Brave expands Basic Attention Token platform to YouTube

(disclosure, I work at google, and previously at YouTube)

This allows a user to donate to a content creator even if that creator doesn't have any way to get access the donations. That is, until youtubers start registering themselves in the payment tool, this is essentially watching someone's video, and then throwing money into a hole.

With other patronage systems, like patreon, you cannot donate money until the creator has an account. To me, that feels super sketch.

Edit: It reminded me to go and check my old bitcointip and altcointip accounts on reddit, on which I apparently had combined closed to $30 in BTC at today's prices, but which have both been shuttered and are now inaccessible. That's not promising.

The money doesn't go "into a hole". The funds are saved and a creator can retrieve them at any time once they sign up for an account: https://brave.com/publishers/#getverified Basically, it's their money, and whether they decide to withdraw it or not is entirely up to them.

IMO this is the right way to do it because it solves the chicken and egg problem that would normally exist with a universal funding method like this. Users don't have to worry about what payment platforms their favorite creators support; they can just browse the web like normal and the platform takes care of the rest.

It's thrown into a hole in exactly the same way that my $30 I tipped btc is not mine, because I never got it out of the system.

Edit: I said it better in response to a sibling of yours: I think it's unethical for a platform to accept payment on my behalf without my permission.

It's thrown into an account that the creator can retrieve at anytime. A hole incorrectly insinuates it's never retrievable. This is a good way to get away from Googles monetization handcuffs.

See my edit, if you didn't already, but there exist services that already do that.

The asymmetry created by this kind of "pay me without my permission" means that someone providing a service now has to do a lot of extra work if they want to get paid, whereas a user who wants to pay someone doesn't. That's not a good system if your goal is really to get money to creators.

> someone providing a service now has to do a lot of extra work if they want to get paid, whereas a user who wants to pay someone doesn't

Exactly. This system makes things easier on users at the expense of making it harder on creators. I think that's kinda the point though.

If your funding method relies on consumers essentially donating their money to you, it's extremely important to make that experience as seamless for them as possible. Patreon is great, but it does require users to go out of their way and make a conscious decision to fund _you_ specifically. That's a lot of extra effort that person has to go through just to give their money away to a random site they happened to visit for a couple hours that month.

With this system however the user just signs up for a single service _once_ and subscribes, and that's the full extent their involvement. The trade-off is that the content creator is now the one who has to go through the extra effort of setting up an account on this service, but unlike content consumers, the creator actually has an incentive to go through that process (free money) which makes it worthwhile for them.

>Exactly. This system makes things easier on users at the expense of making it harder on creators. I think that's kinda the point though.

And my point is that such a system is unsustainable, due to asymmetry of work.

Lets start with a few things that we can know are true:

1. In any system of patrons and artists, an artist will have more patrons than a patron has artists, or the system is unsustainable.

2. I could create a competitor to Brave, "Fearful", tomorrow. So could anyone else.

As a creator, its possible that every single patron of mine will pay me through a different service, I then need to register myself in all of them, and either manually, or via a middleman, convert the disparate currencies to my preferred one. But, because there are so many different payment methods, its likely that the long tail isn't worth my time to receive payment from. Systems that accept payment on behalf of someone else and require work on the part of that party to receive the payment create this loss.

On the other hand, even if every creator has their own payment platform, there's no loss. Patrons simply don't pay the long tail of the creators that they use, and instead only make payments to the ones they appreciate the most.

iow, asymmetry means that creator-focused services are the only ones that can be successful except for very niche groups. So, if your goal is to support blockchain tech, Brave is great. If on the other hand, your goal is to get paid by patrons, its not.

So your concern is the inefficiencies introduced by creators who never claim their cash?

If the tokens were automatically returned to the consumer after a period of, for example, 6 months or so, and redistributed to creators via the usual method, would that alleviate your concerns?

Some, although not all. My concern is that doing that shouldn't be possible if the platform is decentralized.

The token is an Ethereum token, so it's totally possible to do it in a decentralized way using a smart contract.