Comment by celsoazevedo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by celsoazevedo | Hacker News Reader

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Maybe it's because I use Brave (as a "Chrome with less Google" and with all the crypto stuff disabled), but when I look at the "shady things" they've done, it doesn't look that shady:

- The affiliate link "hijacking" was - if I remember correctly - to sites of crypto companies that partner with them. I'd prefer if this didn't happen, but most seem to be fine when other browsers (Safari, Firefox, etc) add something like "?client=safari" when searching or when their search engine (eg: DDG) use affiliate links to sites like Amazon or Ebay. It's not a new thing.

- The money collection (brave rewards)... if one doesn't understand how the system works, it looks like they are stealing money... but the money is returned to the sender after a while if the website/creator doesn't claim it. Is this that bad?

And then there's them not blocking some trackers (Google, Facebook, etc) by default, but if they did, they would break logins on many websites.

Maybe all this is bad, but I'm not sure if there's any browser out there without a history of shady behaviour. Even Mozilla has messed up a few times.

>The money collection (brave rewards)... if one doesn't understand how the system works, it looks like they are stealing money... but the money is returned to the sender after a while if the website/creator doesn't claim it. Is this that bad?

I don't think anyone ever accused them of stealing that money, but yes, hijacking people's personal brands to collect money without their explicit knowledge is a bad thing.

Imagine if I saw the icon and gave "them" money via Brave instead of joining their Patreon or some other official channel that they explicitly set up. If they don't collect, then yes, I might get my money back - nothing was "stolen". But that was money I wanted to send to the content creator in that particular moment, and that creator will probably never see it. The creator got screwed out of money that otherwise would have gone to them.

Please see the second half of this response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31086397.

Imagine I presented you with $10 (from my own pocket), and asked you where it should be spent. You told me "Doc's Pub, over on 9th." So I walked over to Doc's Pub, but found them to be closed. So I waited outside for a few hours, just incase they opened up. I later went home and wrote down "try to spend $10 at Doc's tomorrow."

Brave staked users with BAT (from our token sale). Users could direct that BAT to the sites/properties of their choosing. The BAT then went into an omnibus settlement wallet (note: the BAT originated in one Brave wallet, and was sent to another Brave wallet).

There was no hijacking of brands, or anything of that nature. I would encourage you again to please visit the aforementioned link. In it I mention our blog post on the topic, which includes screenshots and more. I hope this helps!

>hijacking people's personal brands to collect money without their explicit knowledge is a bad thing.

Brave gave users BAT to tip content creators. They tipped it, if it wasn't claimed in 90d, Brave returned the BAT to the pool. There was no collecting money. It was Brave's promotional BAT and it never actually left Brave's possession unless claimed.

The issue was that it wasn't clear if the creator had or hadn't signed up. Which was fixed within 48h.

Maybe the problem is the way it used to work and not so much how it works right now? Things seem to have changed a bit.

At least for websites I have to manually click the Brave Rewards icon (wasn't prompted to do it on a new profile) and it shows if the site is verified or not:

- My personal website (verified): https://i.imgur.com/WZykI2U.png

- Google[.]com (unverified): https://i.imgur.com/89XvzIz.png

And if we hover over the "unverified creator" text, this is displayed: https://i.imgur.com/IfKQUME.png

I guess the right way to do this is to only allow tips/donations for websites already verified... still, if you're going to use Brave Rewards, you probably have an idea of how it works.

Maybe things are different for creators on platforms like YouTube? I don't know how it works. I couldn't find a way to make a direct contribution with Brave Rewards.

> And then there's them not blocking some trackers (Google, Facebook, etc) by default, but if they did, they would break logins on many websites.

Then what should they do? It sounds like they're between a rock and a hard place

Since they want to be a mainstream browser, allowing those by default (that's what they do now) is the way to go in my opinion. The option to block them is available for more advanced users.

This is only a "problem" for some because they think Brave is actually siding with those services, when in reality there's a good reason to not block them by default.

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