuesday evenings, and city Y the rest of the week. That's pretty sensitive stuff for a lot of people.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 6 years ago

The number of examples within the "tech industry" where users fall for a fallacy is too long to list.

In these cases, deception of the user is a prerequisite for "success".

golergka• 6 years ago

Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country

That's only fallacy if you think I'm using VPN because I care about who has my browsing data.

I really couldn't care less. I'm using it because my country blocks certain websites and Netflix doesn't have Arrested Development or West Wing licenses for it.

Barrin92• 6 years ago

Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever.

which is precisely the point because one of the most popular use cases of VPNs is to send copyright infringement letters to /dev/null.

Every single time when VPNs come up there's people talking about all the pitfalls of VPNs when the vast majority of people just want to get past geo-restrictions or avoid being sued for torrenting.

meowfly• 6 years ago

I'm still not sure what the VPN fallacy is, and I'm asking genuinely trying to understand.

If someone goes into private mode (and tor becomes enabled) and visits a site, wouldn't the owners of that site have less information on that person than if they visited from their own IP address?

What exactly is the fallacy here?

gsich2• 6 years ago

The fallacy that a VPN suddenly protects your privacy. While the IP is a data point used in tracking it's not the only one.

mulmen• 6 years ago

The VPN provider knows everything you're doing. You aren't automatically anonymous because you use a VPN, you just shifted the party that gets to inspect your traffic.

huffmsa• 6 years ago

Nothing to do with actual private mode / Tor.

It's that you're "safe" because big bad mega corp isn't seeing your DNS traffic or in this case they aren't sending you ads.

But you've traded big bad mega corp for up and coming bad mega corp2, so you're not really any safer.

Not sure I agree with that in this case.

gsich2• 6 years ago

Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever.

I have seen that argumentation only in reverse when people were defending DNS over HTTPS by Cloudflare.

gambler• 6 years ago

Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country

US ISPs:

- Were given retroactive immunity for their participation in illegal domestic spying.

- Often operate in a duopoly, caring not at all about their reputation.

- Routinely engage in shady practices like DNS hijacking.

0-_-0• 6 years ago

Does Brave really capture all the analytics that Chome does? I find that claim surprising.

festivecake4• 6 years ago

It doesn't. That comment is just irresponsibly false.

This is the extent of Brave's analytics: https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/

You can also disable it completely.

vmception2• 6 years ago

That's not why I use Brave lol.

At this point:

I use Chrome for one Metamask HD sequence

I use Firefox for another Metamask HD sequence

I use Brave for another Metamask HD sequence

Funny to say this, but I use so many browsers mostly for accounting purposes.

I wish there was a good wallet that maintained multiple HD paths and assisted in other best practices.

collsni• 6 years ago

Why not just use firefox profiles ?

toxik• 6 years ago

It’s also a matter of strength in numbers. It’s impossible to go after every little VPS provider in the world, or at least significantly harder, than it is to just tell Google to shut down person X’s account and give us a nice report.

ElijahLynn• 6 years ago

Brave is interesting because some non-users have a complete misinformed idea of what people actually use it for. Brave is one of the best things to happen to the web and actually has a chance at saving the web.

Brave allows me to easily donate money to creators. I currently fund the internet to the tune of $10/month using Brave. Someday that will be $100/month.

Brave removes ads "pre-render" so it is the fastest experience one can get. Other ad-blockers remove them after they have already loaded via JavaScript. Brave does this natively.

Brave has features to let users watch ads and earn currency, I don't use that at all. But some do, and it is consensual and fine for them.

Brave has an option called "Private w/Tor" and that is what yabones is claiming that "its users fall for the VPN fallacy". Which may be true for a small percentage but yabones is making a sweeping generalization here by implying "all users", which is not even close to true. I don't even use Private w/Tor mode. I don't consider anything truly private on the web and nobody else should either.

Brave is one of the best things to happen to the web as the web has become swamped with tracking and ads. Brave does remove all those by default.

bitexploder• 6 years ago

I have been using it along with Firefox for a while. It doesn't have any of Chrome's worst behavior. When Google starting forcing the Google profile stuff into Chrome I dropped it cold. Firefox is alright. Brave is alright.

deadbunny• 6 years ago

Brave allows me to easily donate money to creators. I currently fund the internet to the tune of $10/month using Brave. Someday that will be $100/month.

Isn't this only for sites "signed up" with BAT with Brave keeping the BAT if the site isn't enabled?

NB: It has been a long time since I've checked out Brave so my info may be out of date.

ernesth• 6 years ago

Brave removes ads "pre-render" so it is the fastest experience one can get.

Doesn't Ublock Origin remove ads "pre-download" which is obviously faster?

maest• 6 years ago

I currently fund the internet to the tune of $10/month using Brave. Someday that will be $100/month.

Honest question - how much does that money actually reach the creators? Brave is sitting in the middle and I assume a. is charging a fee and b. has to be trusted to properly account for the money it has to pay creators.

It's a weird sort of marketplace where supply (content) isn't constrained at all, since it's trivial to duplicate. This means there's limited incentive for Brave to be nice to creators.

Are there any (3rd party, not Brave) stats on how much money creators are getting?

mustuhfa4• 6 years ago

So many shills in Brave threads every single time. There have been numerous instances of clear evidence than Brave and its founder are running a scam and Im surprised tech literate people on hacker news (which is an assumption I guess) fall for it. They literally run their own ad network and collect data for analytics on user behaviour. How is the best thing to happen to the web? If you want to give to creators, there are so many other ways to do so. You dont have to do it via a middle man that runs an ad network using a made up crypto coin

MrDresden• 6 years ago

This does not read as a non biased take on a piece of software from a private company.

clajiness• 6 years ago

Brave removes ads "pre-render" so it is the fastest experience one can get.

Tell that to Pi-hole.

festivecake4• 6 years ago

This comment is just irresponsible.

Different flavour of mystery sauce

There's no "mystery sauce". It's completely open-source.

You're still having all the analytics captured, it just goes to somebody with far less scrutiny than Google.

Brave's completely open about its analytics, and they're designed specially to be privacy-preserving. (No, it's not some naive "anonymous identifier".)

https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/

And you can also turn them completely off.

mustuhfa4• 6 years ago

Assuming some of the people turned off analytics, then how do they know the MAU And DAU numbers? You can never turn all analytics off.

justsee• 6 years ago

Brave is interesting because it's taking a firehose to the current ad-tech system, and anyone who's spent time working in ad-tech understands it's is a towering inferno of fraud and abuse.

Some don't like Brave's approach of an alternative, opt-in ads / rewards system because in their view everything crypto-related or ads-supported is scammy. That's an understandable perception: a significant number of crypto enthusiasts appear to be scammers pumping pyramid schemes, and we've already established the ad-tech industry is a towering inferno.

But technically I think you have to concede Brave's on-device ad relevance model is a better way (and the only conscionable one) to run an ad system that delivers relevant ads to interested users, and even directly reward them for their attention. If you think ad-supported anything is a non-starter, then you'd just never enable Brave Rewards, or use another browser (although they're entangled in the current ad-tech system so...)

What you say about 'VPN fallacy' makes little sense.

By default Brave is the most aggressive in blocking trackers, adware, and spyware compared to Firefox and Google — and this is actually a problem for Brave.

Follow their web-compat issues on Github [1] to see the kind of things they're dealing with (an example of the very problematic and kind-of-unresolvable issues that come up include the Duolingo issue [2]).

Users can disable shields on a per-site basis to deal with these things, but it's an open question as to whether this kind of friction will increase or decrease, and whether it's a barrier to larger adoption.

There is no question though that the Brave team have the most commitment to privacy compared to Firefox and, of course, Google.

Your statement that the Google spyware Brave has removed in their Chromium derivative has been replaced by some mystery sauce is based on...?

I do find it curious that whenever this little challenger brand pops up on HN there's a predictable surge of hot take / bad take commentary which aggressively tries to paint a picture of Brave as anything but a plucky challenger brand full of technologists who are expending a lot of energy on privacy, security, and moving browsers forward.

The accounts trying to shop a myth of Brave as a low-rent scam operation will inevitably find buyers for various reasons, but you'd hope technologists in the main will do their research and ignore, or even become curious as to what is driving this continued negative opinion-shaping...

I did mine, and I fell for Brave due to a desire to opt-out of the worst of ad-tech surveillance, get a faster browser, and participate in a novel attempt to bootstrap a frictionless crypto / tipping / payment economy. Not all of these novel ideas will work, but they're worth exploring.

For now Brave's been a dream, and when I accidentally use another open test browser for normal browsing, I'm taken back to a gross dystopia of a web experience.

[1] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/projects/17

[2] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/3725

switch11• 6 years ago

excellent comment

I'm going to give Brave a try

I use Epic and LOVE it. However, do need a second browser to remove my dependence on IE/Edge

FpUser4• 6 years ago

"You're still having all the analytics captured, it just goes to somebody with far less scrutiny than Google."

I could care less what some abstract country has on me. My own country - different story.

dragonwriter2• 6 years ago

I could care less what some abstract country has on me. My own country - different story.

What some other country has on your country’s citizens (whether friend or for) is a target for your country's security services, by exchange or espionage, so you can't ignore one if you are concerned about the other.

deepstack• 6 years ago

It all comes down to which company (or people who runs the company) do I trust. As of now. Google, FB group are not truthworth with any of my data. I'm still not sure about Brave, however willing to give a try. The founder is the mozilla firefox founder BTW. And with the way how Mozilla suck up to Google. Building an alternative that destories goole is always good. Would like to find out the people who are funding Brave at this point.

Anyone here in HN has any clue as to ethics of those VC funding Brave?

BrendanEich4• 6 years ago

We don't replace Google's account based tracking with anything of the kind. See https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...

In completely unrelated code paths, all open source, we have timing-channel blinded, few bits per answer, automated survey questions that tell us, e.g., how many people reset default search to a different engine (but nothing more). See https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/.

I'm not sure why you wrote what you wrote. Assumption? It makes an ass of u and umption, to quote Samuel L. Jackson's character from "The Long Kiss Goodnight" :-/.

kylehotchkiss2• 6 years ago

If you work on brave and are reading this... can you stop showing random Crypto banners over nytimes.com and the like? It's very tacky

PretzelPirate• 6 years ago

I don’t get any crypto banners when I go to nytimes.com in Brave.

fullstop2• 6 years ago

I think that this is what they were referring to: https://i.imgur.com/oaZtmen.png

I'm not sure why it shows up for nytimes.com, though, and not other sites.

bsclifton8• 6 years ago

That's part of "Web3" (aka Dapps) and you can turn it off. Under brave://settings/extensions for `Ethereum provider for using Dapps` pick `None`

kylehotchkiss2• 6 years ago

Hey Brian, turning that off fixed it.

I choose Brave for the privacy, Ad-blockers, degoogling, and pretty good maintenance upkeep. I think a sizable portion of your audience choose it for the same reason. Your crypto work is certainly interesting but I think should be entirely opt-in or an extension.

Thanks for your response here :)

mdre• 6 years ago

Can someone enlighten me on why does literally everyone use Chromium as the engine for their browser? Why does Firefox not have anything comparable to Chromium/Node/Electron? Is Chrome's JS engine that superior or what?

taftster• 6 years ago

I don't have a real answer for you, more just shades of understanding. I believe it's the case that Chromium is just more extensible and designed for reuse. Whereas Firefox is more monolithic and less able to be extended.

I don't think it has anything to do with the javascript engine per se, but more the general API surface that Chromium gives you. There might be some additional benefit that Chrome is the most used browser (currently) and so there might be some developer sentiment or familiarity with it; Chrome's popularity might push adoption for Chromium.

jay_kyburz2• 6 years ago

I don't understand why Mozilla itself doesn't support an Electron clone.

err4nt• 6 years ago

I know there are browser fans who have a preference of UI or companies etc etc, but the answer to the question of why so many people choose to fork Chromium to make their browser distro is solely based on the fact that it's technically the best browser engine out there and to fork anything else would be putting you at an immediate disadvantage compared to forking Chromium, so you'd start with the best and then extend it from there.

Scott_Sanderson2• 6 years ago

That's basically what Brave CEO Brendan Eich said when asked why chromium on a podcast.

bgdam• 6 years ago

The last time I looked into this (about 3 years ago), it was ridiculously difficult to embed Gecko into anything, almost to the point of being impossible. Chromium in comparison is relatively easy to embed (via CEF or LibChromiumContent).

pwdisswordfish03• 6 years ago

Mozilla had an Electron alternative before Electron even existed. It stopped being a viable option several years ago, though. The reason is the same as for every other problem that Mozilla is afflicted with: incompetent leadership.

(Note also that the choice is not a dichotomy between Blink and Gecko. WebKit exists.)

paulryanrogers• 6 years ago

Webkit has the same foundation as Blink. So while it's diverging they are much closer than Gecko or Edge HTML.

fastball3• 6 years ago

All I can tell you is that when watching HTML5 videos on Firefox my CPU spins way up. On Chromium it does not.

Also yes in general every JS-heavy web app I've ever used runs much smoother on Chromium than FF.

atty• 6 years ago

I don’t think I’m alone as a Brave user when I say that the crypto stuff and some of their default settings aren’t the greatest, but overall still provides a compelling solution to multiple problems. So while it’s not a perfect product, and the crypto stuff still weirds me out, I find it to be the best option for my personal use case. I get chromium and it’s large library of extensions, as well as having it be decoupled from Google, and some decent Adblock and tracker blocking built in. On the downside, because of the crypto stuff, I feel like I need to double check the news a few times a year to make sure they haven’t made it mandatory, or done anything shady. Overall I’m happy with Brave, and glad to see it growing.

andirk2• 6 years ago

- Uses far less phone battery. - Blocks abuses of web technology, mainly advertising tricks. - Almost identical to Chrome now but not part of the Google monolith. - Use Tor w/ 1 click.

Disclosure: I'm invested in $BAT, the browser's native token

fastball3• 6 years ago

Interesting that you don't mention the BAT / pay for attention part of the equation, except as it relates to your own investment.

dshep2• 6 years ago

I've been using Brave most of this year and really like it.

The killer feature for me is that it lets you disable scripts for individual websites or 'Allow scripts once'. This basically makes most paywall news sites readable.

fsflover2• 6 years ago

This is exactly what Noscript extension on Firefox does since forever.

jonathansampson3• 6 years ago

Much of what Brave does out of the box can be achieved with an array of extensions which have existed for some time. One major appeal of Brave is that these features are built-in, on-by-default, and have no reliance upon Google to not break them moving forward (see Manifest v3 and uBlock Origin, and/or MetaMask being temporarily removed from Google's Web and Play Stores). With Brave, the type of privacy and control users expect is baked-in, and easy to use. Download, Run, and Done. The way it ought to be in 2020

dshep2• 6 years ago

Noscript is incredibly fussy and hard to use. Also it does not have the 'allow scripts [to run] once' ability afaict.

gnicholas3• 6 years ago

I love this feature also. I just wish that when I disable scripts for a website, it would still let my browser plugins that inject JS work. On Firefox, whatever browser plugin I use to block scripts does this out of the box. It makes more sense to do it this way, since I’m not saying “don’t run scripts on pages of this domain”, I’m saying “don’t run scripts originating from pages on this domain”.

quaffapint• 6 years ago

Recommend Vivaldi (https://vivaldi.com) as an alternative to Brave. Same Chromium based browser, but without any of the crypto stuff and has a lot of nice built-in features. Works on PC/Mac/Linux/Phone.

chrisjarvis• 6 years ago

+1 Vivaldi is a beautifully designed product in my experience. I haven't used on mobile tho.

eznzt2• 6 years ago

The UI needs a lot of polish. Other than that, good.

singhkays• 6 years ago

I'm confused. UI is one of the things Vivaldi differentiates itself on. What's the polish that they could add?

MeinBlutIstBlau• 6 years ago

Vivaldi is a browser that feels like "it's almost there" to me. Opera feels like a fully fleshed out and different browser whereas vivaldi feels like "hey weve got a massive backlog of stuff that doesn't even compare to the competition yet."

My favorite lightweight browser though is fallon. It's like IE but not as bad.

pachico• 6 years ago

I use Brave but mostly because it's fast and blocks lots of ads.

mapgrep• 6 years ago

Brave is the only browser on iOS that lets me turn off javascript on a per-site basis. VERY useful.

(If you're aware of others, I'm all ears.)

tristan957• 6 years ago

Firefox + uBlock Origin

scpedicini• 6 years ago

He said iOS, Firefox on iOS doesn't support addons unfortunately

kqvamxurcagg• 6 years ago

Been using Brave as my main browser for several months now. It's great.

Dahoon2• 6 years ago

"Malware Passes 20M Monthly Active Users and 7M Daily Active Users"

k__2• 6 years ago

I switched from Chrome to Firefox two years ago.

But last week I swiched to Brave, because Firefox simply couldn't deliver the performance I need for all the heavy weight web apps I use (Cloud9, VSCode, Gravit Designer, Slack, Asana).

Brave is overall pretty snappy and I only got problems with Recaptcha, which wants me to do a ridiculous amount of tests.

tinodotim2• 6 years ago

Brave is overall pretty snappy and I only got problems with Recaptcha, which wants me to do a ridiculous amount of tests.

Which seemingly is getting worse and worse, especially like the last 2? weeks.

gnicholas3• 6 years ago

I have also seen ridiculous captcha repetitions in Brave. But if I do the audio tests, I don’t have to answer nearly as many (2-3 instead of 8-10).

bsclifton8• 6 years ago

Fix coming tomorrow for this :) If you don't want to wait, you can check out the pre-release version here: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.16.71

Nightly already has the fix and Beta will get the fix when we finish uplifting Chromium 87 to that channel

bsclifton8• 6 years ago

CAPTCHA fix released just a few mins ago! :)

christophilus• 6 years ago

It’s my daily driver. I’m happy with it. Out of the box, the web is useable. Can’t say the same for any other browser I’ve tried, other than DuckDuckGo on iOS.

Scott_Sanderson2• 6 years ago

Same here. I like Brave especially on mobile for blocking web trackers. I find the crypto attention token neat and automatically pay out a few bucks per month to my favorite websites as well as sometimes one-off tips.

hartator• 6 years ago

I trouble wrapping my mind with the anti-Chromium sentiment. Isn’t monopoly a good thing if it’s an open source monopoly? I don’t seem anyone complaining about the Android monopoly for example or the Linux kernel monopoly.

throwaway13337• 6 years ago

This is a good point.

A standardized (and importantly open) platform that executes code exactly the same is the best to execute code on.

Flash was terrific because you, as a developer, didn't need to wonder if it would run the same on every machine. It did.

It was a major hit to my productivity when Flash went away. HTML5 never really replaced it - mostly due to browser compatibility issues.

Flash was not open but chromium is. The future is oddly bright here.

aasasd• 6 years ago

Afaik Chromium is controlled by Google's devs. E.g. Google introduces quasi-standards because they benefit YouTube, without consulting anyone else. It's basically IE again.

You might say ‘just fork it’, but I'll see how you do that and keep maintaining a full-featured browser. That would also make it not a monopoly.

Chromium itself has features tied to Google. The ‘Ungoogled Chromium’ project is dedicated to undoing that.

Likewise Android goes where Google wants it to go.

bsclifton8• 6 years ago

Chromium might be Google dominated, but it's definitely an open source project. The reviewers I have worked with have been fair and have granted me more access as I've gotten more involved

If you check the commit logs or the AUTHORS file, you'll notice a growing number of non-Google authors https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/master:A...

Microsoft notably has a big presence in the source code and at events like BlinkOn. As each of these folks get their code merged, they gain privs like merge access and start getting tagged as a reviewer in other's change lists

yoasif_• 6 years ago

You might want to ask Huawei what they think about the Android monopoly. I think the same issues apply to Chromium, but not Linux.

I think you can probably figure out why.

lolc2• 6 years ago

Weird how the affiliate scandal didn't break their neck.

festivecake4• 6 years ago

Well, a lot of reporting on the affiliate code situation partly mischaracterized what actually happened. There was an auto-complete suggestion that was auto-selecting when you pressed "enter", and it was fixed shortly thereafter. There is a blog post about it called "On Partner Referral Codes in Brave Suggested Sites".

That said, it does essentially the same thing Firefox does when you do a search on Firefox. Try right now: go into Firefox, type in a search in the URL bar, press enter, and you'll see it appends/"injects" a Firefox "affiliate code" as a query parameter so that Firefox gets a cut from Google. One salient difference is that Firefox's "affiliate code" is a vanity code (human readable: "?client=firefox-b-d"), so it isn't viscerally shocking.

If it read "?client=brave" like it does on Firefox, it's very likely no one would have ever cared!

lolc2• 6 years ago

Well at least Brave acknowledged the problem. Even if you don't.

songshuu2• 6 years ago

Every, and I do mean EVERY, time Brave hits the front page people like to crap on them

... and yet they keep growing.

The more interesting conversation to have is if the growth is linear or early exponential.

ketamine__3• 6 years ago

Many have admitted that they don't understand how Brave works.

seibelj• 6 years ago

Anytime any good news related to cryptocurrency / blockchain is posted, the trolls come out from under their bridges. HN is very anti-crypto, it’s hard to get unbiased commentary here.

an_opabinia• 6 years ago

and yet they keep growing.

They're obviously making up their numbers, probably by 10-100x.

Steam is somewhere between 95-105m real MAU, and publishes only real numbers on its games. I know lots of Steam users, many more than 5. I know zero Brave users. Really, there's no way it is anywhere near as popular as they claim.

"The average CTR (click-through rate) for a Brave Ads campaign is 9%, well above the industry average of just 2%"

Again, another huge red flag. There's nothing special about Brave browser. It just means there is some adversary, like bots, clicking ads, or they are lying.

I'm sure people will downvote this, or talk about whom they know uses Brave. Whatever. I would love to see a real audited number here.

gerbler• 6 years ago

I use Brave exclusively on mobile (so do 5 other people I know, with various levels of tech literacy).

It's fast and blocks ads - that's quite a draw.

ekianjo4• 6 years ago

Steam is somewhere between 95-105m real MAU, and publishes only real numbers on its games. I know lots of Steam users, many more than 5. I know zero Brave users. Really, there's no way it is anywhere near as popular as they claim.

Alternative explanation: you live in a bubble.

1123581321• 6 years ago

This reasoning reminds me of a friend who said Tesla is going out of business because “no one knows anyone with a Tesla.” :)

wegi• 6 years ago

I know more Brave than Steam users. Maybe not everyone lives in your social Circle and in the U.S.A.

Or maybe anecdotes do not tell the whole story.

viridian• 6 years ago

No one I know voted for Nixon.

scared2• 6 years ago

Don't be too proud. Many users just because it gives a false promises of free cryptos. Not because of search and replace chrome version.

Chrome+ublock is the best way.

ketamine__3• 6 years ago

Isn't getting paid to view ads a pretty good deal in 2020?

Nextgrid• 6 years ago

No ads is a better deal.

Drblessing• 6 years ago

Last I heard there were ways to farm BAT so be careful investing in it.

Kye• 6 years ago

I can't even say why I don't want to use it without being downvoted into oblivion. I'm sure there are many wonderful people who use and develop it without going out and being a nuisance, but the fans I encounter the most are horrible. That's not an association I want, and nothing the browser offers is compelling to me.

whateveracct• 6 years ago

the agency provides :)

interestica• 6 years ago

The HN crowd seems to really push Firefox. I would love to get an honest opinion on Opera. It's a chromium fork and the biggest criticism just seems to be that it is now owned by a chinese-based consortium. It has just been the most seamless and capable browser I've found with constant innovation.

britmob• 6 years ago

As an Opera user since before the Cheomium switch, it’s honestly a piece of shit now. I constantly find myself annoyed by popups or features that just do not make sense. I really do need to switch to firefox, I just don’t want to lose my add obs..

classics2• 6 years ago

I dropped Firefox for brave because Firefox dropped support for massive amounts of simple power user features like RSS while claiming they were all “too hard to maintain”. Meanwhile they put massive amounts of time and effort into trying to be a chrome look-alike which adds zero value.

jmnicolas5• 6 years ago

I just tried but afaik Brave doesn't support RSS either.

FpUser4• 6 years ago

I was originally sceptical of Brave but now it is my main browser

aww_dang• 6 years ago

The software is fine, but the BAT ecosystem disturbs me. As someone who has been involved in the affiliate space, accepting a token issued by an ad network seems like a terrible idea. Separation of concerns is important in this case.

Instead of the ad network facing the consequences of chargebacks, unfulfilled obligations, fraud and abuse, everyone holding the token will be on the hook. With all of the horrible things that go on in the ad/affiliate industry experienced publishers should be wary of this.

Also, as an expat the KYC stuff has generally been insurmountable. Hard to square that with the privacy angle.

However, I do look forward to innovation in this space. Brave/BAT has issues, but at least they're doing something.

a_paddy• 6 years ago

I quit using Brave when I found out they injected their own referal codes in websites without my permission.

Brave Browser Passes 20M Monthly Active Users and 7M Daily Active Users

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