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 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.
For each Publisher URL receiving votes during a Calculation Period that is not a Brave Publisher by the end of that Calculation Period, the BAT corresponding to its votes will not be distributed at the end of that Calculation Period, and will instead be held in an Uphold omnibus wallet for no less than ninety (90) days thereafter. At that time, the undistributed BAT may be sent to Company’s user growth pool, which is a pool of BAT that Company administers to incentivize use of the Platform [..] Publisher Contributions will be calculated solely based on our accounting. Solely as a cost-recovery measure, we may allocate a certain amount of BAT contributed by Brave Contributors each Calculation Period toward our reasonable expenses incurred in facilitating Publisher Contributions. (https://basicattentiontoken.org/contributor-terms-of-service... section 4 "contributions")
Sounds very much like "we can redirect this from escrow if we want to".
And even without the clause, if they truly held it in escrow forever, taking money unasked without a way of returning it, is still a bad thing. Given this isn't the first "support creators" app doing this and getting publicly shamed for it, I have no idea how that went through.
In any event, the confusion is our fault and we're working on updating the UI and language to be clear based on all the feedback we've gotten.
Or, better for you personally: how about you hand in your resignation and retain an attorney?
Here's the thing: people who get away with this type of thing (sorry, "exciting and new crowdfunding option for creators", or whatever y'all prefer to call it) tend to get away with it only for as long as the targets of their "fundraising" are small-time creators who don't have the resources to pursue action against it. But sooner or later, even if only by accident, Brave's going to impersonate (sorry, "offer exciting crowdfunding options on behalf of") some entity that has resources, including lawyers, and it's going to end badly.
When that happens, a possible outcome is that they will suddenly "discover" all your statements on their behalf in this thread, and that's when it will end badly for you. Oh, that wasn't our position at all, oh, he wasn't authorized to speak like that on our behalf, oh, that's definitely not what we intended, we'll take action immediately to remedy that! The absolute best outcome of that for you is you get fired for cause. The worst outcomes involve you becoming the target of multiple legal actions.
I'm not an attorney and I'm not giving you legal advice. I will give you sincere personal advice: resign, hire an attorney. Find another job working somewhere that poses less of a threat to you.
As to why people will come after you, let me count the ways:
I know people who blog or create YouTube videos or whatever and are very careful not to monetize, because they're disabled and can't work but still need something to fill their days. But disability benefits are means-tested and income streams are constantly investigated. If a benefits agency decides that your scheme is providing income to a disabled person, congratulations! You just cut off their income, and they probably never even knew you existed. That's bad.
I have worked with several open-source projects that rely heavily on donations to keep going. They all have prominent things on their websites directing people where to go to donate, but you'd like to hijack that and instead send people to something the project doesn't know about and may not be able to collect on (especially given how often you flush the "donations" and how many hoops it seems people have to jump through, which many commenters have identified as something that makes them think this is a scam). Congratulations, you just took resources away from the project. And, for projects which use nonprofit foundations to manage fundraising, you just created tax issues -- what happens when the taxman doesn't believe the "we didn't know about them raising money for us" story?
And round and round and round we go. You're going to be hurting those people to make money. If you have a moral compass, it should be pointing heavily toward getting the hell out of there, as soon as you can.
Plus, crypto in general is in weird legal space to begin with. Lots of people can't afford to have you dealing in potentially unregistered securities in their names and without their knowledge or consent. In the US that could easily lead to federal felonies for them, because of what you did.
So, look. I've seen this pattern again and again and again. What Brave is doing is not a new idea. It's widely, roundly, solidly despised, both because it's an unwarranted intrusion on other people and because it creates such nebulous but frightening potential consequences for them. I've also been waiting for one of these crypto "fundraising" operations to finally go far enough that someone (either an entity with good lawyers, or a regulator) bothers to turn them into a smoking hole in the ground as an example to others. Maybe that's the ultimate fate of Brave; if it is, I won't shed any tears.
Thanks for your passion for creators and for those of modest means and with disabilities. The internet is awesome in part because it's a place where everyone and anyone can contribute.
Interest has dropped to 0, and they go to my shitlist with all the other crytpo-scam stuff prevalent these days.
Edit: Now that I've seen the screenshots of just how blatantly Brave pretends the creator has a profile and actively set this up, this is absolutely fraud. From further down in the comments of OPs original link: https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1076221401353207808
We'd love another shot at winning your interest. Thanks for caring about finding new ways to get creators paid.
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.
"Not yet verified" would, I think, imply to many people that they will in the natural course of things be verified, and perhaps even that they've asked to be verified.
It would be better to say "Bla is not a user and will not get the money you donate now, and quite possibly not ever", or similar wording. Or just (and this is, er, the obvious approach) not allow this at all for people who haven't asked for it.
It has a pretty obvious mark under the name if they are verified.
That said, I did ask the few people I know that have been using BAT. All three of them knew that there was a chance their tip wouldn't be received if it wasn't a verified user. So, from actual users, putting actual money into it, they understood how it worked.
Two of them specifically would only tip to verified accounts. The third said he saw it as an incentive to get the creators to join the platform, though he's also the most vocal and evangelistic about BAT.
It has a grayed out message and a link to learn more about what happens to unclaimed funds: http://se.ri0.us/2018-12-23-170628027-eb454.png
No, it addresses the collection and processing of personal data no matter where it is collected from.
> The only "Youtuber data" being "used" here is publicly gettable data from the Youtuber's channel.
Which is personal data that YouTube has collected or created associated with services they are providing to the user. They are responsible for their collection and use of it, but that doesn't authorize third-party collection and use of it under the GDPR. Particularly, the GDPR definition of personal data subject to the rules it imposes does not exclude information which is “publicly gettable” from some other party than the subject.
Best thing to avoid that, as I said in another comment, is to quit and get a lawyer.
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.