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

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

#301

Post by cfabbro » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 12:50 AM UTC

brandnewlow wrote: post #271

_0ffh wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd be surprised if this will be deemed legal I'm surprised how anyone could think this was a good idea, or even legal. What wouldn't surprise me is an incoming class action.

We 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 100% our fault and we're working on updating the UI and language to be clear based on all the feedback we've gotten. We must do better.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Du-Bo-rUYAAeU6b.png:large

Might I also recommend you update the language on the "tips" overlay itself to remove any implication the money is actually going to the creator when the truth is really that its being held by you, essentially in escrow, until they claim it... which they may never actually do. And even using "tips" to describe the process also seems rather misleading in this case too.

Also, automatically scraping a creator's profile picture and adding it to your own overlay to give yourself the appearance of legitimately representing them is incredibly misleading as well. So might I suggest you stop doing that too.

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

#302

Post by egypturnash » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 1:14 AM UTC

mthoms wrote: post #237

egypturnash wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just to clarify, a content creator just needs to register with Brave once and all further contact will go through whichever channel they choose. I suppose the presumption is, once (if) Brave reaches critical mass, or gets enough press, there won't be a monetizing content creator on the web who isn't aware of it. My apologies if you know this already. It's just that the "whois" email is not really telling the full sto…

Like most creators I know, I've heard of ko-fi. I don't have an account there. I haven't felt it fits my working methods. They don't have a page to take money in my name, either.

I've heard of GoFundMe and don't have an account there, either. Now that they seem to be quite happy to take money from people making comics designed to "stick it to the libs" I kinda don't want to have an account there. They don't have a page in my name either.

"I don't want to do business with you, and I don't want to have an account so I can opt out of doing business with you" is, I feel, a valid attitude. Is anyone who hears about Facebook's "shadow profiles" happy to know that Facebook is tracking them despite them not using that site?

"Having a human find a contact method for a creator" is an option. It does not scale but how many times do I see people writing stuff here on HN that advises doing stuff that doesn't scale until you know it's worth automating it? If Brave wants their model to work they need to put the time into this kind of stuff. Hell, have the user who wants to pay a creator via Brave do it: "Hi! We don't have any contact information for this creator yet, and our automated methods can't find anything. Would you tell us how to contact this person?" And then not take money in the creator's name until they actually say yes.

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

#303

Post by JCharante » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 3:41 AM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #275

maxencecornet wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they are not wrong, you should be using HTTPS.

Why? I don’t have any user accounts on my site. Just stuff. And I’m too busy drawing new stuff to try and get HTTPS working. I had ads on it just fine without HTTPS. I’ve had PayPal links without it, I’ve had Patreon links. Getting Brave hooked up is a giant pain in the ass compared to everything else I’ve tried.

Because not using HTTPS allows an end user's ISP to inject their own ads on their rendition of your website. Whether these ads are for third parties or are telling them about how much data they have left on their monthly plan, I think we can agree that protecting users from their scummy ISP or potential bad actors on their Network by throwing https onto your site is worth it.

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

#304

Post by brandnewlow » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 3:54 AM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #277

phiresky wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Half a day and it still hadn’t propagated. If I could just stick a snippet of text in my site somewhere like I’ve done to authorize with other things it’d be fine, but Brave wants me to dig into this site that’s been working fine for a decade and make it HTTPS before they’ll let me do that. Most creators are less technical than me and wouldn’t have even gotten that far, and if Brave was taking donations in their name…

I'm pinging our support team to see if someone can help you get to the bottom of this.

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

#305

Post by brandnewlow » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 4:06 AM UTC

cfabbro wrote: post #301

brandnewlow wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We 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 100% our fault and we're working on updating the UI and language to be clear based on all the feedback we've gotten. We must do better.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Du-Bo-rUYAAeU6b.png:large Might I also recommend you update the language on the "tips" overlay itself to remove any implication the money is actually going to the creator when the truth is really that its being held by you, essentially in escrow, until they claim it... which they may never actually do. And even using "tips" to describe the process also seems rather misleading in this case…

We just posted up info about the hotfixes going live and I think you'll see your ideas!. This blog post lays out what we're doing: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions.

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

#306

Post by brandnewlow » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 4:10 AM UTC

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…

We just posted a list of the many changes we're pushing live to address the problems found in our UI: https://brave.com/rewards-update/ Thanks for your feedback.

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

#307

Post by brandnewlow » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 4:10 AM UTC

xur17 wrote: post #206

dessant wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. FWIW, you can create an account manually and withdraw with << $100 in your account. $100 is just the limit for them to notify you.

Correct.

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

#308

Post by brandnewlow » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 4:13 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #181

mattferderer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

We just posted a list of the many changes we're pushing live to address the problems found in our UI: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

One of the items listed is looking into blocking all tips to unverified publishers altogether. We hear people's concerns and are going to look into it. In the meantime we've dropped all creative assets (photos) for unverified publishers and are also adding a clear alert saying unverified publishers are in fact not-participating yet in the program. Screenshots in the link. Thanks for your feedback and for caring about this being done properly.

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

#309

Post by brandnewlow » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 4:15 AM UTC

43920 wrote: post #298

brandnewlow wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not our intention. We shipped a UI/UX that was confusing. We originally used checkmarks to denote creators participating in the program but did not have clear language or markers for creators not participating in then program. Many have pointed out the problem with that, which is helpful! That's all being updated now and will hopefully roll out very soon. We've heard the feedback and will make sure no creato…

Why do you even allow donations to "non-verified" websites at all? As far as I can tell, there really isn't any legitimate reason for this, other than forcing website owners to sign up for your payment system.

This is a fair question that's being discussed internally as a consequence of the feedback we're hearing from everyone.

Brave is about to push up a number of hotfixes to our code that address people's concerns. You can read about them here: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

You'll see an express commitment to consider whether to completely block out tips to unverified creators/publishers. That's not a thing we could fix overnight but we're acknowledging it might be the best move and committing to looking into it.

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

#310

Post by brandnewlow » Sun, Dec 23, 2018, 4:20 AM UTC

pushcx wrote: post #167

pushcx wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

We've just published a post detailing the changes we're making to our UI in response to all the great criticism and feedback from the last 24 hours: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

These changes will make it very very clear when creators are not participating in Brave Rewards and will ensure no creator assets are being used.

In response to your other comments, I feel good assuming we're somewhere in the general brand feel of the EFF and Firefox. Brave has never once told people to speculate on the price of BAT (we get asked to do so about once a day and refuse because that's not what we're about). Also, yeah, we've shipped a browser used by 5m people a month around the world. There's a long way to go still but it's a start.

Thanks for your feedback.