You are not required to buy anything.
You are not required to invest anything.
You can use the browser without any of the crypto features, or the ad rewards program. They are opt-in.
There is no scam about Brave's program. Stop projecting. If you don't like crypto, fine. But to disparage it on false statements is beyond lame.
Please omit swipes like that from your HN posts. They're against the site guidelines and weaken your argument.
Nobody claimed Brave is forcing crypto down its users' throats. Instead, that their embrace of crypto signals characteristics about their management, culture and priorities. Some are attracted to that. Others don't care. Still others see it as a red flag. None of these positions rises to the level of disparagement, or accusing others of lying.
[edit] Past conversation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999
[1] https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1076187316748615680
> collecting crypto donations in a pool on 'behalf of' those websites
No. The rewards program is centered around the people. It just happens that the way to discover the people and address the payment is through some specific platforms (like Youtube, twitter, reddit, github, etc).
> holding them hostage
Nothing is held hostage. The only legal way that they can pay someone is if the person goes through KYC. The system can only recognize the recipient as "authorized to receive payments" if the creator has signed up to one of the partner exchanges.
> keeping them for themselves
This is false. Contributions were going to the user pool. Now they are returned to the original donor.
No, I think I'd be significantly angrier if they'd collected actual money and withheld it from its originally intended recipient and instead put it into a fund that they used to grow their business. That was actually more offering them the benefit of the doubt. Crypto tends to cloud a lot of judgement and relax the definitions of 'financial fraud.' If it were done with actual dollars they might already have met with the DOJ.
> Nothing is held hostage. The only legal way that they can pay someone is if the person goes through KYC.
So what you're saying is, you can't get it unless you sign up even though they'd already solicited the donations on your behalf. Got it. So exactly what I said. This wouldn't be an issue if they had people sign up first, right? Then they wouldn't be soliciting donations on behalf of unregistered individuals and the whole point would be moot.
> This is false. Contributions were going to the user pool. Now they are returned to the original donor.
Right, the marketing budget. They stopped after they got called out for it.
Exactly what I said.
[edit] Side-note, if they'd done this on the websites of charities, it may actually be illegal in a number of countries.
> Charity fraud is the act of using deception to get money from people who believe they are making donations to a charity. [...] Charity fraud not only includes fictitious charities but also deceitful business acts. Deceitful business acts include businesses accepting donations and not using the money for its intended purposes, or soliciting funds under the pretense of need. [1]
Now I'm no lawyer but soliciting donations that people think are going to a charity and instead putting them into your 'user pool' if 'unclaimed' sounds a lot like [1].
After your edit, but okay...
Anyway, what they did was no different than any other tip bot did on reddit, or any other company that needs to find a way to bootstrap a marketplace that depends on network effects: they made it easy for people to initiate a transaction and then would go after the other end to close the deal.
> The marketing budget.
The "User Growth Pool" was a literal pool of extra funds that would get distributed to the users beyond what they collected from the ad-selling. It takes a special type of cynic to think that they would use that as a ploy to increase their "marketing budget".
What I really don't get is why people are so sensitive against these actions only when the company is involved with crypto. Google and Facebook are making fortunes out of fraudulent ad views, and I can bet good money that you don't mind having them in your stock portfolio. But here is one company building a model on actual privacy and fraud-free ad views, and you are here calling for "financial fraud". For what? Eight people complaining about the improper messaging on their beta product?
How much did they get out of this "fraud"? A few hundred dollars, that didn't even get to go to their pockets? Is it really believable that a company with millions of dollars in funding and one of most successful ICOs from the 2017 craze would run such a ridiculously unprofitable "fraud"?
It's a great idea with a good implementation that's primarily marred by poor uptake. It could have been a game changer if it had been embraced. The idea that Brave still shows ads and essentially holds the revenue in escrow for a non-member publisher is somewhat uncomfortable. But I also realize the likely reason they did it that way is it's much easier to get a publisher on board if they can show that there's already engagement and revenue waiting to be collected.
I use Brave from time to time with the wallet and rewards disabled. It's a couple settings and you never see it again. I probably would enable it if publishers actually used it. As things stand now, why should I be willing to accept ads the publisher won't be paid for when I'm already unwilling to accept ads that do pay?
So I think that, ultimately, it's not the use of crypto or the rewards program that comes off as a little skeevy. It's the idea that that stuff exists and the money never goes where it's supposed to go.
Yep, I agree with that. It gets a little guilt by association but that's not where the fundamental issue is.
It is completely insidious to the goals of this site that we allow lazy accusations that anything remotely associated with crypto is a scam without a shred of evidence.
Some other crypto being a scam or even holding the opinion that there are so many scams in crypto that it’d better if it was banned / disappeared is not a good reason for the behaviour we see in comments like this.
They reduce the discourse to a meritless shouting contest at best.
That's literally what the GP comment claimed. That it's a crypto scam. Scams usually try to cram a fictitious product down your throat.
> None of these positions rises to the level of disparagement
Calling it a crypto scam when it isn't one does.
I have no dog in this race. I use Safari and Firefox as products, but I don't have a deep enough connection to browser development and the web to feel like either is a part of my identity.
The original commenter substantiated their opinion [1] to a level that rises above deserving a caustic reply. That's all I'm saying.
That said, they still let you opt out and they are one of the few browsers that still have a culture of making the web better for the end users.
Somebody who says that all cryptocurrency stuff is a scam is strictly wrong, but substantially correct. If 95% of door-to-door salesmen are high-pressure assholes and I say all door-to-door salesmen are scum, then strictly I'm wrong but I'm still mostly correct. It wouldn't be fair to the innocent girlscout trying to sell cookies, but the kirby salesmen can fuck right off.
No one is arguing about the general case, but specifically about Brave as a browser. It's bad enough that people are trying to use their general bias about crypto as an argument against using the browser, you are going even further and saying that people should be guilty by association.
To follow your analogy, we are talking specifically about the girl scouts and you are saying you feel justified in branding them as scum because they happen to share a trait with door-to-door salesmen.
I'm telling you that the criticism against Brave's use of cryptocurrencies is informed by a well-warranted generalized belief that all crytocurrency schemes are scams. The only reason I don't slam my door on girlscouts is because it is immediately obvious to me that a little girl in a girlscout uniform is not a kirby salesman. I can see that difference plainly at a glance, without having to read or hear anything they say. To perceive the difference between Brave's scheme and a typical cryptocurrency scam takes a lot more effort and careful examination. It isn't fair to blame people for not putting in that effort, given the general odds in the cryptocurrency sphere.
The low-effort thing here would be to ignore this and walk away, to not leave a comment at all. Instead folks are writing out comments that Brave is a "cryptocurrency scam". It's hard for me to believe that it's too much effort to verify whether something is a scam but it's not too much effort to write a comment dismissing Brave.
This whole thread is a trash fire. Most comments are saying the same things over and over again and only a handful are even comparing Firefox and Brave. Does this really need to happen on any remotely cryptocurrency related thread? It just turns people off from using the site.
There. is. no. scheme.
What is so hard to understand about that? The crypto part from Brave is only if you want to receive a token.
They could change tomorrow to make the payments in greenbacks, and they would still have the same business model. But do you think that the people bitching about the browser would use it, if they suddenly learned they could win $5-10 per month? They wouldn't. They would just find another reason to complain or fight it, and those who actually want to use crypto would leave because they lost their chance to speculate.
I personally don't care about the success of BAT - though I still buy it regularly. My main interest is in finding an alternative economic model for Surveillance Capitalism. Show me any other company that is doing anything that can become a real threat to Google/MS/Facebook, and I will support it as well.
It's a scheme, a business plan. If my understanding of it is correct, it's not a scam but it's certainly a scheme.
> Show me any other company that is doing anything that can become a real threat to Google/MS/Facebook, and I will support it as well.
Wish I could, Mozilla certainly isn't such an example. Brave is unlikely to ever get their foot in the door because their business model smells like a scam. I don't think there are any viable technical solutions to the threat of Google/MS/Facebook, only political/legislative solutions. But if anybody proves me wrong I'll be thankful.
Brave is already at 60 million monthly active users, and growing. Firefox is 200M MAU, and declining.
They are already way past the door.
I get Brave ads as either on its main tab, or as separate notifications I get a reward for. I can believe there were variants on that, but I want more information about what they were.
from 2018
https://productmint.com/brave-business-model-how-does-brave-...
its worse
>In June, reports emerged, which stated that the company had been quietly inserting affiliate links for certain search queries without telling users. For instance, Brave had added a home widget for Binance a month prior, which turned out to redirect users via its affiliate offering.
The ideal situation would be to have no ads if the browser is (often) advertised privacy-first. But then we know the world isn't perfect. We work around tradeoffs.
As long as Brave keeps these contentious options transparent, I have no problems in supporting them.
I really wish I had focused on subscription growth instead of ad growth when I was in the content business (I had a few sites over 1m uniques per day). There's just something to delivering something so valuable that readers are willing to pay for it. You end up being much more focused on quality instead of driving ad clicks and directing your readers off site. That said, times have changed a lot, and people now seem much more willing to pay than 10 years ago.
To me that model is a lot better than the status quo. Content creators that I think are producing quality content get rewarded, while those pushing content to attract eye balls lose power.
Brave is a shady platform at a minimum; and has been caught in the past being actively malicious.
Web browsers are antiquated technology. IMO the original web UX is dying. I’m sharing data through private K8s + Kilo clusters. There is nothing “open” about a web of VC backed user interfaces and FAANG own private DCs.
I understand such economics are this websites bread and butter, but most of you produce b2b tools I have no use for. One could replace the web with AI bots posting the same content, I’d never know because I’m digging into ML generated games and other content on the down-low, with like minded hackers rather than existing in idolatry, white knighting in defense of of VCs and billionaires latest reskin of old technology.
Open ML generated content is going to do to digital media markets what open Linux did to Windows and MacOS; suck the profit out. I’m here for it and the evolution away from the web as we knew it.
The whole point of BAT is to reward people from removing ads placed by website owners and allow Brave to display ads of their own choosing and profit from websites that they have no involvement with.
It could actually be argued the whole 'privacy' angle they use is merely a way to justify the whole idea of ad-swapping. It's no different to what Apple have done with advertising of late.
Of course they justify this by saying the websites can take a cut, but that's only if the website owners know about it and forced against their will to do it.
It implies something has not been disclosed to users. Brave has been almost painfully honest.
> It could actually be argued the whole 'privacy' angle they use is merely a way to justify the whole idea of ad-swapping
Brave does not ad swap, and brave rewards ads show up as a browser notification, not inline with content. This idea came from a 2016 article where content publishers were afraid that Brave might launch with ad-swapping. Brave did get caught re-writing Binance affiliate links to their own affiliate code, but immediately discontinued the process.
If it's the website owners, I need you to explain what makes this worse to them than adblock. Because adblock isn't a scam.
I'd argue that website owners are being scammed by a company stealing profits. Brave is literally going "We don't think you should earn money from your visitors because of factors we decide, but we're going to show people on your website OUR ads because we picked them."
Adblock is just as bad. They block all ads and then go "If you've got plenty of money and want us to let your ads show to our users, you've got to pay us for the privilege."
They're literally like an Ad mafia.
I meant ad blocking in general, sorry.
> Brave is literally going "We don't think you should earn money from your visitors because of factors we decide, but we're going to show people on your website OUR ads because we picked them."
I don't see how this is any worse for the site than blocking all ads doing nothing else. At least as long as the users aren't confused, which they aren't, because the brave ads don't get put into the page.
If ublock cost money to use, would that be a scam?
If you tell me that Google/Firefox share their revenue with users and their ads don't collect personal data, I'll be rushing back to it.
There are some people however who do see the benefit of trading (directly or indirectly) their attention for services and products. These people should be able to do it without having to give away their privacy as well.
The thing is: we have two different business models. On both of them, ads are a reality. But one of them they are (1) opt-in, (2) private and (3) still give the user the power to "vote with their wallet", even if there is no money directly involved. The other is what we have: Surveillance Capitalism, big players exploiting user data and a total misalignment between producers and consumers. To me it seems pretty obvious which one is better and which one I'd support.