https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
So they did intend to put affiliate links into suggestions, and the bug was that it was accidentally applied to autocomplete in the URL bar based on the first suggestion.
I think the original intention was shady enough. It's good that they changed direction on this, but the damage on their reputation is well justified in my opinion.
and I fail to see how is that a 'threat to privacy' or something so outrageous that people are still holding a grudge after years.
Firstly, the feature was off by default, so that those who wanted to support Brave could enable it.
Secondly, the affiliate thing was only supposed to suggest the link and not replace it. Hence, the 'bug'.
Thirdly, this was not a privacy risk in any way. The affiliate link were only suggested for a few crypto websites and nothing else.
Fourthly, the bug was fixed in day. Years ago. Affiliate thing was shut down instantly and since then, nothing of that sort has been tried by Brave.
> I think the original intention was shady enough
Then I guess Firefox providing Google search as default, without asking you is shady too? or Firefox installing a whole extension for Mr.Robot without asking its users was shady too? what about Pocket? Featuring articles from partners.
I still don't see the outrage.
From the same Brave response:
> We have already fixed the issue in Brave’s open source on GitHub and in the Brave Nightly, Beta, and Developer release channels, as well as in the Stable (1.9.80) release of our desktop browser that just went live, by changing the “Show Brave suggested sites in autocomplete suggestions” setting’s default to “off”.
So no, unless I read it wrong, it was not off by default.
> Then I guess Firefox providing Google search as default, without asking you is shady too? or Firefox installing a whole extension for Mr.Robot without asking its users was shady too? what about Pocket? Featuring articles from partners.
Yes, Firefox also did a lot of shady stuff. Also mistakes of Mozilla doesn't absolve Brave from their own mistakes.
Google search being the default in Firefox is blatantly obvious, they don't try to hide it. Compare it to the affiliate link suggestion screenshot:
https://brave.com/static-assets/images/optimized/referral-co...
Yeah, there is absolutely no indication that this is an affiliate link suggested by Brave. It was clearly meant to fly under the radar.
There might be no privacy concerns here, but I still think this is a bit shady.
I wrote it wrong. The feature was 'turned' off by default after that bug.
> Compare it to the affiliate link suggestion screenshot:
Suggestion is not what's wrong. The suggestion replacing the URL was what was wrong.
> It was clearly meant to fly under the radar.
Just like how the rest of the things like Brave News, Brave Talk or Brave Search do. I don't see an issue here? They don't force a lot of stuff in your face, it's evident to anyone who uses the browser. They keep most things off by default, that's what their strategy has become.
When it was not the case (when the browser was like 5 months old), it was changed. I don't see why people are still holding it against them?
> There might be no privacy concerns here, but I still think this is a bit shady.
I don't think it was shady because, as discussed, it was a bug that was acknowledged by them, and they not only removed the affiliate links but also turned the auto-suggest feature off by default. https://github.com/brave/brave-core/commit/e8fdde70a3ac2c25e...
Now, it's up to your interpretation to classify this as shady or not, but I personally don't think this was as big of a deal. People still holding on to it is the reason I cannot take these comments seriously. Edge and Chrome with all that spyware are most HN users' favorite browsers.