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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

#311

Post by brandnewlow »

jacquesm wrote: post #203
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…

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.

Hi Jacquesm. We had no intention to scam people. We shipped a confusing UI that should have been better thought out. In response to all the passionate feedback from creators our product team worked around the clock to push up a bunch of hotfixes that should go live tomorrow. You can read about them here: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

Thanks for jumping into the conversation. Also thanks for all the stories on HN over the years.

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

#312

Post by brandnewlow »

notahacker wrote: post #135
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 invite users to donate to regularly purchase your cryptoassets whilst designing a dark pattern UX which indicates the cryptoassets are being distributed in a certain ratio amongst YouTubers and other content creators. Your website also falsely claims to be sending these assets to these content creators once a month and falsely claims that browser users can see how the assets have been distributed using this UX. I…

We do see a problem here. It's unclear why people are assuming it was intentionally done vs. just poorly thought out UI.

We've spent a lot of time discussing the feedback from threads like this and tomorrow a bunch of changes will go live. Please take a look at this blog post detailing them: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

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

#313

Post by brandnewlow »

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…

We've just posted up a rundown on the changes we're implementing in response to feedback from threads like this. Please give it a look and see where it lands for you: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

We shipped confusing, poorly thought out UI, got a bunch of negative but really thoughtful feedback, and are moving quickly to get things fixed.

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

#314

Post by brandnewlow »

bjl wrote: post #170
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.

Come on, man. The 'donation' UI was clearly designed to deceive visitors into thinking that the creator signed up and customized it themselves. Brave fucked up big time, and you aren't doing your employer any favors by commenting here; at this point the only people who should be making statements are Brave's lawyers.

We've just published a rundown on the many changes going into the UI to address concerns like these. You can find it here: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

We shipped confusing, poorly considered UI and are hustling to get it fixed. Thanks for your feedback.

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

#315

Post by brandnewlow »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #216
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.)

> why a fellow nerd suspects we're up to no good You're taking money on peoples' behalf without their knowledge or permission. What the fuck more is there to understand? Here's the bright ethical line: don't accept any money unless you can be assured that you can provide it to the beneficiary. At least failing that, make it abundantly clear to donators that there's no reason whatsoever to expect the funds to actually…

We've shipped a bunch of hotfixes to our UI in response to this thread and others. You can read about them here: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

Thanks for your feedback. We shipped UI that sent the wrong message about unverified creators. Understood. We're hustling to get fixes in place and talking more about what we can and should be doing.

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

#316

Post by brandnewlow »

SamWhited wrote: post #100
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 donations on other peoples behalf without their consent. That's the definition of "up to no good". Why would you assume you can do this and people will be okay with it?

Not our intention. We've just posted up a rundown of the many changes we're pushing up tomorrow to address these concerns and clarify things a lot more: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

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

#317

Post by brandnewlow »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #218
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.)

Why would I suspect anything else with the way it's presented? Presumably you'd be entirely happy if I made a fork of Chromium or addon that asked for donations on every Brave related site and personality. I'd try and tell you via whois data (even when it's twitter and YT that doesn't have whois lookup for end users) when the amount passed $20k. I'd go with $100, but as it's a side project I can't yet add a system to…

We agree our UI sends the wrong message. We're pushing up a bunch of fixes to make it clearer tomorrow. You can read about them here: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

Thanks for your feedback!

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

#318

Post by brandnewlow »

NathanCH wrote: post #129
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.)

Why not simplify this and make it opt-in?

We've just published a blog post listing then many changes we're pushing up tomorrow to address concerns in this thread and on Twitter; https://brave.com/rewards-update/

As it says in the post, we're definitely planning to talk about whether to block attempts to tip unverified creators altogether.

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

#319

Post by brandnewlow »

bencollier49 wrote: post #188
brandnewlow wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That was not our intention. We see how people could argue we were though so we're dropping creator images from our overlay that explains tipping to unverified creators. You can read about this and other changes we're rolling out here: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

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

#320

Post by brandnewlow »

donaltroddyn wrote: post #259
mistrial9 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the statements from Brave people on this thread seem reasonable ; many inflammatory comments here do not seem reasonable

I disagree completely. So far, both here and on Twitter, the core complaint, that donations are solicited in the name of people who have no relationship with Brave, and from whom Brave has no consent, has been completely ignored. The fact is the original complainant, Tom Scott, and many others, find that practice abhorrent, and the response so far has been deflection or vague promises that the Brave team want to help…

We just posted up a list of changes going live tomorrow that hopefully address all the concerns listed in this thread: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

Thanks for your feedback.

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