Be Brave

I admit to being a stubborn idealist. Some of us have to do it. My latest idealistic commitment is to the Brave browser and the micropayment system it encourages users to employ.

First, you don’t have to buy in (literally) to the micropayment system to use the Brave browser. I will explain a little about this opportunity after a few introductory comments about the browser.

It makes sense to me that believing you use the Internet for free is naive. Of course, you must pay for access to the Internet. This is not what I am describing here, but because of the end of net neutrality, it is another topic worth thinking carefully about. Most use of the Internet and the companies that host content (mostly written by users) is supported by ads and by the collection of personal information which can be used to target ads. Some of this targeting makes sense. If I have to view ads, I want to view ads relevant to my interests and needs. However, one of the things the election of 2016 taught us was that this same personal information offering you ads relevant to things you may be interested in purchasing can also be used to manipulate opinions regarding political candidates.

Some are aware of such issues and have responded by searching for ways to anonymize their Internet activity and block the collection of ads and personal information. Brave will do this for you.

However, when you think about this ad blocking is really not fair to those supporting themselves as content producers by posting ads along with their content. You probably know that most newspapers and magazines do the same thing and as a consequence your cost to purchase these resources is far lower than it would be without the ads. The “free” content takes this same principle to an extreme requiring nothing to view content and attempting to sustain the content producers with ads. By blocking ads, you circumvent the intentions of the producers offering the content. Most don’t think twice about doing so mostly because they are unaware of the consequences, but the behavior is pretty much unethical. If an ad exists, the provider assumes you will see it and perhaps even click on it. This is the implied contract in the arrangement.

Brave will block ads, but encourages users of the browser to make a contribution that will be distributed across the owners of the content you use based on the frequency of your use. This system is presently a little complicated to set up. You must create a cryptocurrency account and transfer money into this account for Brave to access. I figured it out, but I hope Brave can make the process simpler. Folks with a little tech experience should have no problem working their way through the requirements.

While I am idealist, there is a limit to how far I will pursue my commitment to supporting content producers. I terminated my Apple music account and I intend to use this money to support the Brave strategy. I decided it was silly to pay $10 a month when I also pay for two other music subscriptions and I pay Apple $25 a year to hold my 7000 song music collection. So, my financial liability is limited, but if everyone did this ….

Browsers and Consequences

One of the themes I seem to write about a lot is the value of competition. Competition in the market takes care of many problems. In general, the companies that do not treat customers well or who sit on their accomplishments and do not seem to improve their products or services are passed over as other companies with these commitments become apparent. For example, my support for an open Internet (net neutrality) stems from this value. For many of us, there are few or no options for how we connect to the Internet and no hence customer support and innovation suffer.

I think it is important to support competition when possible. When we lock our activity into a single service or product and do not constantly explore alternatives, we end up narrowing our own options and possibly the options available to others. I see this happening with browsers. I see this happening in my own behavior. I have the opportunity to use multiple hardware devices and we all have the opportunity to use the Internet in different ways, but I feel myself sliding into total reliance on Chrome. This may not seem like a significant issue to dwell on, but consider possible long term consequences. The different browsers associated with different companies are associated with different profit motives. Google is funded by ads. Ads are more valuable (to the provider) when targeted to users. Hence, Google benefits by knowing about you and using this information to its advantage. Apple seems more and more to have positioned Safari as the anti-Chrome. Apple makes money on hardware and I assume just maintains a quality browser as a hedge against domination of the Internet space by others. Since Apple is not dependent on ad revenue, the Safari browser can argue that it protects the privacy of users. However, because Apple is focused on its hardware, it is not as interested in creating software products that are cross platform.

This post was prompted by something I read about Firefox. Firefox was long my browser of choice, but then I found Chrome and kind of drifted away. I feel bad failing to live up to my own values. I am not certain of the existing connections between Firefox and Mozilla because this relationship seems to change with time, but the open source movement (Mozilla) has played such as a valuable role in the development of technology and I hope remains a constant hedge against total commercialization of the valuable resources we may take for granted. Hence, my suggestion for today - try a different browser over lunch.

Firefox update

If you are a Firefox user, you want to check for an update. I learned about the update from Mashable and sure enough my existing version was dated.

   

The Mashable description focuses on the new design. It will likely take you a little while to discover some of the capabilities you used before but are not located in a different place. Mozilla also emphasizes the security advantages of Firefox. I assume this is to differentiate their product from Chrome and Explorer.