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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

#241

Post by CryptoPunk »

shkkmo wrote: post #156
Fuebxien wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how Western Union works. The recipient goes to WU and presents matching ID.

Western Union doesn't claim to be accepting donations on creators behalfs. Western Union can refund money sent if it hasn't been collected by the recipient. Western Union doesn't require a minimum amount of money be sent to a recipient before they collect. Really, it is 1 & 2 together that seem to mark this clearly as fraud. 3 doesn't help either.

>>Western Union doesn't claim to be accepting donations on creators behalfs.

Strictly speaking, Brave is not doing that. The fact that the originator of the solicitation is Brave, and that the potential end-recipient may not sign up to receive the funds, is disclosed.

It's an escrow fund that would release the funds to a particular party should they choose to claim it. That's how the contribution service is marketed.

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

#243

Post by throwaway12231 »

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 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 obviously like this model as a Brave user, I am also pleased with this approach.

I'm kind of confused as to why everyone here is up in arms. The UI denotes whether a publisher is verified or not. I never believed that Brave was trying to mislead me to where my donations were going. This feels like a simple misunderstanding.

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

#244

Post by anticensor »

nradov wrote: post #122
matt4077 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fraud is a criminal offense. It needs a prosecutor, not a plaintiff.

In the US legal system there are both criminal and civil forms of fraud. A plaintiff can sue for fraud in civil court, seeking damages or specific performance.

Really? In Europe, if an offense has both civil and criminal forms, criminal courts are authorised for both forms of said offense, difference lying in procedure instead.

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

#246

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

oh_sigh wrote: post #240
jacquesm wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't just look like a scam. That is a scam. You can't just go collecting for causes without being empowered to do so. It's the same as people that go door to door collecting money for some charity when they are actually just going to spend it on their own stuff.

The 'spend it on their own stuff' is the illegal part, not the going door to door collecting money part. You most certainly can go door to door and solicit donations to a charity you have nothing to do with...as long as you actually fulfill the contract.

You might want to cite your “most certainly” because I’m far from sure that’s true in all jurisdictions.

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

#247

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

dylz wrote: post #104
brandnewlow wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#248

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

callinyouin wrote: post #43

Brendan Eich's defense of this scheme [0] seems a bit weak to me. Do you really think the solution is to make creators opt out? What in the world makes you think it's okay to represent people who have not asked for your assistance and take donations on their behalf? Why is it their responsibility to ask you nicely not to use their name to solicit donations? [0] https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/10761873167486156…

It reminds me strongly of 37signals vs GetSatisfaction: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else

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

#249

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

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.

> IANAL

In that case, get your lawyer to google “passing off”. Just because a photo is publically gettable doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to do what the hell you want with it.

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

#250

Post by scarejunba »

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.
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