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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

#181

Post by jacques_chester »

mattferderer wrote: post #120
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.

My understanding is that automatically refunding as part of the agreement with the Brave user is probably workable.

Even more workable is to be opt-in only. That's what I would do (to the point that I developed a protocol that's purely opt-in).

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

#182

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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…

When they first came up on HN, that was pretty much the chorus: Nice thought, but the implementation isn't practical.

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

#183

Post by monochromatic »

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…

Strange. Firefox seems to run just as well as Chrome for me nowadays (on Windows though).

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

#184

Post by ObsoleteNerd »

rchaud wrote: post #133
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.

Tom Scott did not explicitly sign up for this service. Brave is not even telling users that Tom Scott is not signed up, and Brave has no automated way of contacting him to let him know that someone donated. The system is engineered to move the money towards Brave, with neither the benefactor nor the beneficiary being aware of that. How is that ethical?

I was interested in Brave after hearing it mentioned here a fair bit, for innovating new ways for creators to get paid... after this story though? Knowing they effectively scam users out of money under the pretense of it really being the creator? That's fraud as far as I'm concerned (maybe not legally, but to me it's a con, and scummy).

Interest has dropped to 0, and they go to my shitlist with all the other crytpo-scam stuff prevalent these days.

Edit: Now that I've seen the screenshots of just how blatantly Brave pretends the creator has a profile and actively set this up, this is absolutely fraud. From further down in the comments of OPs original link: https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1076221401353207808

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

#185

Post by hollasch »

My basic objection to the "opt-out" scheme is that my browser is effectively acting as a man-in-the-middle agent, confusing both the reader and the author, and co-opting any existing compensation or donation procedure.

For example, consider http://www.vim.org, which hosts the text editor Vim. The author, Bram Moolenaar, makes this editor freely-available, and asks that any donations be directed to ICCF Holand, a charity that serves the Kibaale Children's Center in Uganda.

The Brave browser, as it stands now, inserts itself in the middle of this established reader/contributor relationship and now claims that it'll take your donations and administer them on Bram's behalf. The user who falls for this scheme then sees what appears to be _additional_ requests for donations (the _actual_ request). _At a minimum_, this inserted message sows confusion where there once was none. In the worst case, money that would have gone to the ICCF is now held in escrow by Brave, and may or may not be delivered, and if so, will go to Bram directly rather than to the charity he hopes to support.

This is just one example of how the browser intercepting and modifying what you see is a truly bad design (intentional or not).

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

#186

Post by Traster »

isoskeles wrote: post #171

If this person doesn't want his donations, or wants people to donate to some fund against malaria, I'm sure Brave can figure out how to redirect his funds to another donation site of his choice as a feature. Brave's attempt to find a new way to pay content creators (and, sure, insert themselves into the process) seems to be in good faith. And I'll admit that the complaints are mostly in good faith too, especially tha…

Let's be clear - you cannot start collecting donations on someone's behalf without their consent and expect them to be happy when they find out. Especially when the person you are donating to is a business person with their own public image that they have to maintain and especially when you act shifty about actually handing over the money. Brave might be a great group of people with fantastic intentions, but their behaviour here is identical to someone committing identity theft.

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

#187

Post by trhway »

britch wrote: post #117
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.)

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…

>My friend Mark

i'm thinking about starting to accept money on behalf of Hollywood stars like say Tom Cruise. Once $10M is collected (obviously there is no point in bothering Tom with lesser sums) i will do my best to deliver the money to him.

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

#188

Post by bencollier49 »

brandnewlow wrote: post #81
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…

I work at Brave on the business team. This is helpful feedback. Brave is a startup with a small team earnestly building a new thing that combines a browser with a tipping system, with creator tools, with ad blocking... it's ambitious! As it's a new thing, describing it can be messy sometimes. We're always working to make our language better and clearer though. Thank you for letting us know it fell short for you. To a…

Have you addressed the GDPR issue? What is your legal basis for using someone's identity?

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

#189

Post by jacques_chester »

thekyle wrote: post #148
jonny_eh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe, a few years back I had the idea to create a service identical to what Brave offers today (except based on the traditional banking system, not cryptocurrency) however I stopped after reviewing the money transmitter laws in the United States and determining that they were not compatible with this business model. It's possible that Brave has found some sort of loophole that allows them to do this, but I haven't v…

I have also had this idea (I think everyone who thinks about the problem space for > 30 minutes stumbles on the basic business model).

Expanding your point: banks haaaaate this kind of business model. They see it as a fertile breeding ground for chargebacks, which are very expensive to them.

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

#190

Post by jacques_chester »

isoskeles wrote: post #171

If this person doesn't want his donations, or wants people to donate to some fund against malaria, I'm sure Brave can figure out how to redirect his funds to another donation site of his choice as a feature. Brave's attempt to find a new way to pay content creators (and, sure, insert themselves into the process) seems to be in good faith. And I'll admit that the complaints are mostly in good faith too, especially tha…

Generally, crime has two components: the act or omission itself (actus reus) and the intention to do so (mens rea). What's missing from this formula is whether you did so from pure or impure motives. That might influence a jury or be factored in a judgement, but into itself doesn't change whether you committed a crime.

Assuming there is some jurisdiction where this particular arrangement is potentially criminal, what will matter is not why Brave intended to do it. What will matter is that they intended to do it.

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