

Otherwise, you can manually choose to tip others who have enabled this feature. You can keep the rewards for yourself, or let Brave calculate how much of your attention was spent on each website you visited and tip them proportionally with your rewards (if the sources in question can take crypto donations). (One BAT is about $0.25 as on January 23.)

In exchange for your attention, they will pay you with a cryptocurrency called the Basic Attention Token (BAT). However, if you enjoy some quid pro quo, Brave offers to show you some specially curated ads. For those who never want to see another pop-up or YouTube ad ever again, Brave will use its built-in ad-blocker to make it the case as much as possible. Launched in 2016, Brave is based on the open-source Chromium Web core, meaning that users of Google Chrome will find it comfortingly familiar while also trying out a platform that sets itself apart from most browsers available today.īrave’s premise is that it gets the job done in two ways. We reviewed one such privacy browser, Brave, that blocks website trackers and advertisements while claiming to be three times faster than Google Chrome. While most users are able to brush aside this inconvenience and continue browsing, those who are more concerned about prying Big Tech companies might consider trying out a privacy browser that aims to protect their internet experience. (For insights on emerging themes at the intersection of technology, business, and policy, subscribe to our tech newsletter Today’s Cache.) Soon, you are followed across the web by uncomfortably specific ads that eerily echo your most private problems and desires. This is proposed to make an appearance on the mobile apps soon.A quick search on Google Chrome or Safari might take just a few seconds to lead you to the answer you need, but the resulting data from the search and what it reveals about you as a consumer is rapidly monetised. A clever approach, in our opinion.īest of all, you can still use the majority of Chrome extensions with Brave and the app is available on Android, iOS, macOS and Windows, so you can keep all your bookmarks and other settings synced across your devices.ĭesktop users can also make use of the option to browse with Tor, which offers even more privacy features such as the ability to hide your location. These can then be donated to your favourite websites, which receive a slice of the ad-revenue. So, in order to keep the wheels of creativity turning, Brave offers users the choice to view what it terms ‘privacy respecting ads’ and in return you receive Brave Rewards token. Now, if everyone used this approach then pretty soon there would be no free content to browse, as companies wouldn’t be able to pay their creators if all the ad-revenue disappeared and they weren’t demanding a subscription. Instead Brave automatically blocks trackers and ads, making the web experience fast and strangely peaceful.
