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Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

(twitter.com)
323 points plusCubed | 1 comments | 21 Dec 18 17:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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plusCubed ◴[21 Dec 18 18:03 UTC] No.18735107[source]▶
Edit: title was changed, I am not Tom Scott

I am not too familiar with how Brave and BAT (Brave Attention Token), so please chime in. Here's how Brave describes the BAT YouTube donations system: https://basicattentiontoken.org/brave-expands-basic-attentio...

From my understanding, users of the Brave Browser select which YouTubers to donate to, but they don't know whether the channels have opted in to receive donations? What does Brave do with unclaimed donations? Someone pointed out this concern in an earlier submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15730661

Furthermore, OP said that they might not be following GDPR due to collection of YouTuber data (to assign donations). IANAL, anyone know how compliant this is?

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brandnewlow ◴[21 Dec 18 20:55 UTC] No.18736561[source]▶
I work at Brave. Tips to un-verified publishers sit in escrow for the creator to claim.

IANAL but GDPR refers to personal data collected from users. The only "Youtuber data" being "used" here is publicly gettable data from the Youtuber's channel.

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1. dragonwriter ◴[22 Dec 18 19:10 UTC] No.18741982[source]▶
> IANAL but GDPR refers to personal data collected from users.

No, it addresses the collection and processing of personal data no matter where it is collected from.

> The only "Youtuber data" being "used" here is publicly gettable data from the Youtuber's channel.

Which is personal data that YouTube has collected or created associated with services they are providing to the user. They are responsible for their collection and use of it, but that doesn't authorize third-party collection and use of it under the GDPR. Particularly, the GDPR definition of personal data subject to the rules it imposes does not exclude information which is “publicly gettable” from some other party than the subject.