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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

#111

Post by brandnewlow »

908087 wrote: post #105
brandnewlow wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Why do you suspect that? (I work at Brave. We're all very, very nerdy here. It'd be helpful to understand why a fellow nerd suspects we're up to no good.)

Is the implication here that "fellow nerds" should always be given the benefit of the doubt for some reason? I've seen some "very nerdy" people engage in some "incredibly selfish and shady" activities, so I can't help but laugh at that idea.

Not specifically. But yes, fellow people should be given the benefit of the doubt in my opinion. I was asking if Brave had done something to merit not getting that.

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

#112

Post by lmpostor »

SamWhited wrote: post #98
staticassertion wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people may be forgetting that Brave is a very small, new company, and not everything is streamlined yet...

That's no excuse for financial fraud.

fraud implies intention

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

#113

Post by jonahhorowitz »

woolvalley wrote: post #22
rthomas6 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question. Why not Firefox? What are your concerns with it?

Firefox runs worse than chrome still, and it doesn't work well at all on my 2 core 2015 macbook pro. It works fine on my 6 core & 4 core machines although. I would also like something like the easy user switching that chrome has, since once user would have one set of session tab logins (twitter, fb, google, etc), and another user would have another. firefox -no-remote isn't that smooth of an experience compared to ch…

I've been running Firefox Nightly, and it's way faster.

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

#114

Post by russley »

davidgerard wrote: post #83

If anyone's wondering what got Tom Scott so upset, it was probably this page in the UI flow: https://twitter.com/JTremback/status/1076213808706641925

I think this is also a good representation of why its quite misleading: https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1076218351486087168

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

#115

Post by detaro »

brandnewlow wrote: post #99
plusCubed wrote: post #2

Edit: title was changed, I am not Tom Scott I am not too familiar with how Brave and BAT (Brave Attention Token), so please chime in. Here's how Brave describes the BAT YouTube donations system: https://basicattentiontoken.org/brave-expands-basic-attentio... From my understanding, users of the Brave Browser select which YouTubers to donate to, but they don't know whether the channels have opted in to receive donation…

I work at Brave. Tips to un-verified publishers sit in escrow for the creator to claim. IANAL but GDPR refers to personal data collected from users. The only "Youtuber data" being "used" here is publicly gettable data from the Youtuber's channel.

I quote your own terms of service:

For each Publisher URL receiving votes during a Calculation Period that is not a Brave Publisher by the end of that Calculation Period, the BAT corresponding to its votes will not be distributed at the end of that Calculation Period, and will instead be held in an Uphold omnibus wallet for no less than ninety (90) days thereafter. At that time, the undistributed BAT may be sent to Company’s user growth pool, which is a pool of BAT that Company administers to incentivize use of the Platform [..] Publisher Contributions will be calculated solely based on our accounting. Solely as a cost-recovery measure, we may allocate a certain amount of BAT contributed by Brave Contributors each Calculation Period toward our reasonable expenses incurred in facilitating Publisher Contributions. (https://basicattentiontoken.org/contributor-terms-of-service... section 4 "contributions")

Sounds very much like "we can redirect this from escrow if we want to".

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

#117

Post by britch »

brandnewlow wrote: post #89
egypturnash wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I suspect this is part of their overall revenue model.

Honest question: Why do you suspect that? (I work at Brave. We're all very, very nerdy here. It'd be helpful to understand why a fellow nerd suspects we're up to no good.)

You're taking money for people without a good way of getting it to them (or ensuring that they want the money at all).

My friend Mark had an accident and I think he needs help paying for it. Would you give me some money to help Mark pay for his medical bills? Thank you, I'll just put it in my bank account until Mark asks me for the it.

Trust me, I'm trying very hard to let Mark know I have money for him. I'm going to send a letter to his parent's house so he knows that I have money for him, but only when I get $100. In the mean time I'll just hold on to the money.

Oh Mark never got the money you gave me to give to him?

Well, you only gave me $75 so I never sent him a letter.

Well, it turns out Mark isn't on speaking terms with his parents, so he never got the letter.

Well, he has health insurance and didn't need the money after all.

Where's the money now? I guess it's still in my bank account. No you can't have it back.

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

#118

Post by smsm42 »

Is there actual money involved? I have 60 BAT in my Brave account, and I didn't pay a dime to anybody. Yet, looks like I can donate them. Not sure I understand how the system works - am I supposed to eventually buy BAT tokens if I want to donate them?

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

#119

Post by smsm42 »

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…

> makes it sound like they understand YouTube accounts and nothing else

The text on the page - as I see it now - says "Do you run a web site or are you a YouTube creator". I think that doesn't say "YouTube accounts and nothing else", since it explicitly mentions "web site" before Youtube.

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

#120

Post by mattferderer »

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…

It's been a while since I started using Brave but I felt they were pretty up front with how the payments worked.

I do understand the frustration though of those who don't see this. Brave could warn visitors donating when the content owner hasn't set up Brave Payments. Brave could refund said money back to the visitor if it goes unclaimed after a while. Just random ideas from someone who actually likes their attempt.

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