Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by phiresky » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #72

egypturnash wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh apparently they understand Twitch channels too, huzzah, ugh.

So I typed my domain into the setup thing and I got this: "Hello. It looks like you are using WordPress!" "Your domain is NOT using HTTPS.Uh oh! Your domain is NOT using HTTPS. You will need to fix that before continuing." "The following error was encountered: SSL_connect returned=1 errno=0 state=SSLv2/v3 read server hello A: sslv3 alert handshake failure" Why do I need to be using HTTPS before you'll think about pay…

That's a ridiculous complaint and you know it. Oh no, you have to wait 5 minutes for DNS propagation, what a scam!

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

#262

Post by niij » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

mthoms wrote: post #239

britch wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Where's the money now? I guess it's still in my bank account. No you can't have it back. Except the money goes back to the Brave user pool and ends up in the hands of creators who have opted to participate. Brave's hope is that every content creator will eventually register to collect what's theirs. Their business model depends on it. Before judging, please read their materials (and examine their pedigree). It's pre…

So people can donate to person X but if they don't claim it in time, the money is given away to all the other users that are using the service? That seems really shady to me that donations would be redirected like that. Either keep the money in escrow forever or don't take unsolicited donations without the person's consent in the first place.

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

#263

Post by dkhenry » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

scarejunba wrote: post #250

dkhenry wrote: post #142

They are not taking cryptocurrency "donations" they are taking user contributions. If the creator doesn't want them then I, as a user, have agreed that they go into the "User Growth Pool". In my opinion I don't really care if the creator has signed up or not, as a consumer I have decided I would rather pay for content using Brave's system rather then being forced to use the incrediably intrusive and malicious trackin…

It’s no surprise that you’d ignore blatant copyright violation, misrepresentation, and abuse of personal data when you’re a fan of the project.

Except its none of those things. The courts have held that not subjecting yourself to advertisements is covered under the "Fair Use Doctrine". This is why Ad Blockers, Tracking blockers, or both are not only legal, but built into every single major computing platform. This is now taking that concept and allowing me to pay for things I like.

I would love to hear how you think Ad Blocking is blatant copyright violation, or how linking to content on the internet is misrepresentation.

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

#264

Post by scarejunba » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

dkhenry wrote: post #263

scarejunba wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s no surprise that you’d ignore blatant copyright violation, misrepresentation, and abuse of personal data when you’re a fan of the project.

Except its none of those things. The courts have held that not subjecting yourself to advertisements is covered under the "Fair Use Doctrine". This is why Ad Blockers, Tracking blockers, or both are not only legal, but built into every single major computing platform. This is now taking that concept and allowing me to pay for things I like. I would love to hear how you think Ad Blocking is blatant copyright violation…

I think ad blocking is fine. I don’t think you get to copy someone’s photo of themself and distribute it on your platform without asking them first.

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

#265

Post by dkhenry » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

scarejunba wrote: post #264

dkhenry wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except its none of those things. The courts have held that not subjecting yourself to advertisements is covered under the "Fair Use Doctrine". This is why Ad Blockers, Tracking blockers, or both are not only legal, but built into every single major computing platform. This is now taking that concept and allowing me to pay for things I like. I would love to hear how you think Ad Blocking is blatant copyright violation…

I think ad blocking is fine. I don’t think you get to copy someone’s photo of themself and distribute it on your platform without asking them first.

You mean like how if you google for Tom Scott[1] Google will pull the public profile info for a number of platforms ( twitter, youtube, instagram, wikipedia, and his own website ) and post it right there for you to read ? That is how the internet works, Google does this while displaying ads and tracking not only what you search, but what links you visit and then selling that information to advertisers via their ad-sense platform. Tom will never see any of that revenue. When I go visit Tom's content I get to say if he would like he can take some of the money I have set aside to pay for content I like and he can have it. If he doesn't want it then he doesn't need to claim it.

Every time the status quo has shifted in advertising people have claimed its illegal and a violation of copyright, but the courts have been much more nuanced. Thankfully in this kind of case you can't separate ad blocking and content discovery from what brave is doing, so if someone is going to pick a fight they will be picking the fight with Google, Microsoft and every other tech company out there not just with Brave

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Tom%20Scott

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

#266

Post by scarejunba » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

dkhenry wrote: post #265

scarejunba wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think ad blocking is fine. I don’t think you get to copy someone’s photo of themself and distribute it on your platform without asking them first.

You mean like how if you google for Tom Scott[1] Google will pull the public profile info for a number of platforms ( twitter, youtube, instagram, wikipedia, and his own website ) and post it right there for you to read ? That is how the internet works, Google does this while displaying ads and tracking not only what you search, but what links you visit and then selling that information to advertisers via their ad-se…

Google isn't impersonating Tom Scott here. Brave is.

You're the bad guys here and you can't see it because you think everyone else is Google and Facebook and tracking people. People want nothing to do with either you or them. But clearly less to do with you.

I'm not surprised that the angle is "sure we're bad but people will have to go for the guys with big pockets first". At least you know you're the bad guys. That's something.

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

#267

Post by dylz » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #247

dylz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on Patreon intentionally wish to accept donations, while you hide their Patreon ads, links to their other sites, and replace it with your unwanted platform? You can't compare yourself with a service that _someone particularly opted into and wants and set up themselves_ with _misusing someone's brand to take money as an unauthorised third party, while at the same time blocking that person's intended messaging t…

Right. The sensible thing for any Patreon user to do would be blocking Brave based on UserAgent. Oh, turns out Brave doesn’t have its own UA: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/brave-user-agent-detection What a dishonest product.

Wow, this is even more dishonest than I thought. Intentional choice too, not a "forgot to update after forking x browser".

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

#268

Post by imtringued » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #253

throwaway12231 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to muddle into the legal discussion, but I would like to add that I've been a happy Brave user for several months and have never felt any misunderstanding about where my tips are going. It is very clear to me who is a -verified- publisher and who isn't one. It was also made clear to me that unverified publishers were getting their tips stored in escrow as a carrot to entice them to enroll. Since I obviou…

Can you show screenshots of that? What do the prompts from https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1076221401353207808 look like for a verified publisher?

Probably something like this... https://twitter.com/JTremback/status/1076213808706641925

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

#269

Post by brandnewlow » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #159

uberman wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds very clearly like "scam" as well!

To be fair, it's entirely possible they're not actually making use of that, or only in very limited circumstances, and it's less "how can we trick people" and more "we didn't really think about what that looks like, because we know we are the good guys", and given their anonymous design they need some out if they don't want to be stuck responsible for funds for eternity. If it's the latter, they're now finding out th…

That's a pretty accurate read on things. We've never actually recycled any funds and also hadn't considered that many creators would interpret our UI/UX as "solicitation" vs. "letting a user do a thing they want to do in our browser."

In any event, the confusion is our fault and we're working on updating the UI and language to be clear based on all the feedback we've gotten.

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

#270

Post by dkhenry » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

scarejunba wrote: post #266

dkhenry wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like how if you google for Tom Scott[1] Google will pull the public profile info for a number of platforms ( twitter, youtube, instagram, wikipedia, and his own website ) and post it right there for you to read ? That is how the internet works, Google does this while displaying ads and tracking not only what you search, but what links you visit and then selling that information to advertisers via their ad-se…

Google isn't impersonating Tom Scott here. Brave is. You're the bad guys here and you can't see it because you think everyone else is Google and Facebook and tracking people. People want nothing to do with either you or them. But clearly less to do with you. I'm not surprised that the angle is "sure we're bad but people will have to go for the guys with big pockets first". At least you know you're the bad guys. That'…

Brave is no more impersonating Tom Scott then Google is, in fact they use the same source of information and get it the same way, the only difference is in Brave, after they pull and display that information from the public place where Tom put it ( specifically how he put it there to get displayed in this fashion ) they let me decide if Tom should be able to have some of my money. Every other company that displays this information injects their ads with no ability for me to decide where the money goes or what information they pull off me as part of that process. Even more so I have no way of opting out of that. If people want nothing to do with Brave then don't use it.

The idea you think I, someone with no affiliation with either Brave, or Google, or Tom, is a bad guy because I want to support content creators is laughable. I think the idea that there is a way users can control their personal information and still support content creators is really upsetting to people who are used to being able to dictate the terms of the internet and get wealthy off the backs of users and creators. I for my part won't let random corporations take my information and sell it to anyone who wants. I know that may make some people want to label me a bad guy and I am ok with that. They can continue to participate in that economy, and creators can block my browser. As long as they allow me to freely obtain their content I will use the systems I find useful to attempt to support an open and fair internet.