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Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

(twitter.com)
323 points plusCubed | 13 comments | 21 Dec 18 17:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.737s | source | bottom
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egypturnash ◴[21 Dec 18 19:55 UTC] No.18736059[source]▶
I just dug up info on how Brave’s contributions thing works and it feels like such a mess.

According to https://brave.com/publishers/

- once you have accumulated $100 in contributions they email “the webmaster at your site” and the owner of your domain according to the WHOIS. I assume this is “webmaster@domain.name”, which I sure don’t have set up on my personal site.

- you have to “check your balance frequently and transfer funds wherever you choose”, which suggests that there’s no way to just say “send my my balance every month” and forget about it.

This whole model totally breaks down when you remember that there’s a ton of independent creators who don’t have their own sites, but instead post stuff on another site. Is Brave going to realize that I’m following this particular person on YouTube, that person on Tumblr, this other person on Deviantart, etc, etc? And are they going to ping them or are they just gonna tell the people who own the site?

The page where you sign up to receive payments (https://publishers.basicattentiontoken.org) makes it sound like they understand YouTube accounts and nothing else, and as a creator whos interest in pivoting to video is nonexistent, screw that, I’ll stick with Patreon and it’s opt-in model that just transfers money into my bank account every month as long as I have patrons.

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1. brandnewlow ◴[21 Dec 18 20:40 UTC] No.18736428[source]▶
I work at Brave on the business team. This is helpful feedback.

Brave is a startup with a small team earnestly building a new thing that combines a browser with a tipping system, with creator tools, with ad blocking... it's ambitious!

As it's a new thing, describing it can be messy sometimes. We're always working to make our language better and clearer though. Thank you for letting us know it fell short for you.

To address a point:

We know there's a lot of creators on a lot of platforms. At the moment, we've built support for creator channels in the form of web sites, Youtube channels and Twitch channels. When I joined this past summer I had the same reaction. "What about Tumblr? What about Twitter?" Each new platform takes time to write support for and we have a long list of features requests. We'll get there!

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2. jonahhorowitz ◴[21 Dec 18 20:56 UTC] No.18736585[source]▶
Here's the deal. If you want what you're proposing to work - you need to copy the model that Google briefly used with Google Contributor.

Bid on the exchanges for the ads you want to block. Then serve cat pictures (or whatever). The creators will get paid through the existing payment infrastructure and you don't need to build an entirely parallel, opt-in system that will probably never gain enough traction to be worth using.

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3. Klathmon ◴[21 Dec 18 21:26 UTC] No.18736789[source]▶
I'm still amazed and saddened that the original Contributor didn't work out.

It was such a great concept that would work all the way from first introduction to a hypothetical future where everyone uses this and nobody sees ads.

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4. jonahhorowitz ◴[21 Dec 18 22:08 UTC] No.18737130{3}[source]▶
Agreed.

That said, it's better if it's someone other than Google doing it. Google only has access to bid on the Google exchanges, but a 3rd party can bid on AppNexus, private exchanges (WSJ), etc.

5. marcinzm ◴[21 Dec 18 22:54 UTC] No.18737432[source]▶
>Each new platform takes time to write support for and we have a long list of features requests. We'll get there!

And until you write that support do you still take tips and send them to the whois account holder of the domain? Or do you block tips?

6. smacktoward ◴[21 Dec 18 23:01 UTC] No.18737479[source]▶
The complaint is that you're soliciting donations in the names of specific individuals without their knowledge or consent.

Relative to that complaint:

> Brave is a startup

... is not relevant.

> with a small team

... is not relevant.

> earnestly

... is not relevant.

> building a new thing

... is not relevant.

> that combines a browser with a tipping system, with creator tools, with ad blocking

... is not relevant.

None of these things are relevant to the complaint being offered. It doesn't require a large team to not solicit money in other peoples' names. It doesn't require an established product to not solicit money in other peoples' names. It odesn't require checking off all the boxes on your feature TODO list to not solicit money in other peoples' names. All it requires is to not solicit money in other peoples' names.

7. bencollier49 ◴[21 Dec 18 23:24 UTC] No.18737631[source]▶
Have you addressed the GDPR issue? What is your legal basis for using someone's identity?
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8. mistrial9 ◴[22 Dec 18 00:33 UTC] No.18738025[source]▶
the statements from Brave people on this thread seem reasonable ; many inflammatory comments here do not seem reasonable
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9. klyrs ◴[22 Dec 18 04:22 UTC] No.18738890[source]▶
Sure, Brave's PR approach seems reasonable: act like you're confused and listening, but don't respond to anything resembling criticism.

But acting dumb and carrying on is an inflammatory action, when your actions are ethically bankrupt -- an inflamed response is warranted and quite reasonable in this situation.

10. donaltroddyn ◴[22 Dec 18 15:56 UTC] No.18741045[source]▶
I disagree completely. So far, both here and on Twitter, the core complaint, that donations are solicited in the name of people who have no relationship with Brave, and from whom Brave has no consent, has been completely ignored.

The fact is the original complainant, Tom Scott, and many others, find that practice abhorrent, and the response so far has been deflection or vague promises that the Brave team want to help content creators, whether they want the "help" or not.

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11. SheinhardtWigCo ◴[22 Dec 18 22:06 UTC] No.18742727[source]▶
Can you break down how user dollar contributions were disbursed in 2018? What percentage was paid out to websites and content creators; what percentage was paid into the user growth fund; and what percentage was taken by Brave as a fee?
12. brandnewlow ◴[23 Dec 18 04:39 UTC] No.18744471[source]▶
That was not our intention. We see how people could argue we were though so we're dropping creator images from our overlay that explains tipping to unverified creators. You can read about this and other changes we're rolling out here: https://brave.com/rewards-update/
13. brandnewlow ◴[23 Dec 18 04:40 UTC] No.18744474{3}[source]▶
We just posted up a list of changes going live tomorrow that hopefully address all the concerns listed in this thread: https://brave.com/rewards-update/

Thanks for your feedback.