What Is Brave and BAT?

Brave is a modified version of the Google Chrome web browser that automatically blocks cookies, trackers, and everything used to track you across the interwebs. It even has a native ad blocker that is freaking amazing! If you follow this stuff, you may be thinking, "that's not much different than Mozilla Firefox with a good ad blocker add-on," and you would be correct. What makes Brave really special is the option to let the browser serve you minimally intrusive ads on your PC and mobile devices in exchange for an amount of BAT (Basic Attention Token) per ad view, click, or action. This can either be split up between all of the web creators you visited during the month (since you aren't supporting them with ad views), or you can pocket it and store it away in a Uphold or Gemini account. I choose to pocket it and use the money to buy art and merch from my favorite creators a couple times a year.

BAT is largely an advertising cryptocurrency. So far as I'm aware, it can't be used to purchase anything else beside ads (or traded for other currencies). Despite this, I enjoy collecting BAT and watching my monthly revenue increasing every month... or at least I did.

Gatekeepers Make This Unreliable

I'm not sure if Brave is in trouble or what, but I've been flagged by Brave multiple times for "unusual Brave Ads activity."

Error: Brave Rewards profile is flagged

Unfortunately, your Brave Rewards profile has been flagged, and you're not able to verify with a custodian at this time. This flag can sometimes be due to irregular Brave Ads activity, though it can also be a false positive.

Note that while your Brave Rewards profile is flagged, you won't be able to verify.

No action is required on your part. Your Brave Rewards profile will be automatically reevaluated on a regular basis to determine when (or if) the flag can be removed. Please try again every so often to see if the flag has been removed.

The problem is that after getting this message for the better part of a year, I'm no closer to figuring out WHY my account keeps getting flagged. Aside from having my account tied to 4 or 5 devices (2 of them infrequently) and using a VPN, I don't consider my use to be abnormal at all. I probably click on only one in every 150 ads (maybe less) and don't add and remove my account from different devices ever. Likewise, my wallet tied to my account is used only for sporadic trading and collecting BAT.

The Brave support page for flagged accounts is completely useless and fails to provide any kind of guidance for common behaviors that would be considered suspicious. That's probably why (as of 7/4/2023) only 672 of 5580 people found the page helpful.

Thankfully it's not much, but they owe me a decent amount of BAT. However, they refuse to pay out because they've flagged my account again. I'm slowly becoming convinced that flagging accounts is Brave's way of keeping cash on hand, because I'm sure they're not refunding the advertisers that paid to them to deliver their ad to me. It just looks really bad for Brave and has the making of a pretty nasty scam.

Sad Choices: I'm not waiting for Brave Ads for Publishers

For quite some time, Brave has teased creating a challenge to Google Adsense that would allow creators like me to place ads on our websites. The idea of serving dynamic ads based on the page content without cookies or trackers is wildly attractive to me.

However, given the unreliability of BAT payouts and my failing trust for the people behind Brave Ads, I'm not willing to continue waiting for publisher ads from Brave.

This past weekend, I made the difficult decision to put Google Ads back on KTracy.com.

Why Google Adsense instead of Brave Ads for Publishers?

Aside from being available right now, I've used Google Ads in past iterations of KTracy.com with a good amount of success. In fact, I've had over $72 in my Adsense account waiting for me to re-implement their ads on my site or for my YouTube channel to reach the thresholds for monetization.

Google, despite being an evil corporation, is reliable enough to pay me when they owe me money in Adsense. As much as I love the concept of Brave Ads, the gatekeepers have only been reliably unreliable and untrustworthy.

Will I Continue Using Brave?

Yes, despite the BAT and Brave Ads gatekeepers being untrustworthy, the browser itself is blazingly fast, stable, and loaded with privacy features enabled by default that Firefox either doesn't have or disables by default.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue to foolishly hope that the Brave Ads and BAT gatekeepers get their act together because I REALLY like the concept.