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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

#191

Post by egypturnash »

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…

As far as I know none of my fans have even heard of Brave, so they're probably giving me money via Patreon or the occasional commission (and I should probably make the Paypal tip jar a bit more prominent, as well as maybe setting up Ko-fi or its ilk someday). But if Brave finds money to start a serious publicity campaign and get new users then I can definitely see that being a problem.

Needs a lot better way for them to contact creators, too. Probably they need some actual humans figuring out contact methods for a few years of growth instead of just assuming that "webmaster@domain.name" will get to the right person, and slowly building solutions for multi-user platforms based on the overall revenue of those places.

(Wedging into multi-user platforms by blocking their ads also has the problem of who's gonna pay for the servers if all the ad money gets siphoned off by Brave.)

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

#192

Post by egypturnash »

brandnewlow wrote: post #93
egypturnash wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We're always trying to make the verification process better. On the one hand, it's a pain. On the other, we don't want to let someone other than you pass themselves off as you. The DNS and HTML snippet methods are similar to how verification works for many of Googles publisher and advertiser services, for what it's worth. Sorry this has proven frustrating but I hope DNS updates for you soon!

DNS still isn't updated, and I got signed out of my session on your site. I'll probably be signed out again by the time I check tomorrow, if I remember to.

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

#193

Post by jammygit »

MattGrommes wrote: post #131
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.)

Even if Brave has the best interests of everyone at heart, this kind of thing has been tried many times and nobody is ever happy with it. If the person doesn't want to make money from their fans, that's their choice and it's not cool to possibly mislead fans into thinking the person is taking their money. It's a pain for people to have to constantly monitor all the random sites collecting money "for them". New servic…

I would assume that the accumulating money waiting to be claimed is a carrot to get sites involved.

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

#194

Post by jacques_chester »

thinkmassive wrote: post #164
CryptoPunk wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Incidentally, a reminder: pre-emptively destroying records under the apprehension that you might be served with a lawsuit is A Bad Idea.

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

#195

Post by jammygit »

bscphil wrote: post #176
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…

My understanding is that you're experiencing Brave's other project, which is somehow both more scammy and scummy than this one. The idea is to replace the ads already in the web page with "good ads" approved by Brave, and give the original publisher 1/3 of the resulting revenue through some similarly unclear means. This, of course, is exactly the same model as many pieces of toolbar malware, with the genius addition…

The ad replacements are opt in, are they not? Ads for me are just straight up blocked.

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

#196

Post by jammygit »

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.

I'm using Firefox right now om android and its a nice experience. Chrome variants are smoother scrolling I guess but the sync is sure nice in Firefox.

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

#197

Post by pedrocx486 »

zamalek wrote: post #169
rchaud wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I did, tried it for a week, honestly the scrolling still feels horrible when compared to Chrome.

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

#198

Post by isoskeles »

Traster wrote: post #186
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 be…

> identical to someone committing identity theft

I don't fully understand what you mean here. Are they attempting to take out loans or credit cards for their own use with this person's information, resulting in potentially ruinous consequences for this person's credit? Rhetorical question in that case, but really, I'd like to understand what you mean.

Is it in reference to your first sentence? My assumption is that people using the Brave browser or extension (I don't know how it works) would see these donation solicitations on every blog and understand that they're (Brave) collecting donations on behalf of just about anyone, not some specific person they are pretending to be, and not in any sense where these people are opting in to their platform one-at-a-time.

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

#199

Post by pedrocx486 »

imustbeevil wrote: post #121
Sephr wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Will be" or "are"?

"Will be", as in, "are not".

I have Brave installed on my work machine, it's opt-in... I don't have it activated and never even clicked the Ads button. It even shows as disabled in the settings.

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

#200

Post by sonicdream »

hollasch wrote: post #185

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 cha…

Bad example. The purpose of the BAT token is for ads and tipping, not for donations. Hence the name, Basic Attention Token.
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