Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

by mlinksva • 5 years ago

178 195 5 years ago

jppope2• 5 years ago

damn... Brave is just crushing it. I've been using brave search and its amazing for development... the code samples are front and center

nicce9• 5 years ago

It is just very hard to trust them... they get caught on very hostile things again and again, when they promise that won't happen again. In the end, they are yet another ad based company.

dkdk8283• 5 years ago

Is Mozilla any better? They’ve lost their way and Google remains their largest source of income.

jppope2• 5 years ago

sure... but lets remove the whole trust/ ad thing... Brave is a faster version of chrome, and Brave search gives me the code sample I'm searching for first thing in the sidebar...both are major improvements in my life. It's a better product.

jonathansampson12• 5 years ago

"they get caught on very hostile things again and again"

This is not the case. The most common claims are "Brave accepted donations for others", "Brave replaces ads across the Web", "Brave injected/modified referral links"—each of these claims are unequivocally false.

You are right that Brave is an "ad based company," however. But that needs to be explained a bit, since Brave is unlike any other ad-based company you've likely encountered on the Web.

When people think of "ad-based company," they often picture something like Google. A company that has its hands in most of what you do on the Web, existing as a third-party resource in most of your traffic.

But compare Brave with Google for a moment. Brave's ad-model is consent based, while Google's is not. Brave's model follows the user's configuration for determining how often/whether ads should be shown, while Google does not. Brave's model pays the user 70% of the associated revenue, while Google does not. Brave collects [no user data], while Google does the opposite. The Brave model is built on consent, equity, and privacy. Google's model is the opposite, in every regard.

BrendanEich38• 5 years ago

Do you want to talk about the very hostile things? We're not perfect (neither is Mozilla, people still roast them for stuff like bundling Pocket without it being uninstallable) but we fix and learn.

open-paren3• 5 years ago

To start a call, there is a requirement that you are

1) Using the Brave Browser

2) Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on.

Not loving that.

Edit: the first one is fine (although a little strange that it is a requirement here but not for their other products, like Brave Search). I'm irked by the second one.

bool3max• 5 years ago

I bet you are loving that it's free though.

nicce9• 5 years ago

2) Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on.

There are different definitions for "free".

open-paren3• 5 years ago

Free is great, free is what they advertise. However, I don't personally like Brave Rewards because I am not bullish on crypto and I don't think most of BAT goes to creators, because Brave Rewards market usage is really, really small, so it gets used speculatively. My perfect world solution is that they either

a) advertise that Brave Rewards is required ("Brave Talk is free, ad-supported), or

b) have a payment tier between premium and free that allows me to pay-per-call or something, without the premium features.

deeblering42• 5 years ago

It’s not free, it just doesn't cost any money.

crackercrews2• 5 years ago

Number 1 is to be expected. Number 2 came as a surprise. Doesn't appear to be mentioned anywhere in the launch announcement.

I assume someone could turn on Brave Rewards, start a call, and then turn it off later?

gostsamo• 5 years ago

Yes, many dark patterns use similar justifications.

zakember• 5 years ago

Sorry but why is Number 1 to be expected? HN often shows a lot of hate when any Google products like Gmail or Google Meet works well on Chrome, but not on Firefox.

Web technologies should be browser independent.

bsclifton• 5 years ago

There is an alternative option 2 available- you can subscribe to Brave Premium for a cost (shows as $7 USD/month). Just wanted to share as I hadn't seen it mentioned here

For the no-cost option, enabling Brave Rewards helps Brave to cover the costs of video infrastructure

schleck8• 5 years ago

They appear to be launching additional perks for this premium subscription, like a VPN. I hadn't heard of it until today

peakaboo• 5 years ago

This is the wrong way for them to do it. It must work on all browsers and the they can possibly add features that make people WANT to use Brave, not force them to do it.

jonathansampson12• 5 years ago

Brave Talk does work in all major browsers. Initiating a call requires Brave, but participation in a call does not.

BrendanEich38• 5 years ago

The first one is because we have to use native code with our partner for a user hosting a call to create one. After the call is up, any modern browser can be used to join, given the unique link provided by the host.

The second one, I addressed directly for all Brave products that have significant fixed and per-user/usage costs, the other week on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/pl2lgi/comment/...

Quote:

"A free browser is a free lunch, and TANSTAAFL. Brave has sponsored images on by default, we don't pretend to be free by selling default search to Google as Firefox does. Privacy-conscious users know that nothing on the Web, no app or service, is free.

The salient difference about Brave in this context: we put users first and deal them in for >= the revenue we make on any attention-based revenue where we take the gross. This can't be done with search deals: Google, Bing, and others forbid paying users a share of the revenue that the search partner shares with the browser maker. But we aim to do it when ready with self-serve keywords-at-auction private search ads.

Before then, we hope to offer private ads via a partner, but that's not a sure thing. Details if and when we have a deal. That's the free leg of Brave Search. The premium is ad-free search for a small monthly fee (a few dollars, discounted if paid annually).

This is necessary because Brave Search has per-user as well as fixed costs, which we must cover with a reasonable margin. I think users understand this. In all cases, Brave Search remains private: no tracking or use of IP even for short-term query-refinement "sessions". But if users won't pay, we will put private-until-and-unless-clicked ads in the free leg. This freemium model goes for Brave News too."

End Quote

TANSTAAFL = There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (popularized by Robert A. Heinlein).

Hackers here on HN may be able to self-host a Jitsi instance, even build their own browser. Most users cannot. We at Brave aim to provide all users with a truly user-first, privacy-designed+engineered-in-&-on-by-default products to take on Big Tech with its centralized data collection, surveillance based ads, fraud and abuse problems, and monopolistic, user-hostile tendencies.

We know TANSTAAFL is true so we don't pretend to offer a free lunch and we don't track users. We will work to add more "buy out my ad inventory" ease of use, including for Rewards as well as News. Those who can't or won't pay can still use Brave as a fast, tracking/fingerprinting-blocking browser. We aim to get enough of you using Rewards to keep our lights on, and we'll have to work on distribution and promotion of search to get it covering its costs (premium ad-free or free private ads leg, you choose).

I hope this helps explain what we're trying to achieve, and that you'll give us a try.

goldforever• 5 years ago

Many thanks for the explanation Brendan!

open-paren3• 5 years ago

Thanks Brendan. I'll give it a try next time I need to make a video call.

crackercrews2• 5 years ago

Nice that there are no time limits. Not great that passwords are only for Premium customers. But if you're just doing 1-on-1 calls it's pretty easy to notice if an uninvited guest has appeared.

Does this offer scheduling, or just initiating calls in real time?

html5web2• 5 years ago

you can set a password in the security settings, also there's a feature called Lobby which allows to let users to join the call

slenk• 5 years ago

https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ for the ability to do it with any browser and not having to opt in to their ads.

olah_12• 5 years ago

Brave is technically using this SaaS solution from the company that develops Jitsi: https://jaas.8x8.vc/#/

blitzar7• 5 years ago

So it is just Jitsi with a shitcoin scam attached?

kube-system• 5 years ago

And self-host it for the ultimate in privacy: https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/devops-guide/devops-gu...

LeoPanthera• 5 years ago

See also Linphone: https://www.linphone.org

ElijahLynn6• 5 years ago

Brave Talk is powered by the Jitsi as a Service open source video meeting platform from 8×8, a leading integrated cloud communications platform provider (NYSE: EGHT), using WebRTC open source technology that enables developers to embed HD video directly into the browser.

html5web2• 5 years ago

Looks like you can bypass Brave browser lock by copying and pasting the iframe source url on other browsers

endisneigh3• 5 years ago

I wonder if Brave (the company) is what Mozilla would look like if Eich ended up being CEO of Mozila.

EDIT: Some people took offense, so I am more explicit in my hypothetical here.

KarlKemp3• 5 years ago

Quite the bullet we dodged. It’s a good example for my pet theory that seemingly irrelevant (for the work) things like homophobia tend to pretty good heuristics for general shiftiness (I had a different word in mind, but autocorrect did a smart thing)

trompetenaccoun• 5 years ago

What was the warning sign with Eich back in the day?

Edit: Oh, you meant literally homophobia. Not sure how I'd never heard of him opposing gay marriage. Interesting.

1_player• 5 years ago

Some people took offense

Frankly it was an interesting observation of yours, but a less charitable view of your comment is that you were subtly trying to start the same idiotic flame thread found at the bottom of any Brave post on this forum. And you did.

In case your observation was in good faith, I don't think Mozilla would have gone so deep into crypto and those little unsavoury sponsorships (Binance, etc.) had Eich never left his top spot, and I am positive his governance would have kept Mozilla and Firefox itself in a better place than whatever is happening over there right now.

Feels like we're watching the slow death of a beloved tech company that's one of the cornerstones of net neutrality, and I can't see a way out for them without radical changes in direction and management.

endisneigh3• 5 years ago

Frankly it was an interesting observation of yours, but a less charitable view of your comment is that you were subtly trying to start the same idiotic flame thread found at the bottom of any Brave post on this forum. And you did.

Nope. I simply stated the facts, not that it really was the point of my comment anyway, hence the edit.

In case your observation was in good faith, I don't think Mozilla would have gone so deep into crypto and those little unsavoury sponsorships (Binance, etc.) had Eich never left his top spot, and I am positive his governance would have kept Mozilla and Firefox itself in a better place than whatever is happening over there right now.

It's hard to say. I don't agree with crypto and think it's not really a great way to go, but Mozilla has Google funding - I don't think it's ridiculous to think Mozilla Rewards or equivalent could've been introduced somehow (with or without crypto)

IceWreck• 5 years ago

Have Brave Rewards (their crypto-and-ads service) turned on

If this is true then its another shady thing by a self proclaimed privacy company.

They used to do the protection racket thing where they indirectly threatened website owners with the ultimatum that if they don't work with them, they will man-in-the-middle them to replace the website's ads with their own and not give them a cut of the profit.

Also, Brave has been caught modifying URLs and adding its own affiliate links in them compromising user privacy to earn $$$ for itself.

Spivak2• 5 years ago

I do think that Brave would be 100% in the clear (same with any browser or extension) to "MiTM", modify, or refuse to display any part of any web page.

I don't really want to set any kind of precent that browsers should somehow be forced to display web pages exactly as sent.

throwdecro2• 5 years ago

I do think that Brave would be 100% in the clear (same with any browser or extension) to "MiTM", modify, or refuse to display any part of any web page.

Taken literally this would mean that browsers would be allowed to re-write, either actively or by deleting sections, the actual content of articles. Surely there has to be some expectation that what a person publishes on the internet will be faithfully represented? And if faithful representation of the original is respected for the writing, why shouldn't it be respected for the writer's business/advertising arrangements?

jjulius5• 5 years ago

I don't really want to set any kind of precent that browsers should somehow be forced to display web pages exactly as sent.

That's... exactly what I want.

NikolaNovak• 5 years ago

... I don't know how to approach that statement. You prefer arbitrary invisible changes by actors unknown? Or is it a part of some elaborate Phillip-K-Dick art project about unreliable narrator and "what is truth anyway"?

If Bob sends me a letter, I expect Postal Service to deliver it to me exactly as sent.

If Bob sends me an email I expect email service to deliver it to me as sent.

If Bob sends me a webpage I expect it to be delivered as sent.

We can discuss changes & preferences on presentation layer, but invisible, uncontrollable substitution of content, I have no idea how they're either justifiable or desirable.

I am likely not interpreting your comment correctly. Perhaps if you elaborate it may become clearer.

aeturnum2• 5 years ago

I don't understand why Brave Rewards needs to be enabled, but it seems very normal for the company operating a service to require some kind of account or membership. If you don't trust Brave this is probably not the service for you.

kf6nux• 5 years ago

It's even more mundane than that.

They just require you to allow their ads during your call. It's privacy preserving ad tech in exchange for 1:1 video calls.

That's way better than sites requiring you to allow 3rd party ads to use their site.

EDIT: I just saw they let you set your ads to "0 per hour" and still let you use this service. I wonder if that's an oversight.

tsumnia• 5 years ago

Here is their Reddit response: https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/ptbf7e/brave...

In a nutshell, enabling Rewards is their incentive for giving the product away for free, otherwise they charge via Premium.

KarlKemp3• 5 years ago

They are the self-proclaimed “brave” company. Which is enough reason to avoid them.

jp42• 5 years ago

May be naive question. How does Brave earn money to sustain its operations?

endisneigh3• 5 years ago

Brave Rewards and outside funding as far as I know.

zormino3• 5 years ago

By replacing ads on websites with their own, and url hijacking for referral profits. They are not a good service, they're content thieves with a mask on.

soundnote4• 5 years ago

It doesn't? It adblocks ads like uBlock Origin and tracking blocking tech in other browsers (except the shields are not an add-on so they can exceed the Manifest v3 type limits). There are entirely separate channels (toaster popups, start page backgrounds) that they use to deliver their own ads.

I get the crypto stuff is not everyone's cup of tea (certainly isn't mine) but get the basics straight, at least?

tomComb7• 5 years ago

I didn't think they did those anymore. True, though, they've tried endless very slimy business models - anything that works until they get caught or called out.

BrendanEich38• 5 years ago

No, we never replaced ads on websites with our own; and no, we made nothing from the binance.com/.us autocomplete bug (no other URLs, no links in pages) getting affiliate codes.

Be careful what misinformation you parrot. It doesn't help anyone looking for better privacy products or trustworthy commenters.

ElijahLynn6• 5 years ago

I've been using Brave for over a year now. I don't use the opt-in Brave Rewards Ads but do use the Brave Rewards Auto-Contribute. I love Brave and think it is actually going to save the web from becoming a shitty, slow experience over the years to come.

My only gripe is that the crypto integration with Uphold to pay creators is/was hard to use. I love the idea that I can pay $20/month to use the web and that money is disbursed to the sites I visit most!

Update: This motivated me to login to Uphold again and relink Brave Rewards so I can use the auto-contribute feature. Uphold didn't have recurring transactions for debit/credit cards originally so it was too much friction to use, but it is all working now.

KarlKemp3• 5 years ago

It doesn’t. But it hopes to insert itself into enough interactions to turn the screws on website owners.

BrendanEich38• 5 years ago

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28620369.

sneak2• 5 years ago

How many times have Brave pivoted at this point?

First it was ad replacement, then it was a patreon thing that took donations (illegally) for third parties that didn't want it, then it was ad blocking, then it was a search engine, then it was videoconferencing....

What exactly is their revenue model?

hundchenkatze3• 5 years ago

What exactly is their revenue model?

Seems they're still trying to figure that out.

BrendanEich38• 5 years ago

No, we are transparent about it. https://brave.com/brave-rewards https://brave.com/transparency and premium products such as VPN, Talk, more to come.

EDIT: some of you think we should do only a browser, but we also have a search engine now (https://search.brave.com/). We're going big across privacy and user-agent models that fit together well and provide our users with value in the form of products, also in revenue shares including >= what we make on any opt-in attention economics. Think big, avoid pigeonholing us as some of you did and still do Mozilla. My advice!

tolien3• 5 years ago

How many times have Brave pivoted at this point?

On one hand, the features are at least somewhat adjacent to their core business of building a web browser. On the other, whenever Mozilla did something like this they were panned for spreading themselves too thin and diverging from their core mission.

sneak2• 5 years ago

Mozilla is a nonprofit. Brave is not.

soundnote4• 5 years ago

On the other hand, Mozilla fans are mostly morons who are actively hostile to success and want a pristine FOSS project funded entirely on donations. (I was one of those morons back in the day)

I think initiatives like Pocket, Brave Search, Brave Talk, a privacy-respecting ads ecosystem, Vivaldi's Mail/Calendar/RSS setup and integrated barebones Notes module are all pretty much exactly what should happen. There was an article about how using Firefox alone is meaningless: http://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2021_09_06.ht...

I'm drawn to agree: The browser alone is a hard sell, a bit like how Steve Jobs said that Dropbox is not a product, but a feature. A browser company needs to provide services for users to stay relevant. Search, notes and communication tools are part and parcel of that. If you're just a window, you're going to die.

zormino3• 5 years ago

Their business model is theft by another name, however they can manage to swing it. When they get caught, pivot and steal content for profit a different way. Repeat.

billiam• 5 years ago

Saint Joseph on a hot plate, the intolerance and rigidity of thinking of people on this web page is too much. Hacker News and FB and Twitter and a million other things we use every day are also guilty of theft, theft of our time and attention and ability to think slowly enough to not just reinforce our own preconceived notions. Yes, those Brave people are shifting their model all the time. Eich and team saw first hand that a browser company is almost impossible to run for profit unless you own your own multibillion dollar ad network or half the global phone business. Eich got to learn that first hand at Mozilla. He's trying to find an audience and offer what he considers innovative products. He's no more deceptive than Google or Amazon or Ycombinator are about what gets done with the attention and clicks.

jonathansampson12• 5 years ago

No pivoting; just an incremental realization of a better Web. We never replaced ads. Brave blocks trackers, and their associated third-party ads for privacy and security reasons—we've done this from the start. But when you block third-party ads, you cut into the revenue of publishers, creators, and other content makers.

Cutting revenue for those who make the Web wonderful is not ideal, so an alternative approach was needed to help those who creator the content that keeps us 'coming back' to the Web. This is where Brave Rewards came in, and Brave's User Growth Pool. We distributed BAT to our users, inviting them to ear-mark it for the creators they appreciated most. Some of those creators signed-up to claim our tokens, while others didn't.

From the start, Brave has been focused on privacy, security, and sustainability. In the vein of privacy, we introduced Brave Search. An engine with its own index, not connected to you or your online activities, existing only to help you find what you're seeking on the Web.

Our revenue model is largely ad-based, but quite different from the ads we all have come accustomed to on the Web. Brave's Ad model is consent-based, user-configurable (you control ad-frequencies, etc.), and private-by-design. Rather than sending your data off to third-parties, we send regional ad catalogs to you. These are studied in the private enclave of your machine so that your data is never transmitted elsewhere. When users participate in Brave Ads, they receive 70% of the associated revenue (for their attention). Brave gets the remaining 30%.

I hope this helps

opheliate• 5 years ago

We never replaced ads.

How can you be so disingenuous? You removed ads, then introduced your own advertising. You may see those as two separate events, but the consequence is the same as if you had chosen to replace ads.

marban• 5 years ago

Every program attempts to expand until it can host video conferences.

sciurus• 5 years ago

Time to bring back Firefox Hello?

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3102890/goodbye-hello-firefo...

jonathansampson12• 5 years ago

There have definitely been some really nice features shipped in other browsers, or by other vendors, in the past. Timing is often a curious element. I wonder if Hello might have found more success if it were introduced in 2020-2021, given the great exodus of people from offices, schools, etc., and their increasingly heavy reliance upon the Web to remain in touch.

I'm excited for our launch of Brave Talk in part due to the timing, but also for the technology, and the team behind the effort. WebRTC has come a long way, and the additional encryption options offered are really appealing.

soundnote4• 5 years ago

Firefox's Pocket integration definitely was just years too early, people hadn't gotten used to paying for web services anywhere near today's extent.

bserge• 5 years ago

What does "no tracking" even mean here? Does it include no facial recognition?

I mean, ffs, the FBI or Interpol or whoever could release such an app using keywords that mean nothing these days. Privacy preserving, no tracking, no installation, no special permissions.

We just match everyone on video against a criminal database, but it's fine, we don't save your mugshot if you're not a criminal!

BrendanEich38• 5 years ago

No one in the middle sees unencrypted video. Two-party is fully end-to-end encrypted. We avoid overusing that overloaded phrase for multiparty and we're working on defenses against active (zoom bomb) attacks, that do not require a login. So any face scanner on a multiparty call would have to be someone the host invited who is doing face scanning at their endpoint where the cryptographic session terminates and video gets decrypted.

BrendanEich38• 5 years ago

I didn’t describe the active threat correctly — not zoom bombing (auth system saves day), MitM from us or 8x8. We are closing off this attack surface in a followup release.

warkdarrior• 5 years ago

Do you have plans to support monetization of video chat? This would be a nice competitor to OnlyFans.

Also, what is your approach to CSAM? Do you plan to go the Apple route and do endpoint scanning?

thegabez2• 5 years ago

Easily the best browser on the market and continues to produce great features. Very bullish on its crypto token BAT which is earned by viewing their ads ($5-10/mo). If you're going to use a browser why wouldn't want to use Brave with rewards turned on, honestly?

mNovak• 5 years ago

I use Brave, but turned off the ads. Only so many times I want to see ads for crypto exchanges and such.

thegabez2• 5 years ago

Sure, I've gotten use to them. Having ads enabled also allows for easy donations to Wikipedia, Khan Academy, etc.

fancy_pantser2• 5 years ago

Important to note that only 1:1 calls are E2E encrypted and larger calls are forwarded to a SFU that 8x8 calls "Jitsi Videobridge" where they are decrypted, processed in memory, and then re-encrypted for each participant stream.

secretj4• 5 years ago

Hi I'd like to correct this, if you have enabled "Video Bridge Encryption" in Brave Talk, this is not the case. Calls of up to 20 participants would be encrypted, using keys locally exchanged among participants. The SFU wouldn't be able to decrypt these video/audio streams. Of course, as would be standard and expected, the SFU would decrypt the transport layer of encryption, but wouldn't be able to decrypt the second layer of video/audio encryption. You can find more about the current underlying Jitsi encryption implementation here: https://jitsi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/jitsi-e2ee-1.0....

fancy_pantser2• 5 years ago

Does that require all participants to have enabled "Video Bridge Encryption" in Brave Talk?

Does it notify participants when they go over 20 and does then everyone stop encrypting at the same time?

hammyhavoc• 5 years ago

Yet another silly messaging app. Why not just use an open protocol like Matrix and have done with it? Makes far more sense than this.

Nobody asked for their browser to be a messaging system in 2021, nor for exclusivity of initiation based upon browser. Lol?

betwixthewires• 5 years ago

Jitsi? Anyone?

I'm not one of those people that doesn't like redundancy or thinks that people developing tools that serve a purpose for which other tools already exist is a waste of time. I like options, I want people to build what they think they should build.

But I honestly do not see a point of this, except that Brave is trying to become an ecosystem. I don't want another ecosystem.

anaganisk• 5 years ago

Dont use it? Its not like Google is trying to force google meet on on you? Or Microsoft is forcing edge on windows, oh yeah they already do it.

rank02• 5 years ago

Honestly I’m glad to see some disruption in the web advertising space.

I’m not sure I understand Braves claim about “sharing revenue” with rewards users. Rewards users are getting paid in BAT no? I assume Brave is getting paid in USD. Do they have an arbitrary treasury of BAT tokens? It seems like Brave isn’t sharing any revenue if they’re paying out in tokens they created. Can’t they just create more BAT tokens or switch to BAT2 whenever they please?

I am genuinely confused here and would love to be enlightened.

BrendanEich38• 5 years ago

BAT is capped by its genesis contract at 1.5B tokens, we can't make any more. It has broad and deep liquidity. Most ad buyers pay in fiat, but some pay in BAT, USDC, etc. When paid not in BAT, we take 70% of the gross revenue and buy BAT with market orders, to send to users as their ad revenue shares. See https://brave.com/transparency for these purchases. This makes a buy side for the ecosystem (there are others coming up). See also https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/psnn6o/first_2m.... HTH

BrendanEich38• 5 years ago

Needless to say (I hope, but hostile and skeptical folks here), when the ad buyer does pay us in BAT, we send 70% directly to the rewards users based on anonymous confirmation protocol (blind signature certs; putting on a fast blockchain via THEMIS soon). That is to say, we always pay the opted-in rewards user 70% of gross.

hrez• 5 years ago

So, BAT is required to use it?

I wonder how all the US BAT users plan to answer IRS 1040 question "did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency?"

BrendanEich38• 5 years ago

No, BAT is not required. Rewards opt in is, but you can then turn off Brave Ads.

I use bitcoin.tax and recommend it (for no compensation). Are you just anti-crypto in general?

Brave Talk – Privacy-Preserving Video Conferencing

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