Afaik GreaseMonkey still works and can do whatever to your pages. But it’s a pain in the ass compared to HackTheWeb/Aardvark indeed.
edit:
I found this
https://www.karmatics.com/aardvark/
and I’m overjoyed.
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I know plenty of people who are signed up for brave that aren’t getting tips and never have. I don’t know if I’d say they are a scam but I would say what they say they do is not what seems to be happening.
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All the usual blockers mentioned by other people here + a Pi-Hole acting as a DHCP server directing stuff into a black hole (and I’ve been able to block Facebook from my entire network):
https://pi-hole.net (just add your own Pi).
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Hmm, that’s a shame. Is it possible the visitors to those sites aren’t using Brave?
I mean maybe, but I know others that have run into this too. It’s a common complaint in the brave reddits and forums, and is often removed in other places.
I’ve said it before, but it’s time for a new internet application that doesn’t have all the problems that the world wide web has. There’s no rule that says the current W3C web standards and the http/s protocol are the only ways information can be shared on the internet. There were other internet protocols for sharing information before the invention of the web. There can be others sharing the internet space with the web.
I think the new application should have anonymity built-in as standard. So think of something like the TOR/onion structure rather than the current trackable web structure.
The new app could use some of the existing web technology. To design it, we might start by selecting the bits of the web that work well for those supplying or searching for free information and cutting out all the bits that work well for those trying to make money out of it.
For example, for the new apps browser, we take the open-source code for the TOR browser, which is based on the open-source Firefox browser, and cut out the parts that interpret features that we don’t want the new internet application to understand. Cut out the bits that implement the DRM standards, included in the HTML standards when the W3C inexplicably caved in to the wishes of the major media companies. (We also need server software. Maybe the same idea works using the open source Apache software as the starting point. Don’t know.)
So we keep support for most of HTML5 and CSS3. Cut the DRM support. Cut the Javascript support, which eliminates the easy way for creators to implement pop-ups, and which also creates SO many security issues. There may be a need for some limited client scripting but done in some new language that has security built-in from the start rather than plastered on later. We don’t need the browser to support all the media formats that Firefox supports, because it’s safer to download media files and play them in suitable local software, or for streaming switch to a different protocol better suited to streaming. (And if we do let media formats play in the browser the media companies will try to create systems that allow playing but disallow downloading.) By default, a page in this new application can only include information obtained from the domain servicing the page. So no 3rd party ads. A page could provide a LINK to an ad on another server, but it cannot physically include that ad in the page because the software won’t know how to do that.
And by now readers are probably jumping up and down yelling that the major content providers are not going to support this new platform. Yes - that’s the point. This new application is what you use when you want to escape the monetised hell that the web has become. It also avoids most of the rubbish in the current onion-space, which seems even more hellishly monetised that the visible web. This new app might have a chance of becoming a place for the free exchange of ideas, like the original architects hoped the world wide web would be. You won’t ever do your internet banking on this new application, because if it had the features to implement internet banking, it would also have the features to allow content creators to spy on you.
(And yes - I also know some of the above description is simplistic, but I’m trying to write in a way that makes some sort of sense to non-techs, so the simplicity is forced.)
Anyway, we need a name for the new application. Wibbly Wobbly Web? No - that gives the abbreviation www which creates ambiguity with World Wide Web. I’m going to suggest Grand Trunk Web.
OK. I’ll take my soapbox and leave now. This is the point where the cynics now post replies stating that this is a pipe dream, rather than making suggestions which could turn this vague idea into something workable.
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GNU Sir Terry Pratchett
Your protocol sounds like an updated version of FTP, with an easy to use front end and indexing.
The concepts are all similar- you have to download everything rather than running files in the browser, people select exactly what files to download, plain text which cannot contain anything malicious is treated separately, you can set up your own server and let anyone download from it.
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