Ads and our Privacy

It started a few years ago when I met Brave — A privacy friendly and no ad browser. Then it occurred to me that there was no other way to block ads other than an AdBlocker or another browser like Brave. Sometimes ads are misleading and disturbing. Many well-known companies, at least in India use Google’s AdWords. Like one ad that I found on some websites.

These ads are giving website owners money so they can sustain themselves. There are a very few websites which have ads but are likely to have tracking content. Like for example we think ePathshala or NCERT websites do not have ads or tracking content as they are government based but look at this:

This screenshot has been taken from the ePathashala website from my new Microsoft Edge browser

Google has a majority number of trackers in every single website. The downside of using Adblockers is that they will no longer get any money and can later shut down! There are many other alternatives to AdBlock, but they are all paid. According to Mozilla Firefox’s Better Web

Your reading fuels partner sites… and builds a better web.

Your Firefox Better Web subscription helps fund partner sites based on the time you spend. Partner sites make more money with Firefox Better Web than they do by showing ads. They’re also paid based on time spent rather than clicks. This encourages higher quality and more engaging content. Your payment helps build an internet focused on quality rather than ads.

They have partnered up with Scroll… a privacy company to make this possible and check this screenshot out

Or we could shift to Brave’s Rewards. Here is how it works:

Brave Rewards is built on the Basic Attention Token (BAT), a new way to value attention, connecting users, content creators, and advertisers.

When you join Brave Rewards, your browser will automatically start tallying (only on your device’s local storage) the attention you spend on sites you visit. Once a month, Brave Rewards will send the corresponding amount of BAT, divided up based on your attention, from your local browser-based wallet to the sites you’ve visited. You can remove sites you don’t want to support, and tip creators directly too.

All of this is anonymous: nobody (not even us here at Brave) can see who supported which sites. We can only count the total support for each site and send the BAT their way. Content creators can use our partner Uphold to convert the BAT they earn into a currency of their choosing.