Brave – my new web browser
I have for the longest of times been a Firefox user. I love what Mozilla, the foundation behind Firefox, has done to bring more freedom, transparency, privacy and security to the web. But there’s a lot more work to be done because online monetization is centered around tracking user behavior by compromising on users’ privacy and security with methods like browser fingerprinting, third-party cookies and malicious online advertisements. And yet, no web browser out-of-the-box do a good job of protecting the user against these things, special plug-ins or configuration is needed which is a barrier for many people. And yet, the fundamental problem is still not solved, i.e. limited options for publishers to monetizing their content.
Imagine a world where users doesn’t need to be exploited by instead giving publishers better options for making money online. A world where publishers no longer need to sell user’s data or pay expensive royalties to ad exchanges. Imagine if users could opt-in to see ads and be incentivised to do so by being paid directly by the publisher a small amount of digital currency (instead of royalties to the ad exchange). And imagine if there also was an easy and intuitive way for users to donate small amounts of currency to their favorite publishers.
This is exactly what the new Brave web browser is doing. If that in itself isn’t promising enough, how about the fact that the team building this new browser is lead by Brendan Eich, the creator of Javascript and co-founder of the aforementioned Mozilla project! Pretty cool.
Hasn’t this already been attempted?
Not attempted in the same way. And not attempted by a team of people like those behind Brave.
That said, there’s indeed been countless attempts at similar solutions throughout the history of content monetization on the Internet. But they have all more or less failed because our tools and processes have been both flawed and expensive to implement. What’s needed is a way to enable true one-click micro-payments without middlemen, which Brave does with blockchain technology. I don’t want to go through a 5-10 minute checkout process where and expose my credit card on the Internet just to donate £5 also knowing that a large part of it will become fees to middlemen. It doesn’t make sense. Paypal is not the solution.
Above is a screenshot of The Guardian’s attempt at monetizing their online content with both embedded advertisement and payment gateways.
The Brave web browser
If you think the aforementioned problems are worth solving, I suggest you give the Brave browser a try! It’s easy to import your browser history, bookmarks and cookies so you don’t have to “start over”.