A look under the hood of the Brave Browser, and how to become a Brave Publisher.
Episode #8-24 released on February 4, 2018
When the Internet was first made public it had a choice, charge for each web-site, or use the same funding model as television channels. Today, web-sites, including my own, fund all the costs with advertisements that collect an ever more accurate and precise profile of each user accessing the millions of web-sites all over the Internet.
What if you fund those same sites, and not have to see a single advertisement ever again?
Well you now can. But, it requires some hoops to be traversed first. Step one, the publisher themselves must be registered with Brave as a publisher, open an uphold wallet, and, they must also register all their sites and channels, too.
For individual users who want to support creators, under preferences, there is a payment section, where you can contribute to creators using Bitcoin, Ethereum, Lite coin, or the Basic Attention Token. Regardless of the coin used, it will be converted to BAT, unless it was already BAT.
The funds will be distributed to the creators by Brave, at which point can claim and convert their new source of income using Uphold, which can then be transferred to their bank accounts.
The Brave Browser has three advertisement modes, Adblock by default, which I am ok with. Ads turned on which preserves the previous method of supporting creators, and Ads by Brave which I do not support at all. The reason I don't support Brave Injecting Ads, is for the reason same reason I do not support cable carriers injecting code. It is not net neutral. It is one thing for an end user to have software that removes aspects of the site, it is another for a company to pick and decide what ads run against a page.
Now, let's talk about security settings, shields, plugins and extensions. These all affect the overall look, feel, and usability of the Internet. Under Security, you have a Private Data section, you can clear anything you want from memory whenever you close Brave. You can pick and choose which password manager you want to use, I always preference LastPass. You control media, and if it auto plays. You can request to sites to not track you, not that sites listen to this feature. You can enable Strict Site Isolation, which sandboxes sites in their own process.
Under Plugins, out of the box you can enable Adobe Flash, which I wouldn't, and enable Google Widevine, which I didn't, since it is a DRM technology which restricts how some stuff works. You might have to activate it for some sites, but I haven't so far.
Under Shields, you have the Ad control, cookie control, fingerprinting protection, HTTPS Everywhere, you can block phishing and malware, and a few other things for now.
What are the only things that annoy me with the Brave Browser?
Ad injection, which is at least not enabled by default, and the utter lack of a dark theme. All my browsers I use I have a dark theme enabled, even on Youtube, I use the dark theme.
Host : Steve Smith | Music : | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Dot Net