Brave Browser Update!

A few months ago I joined the Brave Browser iOS Beta Testers and was given access to different things they were developing. Finally, I have seen my favorite feature of theirs from the Beta launch on regular Brave Browser. What is this feature you might ask? It's the privacy-preserving content stream called Brave Today. 

When I first joined the Beta Testers the coolest feature that stuck out to me was this news feed of sorts that Brave has now called Brave Today. I love Google News however I know that Google News is not the best thing for me privacy-wise.... much like fast food is not good for you to health-wise! From when it first was given to us to test out I was quick to voice how great this would be for the average user! A safe and secure place to get news from multiple sources?! Yes, please! If it operates much as it does on my phone the more you use it the better the experience is as it learns more and more what you like and pulls news articles that are along those lines. 

What about if you really want to be private and not even have them do that for you? Well, that's fine as you can opt-out of it! Again this is putting the person first and allowing you to customize how much privacy you want! This has been super critical to me as I changed from racking up most of my BAT rewards on the computer to on my phone because of this news feed! While not as clean as Google News is, I personally love the way Google New's breaks down into topics, this is the first step for them so it's safe to say it will change as it developes! 

Since I had never set up SYNC on my phone, Beta users also had earlier access to this, and I do not have a decent way to try and see if I can SYNC to my computer. Though this is on me and I should have set up SYNC long ago it at the time was just not worth the effort and that was a mistake. 

Apple Being Apple 

For iOS users, we also received a rude awakening yesterday with the announcement that Brave will be halting rewarding BAT because it violates Apple's terms of use. Brave will not leave us out to dry though and soon the desktop will have another update that will give us a code to transfer our BAT from our phone to our desktop wallets. What is interesting about the QR code transfer though is that it is only good once and then it will go away. How this will impact someone like me who has earned both regular app BAT and Beta app BAT remains to be seen. 

Apple's iOS store has been in the news recently for every wrong reason you could think of. In particular, the fees associated with the store and the huge chunks of money, they take from the developers. When you get past the "outer layer" of the issue of fees through a couple of core issues become apparent.

• First Apple is not a huge fan of crypto. While I assume they will quickly develop and deploy their own tools for crypto right now they are clamping down on everyone else. Most crypto apps are available on Android and some never make it to iOS because Apple has made it impossible for them to do so. 
• Apple recently had to give up Safari being the default and only browser that you could set as default. This cut into Apple's ad revenue from people having to use Safari so they want to make sure they continue to get their cut of the pie and will do whatever they can to try and accomplish this.
• Brave Rewards and its token BAT cut them out of the loop and hit their bottom line. I am willing to go out on a limb and say Apple does not want to be paid in BAT. Even if they did they would want you to see as many ads as possible so limiting it down to 5 an hour is something they would not be a fan of at all. 
• Apple also losing the ability to track your search and data etc. this is all lost money to them and because of it put a target on Brave's back.

Apple is in for a rude awakening with how the lawsuits have been flying in against them and the way they operate their app store. The Fortnite lawsuit is going to be the clear give away on if the courts with the laws that are in place now force Apple to change or if new legislation will have to be passed. With the new administration coming in soon it would not surprise me to see Apple do an about-face and change before laws and executive orders are dished out aiming right at them. 

This is a small setback for Brave in the iOS realm but it was one that was bound to happen eventually. I have read what Brave has said about the future rewards for iOS users and I am honestly super confused. It almost sounds as if they are putting all of that BAT in a pot and all of that BAT will then be divided up for all of the Content Creators.... that seems really odd but I also don't really know what their other options are for this. It might be one of those things I just turn off the rewards for my phone until it gets sorted out. 

I hope you enjoyed this article and if you have any comments I would love to hear them below! I also have spots referrals left on Coinbase Earn for Compound (COMP), Band Protocol (BAND), and Stellar Lumens (XLM)! With the price being down on most of the coins today it is a great time to complete these quizzes and also the new one for File Coin they added yesterday! Below are my links thank you so much for reading!

Compound https://coinbase.com/earn/comp/invite/86ztmj3w

BAND https://coinbase.com/earn/band/invite/qydxm7tj

XLM https://coinbase.com/earn/xlm/invite/c6t0xd7s

Hope everyone is staying safe out there!