Brave – The New Generation of Web Browsers

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A bit of history

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There has been a clash of web browsers since I can remember. To me they all seemed pretty much the same. There really were only handful of differences between them. One of them was speed. Most of the browsers were doing just fine, but there were also those that sucked hard (I’m looking at you Microsoft products:D). Then there was the question of reliability. Yet again, most of the browsers were pretty equal, while some of them failed once again (still looking at you Microsoft products…).

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When internet spread sufficiently enough to call it “mainstream”, there was a huge lack of specialists that would actually understand what is going on more deeply. The virtual territory used to be as anonymous as was your nickname basically. Big data used to be a completely unsolved problem, therefore there were no tools how to really “spy” on people. Everyone was still just “grasping” it all.

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As time passed though, this situation has completely changed. The information age has become reality before people even knew it, but wealthy corporations usually realize such facts faster than the rest. Big data started to be chewable using some methods and corporations targeted our personal data, because it was really “out there” unguarded. Information has always meant possible knowledge, efficiency or money (whatever you choose, it really, at the end, is the very same – valuable output). Therefore the reality was that value/money/whatever you want to call it has been out there unguarded in forms of our personal data. I’m too young to know how it really happened, but my bet is that corps started “grabbing” the data just like that. People later realized that this isn’t really a morally justifiable thing, and there had to be some legal proceedings about the matter. The outcome was that all the domains have added the statement into their “Terms of use” that all the data about you will be owned by them (probably in other words, but the point for them was to be safe against various accusations). Suddenly it was “normal” to be yielding your personal data to the highest bidder for free whenever you wanted to use the internet. But that is no fucking thing as normal and definitely not when it’s supposed to be “normal” to keep forcing you to give your data for free if you want to use the internet.

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To make matters worse, the data about you is not only stored somewhere and is directly used against you through adverts. You all probably realized by now that the adverts trying to sell you something that you have been recently searching for is no coincidence. The whole process of “spying” and then “selecting the right adverts” doesn’t happen just like that. It costs energy, it needs bytes to be loaded, which means that the performance and speed of the browser is significantly lowered. It was only a matter of time before decentralized systems will try to tackle this issue too. And here it comes…

The Brave one

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And one of the brave projects (I actually found two… the other one will be presented on Monday) that try to deal with this issue is Brave. Brave mainly works as an ULTIMATE open source (sort of decentralized) add blocker. Using encryption, a wall is set up that reflects all the incoming adds, cookies and possible spying mechanisms. We are searching the internet for information that WE want to see and Brave is finally making it possible! In addition to that the loading time is expected to be two times faster for PCs and SEVEN TIMES FASTER for mobile phones and tablets.

You might be thinking now that some domains that are currently only financially supported by adverts will die out. Brave has dealt with that too! Brave has implemented BAT (Basic Attention Token) wallet. Users can optionally turn on “monthly payments”. The time one spends on every single page is being measured (anonymously of course) and your “monthly payment” is being distributed to the visited domains. You can of course at the end adjust the distribution, or you can completely cut some domains off (I for instance cut Facebook off:D). The rewards are being distributed anonymously too!

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There are only two “missing aspects” that make me kinda sad. I’m not dropping the platform till I sufficiently test it, in fact I plan to use it rather actively now. One of the obstacles that I now face is minor one. My password manager is not supported by Brave yet. Is there anyone who would recommend top notch secure password manager? Possibly with reasons why it is secure. The second one is the fact that there is no cryptocurrency connected to Brave. The sole purpose of BAT is to anonymously reward the domains. I would like to be a Brave’s stakeholder. This to me is a important part of any decentralized system and the fact that Brave lacks it is simply shame. The privacy it provides though is much more attractive than the strength of cons to me!

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