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Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

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Re: Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

#51

Post by russdpale »

I don't totally understand what his problem is. He doesn't want to take money that people are trying to give him? What is the problem here exactly? If he doesn't want it, why not just donate it or something?

It's not like the browser is setting up a crowd funding page for you.. it just lets you know you can pay your favorite content creators how you want instead of a huge unfair chunk going to google.

And for the record, and of you are free to send me money in any which way you can, I even accept trained pigeon courier!

Re: Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

#52

Post by EastSmith »

aphextron wrote: post #9

I'd been really loving Brave and using it as my daily driver for a few months now, until that I noticed that little "Brave Ads" icon at the end of the address bar. That's when I realized their entire business model is just in the usurpation of existing Google ad revenue, dressed up with "privacy concerns" for the good PR. This sent me on a journey to find a really solid, free, Chromium based browser that is totally d…

de-Googled Chromium from an entity we trust is key here. Google and Microsoft are not trustworthy. The cool company of the day is not trustworthy in the long run, agreed. The only entity I know that I trust is Mozilla.

I am backing Mozilla each year with small donations and yet I am not using Firefox. I tried many times and I always return to Chromium (Brave on mobile and Chrome on Desktop).

So my solution is for Mozilla to fork Chromium and see what happens.

Re: Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

#53

Post by russdpale »

egypturnash wrote: post #42

I just dug up info on how Brave’s contributions thing works and it feels like such a mess. According to https://brave.com/publishers/ - once you have accumulated $100 in contributions they email “the webmaster at your site” and the owner of your domain according to the WHOIS. I assume this is “webmaster@domain.name”, which I sure don’t have set up on my personal site. - you have to “check your balance frequently and…

Honestly I would find it much easier to pay you in BAT fully but Ill be honest, that sounds like a pretty convoluted process.

Re: Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

#54

Post by jlg23 »

aphextron wrote: post #26
ceejayoz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the profile sync service can't be trusted? It's end-to-end encrypted. Mozilla doesn't have the keys.

It's just an attack vector I wish didn't exist at all. There's also metadata. Sure Mozilla doesn't have your passwords, but they know who you have passwords with. That creeps me out. There's nothing wrong with the all-purpose heavily featured approach of stuff like Chrome and Firefox, and I get that other people like Sync, I just really wish there was a totally stripped down basic internet browser I could trust.

>Sure Mozilla doesn't have your passwords, but they know who you have passwords with.

Do they? I just skimmed the source and could not find anything that hints at that (and implementing it the way you said it is makes for much more complex code..)

Re: Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

#55

Post by dang »

plusCubed wrote: post #8
bibinou wrote: post #5

Who is me?

Tom Scott, an educational YouTuber. (I am not him, the title was changed by a mod I think)

Yes—we changed the title to use language from the original text.

Use of the first person in titles refers to authors, not submitters.

Re: Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

#56

Post by magissima »

russdpale wrote: post #51

I don't totally understand what his problem is. He doesn't want to take money that people are trying to give him? What is the problem here exactly? If he doesn't want it, why not just donate it or something? It's not like the browser is setting up a crowd funding page for you.. it just lets you know you can pay your favorite content creators how you want instead of a huge unfair chunk going to google. And for the rec…

The problem isn't that people are trying to give him money, it's that Brave is asking people for that money on his behalf, trying to give it to him, and then not returning it when he turns it down.

Re: Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

#57

Post by geofft »

aphextron wrote: post #26
ceejayoz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the profile sync service can't be trusted? It's end-to-end encrypted. Mozilla doesn't have the keys.

It's just an attack vector I wish didn't exist at all. There's also metadata. Sure Mozilla doesn't have your passwords, but they know who you have passwords with. That creeps me out. There's nothing wrong with the all-purpose heavily featured approach of stuff like Chrome and Firefox, and I get that other people like Sync, I just really wish there was a totally stripped down basic internet browser I could trust.

I just don't enable it. It's not on by default.

For the average user—think your uncle who's about to ask you tech support questions this weekend—using Firefox Sync is way better for their privacy and security than reusing the same password everywhere. And for those of us who have and use password managers, Firefox Sync is not on by default—unlike Brave's attention-tracking or Chrome's Google logins.

Re: Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

#58

Post by jonny_eh »

callinyouin wrote: post #43

Brendan Eich's defense of this scheme [0] seems a bit weak to me. Do you really think the solution is to make creators opt out? What in the world makes you think it's okay to represent people who have not asked for your assistance and take donations on their behalf? Why is it their responsibility to ask you nicely not to use their name to solicit donations? [0] https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/10761873167486156…

This must be against some kind of law, I'm not sure which though.

Re: Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

#59

Post by drcode »

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #31

Brave is a web browser that takes your money and claims to pay out to your favorite websites and content creators, but in most cases actually pays into a "user growth pool" that funds pyramid-shaped marketing (paying users to use the browser) and referral programs for partner content creators. How is that not fraud?

Well, I guess the core question is whether their users understand the mechanism they are participating in when they pay their contribution. I don't see the problem of letting their users participate in such a mechanism as long as there is transparency about how it works and that the contribution system has some pretty significant limitations.
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