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.

But the status quo of "Put tons of work producing content and hope that youtube doesn't demonetize, because then my patreon links get deleted." is also pretty fucked.

I am just glad somebody is trying to fix content monetization online without taking 30% for, what, handling payments?

Well, in all honesty, youtube does a lot more than "handle payments" - it actually serves those videos, it finds advertisers and collects money, matches content with ads.

You can argue how well it does the job (especially at the last bullet point) but it should be obvious that it does do in fact more than just "collect money".