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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

#161

Post by isoskeles »

dessant wrote: post #82
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…

My impression is that Brave's current model actively hurts small creators that would otherwise get some of that money sooner on the donation services they have signed up for, without waiting for Brave's $100 withdrawal threshold to be reached, if it ever does. I'd be surprised if this will be deemed legal, once more people will find out that there is a company collecting donations in their name and without their cons…

> actively hurts

What do you think the word active means?

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

#162

Post by thinkmassive »

detaro wrote: post #115
brandnewlow wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 C…

Is this why they moved from using Bitcoin to their own BAT token?

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

#163

Post by aphextron »

adjagu wrote: post #19
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…

Have you checked out Ungoogled Chromium? Link to their GitHub: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

I have, and it's great. But it just comes down to trust. At the end of the day you are still trusting some random internet person to distribute the binaries. I don't want to have to build from source just to be able to trust my browser.

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

#164

Post by thinkmassive »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #136
AnabeeKnox wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search on this page for the word "fraud". Here's what I'd do in your position: remove anything on the internet which personally identifies you as an employee of your company. Nobody knows what is going to happen next, but be prepared for it.

There is zero chance an employee is going to get in trouble because a browser company they worked for collected funds in an escrow account to be released in the event that an intended recipient signs up.

Might want to hold off until we see what legal discovery turns up in chat logs, emails, etc

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

#166

Post by bjl »

brandnewlow wrote: post #111
908087 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're on a thread about Brave shamelessly committing donation fraud and you're surprised people aren't giving you the benefit of the doubt?

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

#167

Post by pushcx »

pushcx wrote: post #147
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.)

https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1076221401353207808 Your UI really looks like Tom Scott has signed up to receive donations through you, not like you've scraped his photo and name off twitter and written a fundraising plea with zero mention that he's never heard of you and that you won't even try to contact him until $100 accumulates and then only half-assedly. For most of us this is our first exposure to your m…

Also: your responses here, and Brendan Eich's on Twitter, seem to assume you are somewhere in the general brand feel of the EFF or Firefox. That this is a big misunderstanding of a clearly well-intentioned feature from familiar volunteers to the public interest.

You're nowhere near them. You're in the same mental headspace as ICO scams because you're also promising that if we give your cryptocurrency a bit of money the riches will rain down for everyone. You need to radically change your rhetorical approaches to this PR disaster (not to mention this "feature") if you hope to start building trust.

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

#168

Post by imustbeevil »

To anyone who has mistakenly "donated" to someone through this service, here's a link to the FTC complaint assistant for reporting fraud, namely "Pretending to be a representative or employee of a business". You don't have to be a lawyer to let the FTC decide whether this is misleading marketing or not.

I honestly like the BAT idea. This is not the way to implement it, and based on the responses from Eich on twitter, and the representative in this thread, it seems like they aren't going to willingly change their scheme.

https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

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

#169

Post by zamalek »

rchaud wrote: post #126
rthomas6 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Firefox absolutely sucks on Android. It's fine on Mac OS, but it is so much slower than Brave (Chromium based) and Chrome itself, that it becomes irritating to use. That being said, it does support extensions like Ublock Origin and Ghostery. Mobile Chrome means zero extensions and ad hell, so Brave it is. Same Chrome engine and UI (swipeable tabs is something I miss in Firefox Android) and adblocking.

> Firefox absolutely sucks on Android.

Have you tried it lately? I agree that it used to, but it has improved vastly. It's my daily driver now.

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

#170

Post by bjl »

brandnewlow wrote: post #85
duxup wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds so clumsy that I suspect they really don't care / want folks to fail to collect.

I am on the business team at Brave. We want people to collect and get paid. It's a huge part of why we come in to work every day, to work on stuff that helps creators get paid. I'm sure there's UI/UX stuff in Patreon that could be better. That doesn't mean they don't want creators to get paid. It just means there's room for improvement.

Come on, man. The 'donation' UI was clearly designed to deceive visitors into thinking that the creator signed up and customized it themselves. Brave fucked up big time, and you aren't doing your employer any favors by commenting here; at this point the only people who should be making statements are Brave's lawyers.
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