Free is largely responsible for most of the issues many of us have with the online world. The revelations related to personal privacy have made clear that what users thought was free really isn’t. Everyone pays with their personal data and users are exposed to online experiences that manipulate them through behavioral techniques. Users are manipulated to devote more and more attention to online experiences to bleed them of more and more information. We have lost control of what we want to accomplish online.
The response of more and more folks to the collection of their information has been to try to block this collection. While largely unsuccessful as a way to protect personal information, ad blocking deprives those attempting to provide useful information and services of revenue. Content creators intending to influence are often supported in other ways. Content creators attempting to do the work necessary to objectively offer information are left uncompensated.
I am a supporter of the notion that content creation and service provision must be supported. Ads have always worked, but ads are now “improved” through the collection of user signals (personal information) that end up being used for more than offering desired information to consumers. In searching for alternatives, I have come across the Brave browser and what I would describe as the Brave ecosystem. The browser does have the capability of blocking ads, cookies, and scripts. The browser and ecosystem do offer or at least plan to offer opportunities to deal with the compensation problem. First, the system allows users to submit money to compensate content and service creators. I think of this as a form of micropayments. You have the opportunity to commit a certain amount of money each month and this amount is divided among cites that join the ecosystem in proportion to the time you spend on the sites. The Brave plan also intends to offer the opportunity to view ads without personal data collection and will use the money advertisers spend to purchase the ads to compensate the viewers of the ads and the content/service creators. Brave does take a cut for maintaining the infrastructure for the service.
While I see these ideas as having great value. Brave is an immature service at this point and I fear faces the dual challenge of ramping up its service and attracting users. What I mean by this is that an immature service will not attract the average user and without users, the revenue stream may not support ramping up the service.
Here are a couple of examples of the “issues” I have experienced.
Users wanting to subsidize the micropayment support for content/service providers need to put money into the system. For reasons I do not fully understand, Brave uses a cryptocurrency system for their compensation model. Users must figure out how to submit their funds to be converted to a cryptocurrency referred to as BAT and this requires they use several other services (e.g., PayPal). The multiple steps required just to contribute will easily befuddle potential users who will give up before trusting and learning these other systems. There may be a reason for this approach, but the failure to explain the approach points to another general problem. Documentation is largely lacking.
My second frustration is with the flakiness of the system itself. I keep having problems in which things just stop working. The browser and the ad/cookie/script blocking works just fine. However, if this is what users get from the system, the browser will end up creating more problems than it solves. The company must get the compensation pieces working to avoid making the problems of the online world worse rather than better. Two examples. First, I have put money in the system, but recently at the beginning of the month when the money I have allocated for the month is to be distributed, the system claims I have failed to provide funds. Second, the system is supposed to keep track of the sites I have visited during the month and I should be able to see this list and the proportion of time I have spent on each site. This feature has stopped working (see image).
All developing services face such problems but must find effective ways of improving. I assume the developers struggle with how to respond to these bugs and continue to develop the features promised. However, both challenges must be met. Brave has outsourced problem reporting to the community of users. This is a standard geek kind of solution, but not one likely to encourage users who do not fit with this mindset. This is not really an open source kind of project. Too many reported problems fail to receive attention within a reasonable amount of time and fixes often do not materialize.
I sympathize with Brave and the decisions they must make, but as a user I also hope for more.