Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has thrown his support behind the Brave browser and the Basic Attention Token (BAT) project.
The internet enthusiast and philosopher published a post, titled ‘The two problems of computer technology”, on his personal website, a post that covered his concerns about internet security and the increasing monopolization of the internet by a few established entities.
Sanger, who is also the Chief Information Office for decentralized web encyclopedia Everipedia, gets straight to the point about how the services that are we offered – computation on desktops, internet search engines, social media platforms and so on – are given to us for free, or so we would like to think. The downside of this free service is that we trade data, which in truth is an extremely lopsided trade-off that works in the favor of these monopolies.
His indictment of the behavior of centralized entities is unsparing,
The threat to our privacy undermines some basic principles of the decentralized Internet that blossomed in the 90s and boomed in the 00s. The Establishment has taken over what was once a centerless, mostly privacy-respecting phenomenon of civil society, transforming it into something centralized, invasive, risky, and controlling. What was once the technology of personal autonomy has enabled—as never before—cybercrime, collectivization, mob rule, and censorship.
He then offers a plan for how to take control of one’s cyber-life, and almost all of it is directed towards limiting how much influence Google and its products have on our life. Although Sanger chooses Firefox over Google, he shows disdain for the fact that Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and co-founder of the BAT project, was ousted from the Mozilla foundation for his political views.
His support and appreciation for Brave is unambiguous,
I’ve switched to Eich’s newer browser, Brave. I’ve had a much better experience using it lately than I had when I first tried it a year or two ago and when it was still on the bleeding edge. Brave automatically blocks ads, trackers, third-party cookies, encrypts your connections—and, unlike Google, they don’t have a profile about you. It’s quite good and a pleasure to use. There might be a few rare issues (maybe connected with JavaScript), but when I suspect there’s a problem with the browser, I try whatever I’m trying to do in Firefox, which is now my fallback. There’s absolutely no need to use Chrome for anything but testing, and that’s only if you’re in Web development. By the way, the Brave iOS app is really nice, too.
The Brave browser has been doing really well in the past year or so. The number of verified publishers has increased, and it features the likes of The Washington Post and The Guardian. It now also allows tipping, has launched its Brave Ads program and remarkably, has hit 20 million downloads on Android.
While Google Chrome still dominates the market, it’s a testament to Brave’s vision and work ethic that it has expanded so quickly.