One of the revelations that has come to my mind from cryptocurrency is how intrusive the big tech companies are who own most of our data: Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, etc.

At first, having a working search engine like Google was a dream come true. I recall the days of yahoo, altavista, lycos, and so on, when search results were not very good.

And wasn't Google's motto to "do no evil."

Yet, even if not wanting to do evil, the fact remains that Google and these other companies are, well, for-profit companies. Their goals are not primarily altruistic. They need revenue growth, profit, and expanded user bases.

Likewise, I've known for a while that my ISP (Spectrum) has been harvesting my data and selling it. If you read the fine print when you sign up, it says that. Now, you can opt out of it typically, either by writing a letter, calling, or by paying extra, but I decided a few months ago I was done giving all this away to big companies.

Enter the Brave Browser

I heard about Brave and decided I liked the idea: no company tracking me, and cut out the middle man between content producer, ad creator, and user, using the Basic Attention Token (BAT) behind the scenes.

So I opted my youtube channel into Brave, so that when people using the Brave browser watch my youtube channel, based on how much time they spend on it, I receive some BAT tokens. And when they recently opened up multi-channel creators, I added my website.

They gave me an affiliate link for a limited time promotion, if you download and use Brave I receive some BAT tokens: http://brave.com/her081

But even before they did this, I was sold. I am now using it on my computer and smart phone.

VPN Too

I also decided to get some more privacy by using a VPN, and after researching I chose Nord VPN https://nordvpn.com/ . It has been good to use, a few glitches with my internet here and there, but nothing that is difficult.

I think the cryptocurrency movement is starting to drive people toward such measures. We are in the early stages of it. It will take a long, long time before mom and pop switch over from using Firefox or Chrome or IE (gasp) to Brave. But I told my Aunt and Uncle about it, who already distrust the big tech corps, and they are using it.

Over time though, this kind of decentralization builds momentum and undermines the business model of Google et. al., and that is what will ultimately grab market share from them.

Disrupt Your Own Company?

The only crypto company I know disrupting themselves with crypto, proactively, is OpSkins through their Wax token: https://opskins.com/

I am invested in Wax, and I love to see that they are disrupting themselves with crypto before someone else can try to do it.