The Brave web browser - a VERY secure web browser based on the Chromium engine used by Google's Chrome browser - has 8 million users a month, and has just decided that they are now V1.0.
Mac. Windows. Android. iOS.
Two levels of security:
1. Forget about me when I leave this site,
2. Never know I was here.
I'm switching, and I am encouraging everyone else to do so, as well. This could cause the ad-based web content model to collapse, if enough people are using Brave. That would be a Good Thing, by all measures, for all parts of the Internet.
Kill the ad-based system, and a better model will finally be able to take foot.
(Brave even starts that off, by awarding you with bitcoins, that you can use to pay for content from good creators. It's a micro-payment model that could work... if we can kill the advertising business model.)
What's the difference between this and Firefox + add-ons?
I like the idea of micropayments, but haven't seen enough about their approach yet. The rest aren't really a selling point for me: the Tor browser bundle is fine (and uses Firefox), and I don't like the monopoly that Chromium-based engines have.
I'd argue it is different in a key way. Users are awarded some fragment of bitcoins for choosing which ads they want to see. The users then spend those bitcoins as tips for content and authors they like. Ad networks are built solely to present you content you don't WANT to see. That's their entire business model... how to get you to pay attention to things you don't want. Brave flips that, and let's users choose what they want to see, and awards that behavior in a way that benefits other providers, as well.