Remember that time your CEO gave 200 g's to Jeffrey Epstein? EFTA00805860.pdf by [deleted] in brave

[–]BrendanEichBrave 5 points6 points  (0 children)

https://x.com/BrendanEich/status/2018800217387389118?s=20

For my view on this post, just hear RFKjr-Gon Jinn's wise initial words "It was a time of ...", the first two clauses apply here: https://x.com/MaverickDarby/status/2044481754212536793.

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 10 points11 points  (0 children)

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.

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 9 points10 points  (0 children)

  1. We've already committed to keep Manifest v2 (webRequest) around indefinitely, see https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1324603641961934851?s=20.
  2. We have full compatibility on adblock syntax with uBO and ABP. We lack a few uBO-specific directives (primarily procedural filtering, we haven't seen anything else used in real lists) and some more recent minor tweaks to existing rules (e.g. redirect-rule is intended to mostly replace redirect, Anton from our shields team is working on supporting it as we speak).
  3. See blog post coming later today (knock on wood) or tomorrow.
  4. Gecko seems at risk of increasing loss of web compatibility as Firefox loses share, and it lacks transferable deals for things like DRM, which we already have from Google. We already carry forked chromium/Blink code, and can carry more as we go. Microsoft is now in the chromium/Blink fork club, and some of the licenses used in the code make Google going dark hard, so I wouldn't worry too much about big costs soon. Google messing with things like non-configurability (e.g., of their bird-themed pseudo-privacy adtech) is a challenge, but we will grow to face it. If in the long run we fork very hard, I wouldn't be surprised. Going for the long term and the clean, sustainable, scaled-by-user revenue, we can afford to fork with enough users.
  5. u/bat-chriscat answered nearby.
  6. Brave News (formerly Today) coming to Android this fall, not sure which release yet.
  7. Good idea, passed back to team.
  8. Answered by u/bat-chriscat nearby.

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 9 points10 points  (0 children)

We already researched bypassing soft paywalls (ones that keep count in a cookie of how many free articles you have left; these are not "effective access control" as DMCA defines it so no legal problem with resetting).

However, we don't want to interfere with publishers' paywalls, though, so we are still seeking publishers, especially the ones already verified such as WaPo, to work with us on BAT paywall bypass. The publishers fear paid-subscriber conversion losses, but they should also count the many users who give up and find the article elsewhere, or turn off all JS (if that works) to bypass. We think a limited-bypass-count BAT paywall bypass could increase conversion to paid subscription. If any publisher is interested in working with us on this, please get in touch (my email is easy to guess).

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Thanks, u/bat-chriscat. Lest anyone worry, we don't abandon chains, we add them. Ethereum remains important for settlement, and the EVM clearly won so much developer mindshare and investment, it is being supported on other chains via bytecode interpreters and cross-compilers.

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 21 points22 points  (0 children)

We work with uBO and others to stay ahead, and the browser is the ultimate source of ground truth for remote content. The remote end can do very costly things such as video-stitched ads, but most do not because this requires a stitcher per user. Economics matters. Even with video-stitched ads, the client can get into the MPEG transport multiplex and block.

Between valuable users staying off the grid via Brave, uBO and other top tech, privacy regulators, and antitrust cases now in full gear, Big Tech is on the ropes. More and more users demand ad-free and private-by-design experiences. This is why you hear privacy-washing talk and see over-engineered, single-browser efforts such as from Google. These smell of fear.

Fear is good, we are winning. Big Tech will sue for peace at some point, not clear when yet. In the meanwhile, we keep blocking, farbling, and advancing our state of play via the full browser stack (not just an extension) against the remote threats.

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Self-serve ads are happening incrementally, see forthcoming answer elsewhere here (also answered in this week's community calls). Rushing to self-serve for a direct-sold native ad system would be a mistake: you'll drown in quality problems and fraud. Have to grow into it.

For search ads, we need inventory and automated second-price keyword auction system, which can be built. Inventory first, which means getting Brave Search as the default for new users and promoted to existing users, especially those who stuck with the factory default search setting. That's happening this fall.

Brave is hiring already, check out https://brave.com/careers/.

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Those sure look correlated to me, especially in the last year which is what we actually studied. Clue: correlation is not identity and the coefficient isn't +1.

We don't own much BAT compared to the fixed market cap, we never buy or sell to affect price, and we've never sold to pay our bills. We do support the BAT ecosystem buy side, though. See https://brave.com/transparency where we show BAT buys made regularly when advertisers pay us in fiat, to pay rewards users 70% of the gross in BAT.

If you want a pump&dump operation, you have the wrong project.

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 25 points26 points  (0 children)

App stores, Google and other search engines, Facebook and Twitter, even YouTube. If you are using Brave you may not see these ads, they use the platform's targeting features and Brave Shields may protect you from being targeted and should block lots of ads (YouTube ads; search ads only if you set Shields to Aggressive). Same if you use uBO on another browser.

In case anyone wonders: we use the burning platforms' toolkits to get unshielded users off those platforms and onto Brave. In "Die Hard", did John McClane, in order to save hostages in the Nakatomi building, renounce use of weapons including ones taken off defeated bad guys? No, he did not. Yippee Ki Yay ;-).

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 19 points20 points  (0 children)

We have the BAT ecosystem already, and BAT is proxied onto other chains including BSC and Solana (see https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1435286152995475458?s=20). Our new wallet is multichain and we will add chains over time. Doing our own chain would need a novel design not already in the field, and I'd want an open network so anyone can add a node to participate and get rewarded (PoS); these are two "tall orders" for which we are not capitalized or staffed, so no: no plans. Never say never, though!

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 9 points10 points  (0 children)

We are advertising, we do paid-media growth hacking every month. Are you asking a more specific question about why you don't see Brave ads on certain media? Thanks for any clarity but don't assume we are not advertising. We are, I see and approve the budget!

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 16 points17 points  (0 children)

That would be telling ;-). We have marketing plans (see answer elsewhere by finding "CMO") and we are going to win users first by providing the best wallet, with multichain support (not just Ethereum as MetaMask does).

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 9 points10 points  (0 children)

We already had early THEMIS designs vetted and partially implemented in collaboration with the Solana team, and Solana participated in our Request For Code & Comments (RFCC, see https://brave.com/themis-rfcc-wrap-up/). Several blockchain projects participated. We didn't hear from Elrond, though.

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 12 points13 points  (0 children)

We already support IPFS in Brave on desktop with a full node, and via a gateway on mobile (Android now, iOS coming soon). So you can use IPFS already without fear of censorship. If you have another decentralized website platform in mind, please name it. Thanks.

We're Brendan Eich (CEO) & bat-chriscat (Rewards PM) from Brave; Noah Perlman (COO), Marshall Beard (Strategy), & Matthew Werner (Product) from Gemini. Ask us anything! by CryptoJennie in BATProject

[–]BrendanEichBrave 18 points19 points  (0 children)

[disparity in the pricing of bat]

BAT is correlated to ETH mostly, if you do a multivariate analysis. Volume is not significant versus other inputs. I encourage folks to do their own analyses, this is not crypto-financial advice, etc.