Former Mozilla CEO Launches "Brave" Browser w/ Ad-Blocking as Default

[Ryuzaki]

sauce: http://www.businessinsider.com/form...launches-ad-blocking-web-browser-brave-2016-1

So Brendan Eich... what a dick head.

He's the creator of JavaScript and one of the founders of Mozilla, the organisation behind the Firefox browser, so he knows a thing or two about the web.
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He knows a thing or two about the web, like how without advertising the internet would still look like Angelfire mated with Geocities.

The background story is he tried to suppress the ability for gays to get married and ended up getting fired over it. So he screwed himself over hard and cock-blocked himself from the industry.

How to fix it? Betray the industry that allowed you success and take the lowest-blowing, sucker-punchiest move possible: Launch a browser that blocks all ads and just leaves a blank spot in their place, preserving the CSS and all that.

Then, he takes an even more low-level move and turns it into a morality issue: "It's about privacy."

Then he tries to save face and acts like it's a superior browser" "It's faster because there's no ad trackers slowing down page speed."

Now Check Out the TRUE Evil Reason:

Sure... he's blocking ads, right? Big noble effort. Except he's replacing YOUR ads with his own he sold to his own advertisers.

This is the more radical aspect of Brave — re-inserting new adverts. The browser will detect where adverts should go and fill them with new programmatic advertising. Eich says that by doing so, they can offer a better deal to publishers than currently exists by cutting out the adtech middle-men.

Publishers will get around 55% of revenues. 15% will go to Brave. 15% will go to the partner that supplies the ads. And, interestingly, 10-15% goes directly to the user.
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So basically... your ads get blocked and one of three things happens, as far as I could tell by this confusingly written article:

1. The user see's nothing and everyone loses, including the user in the long-run
2. The user see's nothing on certain sites that he contributed money towards in the scheme mentioned above
3. The user see's new ads that "Brave" sold to advertisers, defeating it's own purpose.

And Now We've Come Full Circle

"The adverts that Brave display will be based on tags generated from the user's web browsing history (although this history won't be shared with advertisers)."

So all the tracking is right back in.

Oh, and the most absurd part: It's basically just Chromium with Ad-Block installed. It's "built on Chromium."

And yet, they've still managed to raise $2,500,000...

Talk about the ole bait and switch, on the order of millions. "I'm against advertising, so I took ads out completely, and then put my own back in, but don't worry about that part."

 

[CCarter]

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But on a serious note, I'm going to have to go with Google on this one: "Ad blocking is a symptom of bad ads. Newspaper ads, magazine ads, and TV there is a level of acceptance to a degree. But these transferred one-by-one over to the digital space, and that didn't work out so well. Click-through rates and the money people were getting back from impressions fell under a while. And the response was to just make more ads." (Sauce: http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-larry-page-on-ad-blockers-2015-6)

Sometimes I'm browsing some of these websites and have Chromium's Disconnect on and think "man this is a lot of ADs... wait a minute i've got Disconnect on, so that means there is a TON more ADs I'm not even seeing." I can barely use these websites even with 75% of the Ads disabled, and Flash disabled. I mean really what's the point of making your site that unusable? You are not adding any value to the end user, so the only option is to escape out of there.

The problem is instead of making better ADs, when revenue drops, people just add more ADs onto a page until the site is barely functional. There are some people who's site I've seen and wonder how do they ever expect a user to interact with this site WITHOUT AD blockers, cause those sites are extremely slow and/or crash the browser. It started with the publisher and their placement. Maybe don't try to completely rape the user on that first visit. How about get the customer's email or contact info then slowly churn them into your userbase by having them interact with your brand so they want to come back to your site over and over.

Second are the 3rd party Ad providers like Google. They need to make their interfaces and software more transparent so people can understand which ADs work for their campaign and which ones are a waste of money.

Once you solve those two problems, reduce overall ADs on a site and increase the quality of the Advertising software then you can start to "re-gain" people's confidence back. But both those plays means immediate drop in revenue today for a while (for the publisher AND the advertising platform, Google Adsense in most cases), but it will increase your longevity down the road. Problem is try telling a person that needs that revenue to stop cannibalizing their future with their tactics. It's a kick the can down the road scenario.

I don't know the solution, but I know if you create a website that's completely unusable for end users eventually Facebook, Reddit, Google or whoever is sending you traffic will slam the hammer down until you create a better user experience. The worst thing that will happen is MORE moderation of the sites and pages end users end up on by Facebook and these other big guys, and that's the last thing anyone wants, cause then the jig is up for real.

 

[built]

I guess it's time to start thinking of an alternative. Something that can't be blocked.

 

[Potatoe]

 

[contract]

What a piece of shit.

 

[juliantrueflynn]

I'm really on the fence with the ad blocking argument and always having an internal debate about it. I actually use uBlock because it's easier for browsing and loading content quicker, I still take it off a lot though because marketing/advertising is what I do.

Before ad-blocking with extensions people who were tech-savvy were just blocking them with their local host file. Does that suggest people who are only smart enough can skirt around loading ads, if so, why?

The reason we actually have the internet is because Tim Berners-Lee gave it away for free. The flip-side of that is the biggest advances in the web have been business pursuits like you said.

It gets more interesting though with the idea that people hate when any filter/wall is put up online. What ad-blockers are actually doing is positioning themselves as 'gate keepers' and so users are blocking themselves in. These ad-blockers mostly aren't honorable as you pointed out either.

Also the idea that are we fighting change here? Are banner ads, pop unders, pop ups, etc. just now all a thing of the past? Google, FB, and other businesses just have to deal with it as new faces pop up.

 

[animalstyle]

He better add a built in user agent switcher so nobody can tell you're using his browser.

 

[turbin3]

He better add a built in user agent switcher so nobody can tell you're using his browser.

Right, or people might do stuff like conditional redirects to gay porn sites...