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Comment by NayamAmarshe | Hacker News Reader

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NayamAmarshe

A few things:

- It was a URL auto-suggestion bug.

- It was fixed in a day after release.

- The PR is on GitHub, this isn't a closed source browser.

- The bug appeared when Brave was like a few months old.

- The URLs that were being overwritten were only a few crypto exchange websites that partnered with Brave. The affiliate URL was supposed to be a suggestion but the bug made it overwrite the URL.

- The affiliate program was shutdown right after the PR was merged.

- Nothing of that sort happened again.

- Even the CEO apologized for an issue that was blown way out of proportions.

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> The URLs that were being overwritten were only a few crypto exchange websites that partnered with Brave. The affiliate URL was supposed to be a suggestion but the bug made it overwrite the URL.

I'm sure the outcry from folks who recognized this was happening did not have anything to do with the affiliate program being canned and this 'bug' being patched ASAP. It's quite an egregious thing for a browser to screw up. That kind of trust can't be bought back by saying "Nothing of that sort happened again", because now that statement is permanently "Nothing of that sort happened again...yet" because that trust is gone.

If this issue wasn't "blown way out of proportions", one can only theorize how how long this bug would have stayed. The way I see it, the CEO apologizing is basically an apology that they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

and yet everybody seems fine with advertisements in the address bar on Firefox, Chrome, Edge and other browsers.

Brave is the only mainstream browser right now that is not serving ads in the address bar. So before anybody has a problem with a bug that was fixed a couple of years back, they should be talking about their favorite bug-free browser.

I am not here to engage in whataboutisms. This was my critique on Brave, not my critique on every other browser. Do you work for Brave? Otherwise, I am unsure why you are being this defensive.

Thats the joke, they changed the browser to harm the user and help the business. You and them have the gumption to act like wei isnt the same thing they've been shipping.

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