Yesterday I started receiving ads from Brave itself. Some with political propaganda content like “Afghan girls can code!”.
I just wanted to let you know that if killing Brave is what you want, this is the perfect path to take.
The main reason people use Brave is built-in ad-blocking. If you add built-in ads to that, you’re going against what most people want from the browser and giving them a reason to drop it for any other browser.
I really hope I’m missing something here. Because otherwise this is indefensible.
The inclusion of politics and particularly the inclusion of politics of the same stripes you’re going to find everywhere else in Sillicon Valley is also going to drive away people who saw Brave as an alternative to the concentrated power of the web giants, their intrusion in our lives, and this notion that they can tell us what to think that has been infecting everything over there since around 2014.
Moreover, that’s the brand of politics that considers itself above every other aspects of anything. Which is why there’s no reason for me to believe that Brave’s features are going to remain open and not become tools for supporting the one worldview that is being pushed by Sillicon Valley.
If this is really what’s going on and I’m not missing anything, this personally destroys any emotional attachment I’ve had to Brave and any expectations that it would help expand human Freedoms. And the moment I come accross another browser that offers decent ad-blocking / tracking-protection, there’s no reason for me not to jump the shark.
Not 100% sure about this but I thought that you only get ads if you activate BAT rewards. The whole concept is that they’re giving you relatively “safe” ads instead so you can earn a currency which you can then donate to websites you like (since ads are how the websites usually make money).
There are a lot of assumptions in the post. Let me clarify a few things.
By default, Brave blocks 3rd party ads and trackers.
Brave Ads are a part of Brave Rewards, and are disabled by default.
The ad in question is from a non-profit, Code to Inspire, as a part of our ad grant program, which serves a non-profit ad when we don’t have a paid ad to serve. We are not pushing propaganda, the organization that provided that ad is among several non-profits that are currently running ads, including hrf.org and the lupus foundation of america.
If you do not like the ad, our upcoming Ads History view will allow you to downvote and even exclude the entire category that the ad was matched against.
Brave Ads is entirely opt-in, as part of Brave Rewards. It is not enabled by default, and can be deactivated at any time if you do not like the Brave Ads experience, which rewards people with BAT for the ads that they view, without compromising your privacy.
If Brave Ads is enabled and you would like to disable it, you can do so by entering brave://rewards in the URL bar, and toggling off Brave Ads.
Ok. That was a very misguided post by me. I apologize for that.
However, I still think there might still be something worth discussing here, so I’m going to tone down the title and keep the post up.
There are two things that contributed to my misunderstanding of the situation. The first one is that I’d had Brave Ads enabled for a long time and only just now received ads.
The other one is that I didn’t know ads would display as notifications. My assumption was that Brave ads would replace existing ads in pages, like I’d heard some adblockers do. Does that not happen at all?
Are OS notifications the only way brave ads are presented? If so, my first reaction is to object to that. But I imagine I’m not the only one, and there’s already been some discussion about that subject. Can I read it somewhere and maybe join it?