Month: May 2019

My issues with Brave

I want to be clear about the content that follows. I am a big fan of the Brave browser and what I have taken to calling the Brave ecosystem. If you are unfamiliar with this browser, you might read some of my earlier posts. I believe the Brave ecosystem has the potential to address several of the interrelated issues dealing with the funding of online services and content and personal freedoms. Potential is the key word here and the comments that follow most concern what it will take for this potential to be realized. These comments assume you have some familiarity with what Brave browsers as an alternative to ads and ad blocking.

I find Brave a very interesting Internet company. I have used the Brave browser for some time and I provide funds within the Brave ecosystem to compensate content and service providers when the Brave browser blocks ads. My concerns mostly concern how Brave has allocated time and resources to develop different aspects of its online ecosystem. The priorities are not consistent with what I find to be the most important of the features Brave promotes. Picking among these features will defeat what I think is the potential of Brave.

My present concerns are listed below. I see many of these concerns as interrelated, but I list them individually for greater clarity.

  1. The functioning of the Brave ecosystem (browser and related services) is not well documented either in terms of how things work or by providing descriptive data regarding user activities. I struggle to understand exactly how things work. I understand that some of this information is only shared with investors, but I regard my time and money as an investment and I am frustrated as an early adopter not to be able to learn more. For example, what proportion of Brave users have contributed funds to compensate content providers who have had their ads blocked?
  2. I am unclear on why the underlying exchange of funds within the Brave ecosystem relies on a cryptocurrency. Getting most users to put money into BAT (the cryptocurrency) is not what I would describe as a simple process and this complexity will limit investment that would be used to reward content creators. Is this a reasonable expectation of casual tech users?
  3. Things with the Browser and Browser functions just break and the user experience often requires that users share their concerns through a “community” rather than by directly requesting assistance from the company. Problems I have had are mentioned by the community, but these problems were not resolved and I had to use the developer version for a period of time simply to make certain the funds I had allocated to content creators were actually dispersed. The system claimed funds were not available even when my wallet contained more than $100. I assume this is an allocation of development resources issue, but a buggy experience is not going to attract users.
  4. There is a lack of user integration across devices – some features of Brave (bookmarks) synch, but the most important and unique features do not. What it comes to earning and spending BAT, your identity is associated with one device and this device presently must be a computer (laptop or desktop). Your wallet is associated with this single device and the record of the sites you visit only matters from this device. This means the payment of BAT you have allocated to offset blocked ads and the rewards you receive for viewing Brave ads only happen from a single device. Is the computer really the device most of us spend most of our time using? Even if it is, what proportion of total time spent is expended on this single device? Note that even the use of multiple desktops or a desktop and a laptop involve distribution of viewing time.

Taken together, these issues limit the likelihood Brave will be more than just another option for blocking ads and Brave is not doing enough to take steps to work against this narrow focus. Using the Browser to block ads takes little effort and most will likely stop with this feature. Brave also ignores ways it could interconnect features to offer greater balance in how it supports both consumers and creators. It appears willing to compensate consumers for viewing Brave controlled ads without requiring some part of this compensation being used to reward content creators. My interest in Brave is less about blocking ads and protecting my privacy than it is about addressing the reasons ads exist in the first place. I can block ads and protect my privacy in multiple ways. What makes Brave interesting is the “potential” to assure content creators are compensated while protecting content consumer privacy. It is this combination that is essential for the long-term growth of the Internet.


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Elections have consequences

I am guessing that most educators don’t spend a lot of time scanning the latest educational research. Retired or not, this is what I do. Because educators have reported anecdotes related to this issue, I thought they might be interested in this study.

I would suggest that the election of 2016 had a unique and problematic character. I usually vote for Democrats, but it is not the outcome per se that bothered me. I was troubled by the character and style of the Republican presidential candidate.

In the aftermath of the election, anecdotes surfaced of children using some of the language and behaviors of the Republican Presidential candidate. We all like to share examples to support our perspectives, but anecdotal evidence is regarded as weak because one can find a case for pretty much any argument you want to make.

When I taught advanced students, I often encountered some who did not share my interest in reading the actual research studies. I used to encourage them to consider the creative methods researchers came up with to investigate important topics. How do you go about getting the kind of data you need to answer questions that on the surface are deceptively simple? How do you rule out what others might raise as alternate explanations?

Huang and Cornell (2019) developed this approach. The state of Virginia contains counties reliably voting Democrat or Republican. The difference in the Republican vote varies from 11% to 82% by county. School districts in Virginia tend to be either county or big city districts. Virginia administers a statewide school climate survey in alternate years and has data available from 2013, 2015, and 2017. Several items from the survey deal with teasing and bullying – e.g., Bullying is a problem in this school. Students in this school are teased or put down because of their race or ethnicity. These are what I consider the key characteristics of the study. Of course, the journal article provides much more detail.

The Huang and Cornell research focused on middle school students. The study compared that data on bullying across schools in Republican and Democratic districts in the three target years. The study found significant differences in bullying only in 2017. The researchers tested whether the difference remained after controlling for other variables population density, % of students requiring subsidized lunches, level of education of parents, % of white voters. The study used sophisticated statistical procedures (e.g., path analysis) to test complex models involving multiple variables and test alternative explanations. The researchers concluded that the party prevalence had a unique influence in 2017. There was uniquely more bullying reported in Republican districts in 2017.

Politicians, depending on the election, have recently used to phrase “elections matter” to justify actions they were taking. It appears that some elections do and I am guessing increasing the frequency of bullying is not what the Republican politicians’ use of the phrase is intended to justify.

Huang, F. L., & Cornell, D. G. (2019). School teasing and bullying after the presidential election. Educational Researcher, 48(2), 69-83.

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Escape the trap of the network effect

The definition of network effect argues that the value of a networked service increases as nodes/people are added. Translated – you won’t be happy online unless you are where everyone else is.

Despite what is becoming obvious about “free” internet services, people do not leave. They complain. The threaten. But, they do not leave. They stay despite the known damage to their personal privacy because others also stay.

In general, I just don’t like monopolistic online companies. I can blunt their collection of my private information, but I just as a matter of policy want to see competition in important areas of the economy. I try to diversify my online activity. This reduces the access any given company has to a record of my behavior, but also encourages the development of other companies. Here are some options I use for social media services you may not know exist.

My alternative to Twitter is Mastodon. I have fewer complaints targeted at Twitter than the other two services mentioned here. I am also the most lukewarm in promoting Mastodon. My reluctance has nothing to do with the technology. I just don’t find the substance I am looking for in the audience this service has attracted. Too many cat photos, anime, and meaningless posts. There are also some instances that promote sex work. An instance is like a separate group operating from a separate server. Instances are combined into a federation and it is possible to view the public contributions to all instances. Mastodon is a federated system of instances and I guess would prefer participants find a home with an instance suited to their interests, but this does not seem to have happened.

My alternative to Facebook is Diaspora. I limit my Facebook activity to my political comments and I post other categories on Diaspora. Diaspora works well allowing public, aspect specific (the instances you participate in), and self-assigned categories of posts (family, friends, etc.). I admit that I have not worked hard enough at this service to become part of a group, but the potential is there.

My alternative to Instagram is pixelfed. I tend to think of Instagram is a service you use to share photos with a relatively small group of friends. If you can convince this small group to sign up for pixelfed, you will find the service very easy to use. Again, you either use this service to share with friends who will follow you there or you use this service to meet people based on a common interest in photography. Of the alternatives I have proposed, pixelfed probably represents the easiest transition.

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