The Brave web browser

The Brave web browser is a project from a new company called Brave Software. It was founded by Brendan Eich, who is the inventor of JavaScript and former developer and CTO at Mozilla; he hopes to dramatically re-invent the advertising model of the web while strengthening user anonymity and security. Brave's value proposition is that instead of being served advertisements from web sites that use the revenue to pay their bills, users can opt to directly pay the content providers of their choosing with cryptocurrency. Also, there is a recognition of the utility of targeted advertising, so users have an option of saving a local, protected profile that can be used anonymously to obtain targeted advertisements instead of having their online behavior tracked and sold by a third party.

Brave is an open-source browser derived from Chromium, and as such it is based on the Blink web engine. Advertisements and user tracking are blocked by default as a built-in feature in Brave, as opposed to other browsers that offer that functionality via plugins. In 2016, Brave announced that, on top of blocking advertisements, it would let users choose to replace them with other advertisements that are sourced from a curated list of partners. Revenue from these ads would go to Brave Software as well as being shared with the publishers and others.

When the idea of advertisement replacement was first floated, the concept rattled the online publishing industry so badly that there was a backlash. That resulted in a cease and desist letter to Brave from seventeen newspaper publishing companies to vehemently protest the advertising scheme. They said that what Brave was doing was illegal and brought forward claims of copyright violation, breach of contract, unfair business practices, and unauthorized access. It is unclear if any of those accusations has any legal merit; in any case, it has not slowed down Brave Software in building the Brave browser and raising funds for its development.

However, it is not publicly known whether Brave Software still intends to roll out its planned ad-replacement mechanism. If so, there remain murky ethical issues (and possibly legal issues) in replacing advertisements from a content provider for the financial benefit of an unrelated party without the consent of the publisher, even if some of the money is given back to the said publisher. This is the reason for most of the publisher outrage at the idea.

Solving the intrusive advertisement problem

Brave may seem similar in functionality to other browsers with ad-blocking plugins installed, but the underlying goal of Brave is to subvert the existing advertising and user tracking model. Serving advertisements on the web has grown to become a complex labyrinth of scripts, cookies, and other mechanisms that range from benign to unscrupulous to outright malicious. Advertisements also suck up bandwidth that users may have to pay for; that is a burden for mobile users with limited data plans, for example.

In addition, advertisers aren't just serving advertisements to prospective customers, but also mining the personal data of said customers so that marketing can be tailored and fine-tuned. While there is value to be had for consumers in the form of customized advertisements, there are legitimate concerns about the breaches in user privacy that such tracking entails. Worse still, some advertisements are written with predatory JavaScript that attempts to install malware on users' computers. Brave's raison d'être is to block such intrusiveness and offer an alternative model of payment for users, publishers, and advertisers, while providing a revenue stream for itself as well.

The Brave browser blocks all advertisements by default. This also includes blocking tracking pixels and third-party cookies. However, Brave Software has devised a mechanism to pay content producers to offset the loss of income from blocking advertisements on their site. Using cryptocurrency, users may opt to either pay content producers a monthly fee or enable "Brave Ads", which are ads from Brave Software's partners that are delivered via anonymous protocols so users cannot be tracked.

Revenue from Brave Ads is shared with content publishers (55%), Brave's advertising partners (15%), the users themselves (15%), and a portion goes back to Brave Software (15%). Currently, Bitcoin is used for these payments, but there are plans to replace the use of Bitcoin with a new cryptocurrency called Basic Attention Tokens.

The idea behind this new payment ecosystem is to eliminate the privacy-violating data collection that is currently inherent in getting advertisements to users, and for users to directly pay content publishers. The third parties who track user behavior hoard a vast collection of user-related data that advertisers have to pay for, which puts user privacy and security at risk. By making the browser the ultimate arbiter for advertising and payments for those advertisements, the bulk of the most objectionable part of the advertising ecosystem is reduced.

Basic Attention Tokens

Advertisers seek user engagement. Thus, users' attention becomes a currency, and Brave Software has devised a scheme to quantize and monetize it in the form of Basic Attention Tokens. Since the browser is able to record user interaction with advertisements, that interaction can be enumerated and recorded for the purposes of remuneration. Apart from direct user engagement, the algorithms used to determine user attention are based on how much of an advertisement is visible on screen, and for how long. The cumulative total of these engagements is tracked on-device by the browser, and will eventually add up to an amount where it can be rewarded with BATs.

Basic Attention Tokens are built on top of Ethereum, a decentralized blockchain technology that can be used to create any number of applications, including cryptocurrency. Ethereum provides "smart contracts", which consist of code that resides in a blockchain and executes based on conditions and events. These smart contracts are used to create BAT ledgers that pay content providers based on advertisement views.

Interest in BATs as a cryptocurrency is exceedingly high. On 31 May 2017, Brave Software held an initial online sale of BATs that raised about 35 million dollars, and sold out within 30 seconds. Purchases were made using ETHs (a cryptocurrency built atop Ethereum), and about 1.5 billion units of BATs were sold. Despite the large amount of money being exchanged, only about 130 people were able to buy the tokens, and half the supply was bought out by only five parties. That frenzied trading resulted in a big chunk of money for continued development of Brave's browser and infrastructure technology.

Anonymized user activity

One of the key selling points of Brave is how "user intent"—the browsing behavior of a browser user—will be profiled and kept (voluntarily) by the users themselves instead of being tracked and compiled by third parties. When a user opts-in for Brave Ads, they will want to get relevant, targeted advertisements without compromising their privacy. When enabled, the browser will gather browsing information and use it to create "intent signals" to Brave Ads, without any specific user identification or cookies. To prevent fingerprinting, only a small subset of information is used to signal intent.

Brave also has built-in defense against browser fingerprinting, although it is disabled by default as it breaks the functionality of some sites. Fingerprinting is the underhanded use of browser or operating system features to identify computers and track them across the web. In fingerprinting-protect mode, Brave will attempt to thwart fingerprinting attempts via canvas, WebGL, AudioContext, and battery status. That mode also disables WebRTC so that it cannot leak private IP addresses.

Browser experience

Brave feels similar to Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers. It is possible to start a different browsing session in each tab, and group tabs by session, which is useful for logging into two or more web accounts simultaneously. Private mode can also be started in a tab, instead of requiring an entirely new window like Google Chrome. The main feature is advertisement blocking, and when browsing sites such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, I did not see a single advertisement. When browsing a more advertisement-heavy site like ZDNet, Brave manages to block most of the ads, but some still appear when they are presented in the form of "partner links".

Chrome's browser plugins and extensions are compatible with Brave, but the browser does not support directly using them. Instead, a curated list of extensions is included in the Brave browser download; the developers claim that having a list of approved, tested extensions is meant to maintain the security of the browser. Therefore, if users want an extension, they need to make a feature request to the developers.

Since the use of BATs has not yet been implemented in Brave, Bitcoin is used for monthly contributions paid to web sites of the user's choosing. In the options screen, there is a tab called Payments where this can be enabled. A Bitcoin wallet is created automatically, and users can choose to deposit some of their own money into it if they want. When enabling Brave Ads and browsing participating web sites, payments from advertisers should be deposited into that wallet every 30 days. The Brave developers hope users will ultimately spend all of their collected payments on publisher web sites to help make this new payment ecosystem work.

If you want to try out Brave yourself, you can download it from the web site, where packages are available for Windows 7 or later, macOS 10.9 or later, and Linux. It is also available for Android and iOS in the appropriate app store. If you're running Linux, there are instructions that describes how to install it. Packages are available for Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, and openSUSE. It can also be installed as a generic x86-64 binary or via a snap.

Conclusion

The brand new advertisement ecosystem that Brave is pushing is clearly designed to pressure existing players to improve their practices. Brave Software wants to position itself as the spearhead in disrupting the existing ecosystem, but will users, publishers, and advertisers hop on board the new model? Brave maintains that it will not engage in dodgy practices itself; the open-source nature of its browser will help ensure that. However, it remains to be seen if most users and publishers will agree to the new model, especially with Brave Software having the final word on the rules of the new game, which includes how much revenue is shared and with whom.

For now, only Brave incorporates this technology, and it will probably need more widespread adoption before the business model becomes sustainable for publishers. Also, as with all ad-blocking technology, there will be a pushback from advertisers and third parties relying on the user-tracking business model; perhaps they will find subversive ways to defeat ad blocking. It is an arms race, and it is unclear whether users, advertisers, or content publishers come out on top.