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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

#71

Post by _corym »

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…

Brave is completely open source and the ads are opt-in.

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser https://github.com/brave-intl

You're right the business model is advertising, very similar to Google. However the key difference is that they're trying to enable ads in a way that is privacy focused. They don't let websites track you. The whole point is that there are client-side algorithms that decide what advertisements to serve you.

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

#72

Post by egypturnash »

egypturnash wrote: post #63
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…

Oh apparently they understand Twitch channels too, huzzah, ugh.

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 paying me, Brave? I've been getting along posting comics on my HTTP site for an entire decade, and I'm really not interested in bothering to set that up. You are really not built with any understanding of the level of technical knowledge among people who make art, are you. And I'm unusually technical for an artist.

Oh wait there is a 'choose different verification method'. I can place a trusted file in my domain? Nope. Requires HTTPS. Or I can add a record to my DNS settings; let's try that... looks like I gotta wait for the dns to propagate, that's always fun.

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

#73

Post by plusCubed »

dang wrote: post #55
plusCubed wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tom Scott, an educational YouTuber. (I am not him, the title was changed by a mod I think)

Yes—we changed the title to use language from the original text. Use of the first person in titles refers to authors, not submitters.

Ah got it. Maybe the first-person part can be added to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ?

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

#74

Post by cyphar »

jonny_eh wrote: post #58
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…

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

You could argue it's charity fraud, though the "intended" target isn't being represented as a charity they are being given donations (so "charity donation fraud", I guess). But it's likely some flavour of fraud.

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

#75

Post by DavideNL »

russdpale wrote: post #35
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…

take a look at ungoogle chrome if you are on mac or linux. https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium Not sure why you don't like Brave? You can turn off all of the crypto currency and advertising stuff. I think its a good idea personally. What is the problem in usurping googles ad business, exactly?

I've read un-googled chromium is often behind/not up to date with the latest Chromium release/updates (which makes it not secure).

Source: https://github.com/privacytoolsIO/privacytools.io/issues/274...

i found that post because the un-googled chromium author linked to it here: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium/issues/640#iss...

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

#76

Post by _corym »

icebraining wrote: post #69
ShannonAlther wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just realized I didn't know this: how are you supposed to comply with GDPR if your clients are partially anonymous?

I assume you're talking about the user requests regarding their data? Well, if the data is so anonymized that even the person can't prove who they are, then I'd say it falls in the provision that exempts anonymized data. But in this case, I'm assuming the user must have a private key (for signing BAT transactions), so they could build a feature in the browser to sign messages using it.

The problem with signing transactions is basically then you can identify the browser history of the user. The BAT-ledger explains the principles of the transaction system

https://github.com/brave-intl/bat-ledger/blob/master/documen...

The current process is the data is anonymized and then sent out for privacy reasons.

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

#77

Post by davefp »

lmcarreiro wrote: post #38

People could do something similar for open source projects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736006

Tidelift is the latest attempt at this: https://tidelift.com/

They don't adequately explain what happens if a project has no 'lifters' and it sounds like it could have the same problems as Brave.

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

#78

Post by jdietrich »

duxup wrote: post #50
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…

That sounds so clumsy that I suspect they really don't care / want folks to fail to collect.

I'm reminded of mail-in rebates.

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

#79

Post by cyphar »

wakeywakeywakey wrote: post #44
davidgerard wrote: post #7

Brendan Eich answers on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1076187316748615680 basically he plans to keep it working the way it works now, "opt out" and all - he's confident this is a completely legal way to work

His tweet says, in part > "... Tom has a point, we should let creators say "no thanks" and be auto-excluded. Users may already auto-exclude unverified sites/channels. We will work on this." This makes your interpretation disingenuous, or uncharitable at best.

He is missing the point though.

It shouldn't be opt-out, it should be opt-in -- if the purpose is to give donations to creators then surely those creators should agree to receive donations (especially since donations have to be included in tax filings and so on).

For "donations to a creator" to be used for a different purpose by the party that is mediating donations appears (to a non-lawyer like me) to be some kind of charity fraud.

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

#80

Post by duxup »

staticassertion wrote: post #68
duxup wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds so clumsy that I suspect they really don't care / want folks to fail to collect.

I think people may be forgetting that Brave is a very small, new company, and not everything is streamlined yet...

Maybe, but i'm pretty skeptical of the "taking money but not actually all that capable of getting it to the other person" to be a larger issue than streamlining.
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