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Mozilla Co-Founder's Ad-blocking Brave Browser Will Pay You Bitcoin To See Ads (pcworld.com) 159

Posted by msmash from the everybody-wins? dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Brave, a new privacy and speed focused web browser for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android, backed by Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich, will pay its users in bitcoin to watch ads. From a PCWorld article, 'Under this plan, advertisers pay for a certain number of impressions, and Brave aggregates those payments into one sum. Websites that participate in the scheme get 55 percent of the money, weighted by how many impressions are served on their sites. For both users and publishers, Brave deposits the money into individual bitcoin wallets, and both parties must verify their identity to claim the funds. This requires an email and phone number for users, and more stringent identification steps for publishers. Users who don't verify will automatically donate their share of the funds back to the sites they visit most.' It appears Brave's strategy hinges on, among other things, collecting your browsing data to display relevant ads. The aforementioned article also says that users will have an option to block all ads by paying a monthly subscription to Brave. Not sure how many people would want to buy that.
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Mozilla Co-Founder's Ad-blocking Brave Browser Will Pay You Bitcoin To See Ads More

Mozilla Co-Founder's Ad-blocking Brave Browser Will Pay You Bitcoin To See Ads

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  • pay me to Not Block ads (Score:5, Interesting)

    by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Saturday April 02, 2016 @09:32PM (#51830443)
    i'll bite. still won't watch the ads, though.

    • I love this flipping of the equation! I can't imagine it's a lot of money but I like it putting the control to default off but letting me decide if I want to opt in. then compensating me. the feeling would be more important than the cash. and if it works we could have a world where it's default-off without an arms race in ad-blocking software. Ad blocking software is broke as a model because the ad blockers themselves track me, and it makes browsing unstable when it doesn't work right. Worse ad blocki

      • Considering individual publishers started law suits against AdBlockPlus, there is A LOT of money at stake.

        • The math can't work.. And will be gamed (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The money has to come from somewhere. The ROI of online advertising is already iffy at best. Now you want to add an additional cost by charging for viewability? Please. You can't change the math just because it sounds good. The only way that can possibly work is for even less money to go to publishers who are already on their last legs.

          Besides, this system will be *instantly* gamed by browsing bots that surf 24/7 on multiple virtual machines making the ROI of online ads rapidly approach zero.

          • I remember years ago (15?) there were companies that would pay you to watch ads by allowing a toolbar in the browser.

            I set up a macro to make it think the computer and browser were active. I think I made all of $100. This was in real dollars, sent as a check.

      • How about three options:

        1. No ads

        2. Ads are served but there is no tracking of who was served (unless you click).

        3. Business as usual.

        • While you're at it: different pay rates for enabling JS, Flash and whatever else is suspect.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by kmoser ( 1469707 )

            While you're at it: different pay rates for enabling JS, Flash and whatever else is suspect.

            There's no amount of money you could pay me to enable Flash.

      • No, No, No! This is WAY too Dangerous... (Score:5, Informative)

        by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Sunday April 03, 2016 @05:39AM (#51831497)
        In order to receive the payments, the browser requires that you register three things: a bitcoin wallet [otherwise you won't get paid] an email address and a phone number. In the small print you can bet that you are signing away permission for this company to "sell on" your activity data. How would you like to be plagued by telephone marketing? Worse, the way this is going to work is by use of things like session cookies, because this browser is going to need to have a way of identifying itself to participating infrastructure. What this does is "expand the identity attributes" [i.e. add to the vectors] by which you can be identified as a real person. This is very much like that ultrasonic audio trick that was recently banned [that allowed a smartphone app to figure out what channel and what TV commercials you were watching]. In other words, you are giving away FAR, FAR more than just the time and intrusion that these ads will cost you. Seriously, don't do it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bazorg ( 911295 )

          We saw similar in the late 90s, those applications that measured mouse cursor movement and showed a banner at the bottom of the screen. I've never heard of anyone who actually received any money from them, so for this one I'll wait until someone else confirms that the payments indeed coming though before any commitment. If I do sign up it won't be with my normal email and phone number. Plenty of free SIM cards I can use like a hole in the ground for advertisers to yell into.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by JazzLad ( 935151 )

          In order to receive the payments, the browser requires that you register three things:

          Ok

          a bitcoin wallet [otherwise you won't get paid]

          Yup

          an email address and a phone number

          Gmail + Google voice?

          I don't see a problem with this. It's more hassle than my time is worth, but not something that should scare a geek.

    • Will they pay you for the malware that gets installed on your computer or is that already covered?

  • Subject of Comment (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is something. I don't know if I should find it interesting, laudable, or horrifying.

    I bet it would take less than 10 hours, for someone to be heavily abusing the system.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Two choices:

      1) It makes enough money for anyone to notice or care:
      - Suddenly an epidemic of bots that appear to be people look at web pages everywhere and consume bandwidth and processing time to mine bitcoin out of the wallets of advertisers

      2) It doesn't make enough money for anyone to notice or care:
      - No-one notices or cares.

    • Re:Subject of Comment (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Stoutlimb ( 143245 ) on Saturday April 02, 2016 @10:23PM (#51830663)

      Personally I find it hard to quantify how much money I should be paid to face the greater risk of malware infection. I value my data and time very highly, so it's unlikely they could pay me enough.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday April 02, 2016 @10:54PM (#51830791)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • a lot of people pay for AV software and even AV subscriptions, so that's quantifying how much those services are worth.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Koby77 ( 992785 )
        Considering that more ISPs now have a data cap, I would like to see a quantification of how much data the advertisements eat up, and then multiply that data as a fraction of the monthly cost. We could use that as an absolute bare minimum.

        • In much of the world there is a condition to be uncapped, which is : get a DSL, cable or fiber connection.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by tepples ( 727027 )

            And there's a condition for that condition: buy a house in the service area of a DSL, cable or fiber connection. A lot of especially rural places have only satellite, only cellular, or a choice between satellite and cellular.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *
            Even that isn't a guarantee of an unmetered connection. There's supposedly a limit on my cable-modem connection, though I've never been throttled or charged a fee for exceeding that limit.
          • Isn't Comcast who happens to be the leader in most markets planning on a data cap? If they are successful, the rest of the high speed ISP's will also see data caps as a good idea. For example, Verizon was the first cellular carrier to consider data caps and most of the remaining carriers followed suit. There are some that may have unlimited plans but you usually get lousy service from them so it isn't worth switching to their unlimited plan. Some carriers such as Centurylink already have a form of data cap

  • Sorry (Score:5, Interesting)

    by C18H27NO3 ( 1282172 ) on Saturday April 02, 2016 @09:42PM (#51830491)
    I'm not enabling the ability to see ads for the sake of bitcoins when doing so is a potential avenue for malware. You want to vet the advertisers and take on full liability in case of wrongdoing then maybe I'll consider it.

    • Isn't that part of the point? They vet the ads and serve the safe and unobtrusive ones? Outside of taking liability, its there.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The whole idea is nucking futs. So how many browsers tabs do you want people to open in the background, they pay no attention to in order to stream ads. WTF is going on with marketing insanity where it is no longer about selling products but just selling advertising to, pretty much no longer generates sufficient sales to justify that advertising. It seems most internet advertising is targeted at advertisers convincing them to buy more and more internet advertisements. All this in a collapsing market where

        • I think it was around 1999 when there were apps that ran on your desktop to show ads and as long as your mouse was active (moving every 15 or 30 seconds or so) then you would get paid for the ads shown. So of course it wasn't long before utilities came up that would move the pointer to simulate the mouse being moved and you could walk away from your computer for hours at a time.

        • > So how many browsers tabs do you want people to open in the background, they pay no attention to in order to stream ads.

          Likely they would put a huge weighting on pay per click rather than pay per impression. Not that this metric couldn't be gamed as well.

          > It seems most internet advertising is targeted at advertisers convincing them to buy more and more internet advertisements.

          Internet advertising, like any business, is focused on the customers that pay its bills.

          > All this in a collapsing market

          • Re:Sorry (Score:4, Funny)

            by Blaskowicz ( 634489 ) on Sunday April 03, 2016 @05:12AM (#51831453)

            The US risks ending with a Clinton vs Trump finale. One is an egotistical, violent maniac warmonger and right-winger. The other one is Donald Trump.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *
              Clinton? Right-winger? She's many things, none of them good, but take it from an actual right-winger: Hillary Clinton is not one of us.

              • She's not a tea party or an evangelical, but she's very close to a moderate republican. She's owned by the same corporate interests that own jeb bush and company. They're different on the requisite social issues, abortion, etc, but I don't think they really care about that anyway.

      • How are they going to insure the ads are safe. Even reputable sites have been subject to drive by download attacks and they have gone with an internet advertiser who insisted that they serve only safe ads. In addition, should a user be forced to give up bandwidth, and be annoyed as they are trying to read because of some obnoxious video playing? A lot of people have slower internet connections and these ads steal a bigger chunk of their bandwidth meaning it will take much longer for them to browse sites. Th

        • My understanding is that they will have their own ad network and vet the ads. The ads are supposed to be unobtrusive but if people think it is to much of a strain on their internet, I suppose they just use something else.

          Everything about this is opt in. You have to download a browser and actually use it. If you find problems you can either move on or contact the company and try to get them to improve it.

          I think the difference between this and something like adblock and similar is that the site gets to gener

          • I won't be opting in by downloading this browser. I think ad designers also need to realize that some of us have slow internet connections (I have only 1.5 Mbps) and these video ads steal precious bandwidth. It is also hard for me to read a website when there is video advertisements playing that I cannot stop which is the main reason (in addition to security) that I use NoScript and AdBlock.

    • I'm not going to do it either. Mozilla has really jumped the shark on this one (actually, my mistake, it's not Mozilla that's backing this, it's one of the Mozilla co-founders that's backing it, but still that guy is an idiot).

      What they're suggesting is already happening. You can get loyalty points if you watch ads and fill out surveys. And you can convert these loyalty points to cash (not that you can make much from this unless you're doing it from India with puppet accounts and proxies in the United State

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Set up a VM with Brave browser and one of those key macro apps to keep pressing F5 to refresh the page and see more ads. Could be a nice little earner and no worries about malware, just reload a clean snapshot periodically and firewall everything except that one site and the ad server.

  • If only I can access my so-called "preferences" profile to edit the categories I'm actually interested in instead of letting ad companies "guestimate" my interests from websites I'll only visit once in my lifetime.

    This requires an email and phone number for users

    Oh, so I can get called by telemarketers? Sorry but you lost me with this requirement.

    • Re:That sounds great (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wvmarle ( 1070040 ) on Saturday April 02, 2016 @10:16PM (#51830633)

      If only I can access my so-called "preferences" profile to edit the categories I'm actually interested in instead of letting ad companies "guestimate" my interests from websites I'll only visit once in my lifetime

      I know of only a few web sites that, imho, get their ads right. And they're all sites that do it in-house.

      Why they get it right? They serve ads that are related to the content. A web site that serves as market place for recycling companies, serves ads of those very companies as well. They passed right through AdBlock (for not coming from one of the major networks I guess), and proved interesting as I visited that site with the purpose of getting company contacts in that trade.

      Google's ads on the search page are also generally relevant (though they're getting intrusive now and harder to distinguish from organic results). Those are based on what you're looking for there and then, not what you were looking for last week or last month.

      So the only ads that I've found useful and relevant to me, are the ones that were served to me without any profiling of myself (except a geolocation on my IP for Google's ads, as many are localised). No massive databases where my browsing has been tracked or anything.

      Now all the rest is blocked by AdBlockPlus. Mostly for being annoying. After a reinstall of the computer I not always install it right away, but after a while the ads get so annoying (flashing, floaters) that I install it again. Most of the ads I see in those periods have nothing to do with my interests. Most are generic ads (like the billboards along the roads), that's OK as long as they don't flash or so. Again no need to do any tracking or profiling to serve those.

      It is really time for a new ad network that can offer more bang for the buck to advertisers. They serve only "acceptable ads" that can bypass AdBlock; these ads don't contain any scripting (plain JPG) so can not serve malware; less cost per impression for the advertiser and higher payout for the publisher as the network doesn't spend any money on large-scale tracking servers but just uses the content of the publisher's site to target ads.

    • Oh they'll get it right. Once they have your phone number they can go out and buy a whole lot of extra information about you in order to target the ads.

  • Wow. What a Racket. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Saturday April 02, 2016 @09:48PM (#51830521) Homepage Journal
    So, let me get this straight. Brave will either collect money from advertisers and maybe pay some of it to Web site operators based on delivered impressions; or Brave will collect money from users under the guise of a "subscription."

    Why does this parse as "scam" to me?

    What exactly would I, a "subscriber," be subscribing to? "Look at all this lovely personally identifiable data we've collected. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it..." Yeah, the word "subscription" doesn't properly describe that kind of transaction...

    And what's to prevent me from launching a phalanx of Brave browsers and have them randomly surfing the Web and accumulating Bitcoin for watcching ad impressions? Sockpuppetry is still trivial. Hell, why would I need to use the Brave browser at all; I could just emulate the protocol and then install the client on millions of compromised Windows machines...

    This strikes me as really goddamned dumb...

    • So, let me get this straight. Brave will either collect money from advertisers and maybe pay some of it to Web site operators based on delivered impressions; or Brave will collect money from users under the guise of a "subscription."

      Why does this parse as "scam" to me?

      What exactly would I, a "subscriber," be subscribing to? "Look at all this lovely personally identifiable data we've collected. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it..." Yeah, the word "subscription" doesn't properly describe that kind of transaction...

      And how exactly does all this fit into the business of "a privacy and speed focused web browser"?

      Sorry, but speed and privacy are incompatible with advertising.

    • Welcome to Capitalism. You say 'scam'; they say 'innovative idea'! I say 'potato'

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I read about the concept of the brave browser when it was first announced, and I think there are a few important points that you have to understand. Their plan is to have the browser watch your activity and serve ads according to that activity. But it is the browser doing this not some centralized server. So your private data stays on your machine and their algorithms run in the browser turning the local tracking data into requests to their ad providers for ads that fit your profile. The ads they serve

  • 1. Create a bot to randomly crawl pages. 2. Profit?

    • 1. Create a bot to randomly crawl pages. 2. Profit?

      Why randomly? Create a bot to click to site you like, click on links to articles on the site, scroll down page, return to main page and repeat. You would mimic real browsing habits and with a VM could run it independent of your main machine. Shut it down at about the same time and start up after you "sleep" to avoid being deemed a bot.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ark1 ( 873448 )
        Randomize to protect your privacy

        • Randomize to protect your privacy

          You've already given them an email and # number, so they know who you said you were; of course you've created a throwaway email account and phone number that is not tied to any real information so they really don't know you. At that point, you want to appear to be a real person to minimize the chances of them deciding you merely are a bot collecting cash. Running a bot in a VM or on a completely separate machine, connected via a VPN, minimizes the chances of a cookie hanging around to detect the real you, w

          • As long as they have my name, Attila T. Hun, any address and phone number with an area code followed by 555 7867 they are happy even though none of it is real. My purchases just become noise in the data beyond knowing someone bought X at store Y on Z.
            As soon as you charge money for this: it is fraud.

  • This is a good idea, and it's fair. If you want me to hear/watch a sales pitch then it makes sense that I get something up front for the time spent. The only problem that I see is that it's not going to attract people who actually have money to spend. They've got better ways to make money then get paid to watch advertisments.

  • Too complex. Too arcane.

    Bitcoin doesn't have the awareness, utility, or acceptance to be mass market.

    Even if 40% or more of your adds are blocked in Firefox, Chrome. IE, Safari and Edge, you're still getting a pretty good bang for your buck.

  • The "we'll pay you to watch ads" businesses was one of the signs before the DotCom crash.

    This is scary as hell.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      Someone else who also caught it. Yep, it's incoming. The whole QE racket has simply delayed it for the last few years.

  • I don't want to be paid to watch Ad's, I don't want to see them at all ever, and yes I am willing to pay an annual subscription for that privilege if someone can make a browser and websites behave well with Ad Blocking (I doubt this project is it though).

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by saward ( 4277563 )

      Check out webpass.io. It's designed to work alongside your adblocker, as a way to financially support websites via a subscription. Those sites that receive money from the subscription have to voluntarily remove their ads, and your adblocker will continue to block ads on all other sites.

      • nice idea but far too limited website support and far too limited browser support for it. If they get it to a point where they support more platforms and browsers and websites I would be happy to fork over a subscription each month. I won't fund their efforts until they have a service that is worthwhile. Perhaps they need to change their subscription model to cents per ad free page served until they can show good website support..

  • Put a fork in it (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If this is what Mozilla is bringing to the table I think it's pretty safe to say it's nearly dead.

  • Yeah, sure. Like Netscape users had the option to 'legally' purchase the browser.

    Unless they make it free, a latter day IE (this time, funded by Google) will show up to eat their lunch.

  • The whole ad blocking is up for debate as it does prevent the publishers from receiving revenue, but ads have become malicious and extremely annoying. I do use ad blockers except I turn it off on some sites to show support. But this is just wrong, because instead of giving the publishers revenue for the ads that they post, the browser will inject their own ads to moreso benefit "brave" and the users. If you are down to viewing ads, you might as well help out who ever publishes it instead of this. Sigh,

  • How efficient is Bitcoin at handling micropayments?

  • See, Mr. Eich, we can reach equitable terms. Give me all your bitcoins! I will fund the gay agenda! Bwahahahaha!

  • "Brave"? Getting a crypto virus from malvertising is stupid, not Brave.

  • My price is $1000/month, no less.

  • A little bit of bitcoin is deducted from your account for viewing content you're interested in? Is their plan to completely monetize the Internet?

  • Privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Meneth ( 872868 ) on Sunday April 03, 2016 @04:53AM (#51831429)
    So a privacy-focused browser has code specifically written to send all your browsing history to a wide variety of third parties? Something's wrong there...
  • Like, it's not exactly click fraud, because you're not clicking, so the advertisers aren't paying for that. But an ad you're paid to watch is one they know you're explicitly not interested in, so I thought they didn't like that, either?

  • I, for example would donate to wikipedia.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      If you want to donate to Wikipedia just go there : https://wikimediafoundation.or... [wikimediafoundation.org] and select your preferred method. No "I would", just donate or don't donate.
      Donating to the sites you visit most is the fairest, if you want to donate to others, just cash-in and redistribute as you want to. It is your money after all, the donation is just the default option in case you don't manifest yourself.

  • We had "pay to surf" back in the the early 2000s, and it didn't work because the sort of people who sign up to receive money for watching ads are the sort of people who don't have enough money to buy anything advertised on those ads. Also they tend to be the sort of people who write software to simulate a web-browsing session so that they can receive the money without having to look at the ads.

  • If one of these ads infects my computer in a drive by download attack?
  • When are television advertisers going to complain that nobody watches their commercials and ask TV makers to build a detector to sense when people watching TV leave the room during a commercial break? Aren't these TV advertisers in the same boat as internet website advertisers. If everybody is using commercial breaks to use the bathroom or do something else other than watching TV nobody watches their commercials and they have wasted their money paying to have a commercial aired on network TV. Advertisers an
  • How much do I get to allow those malware-laden ads? Hope it's enough to fix the resulting damage!
  • I remember when I was a teenager running an auto-mouse script to take full advantage of "All Advantage, Get Paid to Surf!". Made a killing (for 14) before they went under. Tech has improved 100x but advertising tech not so much. I see the exact same arms race taking place here... I'm out this time though ;)

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