is it possible to like a browser?
Brave is a browser created by Brendan Eich, one of the founders and a former CEO of mozilla. Brave is a chromium fork that integrates innovative technology, and is private by design. This forward thinking approach is fascinating, and is allowing the company to be at the forefront of the free and open internet.
was pushed from mozilla after a controversy around his donations to a christian charity. I don’t want to rehash the controversy. He was also the original developer of javascript.
One of the first pleasant surprises when opening brave for the first time is the lack of ads. While most other browsers have ad blocking extensions brave ships ad-blocking from the start. This is part of it’s secure and private by default philosophy, the scripts and requests embedded in online ads are the primary sources of tracking. Brave uses a new model for funding the web that makes users and creators the central, unlike the current model that prioritizes ad networks and platforms. It does this with…
Brave integrates a wallet for the Basic Attention Token ($BAT) a cryptocurrency based on etherium. When a user browses the web they have the option of their browser identifying an ad that would be interesting and presenting it to the user as a fleeting system notification. All user data and advertising profiles are stored locally on the users machine. When the user views an ad the fee is split 70-30 with the user taking the most. These tokens are then accumulated within the browser and may be automatically forwarded on to registered creators, tipped to them, or traded in for cash, other crypto, or spent in eCommerce. The process to become a verified creator is simple, and integration is ready for youtubers, twitter users, [look this up tomoz mate]. I’m even a verified creator both on this page, and on my twitter hint hint.
I was surprised to find out that the desktop version of Brave integrates TOR. This means that gaining network and location privacy is one-click, and very simple compared to running Tails or TOR browser. The support had some issues as a number of browser fingerprinting datapoints were exposed to external sites when I benchmarked it. Ideally the base OS and hardware would be obscured.
Because Brave is a fork of chromium it inherits the compatibility and performance of Google Chrome. I’ve come to accept that web developers only test on Chrome, and I’m glad to say that the bugs I got used to on Firefox are completely gone. The difference in compatibility and performance is most dramatic when comparing the mobile offerings.
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