New open-source ad-blocking web browser emerges from brain of ex-Mozilla boss Eich A new open-source browser that blocks ads and tracking code and so promises to "fix the Web" by offering a faster, privacy-respecting experience has been released. The Brave browser is the brainchild of former Mozilla (Firefox) CEO and JavaScript inventor Brendan Eich, and version 0.7 is now available to developers on GitHub …
No, sounds creepy.
I can see no reason why I'd switch to this from Firefox, unless Mozilla totally mess up. As it is, I need "Classic Theme Restorer" on Linux Mint with Mate and Windows to have sensible GUI / UX interface. I had to install an addon/plug in thingy on Thunderbird too.
There are two reasons for switching, if they get it right. One is to take control of your advertising profile and get it out of the hands of Google, Krux etc.
The other is because you care about content providers' continued existance. Without ads there'd be no Guardian, no The Register and no Daily Mail. Even those with a paywall would struggle to survive, so no FT, no Telegraph and no Sun. Some of those you might not miss but you'd miss them if they all went. Without them we'd not know about the MPs expenses and NSA spying.
Maybe something else will fill the gap but I can't see anything unfunded taking on the government other than paediatrician burning mobs.
Agreed. Whether or not this is a good solution (am still thinking it over), they at least understand the problem. It's not Ads that bother me (unless they're they start autoplaying video and sound in which case it's an instant page close), it's the tracking.
I'm happy for the staff of El Reg. to get paid! What I'm not happy with is Google having a detailed profile of me which is easily linked to who I am.
"Without ads there'd be no Guardian, no The Register and no Daily Mail."
But ads served as simple img files from the site host would still show since there's no way for a browser to tell the difference between ElRegHeroImage02037252.jpg and ElRegImage6356336.png, that latter being an advert for Dr Dobbs Patent Nerd Sex Attractant Pills.
The tracking is gone, the personalisation which rarely works is gone, but the ads and the potential revenue are still there. With flash and script blocking the other annoyances are gone too.
This sounds encouraging but challenging.
Positioning yourself as a solution to the murky underbelly of Internet advertising, whilst describing yourself as a "browser-based ad-tech platform" sounds like an untenable position - or at least one that will quickly erode once it starts making money. Anyone remember "Do no evil."
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Advertisers brought it on themselves. They abused the medium and people are fighting back. Google showed that text ads could be effective but blinky,blinky seems to appeal to ad suits more (perhaps they can extract more $$$ from their clients?).... Don't even get me started on auto-play audio and/or video.
And if your are bandwidth constrained or have a relatively slow machine, you have no choice since a site like the Verge will load 40 to 50 scripts related to advertising alone.
Besides, no advertiser seems to complain about 'Reader View' iOS which does the same thing as ad blockers.
Your arguments is as moronic as arguing for locking up every white, every male, and every American person in jail, just because there were a few crimes committed by a (or a few) American white males some time ago. That's a false generalization and a collective punishment, which is not only wrong but also illegal to make. Just like it is blocking all ads on all sites just because there were some bad ads or even bad sites.
If "every white, every male, and every American person" stood shoulder to shoulder with the criminals in their midst and refused to acknowledge that they'd done anything wrong, or even that anything that had happened was wrong, in the face of a significant level of crime directed against people outside their number...
... then yes, it'd be completely fair to collectively punish the lot of them.
That's what advertisers have done. Industry groups like the IAB have made a huge deal about "self-regulation" being the way forward, about how they'd keep out the bad apples to protect their own reputations, and then totally, utterly and abysmally failed to make even the most rudimentary attempt to follow through on that idea.
Screw 'em. I owe them nothing. And if that means 94% of the internet is going to go bust, actually I'm OK with that.
FF22 - a late thirties marketing man with an uncomfortably large mortgage, few savings, a young child or two and the major earner in this family - today put out an impassioned plea to be allowed to keep his rather pointless but reasonably paid job by explaining that people who didn't see the glorious value in advertising were evil and should be locked up. He wanted to mention Hitler, clearly a powerful anti-advertising image, but a small voice in his head said not to, and reluctantly, Hitler was dropped from his impromptu online campaign.
Sorry FF22, I don't like intrusive ads, and I don't like the people and firms who think this approach is anything but irritating and patronising. My blocker stays enabled.
"explaining that people who didn't see the glorious value in advertising were evil and should be locked up"
Reading comprehension just beat you at it. Again. Badly. No wonder our culture is doomed when most people can't even understand simple, three sentence comments, written in plain English.
"Reading comprehension just beat you at it. Again. Badly. No wonder our culture is doomed when most people can't even understand simple, three sentence comments, written in plain English."
"Your arguments is as moronic as arguing for..."
You seem to find writing plain English difficult. However we do understand your badly written English. As a result most of us see you as an example of the advertising business displaying the exaggerated sense of entitlement that seems endemic there.
@FF22
Let's extend your argument a little.
On the whole websites and email are harmless and don't try to install malware so there's no reason not to run your OS in admin mode all the time and no need to use anti-virus software.
You're failing to understand that by now adblocking isn't just to avoid all the attempts by advertisers to loose their screaming jiggling auto-play brain-farts on you, it's become part of your normal security setup to keep malvertising out.
"Let's extend your argument a little."
You can do that, but it's a logical fallacy, called beating a straw man. Replacing my original argument with one of your own an "proving" that it's somehow absurd or false says actually nothing about the validity of the original argument.
"You're failing to understand that "
No, I do not "fail to understand". On the contrary: I know what you don't: that ads can do no more harm to your computer than can do the web page they're embedded on. And I also know that ad networks are generally more secured and run by more professional people than are websites, in general.
So blocking ads and and yet keeping visiting the websites themselves, while claiming that you do it just to avoid getting infected or harmed by them, is a no-brainer. Also, it's akin to taking goods at the mall and refusing to pay for them (ie. stealing them), and then claiming afterwards that you only did it, because money might contain germs and viruses, and you only stole the stuff to avoid getting infected.
Theft is theft, no matter what your reasons for doing it are. And using web services and consuming content without "paying" for them by tolerating ads IS also theft.
"And I also know that ad networks are generally more secured and run by more professional people than are websites, in general."
How do you know? Sounds like bluster to me. Just take a look at the crap and verbose JS these ad networks spew up. Just time how much slower a page load is with the ads. Professional? Doesn't look like it.
"And using web services and consuming content without "paying" for them by tolerating ads IS also theft."
No it isn't. I have no financial obligation to these websites - I am not paying for their content. I have signed no contract, agreed to no terms and conditions, broken no laws, nor acted irresponsibly. I have simply chosen not to view all the content I find irrelevant, like I'd do with reader view. Explain again why this is thievery.
Anyway FF22, we will never agree so I'm leaving it now - with my ad blocker still very much switched on. You enjoy your slow webpage loads and extended data usage.
"How do you know?"
Are you seriously asking me how I know whether a multi-billion dollar company like for ex. Google running the Adsense network has more serious and educated professionals working on their services than for ex. Joe Doe who happens to run his own blog in his spare time? You didn't think that through, did you?
"Just take a look at the crap and verbose JS these ad networks spew up."
What, even if it would be true, would have nothing to do with how secure they are compared to the web sites they have their ads embedded on.
"Just time how much slower a page load is with the ads. "
Which, again, has nothing to do with the security of ad networks. And what's a minor inconvenience anyway, you have to bear for getting all those content and services you're consuming for free.
"No it isn't. I have no financial obligation to these websites "
Yes, you do. Those websites are providing services and content to you in return for you viewing the ads. They may even explicitly state that in their TOS.
" I have signed no contract, agreed to no terms and conditions"
Yes you did by accessing their content and using their services. Look up implied contract! Also, you obviously don't sign any contract when shopping in a mail or taking a taxi either. Yet you don't argue that you don't own neither the shop nor the driver anything for the goods you've taken and the services that have been rendered to you. Or do you?
" I have simply chosen not to view all the content I find irrelevant"
Ads are not part of the content, but your "payment" in return of the former. If you're denying payment for good and services you voluntarily consumed, you're committing theft and fraud.
"Anyway FF22, we will never agree so I'm leaving it now - with my ad blocker still very much switched on."
Weird way of expressing being too thickheaded to accept and too ignorant to understand valid and sound arguments.
FF22: you need to look up what "theft and fraud" are, because you're throwing the terms around very freely, and I don't believe any reputable legal authority would support your usage in this context.
A "website" is a resource that the website owner has chosen to make public. Nobody forced them to put those files on a server, connect it to the internet and let people request that content via HTTP.
Any web browser has (and has always had) the technical capability to be selective about what it downloads, and - separately - about what it processes and displays. (Indeed, that's arguably what a web browser is for.) I remember browsing without images, just to save on bandwidth - this was long before ads became the scourge they are now. Just because a picture or a script is served to my computer, doesn't in any way obligate my browser to show or run it. Anyone who doesn't understand this - really shouldn't be trying to run a website, because that's like trying to drive a car without knowing what a "road" is.
As for those hardworking website owners who deserve to be compensated - there are plenty of options available to them. The only model I won't support is the one where they use scripts to download material from other domains.
FF22. I am speaking as a potential viewer of a site and I have a monthly broadband limit (due to living on the road and feed my internet usage via SIMS in dongles) so I have to consider the bandwidth that I consume.
I pay for this bandwidth and I see it as theft, not fraud (I can't work out how you come to this particular conclusion) when an advertiser throws a massive advert at me that is not needed. Now if I agreed to receive, via the post office, a letter from an advertiser the next morning and pay on delivery for the advertisement in return for browsing the site then that's one thing. It's another when the doorbell rings and the postman shows me a large parcel which took days to deliver and weights as much as a small racehorse and is going to cost me considerably more for delivery.
Yes, you're right. That is fraud.
Not too many years ago the web was full of pages with no adverts. Or if they were then they were just simple jpeg files dished up by the host's server with a simple URL behind it. And even these came in well after the web was up and running.
Now you are telling me that there's an implied Terms of Service which says that we have to receive this data whether we want them or not. And that we have to have installed any malware because you say so.
When I pop into a newsagents and buy a magazine I walk three steps outside to the nearest bin and, holding the outside cover pages together I give the thing a bloody great shake and all the blow in advertising crap goes straight into the bin. I will read the proper adverts in the magazine as a rule (usually they are the most interesting bits in there) but never the add ins because they are an annoyance particularly as I have to dispose of them because living on a motorhome exploring the country that I live in I don't particularly want badly targeted adverts which offer a stair lift, or a Parker biro if I sign up for some funeral insurance.
These advertisers have ruined it for themselves and there was no ToS that I agreed to when buying the magazine saying that I had to accept these blow-ins.
No-one here is wanting no advertising.
We are just wanting proportional advertising which:
- doesn't sling adverts that autoplay,
- have sound,
- block the page one's reading,
- potentially serve malware, and
- doesn't report back with our reader profile to anyone.
If you wish to bang on about a ToS then that list is what we expect to see in a site's ToS because as a server of a web site and you wish to deal with me then, equally, you have implied agreement to these terms. None of those items in that list above are excessive and all are reasonable.
So,
"And I also know that ad networks are generally more secured and run by more professional people than are websites, in general."
So how do you account for malvertising? Or is it your contention that these professional people are securely serving it up deliberately?
"Theft is theft"
Indeed. If I get pestered by an advert I'm less likely to buy whatever's being pushed at me. Less as in if it's something I need I'll find someone else to sell it. But the advertising network will have take good money from whoever's trying to sell it in order to achieve this end. So who's stealing here? Clue, who is it that ends up with the money in their pocket?
"Indeed. If I get pestered by an advert I'm less likely to buy whatever's being pushed at me. "
You obviously have no clue how advertising works. And just because of your ignorance you're even more prone to be affected and even fooled by it, than Average Joe. In this way I can totally understand of you being so afraid of getting in touch with advertisement. Fears of the weak mind, you know.
"You obviously have no clue how advertising works."
No, it's you who obviously have no clue how I work.
I know very well how advertising works in my case. It pisses me off. Specifically it pisses me off about the businesses who think they're entitled to my time and attention.
I've spent far too many decades on this Earth being pestered by idiots who think I should suck it up.
Companies who thought they knew how advertising works but didn't get the message have lost my business. They thought that as I was their customer they were entitled to pester. My solution was simple. I'm no longer a customer.
Companies I haven't dealt with who think they know how advertising works but haven't got the message try to pester. I'll never be their customer.
@FF22
"Theft is theft, no matter what your reasons for doing it are. And using web services and consuming content without "paying" for them by tolerating ads IS also theft."
Did somebody forced you to put your 'content' on the web?
Did somebody forced you to make the said 'content' avaialble for free (as in not behind a paywall)?
No? Well then, you just made it available for anybody FOR FREE. So it's not theft.
Oh, you were expecting to gain some monetary compensation from ads? The sell ads, not 'content'.
"Don't most users who use these, 'ad-blockers', just want a simple solution that stops them seeing adverts? How many of them care about funding the websites?"
Quite a few of us actually.
Ruins the simplified world view I know, but such is reality.
I don't mind ads in moderation. I use a few sites that rely on them to offer a service I use, so ad-blocking off.
I object to ads with a little content hidden among them. So click bait sites get used with blocking set to kill.
"Most" people are in fact, individuals.
Doesn't work well. Block Google Analytics for example, and about a third of the Web becomes unusable because each page is loaded with Javascript that waits for Google to respond to it before proceeding. After about three minutes your page will eventually load having timed out waiting for the reply, only to put you through it a moment later when you click on the next link on the page.
Then don't block GA! Nobody is forcing you. This is surely no reason to not block ad slinging domains/subdomains?
Or get a better list. I have a beautiful ad-free life with much faster page loads and no 3 minute delays. Would you have preferred I'd kept quiet about it?
My beef with modern websites is that there's so much crap on there that many sites are becoming unusable unless you've got a state of the art system. Think about it -- you need a supercomputer just to look at a web page. The problem is that advertising needs information, the web is not designed to yield it efficiently so the result is a whole pile of badly designed and coded script workarounds, all looking for that edge to get that information. This not only clags up the computer and its network link but those exploits advertisers need to get their data are also exactly what malware droppers are looking for. (Two sides of the same coin?) This browser seems like an honest approach; you can't stop people from monetizing content but you can stop them from screwing up your system with the latest attempt to infiltrate it.
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@ Charles 9
I generally don't have that sort of issue - my drivers tend to come from repos, not websites.
With *work* stuff, we've enough equipment on the floor that has proprietary hardware that I've got repos for the linux hosts and ISOs for the windows boxen (cough) that are falling into my lap.
If the *driver* site you are visiting has $h177ons of javascript, and whales of ads, you aren't downloading a driver, you're downloading toolbars, adware, malware and crap that you will have to moan about.
@ Jos V
While I'll agree that google's homepage is a horrendous mess of code, that is, when noscript is running and *blocking*, exactly one script. Not a list. And search still works rather well.
I'm referring to the moments when you have 45 different sources involved in getting one webpage to load and *work*
"...but how long until websites start blocking Brave users and the sue shitfest hits? That's why we can't have nice things"
About the same time as they do this to all the other blocking service operators..
So probably NEVER.
And yes. We can have nice things.
An ad agency has no standing to sue me, or the ad blocking service for anything. Nobody is obliged to download advertising. And any site that bans blocker users ends up with fewer customers.
So hardly anybody does.
More than you think because although fewer they at least pay the bills unlike all the other leeches. Or would you rather 90% of the Internet switch to paywalls that demand your credit card? And leaving the Internet is less of an option as print sources shut their doors. Finally, while one could go without information, many would also point to a lower standard of living compared to today.
"they at least pay the bills"
But don't you think there ought to be a better way for sites to pay their bills than letting the advertising industry poke their fingers into visitors' eyeballs and ears and letting the scum of the internet have a go at pwning visitors' PCs?
Has it really come to this?
The number of sites that get a bit 'uppity' when they detect that you are using AdBlock is increasing every day.
From memory Forbes just does not work any more.
As someone who hates ALL forms of advertising (yes I spent time working in the AD Industry in pre-internet days) I won't buy anything advertised to me on TV or via a web-page. If fact I often go out of the way to buy stuff from companies that don't advertise to me.
I do subscribe to a few (non-commercial) sites that rely on advertising but get blocked by my blanket ban on anything from Google etc.
For those sites that basically tell you to 'fuck off' because you are using tools like Adblock, NoScript etc I have a VM that gets used for them. All browsing is done via a proxy in Germany or Spain or Italy or Manchester etc.
Once I'm done with it, the VM gets overwritten with the clean version. No browser history, contacts or anything that can give the advertisers a clue about the real me.
As 'Tommy' says, 'Can you see the real me?' No and I want it to stay that way as long as possible.
"Once I'm done with it, the VM gets overwritten with the clean version. No browser history, contacts or anything that can give the advertisers a clue about the real me."
I hate to see what'll happen when someone develops a working hypervisor attack and uses it to break your method and see the real you.
I will be on the lookout for a browser that allows the page to load and then promptly disables any user interaction with any advertising shit and makes it invisible so the both the advertisers and I am happy.
Cross domain restrictions will ensure there is no way of the advertisers knowing,
I would pay good money for a browser that did that. Dump all the ads and trackers to /dev/null and just show me the page.
At present I use ABP+ and Adnauseum as far the advertisers are concerned I am interested in and click on every ad on every page I have opened in about the last 2 years.
An inline micro pay wallet that automatically pays sites a sliver of a penny equal to what they'd accrue from my ocular scans of their advertising would be interesting.
I click in, the adverts shut off, and the tinkling of teeny tiny coins lets me know they've been paid and amuses me at the same time. :)
Build that. That would be cool.
My thought is that it would be a re-fillable container, separated from anything connected to myself. The handshake would be between the site and whomever I designate to handle that for me. A token goes out to the site that they then get reconciled at some other time. If my browser is compromised and the container stolen then, since we're dealing in micro payments, how much would I lose? Eight bits?
Regardless, I hadn't thought of what you'd brought up since I don't particularly worry about it since I deal with PayPal, Amazon, etc, do online banking so to worry about my payment credentials being stolen seems, well, quaint. Not to be patronizing and not admit that that fear may have some validity, though with modern browsers and all that it seems pretty small.
If we're talking about the users inclined to run with n+1 toolbars, well, we could ease their mind by selling them a fingerprint scanner to use when they fill the wallet and when they decide on a browsing session with it active.
Lol, this is sounding pretty good. Whomever develops this, please cut me in for some shares. Please and thanks. :)
A while ago I've wondered about a scheme where holders of supermarket loyalty cards could swap them so as to confuse the data picture that was being compiled.
What would be fun is a browser on similar lines, designed to be packed and handed from one user to another. Perhaps the number of swaps could be listed in a manner similar to playing conkers, thus adding value. Then users could boast about the camouflage rating of their latest browser. E.g. "I'm currently using a 23-swap Firefox with 58,000 adsite hits listed."
They keep the tracking stuff in one central location? Jesus unicycling Christ, that's even worse than what we have now. For a start, you just *know* that stuff is going to be slurped to death by everyone with five eyes and that's before it becomes a one-stop shop for every creepy bastard on the web.
No thanks. I'll keep maintaining my own defences, I think.
Oh, and lions aren't brave. They're just hungry and driven by instinct when something made of meat wanders by.
Personally if I find ads to be intrusive, follow the mouse round the screen, play videos, make noises follow me across sites etc...
Then I will take great pains to find out which adserver served that particular ad to me if I can't find out by looking at the page info from the browser I will spend hours looking at the code for the page or examining the network traffic until I find the server.
Then I will add that server to my hosts file directed to 127.0.0.1
If they won't play nice then f*ck 'em is my attitude, this is my machine not theirs.
I realise some sites rely on the ad revenue they get from serving ads and providing those ads aren't intrusive that's fine, if the advertisers start thinking that putting their ads on my machine is a right and not a privilege then they'll get blocked.
Sorry to the sites that need the revenue, get your advertisers sorted out and there won't be a problem, until then my machine, my rules
The website https://www.brave.com/ hits you with two bits of code running in the background: Chartbeat and Doubleclick advertising (according to Ghostery). So looks like even their own website would load faster in Brave than than in other browsers because that code would be stripped out.
Sounds as if they're describing Ghostery. The Android version is great at stripping out the unneeded parts of the web. The IE and Firefox and Chrome addins seem to also work well. If they could only provide the user a means of saving, printing, emailing the reports it creates . . .
Whenever I get junk mail from businesses,political org's,'Holy Joe's','charities' et'c put in my letter box, I ALWAYS pick it up & without even looking at it put it into the 'Recycle Bin'.
I do not ask them to post me their rubbish,I do not ask for it,I do not want it & I am 99.9% sure that no one else does either.
The same is true of our computers, I regard ad's as junk & I think that either it should be stopped by law or the companies concerned should be made to pay me a financial penalty for depositing rubbish on my property.
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