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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 describe

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-attention-token-platform-to-youtube 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 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?

ecp9 8y ago
This is so weird, I keep meaning to check out the brave browser but knowing it's tied into cryptocoin nonsense drops my interest level to zero.
- rchaud 8y ago
  I agree, this is a terrible look for the company. They need to apologize, suspend the service and be honest with users about how this works, before announcing a reboot. That being said, I've been using Brave on Android since early 2017, and it's been great. I don't think the BAT stuff is in the mobile version, but I did see it on the desktop Windows version recently.
brandnewlow 8y ago
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.
- AnabeeKnox 8y ago
  Search on this page for the word "fraud". Here's what I'd do in your position: remove anything on the internet which personally identifies you as an employee of your company. Nobody knows what is going to happen next, but be prepared for it.
  - CryptoPunk 8y ago
    There is zero chance an employee is going to get in trouble because a browser company they worked for collected funds in an escrow account to be released in the event that an intended recipient signs up.
    - thinkmassive 8y ago
      Might want to hold off until we see what legal discovery turns up in chat logs, emails, etc
      - jacques_chester 8y ago
        Incidentally, a reminder: pre-emptively destroying records under the apprehension that you might be served with a lawsuit is A Bad Idea.
    - jblow 8y ago
      I would think twice about hiring someone if their previous place of work was a scam company, at least because it tells me something about that person's ethical compass.
    - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
      He calls himself VC, so he may be more liable than you think.
    - ubernostrum 8y ago
      There is a non-zero chance that a company in legal trouble will suddenly decide an employee wasn't authorized to speak on their behalf and so clearly misrepresent their perfectly legal and honest intentions, and throw that employee under a bus. Best thing to avoid that, as I said in another comment, is to quit and get a lawyer.
- detaro 8y ago
  I quote your own terms of service: For each Publisher URL receiving votes during a Calculation Period that is not a Brave Publisher by the end of that Calculation Period, the BAT corresponding to its votes will not be distributed at the end of that Calculation Period, and will instead be held in an Uphold omnibus wallet for no less than ninety (90) days thereafter. At that time, the undistributed BAT may be sent to Company’s user growth pool, which is a pool of BAT that Company administers to incentivize use of the Platform [..] Publisher Contributions will be calculated solely based on our accounting. Solely as a cost-recovery measure, we may allocate a certain amount of BAT contributed by Brave Contributors each Calculation Period toward our reasonable expenses incurred in facilitating Publisher Contributions. (https://basicattentiontoken.org/contributor-terms-of-service/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/contributor-terms-of-service... section 4 "contributions") Sounds very much like "we can redirect this from escrow if we want to".
  - uberman 8y ago
    Sounds very clearly like "scam" as well!
    - detaro 8y ago
      To be fair, it's entirely possible they're not actually making use of that, or only in very limited circumstances, and it's less "how can we trick people" and more "we didn't really think about what that looks like, because we know we are the good guys", and given their anonymous design they need some out if they don't want to be stuck responsible for funds for eternity. If it's the latter, they're now finding out that especially in combination with the deceptive UI it really looks bad. And even without the clause, if they truly held it in escrow forever, taking money unasked without a way of returning it, is still a bad thing. Given this isn't the first "support creators" app doing this and getting publicly shamed for it, I have no idea how that went through.
      - brandnewlow 8y ago
        That's a pretty accurate read on things. We've never actually recycled any funds and also hadn't considered that many creators would interpret our UI/UX as "solicitation" vs. "letting a user do a thing they want to do in our browser." In any event, the confusion is our fault and we're working on updating the UI and language to be clear based on all the feedback we've gotten.
- rchaud 8y ago
  Tom Scott did not explicitly sign up for this service. Brave is not even telling users that Tom Scott is not signed up, and Brave has no automated way of contacting him to let him know that someone donated. The system is engineered to move the money towards Brave, with neither the benefactor nor the beneficiary being aware of that. How is that ethical?
  - ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
    I was interested in Brave after hearing it mentioned here a fair bit, for innovating new ways for creators to get paid... after this story though? Knowing they effectively scam users out of money under the pretense of it really being the creator? That's fraud as far as I'm concerned (maybe not legally, but to me it's a con, and scummy). Interest has dropped to 0, and they go to my shitlist with all the other crytpo-scam stuff prevalent these days. Edit: Now that I've seen the screenshots of just how blatantly Brave pretends the creator has a profile and actively set this up, this is absolutely fraud. From further down in the comments of OPs original link: https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1076221401353207808 https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1076221401353207808
    - brandnewlow 8y ago
      We agree the UI in that screenshot tells the wrong story. It doesn't represent what we're trying to do so we're shipping a bunch of changes tomorrow that we hope will fix things: https://brave.com/rewards-update/ https://brave.com/rewards-update/ We'd love another shot at winning your interest. Thanks for caring about finding new ways to get creators paid.
  - throwaway12231 8y ago
    I don't want to muddle into the legal discussion, but I would like to add that I've been a happy Brave user for several months and have never felt any misunderstanding about where my tips are going. It is very clear to me who is a -verified- publisher and who isn't one. It was also made clear to me that unverified publishers were getting their tips stored in escrow as a carrot to entice them to enroll. Since I obviously like this model as a Brave user, I am also pleased with this approach. I'm kind of confused as to why everyone here is up in arms. The UI denotes whether a publisher is verified or not. I never believed that Brave was trying to mislead me to where my donations were going. This feels like a simple misunderstanding.
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- Doctor_Fegg 8y ago
  > IANAL In that case, get your lawyer to google “passing off”. Just because a photo is publically gettable doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to do what the hell you want with it.
- asadotzler 8y ago
  Every escrow I've ever come across had the agreement of both parties. This one does not.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > 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.

ecp9 8y ago

This is so weird, I keep meaning to check out the brave browser but knowing it's tied into cryptocoin nonsense drops my interest level to zero.

rchaud 8y ago
I agree, this is a terrible look for the company. They need to apologize, suspend the service and be honest with users about how this works, before announcing a reboot. That being said, I've been using Brave on Android since early 2017, and it's been great. I don't think the BAT stuff is in the mobile version, but I did see it on the desktop Windows version recently.

brandnewlow 8y ago

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.

AnabeeKnox 8y ago
Search on this page for the word "fraud". Here's what I'd do in your position: remove anything on the internet which personally identifies you as an employee of your company. Nobody knows what is going to happen next, but be prepared for it.
- CryptoPunk 8y ago
  There is zero chance an employee is going to get in trouble because a browser company they worked for collected funds in an escrow account to be released in the event that an intended recipient signs up.
  - thinkmassive 8y ago
    Might want to hold off until we see what legal discovery turns up in chat logs, emails, etc
    - jacques_chester 8y ago
      Incidentally, a reminder: pre-emptively destroying records under the apprehension that you might be served with a lawsuit is A Bad Idea.
  - jblow 8y ago
    I would think twice about hiring someone if their previous place of work was a scam company, at least because it tells me something about that person's ethical compass.
  - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
    He calls himself VC, so he may be more liable than you think.
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    There is a non-zero chance that a company in legal trouble will suddenly decide an employee wasn't authorized to speak on their behalf and so clearly misrepresent their perfectly legal and honest intentions, and throw that employee under a bus. Best thing to avoid that, as I said in another comment, is to quit and get a lawyer.
detaro 8y ago
I quote your own terms of service: For each Publisher URL receiving votes during a Calculation Period that is not a Brave Publisher by the end of that Calculation Period, the BAT corresponding to its votes will not be distributed at the end of that Calculation Period, and will instead be held in an Uphold omnibus wallet for no less than ninety (90) days thereafter. At that time, the undistributed BAT may be sent to Company’s user growth pool, which is a pool of BAT that Company administers to incentivize use of the Platform [..] Publisher Contributions will be calculated solely based on our accounting. Solely as a cost-recovery measure, we may allocate a certain amount of BAT contributed by Brave Contributors each Calculation Period toward our reasonable expenses incurred in facilitating Publisher Contributions. (https://basicattentiontoken.org/contributor-terms-of-service/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/contributor-terms-of-service... section 4 "contributions") Sounds very much like "we can redirect this from escrow if we want to".
- uberman 8y ago
  Sounds very clearly like "scam" as well!
  - detaro 8y ago
    To be fair, it's entirely possible they're not actually making use of that, or only in very limited circumstances, and it's less "how can we trick people" and more "we didn't really think about what that looks like, because we know we are the good guys", and given their anonymous design they need some out if they don't want to be stuck responsible for funds for eternity. If it's the latter, they're now finding out that especially in combination with the deceptive UI it really looks bad. And even without the clause, if they truly held it in escrow forever, taking money unasked without a way of returning it, is still a bad thing. Given this isn't the first "support creators" app doing this and getting publicly shamed for it, I have no idea how that went through.
    - brandnewlow 8y ago
      That's a pretty accurate read on things. We've never actually recycled any funds and also hadn't considered that many creators would interpret our UI/UX as "solicitation" vs. "letting a user do a thing they want to do in our browser." In any event, the confusion is our fault and we're working on updating the UI and language to be clear based on all the feedback we've gotten.
rchaud 8y ago
Tom Scott did not explicitly sign up for this service. Brave is not even telling users that Tom Scott is not signed up, and Brave has no automated way of contacting him to let him know that someone donated. The system is engineered to move the money towards Brave, with neither the benefactor nor the beneficiary being aware of that. How is that ethical?
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  I was interested in Brave after hearing it mentioned here a fair bit, for innovating new ways for creators to get paid... after this story though? Knowing they effectively scam users out of money under the pretense of it really being the creator? That's fraud as far as I'm concerned (maybe not legally, but to me it's a con, and scummy). Interest has dropped to 0, and they go to my shitlist with all the other crytpo-scam stuff prevalent these days. Edit: Now that I've seen the screenshots of just how blatantly Brave pretends the creator has a profile and actively set this up, this is absolutely fraud. From further down in the comments of OPs original link: https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1076221401353207808 https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1076221401353207808
  - brandnewlow 8y ago
    We agree the UI in that screenshot tells the wrong story. It doesn't represent what we're trying to do so we're shipping a bunch of changes tomorrow that we hope will fix things: https://brave.com/rewards-update/ https://brave.com/rewards-update/ We'd love another shot at winning your interest. Thanks for caring about finding new ways to get creators paid.
- throwaway12231 8y ago
  I don't want to muddle into the legal discussion, but I would like to add that I've been a happy Brave user for several months and have never felt any misunderstanding about where my tips are going. It is very clear to me who is a -verified- publisher and who isn't one. It was also made clear to me that unverified publishers were getting their tips stored in escrow as a carrot to entice them to enroll. Since I obviously like this model as a Brave user, I am also pleased with this approach. I'm kind of confused as to why everyone here is up in arms. The UI denotes whether a publisher is verified or not. I never believed that Brave was trying to mislead me to where my donations were going. This feels like a simple misunderstanding.
deleted 8y ago
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deleted 8y ago
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Doctor_Fegg 8y ago
> IANAL In that case, get your lawyer to google “passing off”. Just because a photo is publically gettable doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to do what the hell you want with it.
asadotzler 8y ago
Every escrow I've ever come across had the agreement of both parties. This one does not.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> 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.