Why BAT could change the ecosystem

Privacy is something that many people don’t find important until it is lost. Lately, a lot of web browsers have started to take a heavy hand when it comes to their users’ privacy as that data is worth so much to companies such as Google, and Facebook. It is something that the Brave Browser aims to share with its users by keeping the user’s information within the browser and not sharing it with either themselves or advertisers. The end-users are paid via a token that they can exchange for fiat currency.

The token I will be discussing is known as a Basic Attention Token (BAT for short) and the basic idea is every time you are shown an advert you are given some tokens in the form of a cryptocurrency that is based on ETH which you can then cash out or more importantly – tip it.

If you are someone who often reads the BAT Project subreddit you will often read about people holding onto the tokens saying the value will shoot up in time which it may do so but this project needs to work people do need to tip content creators.

I am sure right now you are pondering why this is the case as you may be using the Brave Browser right now to browse Tweaked for your Pleasure congratulations if you are but the idea behind BAT is to replace how adverts work. The browser blocks adverts by default with the idea being the income for the content creators is replaced by the browser automatically sharing a part of the BAT you earn and giving it out based on how often you use the websites.

While it may be the case that the more people that install and use Brave will bring in much more advertisers and the users of the browsers will earn a semi-stable amount from their typical web browsing it will be content creators that lose out massively and this will cause one thing to happen and that is the evil that is paywalls or subscriptions

If Brave’s market share increases and it may be with Firefox currently in a crisis, more and more small-time websites such as this one will lose out on the income it needs to survive and while I have disabled adverts completely other websites will need to find a way to survive.

Imagine using Brave after very few people tip content creators only to find once you are using that web browser you have to pay to view something I know once the SDK comes out for BAT payments I will make a WordPress plugin for this purpose on other websites. People need to share the BAT they earn with content creators or ultimately things will change for the worse.

Sure I will agree with you that tracking adverts is evil and something that needs to change but if Brave gains a far higher user share in future we will either see more subscription websites or paywalls unless we share BAT just like how it was designed.

For all those who use Brave (and so do I), I would love to hear your opinion from a viewer’s point of view. I understand some use it for privacy, others hoping to make it rich thinking it will be the next Bitcoin but I would like to hear why you either tip or don’t with BAT.