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The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

592 points by davidgerard 6y ago

tyingq 6y ago
I would think the affiliate programs wouldn't like this either. The browser isn't doing anything to drive traffic. It's just taking credit for traffic that was coming already.
- davidgerard 6y ago
  They seem to have explicit deals with Binance and Coinbase - don't know about Ledger or Trezor.
- javajosh 6y ago
  Good point. Maybe brave should make affiliate-able links blink and/or respond to clicks in a wider area? (Just to be clear: this is satire. Please don't do this.)
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Don't give him ideas.
- jfoster 6y ago
  They theoretically could do things to drive traffic. For example, if they surface the domain sooner than they might surface other domains, or change the way the URL is displayed. Eg. User types "B" and whilst "bbc.co.uk" might be very popular, Brave could instead surface the less popular "binance.com" ahead of BBC, and potentially give it a different visual treatment, too. I don't use Brave, so I'm not sure whether they do either of these things, though.
oftenwrong 6y ago
How could they not realise this would turn away their target audience?
- rsynnott 6y ago
  What IS their target audience, though? I always vaguely thought it was the crypto people, who as a community are quite accepting of weird slightly shady stuff. I could never really figure out who this product was for tho.
  - RandomBacon 6y ago
    People that are too lazy to install add-ons or that want some pocket change in tokens? The shills say "privacy", but it's not any better than Firefox with add-ons (and worse because using it adds to the Chromium ecosystem which Google ultimately controls), and you have to KYC if you want to withdraw the tokens.
arez 6y ago
You have become the very thing you swore to destroy!
- Koshkin 6y ago
  Yeah, that’s the thing with trust: you shouldn’t.
phnofive 6y ago
> However, Eich is very sorry that Brave got caught — again — and something will be changed in some manner to stop this behaviour, or at least obscure it. No surprise there. > There is no good reason to use Brave. Use Chromium — the open-source core of Chrome — with the uBlock Origin ad blocker [...] or use Firefox with uBlock Origin — ‘cos it blocks more ads than the Chromium framework will let anything block. Is this true? I assumed the functionality would be the same.
- davidgerard 6y ago
  Nope! I routinely run Firefox and Chromium, both with uBO on default settings - and Google results on Chromium always have three ad-link results inserted at the top, lazy late-loading via JavaScript. Google know what they're doing there.
  - drannex 6y ago
    You need to install some filters then! I have all the top featured ones installed and haven't seen a single advertisement on Google (which I only use <20% of the time, DDG gets the rest).
- GraemeL 6y ago
  The Firefox version has the ability to block third party scripts masked as first party ones through the use of CNAMEs. Chrome doesn't expose APIs to let extensions do it.
  - close04 6y ago
    Also this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 > The blocking ability of the webRequest API is still deprecated, and Google Chrome's limited matching algorithm will be the only one possible, and with limits dictated by Google employees. Firefox + uBO + uMatrix will block everything you can reasonably block without making your internet life miserable in the other extreme (although uMatrix can be a pain sometimes).
sergiotapia 6y ago
I'm going to have to switch browser AGAIN? Dammit. Is Opera safe or what shady shit have they done? I haven't used Opera since Opera back in 2006. God I miss the Presto engine and dragonfly. Can I go back to them or they doing shady stuff?
- kick 6y ago
  Opera is still proprietary, and, uh, also they got caught doing some stuff involving predatory short-term loans to the impoverished in African countries, not to mention their CEO was also involved in an entirely different Chinese conglomerate that was also involved with fraud and some lending thing. Oh yeah and if you haven't used it since 2006: Opera is Chromium now, and the company behind it got sold a time or two.
  - sergiotapia 6y ago
    what the fuck, whats happening in the tech scene :( what should I use if I _dont_ want to be in the botnet or scammed and outside of google's mesh
    - coryrc 6y ago
      Firefox, like always.
    - superkuh 6y ago
      I used Opera from 5 to 12, then Firefox till v37, and it's been Pale Moon ever since. Check out the latest release notes. I know I'm not the only one that likes things such as, >Removed more telemetry code >Removed the in-browser speech recognition engine and API >Removed support for the obsolete and unmaintained NVidia 3DVision stereoscopic interface. Palemoon is Firefox if it were still Firefox instead of feature-for-feature chrome copy for watching encrypted netflix.
      - Shared404 6y ago
        I would love to be able to use Palemoon, but I just can't get over the fact that it's a single main developer trying to maintain an entire web browser. That seems like a security nightmare waiting to happen. If I'm wrong about this, please let me know, I really like the idea.
buboard 6y ago
bit overblown. It's not all "links", they did the redirect for the autocomplete of "binance.us" and they are correcting it. https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
  It's not just "binance.us", it's common terms like "bitcoin", "btc", "ltc", "eth", etc. https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/components/omnibox/browser/suggested_sites_provider_data.cc https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/components/o... Eich's tweet worsens things as it omits that fact. I see there is already a user submitted PR to remove this code: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/5759/files https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/5759/files We'll see how that goes.
  - duskwuff 6y ago
    Wow... that looks to me like they're injecting their affiliate code to some URLs which the user would have to type in manually, like "binance.com", "coinbase.com/join", or "trezor.io/product/trezor-one-metallic". That's affiliate fraud -- Brave is not responsible for referring the user to those URLs, so it's inappropriate for them to claim credit for the referral. I'd be shocked if the parties involved didn't terminate Brave's affiliate account upon discovering this.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- weare138 6y ago
  >and they are correcting it. Only after getting caught. It's not like you can 'accidentally' write a bunch of code and push it out.
  - skissane 6y ago
    He says "We are a Binance affiliate, we refer users via the opt-in trading widget on the new tab page, but autocomplete should not add any code." Charitable interpretation: It is possible that he told the development team to add the affiliate code on the new tab page, and someone in the development team decided to add it to the autocomplete code as well, without him realising. I've certainly seen it happen when developers are told to do X and then they decide "oh since we are doing X we should do Y too". It isn't even always a bad thing, but sure sometimes it is. Of course, the charitable interpretation could be wrong. Maybe he is actually being deceitful here. But, I prefer to assume the best of people rather than the worst.
this_user 6y ago
I'm surprised people are surprised by this. Brave have said from the beginning that this is how their business model works. What I'm even more surprised about is that Brave has gotten any traction at all, as there is really no reason to use it instead of a normal browser with regular ad blockers.
- Shank 6y ago
  > Brave have said from the beginning that this is how their business model works. This sounded like a pretty surprising claim. I looked at the terms of use (https://brave.com/terms-of-use/ https://brave.com/terms-of-use/) and the privacy policy for the browser (https://brave.com/privacy/ https://brave.com/privacy/) and I wasn't able to find any reference to the notion of automatically inserting affiliate or referral links. Do you have a more specific source on this? I'm really curious about when and how this has been communicated. I'm not trying to accuse you of anything, I just want to make sure I'm understanding the situation correctly.
  - toyg 6y ago
    The substance of their business model has always been "we fight advertisers because money should flow to websites through us". They changed actual terms a few times when called up on their tactics being shady, but that's always been the end goal. In that framework, hijacking referral links is par for the course. I don't blame them - a man's gotta eat, and they're not doing anything illegal or dangerous - but I've always found very curious that some people actually believe using Brave might be an "ethical" choice. It just isn't, it's simply a better mousetrap.
    - SahAssar 6y ago
      > they're not doing anything illegal or dangerous The words "dishonest" and "rent-seeking" come to mind. Also, it seems that using affiliate links without disclosure might actually be illegal.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
drummer 6y ago
They began sucking pretty fast. Good riddance.
meerita 6y ago
Being a happy Firefox user and watching all the browser drama from the backyard. I still don't understand why people uses Chrome or Chrome variants claiming privacy things.
- mixedCase 6y ago
  Firefox's performance on Linux is markedly worse than Chrome's.
  - 8192kjshad09- 6y ago
    How ironic
  - rpdillon 6y ago
    This has never been my experience, FWIW.
  - washadjeffmad 6y ago
    You may need to manually tune your configs. Often, people just forget to enable HW acceleration. Personally, Chromium crashes too often to rely on it.
- drannex 6y ago
  Agreed, I haven't seen or heard anything off kilter with Firefox in a very very long time and they have always been on the forefront of privacy and development features.
  - toyg 6y ago
    Mozilla make their fair share of fuckups and bad moves, but they're still on a different level from these niche Chromium derivatives that invariably come with ugly business models attached.
  - ethagnawl 6y ago
    Well, there was the DNS-over-HTTPS thing and the Mr. Robot thing, and the Pocket thing and ... they're not perfect. However, I've been using Firefox as my primary browser for about five years and have been very happy with it -- especially post Quantum. I can't even remember the last time I've had to switch to Chromium because something wasn't working.
gnicholas 6y ago
Bummer! I got the Tracking Token Stripper [1] to help remove stuff like this. Wonder what the result is if I use this and Brave — which one wins? 1: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tracking-token-stripper/kcpnkledgcbobhkgimpbmejgockkplob?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tracking-token-str...
heavyset_go 6y ago
It's as if Brave is performance art put on by Mozilla's advertising department.
- chrisjarvis 6y ago
  he updated the article and quoted you in it :D
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Nice catch, wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
FillardMillmore 6y ago
I am an enthusiastic Brave user - but seeing stories like these make me wonder if I'd be better off configuring Firefox to be more secure/private and using that. As a privacy and transparency advocate, it disappoints me to see Brave fail to pass the test, especially considering that privacy and transparency are supposed to be the browser's MO.
- DagAgren 6y ago
  Yes, you would be much better off doing that.
- SahAssar 6y ago
  What makes you think brave is better for privacy and transparency in the first place? Everything I've seen about brave sounds like something that can be done better with extensions within firefox, just with some added crypto/privacy hype BS added on top.
  - fastball 6y ago
    The fact that it is built-in makes me think the browser vendor (Brave) cares more about this issue. Does that not seem like a reasonable assumption? Presumably it's not built-in to Firefox because if it was, Google might pull the lucrative default search engine deal that they have.
- luxurytent 6y ago
  Not too difficult to configure Firefox imo. My recommendations on plugins: * HTTPS Everywhere: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-everywhere/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-everywh... * DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-for-firefox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-fo... * uBlock Origin Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
  - Ayesh 6y ago
dkdk8283 6y ago
Brave has to pay salaries - I suppose this is better than selling user data. Chrome is subsidized by search and Firefox gets money from Google. The revenue model for browsers is fucked up.
- slater 6y ago
  Countdown till some Chromium-based browser pops up with adblock enabled, but a $10/mo usage fee? (i jinxed it, didn't i)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Sherl 6y ago
    fuckin linux is free where the entire business lives serving trillions of dollars. $10/mo for a web browser? guess its time for another FOSS on browsers this time.
    - slater 6y ago
      So I take it you won't be signing up for Adobe® CloudBrowser™ any time soon...?
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  Ironically there’s only one browser with a sane business model and it’s Safari. You have to buy an Apple product to use it. Simple. That’s probably why it’s the only mainstream browser, outside of obscure open source browsers like Falkon and Gnome Web, that doesn’t have any built-in ties to third party services.
  - selykg 6y ago
    I think Apple still get revenue from Google (and probably Bing?) searches. Could be wrong but I thought I remember details about Google paying Apple for this. But it was years ago I last seen it Edit: quick search for “safari google search revenue” got me a few links from prior years about Google paying to be the default search engine. Last mention was 2019 so who knows how long that contract is or whatever
Nextgrid 6y ago
Brave's whole business model is flawed, even ignoring shenanigans like this. They claim they want to fix everything wrong with today's web (annoying and privacy-invasive ads, etc) by replacing them their own ads backed by a shitty cryptocurrency. While this might work in the short term while the browser is niche, they will have no choice but to deploy the same techniques once it goes mainstream and ad fraud goes up, removing their only selling point. The only real solution here is to just admit that view-based or click-based advertising on the web is flawed (and will always be vulnerable to fraud) and get rid of it, replacing it with time-based advertising where you pay for an ad to stay up for a certain period of time regardless of how many clicks or views it gets, making it immune to fraud and reducing the need for privacy-violating analytics because the only analytic that matters is "do we make more money?". Of course, this real solution wouldn't allow opportunistic middlemen to make money out of thin air, so that's why we have Brave instead.
- anderber 6y ago
  > by replacing them their own ads backed by a shitty cryptocurrency This is not true at all, and it has been talked enough here but I figured I'd explain it again. The Brave ads are opt-in, for people who would like to earn "shitty" cryptocurrency by clicking on them. They are fixing the ad issue by blocking the ads and letting you "pay" the sites with BAT tokens. This can be done by a one-time donation or automatically each month (based on your attention). Reason for the Basic Attention Token name.
  - lakeWater 6y ago
    Thought I should point out you receive BAT for viewing the notifications. Not for clicking on them. https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Brave-Ads-FAQ https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Bra...
CamperBob2 6y ago
When someone tells you who he is [1], believe him. [1] https://readwrite.com/2014/03/28/brendan-eich-mozilla-ceo-proposition-8/ https://readwrite.com/2014/03/28/brendan-eich-mozilla-ceo-pr...
deleted 6y ago
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- warranty 6y ago
  That is discrimination and you should be ashamed of it.
srich36 6y ago
This is similar to when Pinterest did this back in 2012 and very quickly made large amounts of money but were crushed by public opinion and quickly shut the practice down. It’ll be interesting to see how Brave responds. 1. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2012/2/8/2783807/pintrest-skimming-affiliate-links https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...
- lexs 6y ago
  Ironic that you posted an AMP link https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2012/2/8/2783807/pintrest-skimming-affiliate-links https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2012/2/8/2783807/pintr...
  - llacb47 6y ago
    That's still an AMP link
    - greenyoda 6y ago
      Non-AMP link: https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/8/2783807/pintrest-skimming-affiliate-links https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/8/2783807/pintrest-skimming-...
- drannex 6y ago
  Tumblr implemented this about two years ago, not sure on revenue but I imagine it's been very effective for them. (You can disable this for your personal blog posts in settings)
thezdroids 6y ago
I support businesses that don't support bigotry toward me- their lead dev @jonathansampson is a vocal supporter of Trump. Nah I’m good.
- jccalhoun 6y ago
  Ugh. Between him and Eich's past with opposing the legalization of gay marriage, I think I'll stay clear of brave.
  - thezdroids 6y ago
    I completely forget about Eich’s antigay stance! Thank you for reminding me: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536
- chance_state 6y ago
  You're going to be in for a rude awakening when you discover that not every FAANG engineer hates Trump too. I guess you have the option of giving up all those products and services too.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - thezdroids 6y ago
    If FAANG leadership was out there tweeting pro Trump rhetoric, I would.
gridlockd 6y ago
This is a nothingburger. Brave adds its own referrer code to a handful of crypto-related websites, if you type them into the address bar. It doesn't modify other affiliate links, as far as I can tell.
jccalhoun 6y ago
I seem to collect browsers like some people collect pokemon. Right now I am typing this in firefox and have twitch open in chrome in my second monitor. I use Edge for work accounts, Waterfox for times when I want to use a couple old addons that were never ported over, and opera and vivaldi around just to see how they measure up.
Havoc 6y ago
Wow. They appear to have a death wish. If your entire raison d'etre is privacy and clear stated model then one covert shady move like this can wreck trust irrevocably. If they had just declared that their model includes inserting affiliate codes then that would all be fine. The codes aren't the issue here its a violation of trust. If I'm OK with mystery monetization stuff happening behind the scenes I'd be using Chrome.
- Kye 6y ago
  I think the privacy angle was just a side-benefit for people who mainly cared about crypto currency. I don't see how someone could care about privacy and use a browser funded in part by the Palantir guy. If someone cared that much about privacy, they would look into the funding, and run screaming from that.
- fastball 6y ago
  Except mystery monetization is a pre-req for heavily maintained software that you don't pay for. I'd rather the mystery be "affiliate deals" than "selling my data". Mozilla's mystery monetization is getting paid lotsa dollars to make Google the default search engine in Firefox. And Google can only afford that because of ads. If Firefox integrated ad-blocking by default like Brave did, Google might be inclined to pull that deal, as it is paid for with ads. I trust the company with that conflict of interest less than I trust Brave.
  - Havoc 6y ago
    Very valid point :)
christophilus 6y ago
Typing this on Brave for iOS. What is the best browser for iOS from a privacy standpoint? Firefox doesn’t have uBlock Origin. I don’t trust Microsoft Edge or Chrome. What do you suggest?
- Nightshaxx 6y ago
  Um Firefox not only has uBlock origin, it's way better than Chrome's version. FF is definitely way better.
  - RandomBacon 6y ago
    Apple doesn't let it's users have the freedom to install add-ons.
    - cerberusss 6y ago
      I use Firefox on iOS, in combination with ad blocking via NextDNS. Works pretty good.
    - mukuz 6y ago
      You can install Firefox Focus[1] on iOS and enable it as a content blocker in safari settings. It works really well as an ad-blocker. [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-focus-privacy-browser/id1055677337 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-focus-privacy-browser/...
  - Proven 6y ago
    iOS, FFS
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  Safari, as it has a built in cross-site tracking blocker. Optionally add an ad-blocker, such as AdGuard.
oldgregg 6y ago
Given the Total Information Surviellance from Google this is relatively a non-issue. Nearly anything that meaningfully restrains Google is a net good at this point. Getting bent over this is like people who dismiss Signal for not having perfect e2e- purists that are oblivious to what is actually happening in the world.
throw2308230492 6y ago
This article is highly inflammatory. These are not random websites they are hijacking for affiliate money like the article purports. These are all advertisers / partners that appear on the new tab landing page when you sign up for Brave rewards...This is affiliate tracking for advertisements baked into the browser itself not some nefarious scheme to skim off someones else's traffic.
- egypturnash 6y ago
  This is not on the new tab page, this is hijacking links typed directly into the address bar. “If you’re using Brave and try to go to the Binance crypto exchange, Brave hijacks the Binance link you typed in, and autofills with its own affiliate code.” There’s an animated screen capture of this happening here: https://twitter.com/cryptonator1337/status/1269201480105578496 https://twitter.com/cryptonator1337/status/12692014801055784...
  - secr3t0 6y ago
    Hate it when people do this. Have you actually even tried it ? It just shows the referral link suggestion at the top, it doesn't hijack the link you typed in. You're still free to open the original link. Of course the twitter post cleverly hides this by hiding the list of suggestions. Now we have this long flaming thread for something that's totally normal and perfectly acceptable.
    - RandomBacon 6y ago
      Firefox: type in Binance.us and immediately press enter - no referral code. Chrome: type in Binance.us and immediately press enter - no referral code. Brave: type in Binance.us and immediately press enter - yes referral code.
      - lakeWater 6y ago
        Looks like their plan for resolving the outrage is an opt-in setting. https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269404443818119168 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269404443818119168
davidgerard 6y ago
OP here. Brendan Eich is now publicly calling me a liar, though he's inexplicably failed to detail the claimed lies. I've asked him to do so. https://web.archive.org/web/20200606232839/https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269403116740308993 https://web.archive.org/web/20200606232839/https://twitter.c...
- llacb47 6y ago
  You clearly have some personal vendetta against Eich and I don't think HN is the best place for it.
  - kbumsik 6y ago
    > You clearly have some personal vendetta How so? I cannot see any evidence.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  A few months back typographer/programmer/lawyer/acerbic writer Matthew Butterick wrote an, ah, let's say pointed critique called "The Cowardice of Brave," in which he argued that Brave is neither innovative nor particularly honest: "It's just substituting one set of ads for another... for publishers, it's the same old shakedown, but run by Brave instead of Google or Facebook; for users, Brave is still going to collect data about you." It's worth a read, even if one ultimately disagrees with it. https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html Anyway, I bring it up because I linked to it from my Twitter and got a cranky response from Brendan Eich about how Butterick was wrong. Eich's response to Butterick was, like the one to you, not really a rebuttal of any of the critiques beyond "this is all wrong and inaccurate." I looked back at Eich's Twitter feed and discovered he was clearly searching for links to Butterick's article and tweeting links to his non-response. And sure, responding to criticism is normal, but that "must find all who referenced this critique and CORRECT THEM" approach is... just... it is sure a thing.
egypturnash 6y ago
From the same browser that brought you “Hey we’ll just start taking donations for everyone whose ads we block, and we won’t put any effort into contacting anyone to tell them about this - and if they do find out, the process to start getting those donations is a giant pain in the ass!” I’m tempted to add some browser sniffing to my site just so I can block this scammy thing. I don’t even have ads on my comics any more, just a Patreon. And I fully expect at this point that anyone clicking my Patreon link on Brave would get redirected to some weird site they built that skims my Patreon posts, makes you pay in crypto, and only pays me 5¢ out of every dollar you think you’re paying me.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  Nothing I've read about Brave has ever made me want to use it instead of any other browser with a basic ad blocker, and this whole "we will save the web by substituting other people's ads with our own and making them all party to our business model whether they want to be or not, also something something cryptocurrency woo" shtick was the main reason. It continues to be the main reason.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    They don't substitute on page ads and viewing ads that are notifications is optin. There are also ads on new tabs. That's another chance to earn BAT. The user decides if they want to donate to a site. If the owner doesn't sign up the tips remain with the user. I have donated $10 to my favorite open source developer after convincing him to sign up. All I had to do was visit his GitHub profile and click a few times. That Brave uses cryptocurrency is not a reason to dismiss it. There is a lot of hand waving but the hand wavers have no idea how Brave works. At least be familiar with the object of your criticism. Even the author of the blog post doesn't know the difference between a link and auto complete. How is that helpful? A legitimate criticism of Brave is that competitors like Scroll have amassed quite a few publishers for their micropayments platform. Can Brave catch up?
  - 6y ago
ChuckMcM 6y ago
Filed under "Things people do that are 'perfectly legal' and reprehensible at the same time."
rsynnott 6y ago
> “In short run, without sounding Nietzschean, will matters. Patreon’s is weak or corrupt. Ours is not“ What is he, a ‘Silicon Valley’ character?
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Life imitates art.
waynesonfire 6y ago
i'm done with brave.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
trumpwillwinlol 6y ago
crypto-degenerate-bubble stuff. just idiots being idiots.
slashink 6y ago
Always a balance with a tradeoff, I'm not sure if to uninstall here or come to terms with the business model.
kohtatsu 6y ago
Don't they understand they're undermining the entire point of affiliate codes? This would never be sustainable long-term, it's just dumb and awful for very short-term gain.
Meekro 6y ago
You know how Firefox has a deal with Google where if you use Firefox and do a Google search and click on an ad, Firefox gets a cut of the ad money? This is sort of like that: Binance and Brave have a deal[1] where Brave promotes Binance from an in-browser widget[2], and in return Brave gets affiliate money whenever a Brave user signs up for Binance (whether by clicking on the widget or not). In cases of affiliate hijacking, the company (and not the user) is the victim because the company is made to pay referral money when the hijacker didn't actually refer the customer. This didn't happen here because, again, Brave and Binance have a deal and Brave is operating according to that deal. I suppose editing URLs out from under people is a little weird, so now that there's been an outcry they'll probably change it to identify Brave users by UserAgent or by injecting an HTTP header or something. [1] https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269289242905042944 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269289242905042944 [2] https://cointelegraph.com/news/brave-browser-brings-binance-integration-to-all-desktop-users https://cointelegraph.com/news/brave-browser-brings-binance-...
KennethSRoberts 6y ago
I use and love Brave (since beta). As usual HN making a bigger deal out of nothing. They gotta make money, and it's not like they are stealing from anyone else (replacing ref links). Chill out.
- foob4r 6y ago
  This. HN is so entitled - I want the perfect thing, then complain about them trying to be sustainable.
modzu 6y ago
please brave dont f this up. we really need you!
Markoff 6y ago
who even use brave on desktop? author completely misses point with alternatives for Android he recommends only Firefox which is either slow or buggy, but nowhere close to stability and speed of chromium browsers if you want chromium browser for Android with ublock your only options are Kiwi browser with outdated chromium, shady Russian yandex browser, ungoogled chromium pretty much in alpha or brave which promises extensions by the end of June
deleted 6y ago
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xtat 6y ago
I get that this is a bad look but practically speaking it's not that different from Google paying Mozilla for every search query that comes in with a FF User-Agent. Article reads more like personal beef
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
RJVB 6y ago
Interesting discussion. I'm probably not the only one who started using Brave (on the side) because it's being put forward as one of the fastest/leanest browsers around. And I need something like that for the hybrid Win10 PC I chose as a cheap tablet alternative that will also run desktop software. I can't attest to "leanest", but it is indeed the only browser that works reasonably well with something like Facebook on that tablet. Anything else becomes unbearably sluggish after a short while, an MS Edge just has a too much crippled UI (and general incapability to function with my filtering proxy, Privoxy). I see lots of remarks about FF being slow. It's a memory hog indeed (can't use it on my tablet because of that), but so are Chromium-based browsers, and FF is the only one I know where you can trigger a GC run that actually has some effect. I combine that with "The Great Suspender" extension to keep things manageable. Funny enough it was by far the fastest a year or 2 ago on what seemed a reasonably representative HTML5 benchmark that has been taken offline since. It's also the only option to have an up-to-date browser on my Mac that I've been keeping under OS X 10.9.5. That alone earns them my support... I do wonder why WebKit2 isn't been used more; outside of the Apple universe (where it's sadly linked to the OS version) the only "official" browser I know of that uses it is Gnome's epiphany which isn't exactly cross-platform. My tests with the rebooted QtWebkit suggest that the older (but maintained, AFAIK) WebKit codebase superior in performance and resource use to Chromium ("WebEngine") for sites that don't require newer, unsupported features (and as an embedded HTML renderer).
fulldecent2 6y ago
Project plan for a new browser: 1. Copy Brave. 2. Remove everything except the part about paying monthly and supporting websites you visit Who's with me?
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Micropayments have failed many times before. I can earn BAT with Brave and donate it to sites without having to sign up and deposit money with a credit card. There is much less friction compared to solutions that came before it. Andrew Mason is forking Brave and doing some of what you describe. Being associated with Gab and Andrew Mason isn't for everyone.
ijustwanttovote 6y ago
Copied my wallets and removed Brave off all my devices. It only lasted a couple weeks, lol.
mukuz 6y ago
Most comments here are blowing things way out of proportion. Links are in no way getting modified by the browser. The issue is that when someone types binance.us(or a few other brave affiliate sites) in the address bar, the top recommended link comes to be one with the referral link appended. When enter is hit that link is automatically selected(normal chromium behaviour) and page opens with the url with referral code. This sure is problematic. As Brendan has said[1] it sure was not the right way to do it. Again, the links in pages are in no way modified as people are trying to portray. [1] https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269317625915400192 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269317625915400192
josefresco 6y ago
Vivaldi is my "third" browser. I have it setup with maximum privacy settings and extensions. https://vivaldi.com https://vivaldi.com "Vivaldi is a freeware, cross-platform web browser developed by Vivaldi Technologies, a company founded by Opera Software co-founder and former CEO Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Tatsuki Tomita."

592 points by davidgerard 6y ago

I would think the affiliate programs wouldn't like this either. The browser isn't doing anything to drive traffic. It's just taking credit for traffic that was coming already.

davidgerard 6y ago
They seem to have explicit deals with Binance and Coinbase - don't know about Ledger or Trezor.
javajosh 6y ago
Good point. Maybe brave should make affiliate-able links blink and/or respond to clicks in a wider area? (Just to be clear: this is satire. Please don't do this.)
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Don't give him ideas.
jfoster 6y ago
They theoretically could do things to drive traffic. For example, if they surface the domain sooner than they might surface other domains, or change the way the URL is displayed. Eg. User types "B" and whilst "bbc.co.uk" might be very popular, Brave could instead surface the less popular "binance.com" ahead of BBC, and potentially give it a different visual treatment, too. I don't use Brave, so I'm not sure whether they do either of these things, though.

oftenwrong 6y ago

How could they not realise this would turn away their target audience?

rsynnott 6y ago
What IS their target audience, though? I always vaguely thought it was the crypto people, who as a community are quite accepting of weird slightly shady stuff. I could never really figure out who this product was for tho.
- RandomBacon 6y ago
  People that are too lazy to install add-ons or that want some pocket change in tokens? The shills say "privacy", but it's not any better than Firefox with add-ons (and worse because using it adds to the Chromium ecosystem which Google ultimately controls), and you have to KYC if you want to withdraw the tokens.

arez 6y ago

You have become the very thing you swore to destroy!

Koshkin 6y ago
Yeah, that’s the thing with trust: you shouldn’t.

phnofive 6y ago

> However, Eich is very sorry that Brave got caught — again — and something will be changed in some manner to stop this behaviour, or at least obscure it. No surprise there. > There is no good reason to use Brave. Use Chromium — the open-source core of Chrome — with the uBlock Origin ad blocker [...] or use Firefox with uBlock Origin — ‘cos it blocks more ads than the Chromium framework will let anything block. Is this true? I assumed the functionality would be the same.

davidgerard 6y ago
Nope! I routinely run Firefox and Chromium, both with uBO on default settings - and Google results on Chromium always have three ad-link results inserted at the top, lazy late-loading via JavaScript. Google know what they're doing there.
- drannex 6y ago
  You need to install some filters then! I have all the top featured ones installed and haven't seen a single advertisement on Google (which I only use <20% of the time, DDG gets the rest).
GraemeL 6y ago
The Firefox version has the ability to block third party scripts masked as first party ones through the use of CNAMEs. Chrome doesn't expose APIs to let extensions do it.
- close04 6y ago
  Also this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 > The blocking ability of the webRequest API is still deprecated, and Google Chrome's limited matching algorithm will be the only one possible, and with limits dictated by Google employees. Firefox + uBO + uMatrix will block everything you can reasonably block without making your internet life miserable in the other extreme (although uMatrix can be a pain sometimes).

sergiotapia 6y ago

I'm going to have to switch browser AGAIN? Dammit. Is Opera safe or what shady shit have they done? I haven't used Opera since Opera back in 2006. God I miss the Presto engine and dragonfly. Can I go back to them or they doing shady stuff?

kick 6y ago
Opera is still proprietary, and, uh, also they got caught doing some stuff involving predatory short-term loans to the impoverished in African countries, not to mention their CEO was also involved in an entirely different Chinese conglomerate that was also involved with fraud and some lending thing. Oh yeah and if you haven't used it since 2006: Opera is Chromium now, and the company behind it got sold a time or two.
- sergiotapia 6y ago
  what the fuck, whats happening in the tech scene :( what should I use if I _dont_ want to be in the botnet or scammed and outside of google's mesh
  - coryrc 6y ago
    Firefox, like always.
  - superkuh 6y ago
    I used Opera from 5 to 12, then Firefox till v37, and it's been Pale Moon ever since. Check out the latest release notes. I know I'm not the only one that likes things such as, >Removed more telemetry code >Removed the in-browser speech recognition engine and API >Removed support for the obsolete and unmaintained NVidia 3DVision stereoscopic interface. Palemoon is Firefox if it were still Firefox instead of feature-for-feature chrome copy for watching encrypted netflix.
    - Shared404 6y ago
      I would love to be able to use Palemoon, but I just can't get over the fact that it's a single main developer trying to maintain an entire web browser. That seems like a security nightmare waiting to happen. If I'm wrong about this, please let me know, I really like the idea.

buboard 6y ago

bit overblown. It's not all "links", they did the redirect for the autocomplete of "binance.us" and they are correcting it. https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201

s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
It's not just "binance.us", it's common terms like "bitcoin", "btc", "ltc", "eth", etc. https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/components/omnibox/browser/suggested_sites_provider_data.cc https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/master/components/o... Eich's tweet worsens things as it omits that fact. I see there is already a user submitted PR to remove this code: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/5759/files https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/5759/files We'll see how that goes.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  Wow... that looks to me like they're injecting their affiliate code to some URLs which the user would have to type in manually, like "binance.com", "coinbase.com/join", or "trezor.io/product/trezor-one-metallic". That's affiliate fraud -- Brave is not responsible for referring the user to those URLs, so it's inappropriate for them to claim credit for the referral. I'd be shocked if the parties involved didn't terminate Brave's affiliate account upon discovering this.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
weare138 6y ago
>and they are correcting it. Only after getting caught. It's not like you can 'accidentally' write a bunch of code and push it out.
- skissane 6y ago
  He says "We are a Binance affiliate, we refer users via the opt-in trading widget on the new tab page, but autocomplete should not add any code." Charitable interpretation: It is possible that he told the development team to add the affiliate code on the new tab page, and someone in the development team decided to add it to the autocomplete code as well, without him realising. I've certainly seen it happen when developers are told to do X and then they decide "oh since we are doing X we should do Y too". It isn't even always a bad thing, but sure sometimes it is. Of course, the charitable interpretation could be wrong. Maybe he is actually being deceitful here. But, I prefer to assume the best of people rather than the worst.

this_user 6y ago

I'm surprised people are surprised by this. Brave have said from the beginning that this is how their business model works. What I'm even more surprised about is that Brave has gotten any traction at all, as there is really no reason to use it instead of a normal browser with regular ad blockers.

Shank 6y ago
> Brave have said from the beginning that this is how their business model works. This sounded like a pretty surprising claim. I looked at the terms of use (https://brave.com/terms-of-use/ https://brave.com/terms-of-use/) and the privacy policy for the browser (https://brave.com/privacy/ https://brave.com/privacy/) and I wasn't able to find any reference to the notion of automatically inserting affiliate or referral links. Do you have a more specific source on this? I'm really curious about when and how this has been communicated. I'm not trying to accuse you of anything, I just want to make sure I'm understanding the situation correctly.
- toyg 6y ago
  The substance of their business model has always been "we fight advertisers because money should flow to websites through us". They changed actual terms a few times when called up on their tactics being shady, but that's always been the end goal. In that framework, hijacking referral links is par for the course. I don't blame them - a man's gotta eat, and they're not doing anything illegal or dangerous - but I've always found very curious that some people actually believe using Brave might be an "ethical" choice. It just isn't, it's simply a better mousetrap.
  - SahAssar 6y ago
    > they're not doing anything illegal or dangerous The words "dishonest" and "rent-seeking" come to mind. Also, it seems that using affiliate links without disclosure might actually be illegal.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago

drummer 6y ago

They began sucking pretty fast. Good riddance.

meerita 6y ago

Being a happy Firefox user and watching all the browser drama from the backyard. I still don't understand why people uses Chrome or Chrome variants claiming privacy things.

mixedCase 6y ago
Firefox's performance on Linux is markedly worse than Chrome's.
- 8192kjshad09- 6y ago
  How ironic
- rpdillon 6y ago
  This has never been my experience, FWIW.
- washadjeffmad 6y ago
  You may need to manually tune your configs. Often, people just forget to enable HW acceleration. Personally, Chromium crashes too often to rely on it.
drannex 6y ago
Agreed, I haven't seen or heard anything off kilter with Firefox in a very very long time and they have always been on the forefront of privacy and development features.
- toyg 6y ago
  Mozilla make their fair share of fuckups and bad moves, but they're still on a different level from these niche Chromium derivatives that invariably come with ugly business models attached.
- ethagnawl 6y ago
  Well, there was the DNS-over-HTTPS thing and the Mr. Robot thing, and the Pocket thing and ... they're not perfect. However, I've been using Firefox as my primary browser for about five years and have been very happy with it -- especially post Quantum. I can't even remember the last time I've had to switch to Chromium because something wasn't working.

gnicholas 6y ago

Bummer! I got the Tracking Token Stripper [1] to help remove stuff like this. Wonder what the result is if I use this and Brave — which one wins? 1: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tracking-token-stripper/kcpnkledgcbobhkgimpbmejgockkplob?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tracking-token-str...

heavyset_go 6y ago

It's as if Brave is performance art put on by Mozilla's advertising department.

chrisjarvis 6y ago
he updated the article and quoted you in it :D
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Nice catch, wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

FillardMillmore 6y ago

I am an enthusiastic Brave user - but seeing stories like these make me wonder if I'd be better off configuring Firefox to be more secure/private and using that. As a privacy and transparency advocate, it disappoints me to see Brave fail to pass the test, especially considering that privacy and transparency are supposed to be the browser's MO.

DagAgren 6y ago
Yes, you would be much better off doing that.
SahAssar 6y ago
What makes you think brave is better for privacy and transparency in the first place? Everything I've seen about brave sounds like something that can be done better with extensions within firefox, just with some added crypto/privacy hype BS added on top.
- fastball 6y ago
  The fact that it is built-in makes me think the browser vendor (Brave) cares more about this issue. Does that not seem like a reasonable assumption? Presumably it's not built-in to Firefox because if it was, Google might pull the lucrative default search engine deal that they have.
luxurytent 6y ago
Not too difficult to configure Firefox imo. My recommendations on plugins: * HTTPS Everywhere: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-everywhere/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-everywh... * DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-for-firefox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-fo... * uBlock Origin Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
- Ayesh 6y ago

dkdk8283 6y ago

Brave has to pay salaries - I suppose this is better than selling user data. Chrome is subsidized by search and Firefox gets money from Google. The revenue model for browsers is fucked up.

slater 6y ago
Countdown till some Chromium-based browser pops up with adblock enabled, but a $10/mo usage fee? (i jinxed it, didn't i)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Sherl 6y ago
  fuckin linux is free where the entire business lives serving trillions of dollars. $10/mo for a web browser? guess its time for another FOSS on browsers this time.
  - slater 6y ago
    So I take it you won't be signing up for Adobe® CloudBrowser™ any time soon...?
LeoPanthera 6y ago
Ironically there’s only one browser with a sane business model and it’s Safari. You have to buy an Apple product to use it. Simple. That’s probably why it’s the only mainstream browser, outside of obscure open source browsers like Falkon and Gnome Web, that doesn’t have any built-in ties to third party services.
- selykg 6y ago
  I think Apple still get revenue from Google (and probably Bing?) searches. Could be wrong but I thought I remember details about Google paying Apple for this. But it was years ago I last seen it Edit: quick search for “safari google search revenue” got me a few links from prior years about Google paying to be the default search engine. Last mention was 2019 so who knows how long that contract is or whatever

Nextgrid 6y ago

Brave's whole business model is flawed, even ignoring shenanigans like this. They claim they want to fix everything wrong with today's web (annoying and privacy-invasive ads, etc) by replacing them their own ads backed by a shitty cryptocurrency. While this might work in the short term while the browser is niche, they will have no choice but to deploy the same techniques once it goes mainstream and ad fraud goes up, removing their only selling point. The only real solution here is to just admit that view-based or click-based advertising on the web is flawed (and will always be vulnerable to fraud) and get rid of it, replacing it with time-based advertising where you pay for an ad to stay up for a certain period of time regardless of how many clicks or views it gets, making it immune to fraud and reducing the need for privacy-violating analytics because the only analytic that matters is "do we make more money?". Of course, this real solution wouldn't allow opportunistic middlemen to make money out of thin air, so that's why we have Brave instead.

anderber 6y ago
> by replacing them their own ads backed by a shitty cryptocurrency This is not true at all, and it has been talked enough here but I figured I'd explain it again. The Brave ads are opt-in, for people who would like to earn "shitty" cryptocurrency by clicking on them. They are fixing the ad issue by blocking the ads and letting you "pay" the sites with BAT tokens. This can be done by a one-time donation or automatically each month (based on your attention). Reason for the Basic Attention Token name.
- lakeWater 6y ago
  Thought I should point out you receive BAT for viewing the notifications. Not for clicking on them. https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Brave-Ads-FAQ https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026361072-Bra...

CamperBob2 6y ago

When someone tells you who he is [1], believe him. [1] https://readwrite.com/2014/03/28/brendan-eich-mozilla-ceo-proposition-8/ https://readwrite.com/2014/03/28/brendan-eich-mozilla-ceo-pr...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

warranty 6y ago
That is discrimination and you should be ashamed of it.

srich36 6y ago

This is similar to when Pinterest did this back in 2012 and very quickly made large amounts of money but were crushed by public opinion and quickly shut the practice down. It’ll be interesting to see how Brave responds. 1. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2012/2/8/2783807/pintrest-skimming-affiliate-links https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...

lexs 6y ago
Ironic that you posted an AMP link https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2012/2/8/2783807/pintrest-skimming-affiliate-links https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2012/2/8/2783807/pintr...
- llacb47 6y ago
  That's still an AMP link
  - greenyoda 6y ago
    Non-AMP link: https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/8/2783807/pintrest-skimming-affiliate-links https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/8/2783807/pintrest-skimming-...
drannex 6y ago
Tumblr implemented this about two years ago, not sure on revenue but I imagine it's been very effective for them. (You can disable this for your personal blog posts in settings)

thezdroids 6y ago

I support businesses that don't support bigotry toward me- their lead dev @jonathansampson is a vocal supporter of Trump. Nah I’m good.

jccalhoun 6y ago
Ugh. Between him and Eich's past with opposing the legalization of gay marriage, I think I'll stay clear of brave.
- thezdroids 6y ago
  I completely forget about Eich’s antigay stance! Thank you for reminding me: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536
chance_state 6y ago
You're going to be in for a rude awakening when you discover that not every FAANG engineer hates Trump too. I guess you have the option of giving up all those products and services too.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- thezdroids 6y ago
  If FAANG leadership was out there tweeting pro Trump rhetoric, I would.

gridlockd 6y ago

This is a nothingburger. Brave adds its own referrer code to a handful of crypto-related websites, if you type them into the address bar. It doesn't modify other affiliate links, as far as I can tell.

jccalhoun 6y ago

I seem to collect browsers like some people collect pokemon. Right now I am typing this in firefox and have twitch open in chrome in my second monitor. I use Edge for work accounts, Waterfox for times when I want to use a couple old addons that were never ported over, and opera and vivaldi around just to see how they measure up.

Havoc 6y ago

Wow. They appear to have a death wish. If your entire raison d'etre is privacy and clear stated model then one covert shady move like this can wreck trust irrevocably. If they had just declared that their model includes inserting affiliate codes then that would all be fine. The codes aren't the issue here its a violation of trust. If I'm OK with mystery monetization stuff happening behind the scenes I'd be using Chrome.

Kye 6y ago
I think the privacy angle was just a side-benefit for people who mainly cared about crypto currency. I don't see how someone could care about privacy and use a browser funded in part by the Palantir guy. If someone cared that much about privacy, they would look into the funding, and run screaming from that.
fastball 6y ago
Except mystery monetization is a pre-req for heavily maintained software that you don't pay for. I'd rather the mystery be "affiliate deals" than "selling my data". Mozilla's mystery monetization is getting paid lotsa dollars to make Google the default search engine in Firefox. And Google can only afford that because of ads. If Firefox integrated ad-blocking by default like Brave did, Google might be inclined to pull that deal, as it is paid for with ads. I trust the company with that conflict of interest less than I trust Brave.
- Havoc 6y ago
  Very valid point :)

christophilus 6y ago

Typing this on Brave for iOS. What is the best browser for iOS from a privacy standpoint? Firefox doesn’t have uBlock Origin. I don’t trust Microsoft Edge or Chrome. What do you suggest?

Nightshaxx 6y ago
Um Firefox not only has uBlock origin, it's way better than Chrome's version. FF is definitely way better.
- RandomBacon 6y ago
  Apple doesn't let it's users have the freedom to install add-ons.
  - cerberusss 6y ago
    I use Firefox on iOS, in combination with ad blocking via NextDNS. Works pretty good.
  - mukuz 6y ago
    You can install Firefox Focus[1] on iOS and enable it as a content blocker in safari settings. It works really well as an ad-blocker. [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-focus-privacy-browser/id1055677337 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-focus-privacy-browser/...
- Proven 6y ago
  iOS, FFS
LeoPanthera 6y ago
Safari, as it has a built in cross-site tracking blocker. Optionally add an ad-blocker, such as AdGuard.

oldgregg 6y ago

Given the Total Information Surviellance from Google this is relatively a non-issue. Nearly anything that meaningfully restrains Google is a net good at this point. Getting bent over this is like people who dismiss Signal for not having perfect e2e- purists that are oblivious to what is actually happening in the world.

throw2308230492 6y ago

This article is highly inflammatory. These are not random websites they are hijacking for affiliate money like the article purports. These are all advertisers / partners that appear on the new tab landing page when you sign up for Brave rewards...This is affiliate tracking for advertisements baked into the browser itself not some nefarious scheme to skim off someones else's traffic.

egypturnash 6y ago
This is not on the new tab page, this is hijacking links typed directly into the address bar. “If you’re using Brave and try to go to the Binance crypto exchange, Brave hijacks the Binance link you typed in, and autofills with its own affiliate code.” There’s an animated screen capture of this happening here: https://twitter.com/cryptonator1337/status/1269201480105578496 https://twitter.com/cryptonator1337/status/12692014801055784...
- secr3t0 6y ago
  Hate it when people do this. Have you actually even tried it ? It just shows the referral link suggestion at the top, it doesn't hijack the link you typed in. You're still free to open the original link. Of course the twitter post cleverly hides this by hiding the list of suggestions. Now we have this long flaming thread for something that's totally normal and perfectly acceptable.
  - RandomBacon 6y ago
    Firefox: type in Binance.us and immediately press enter - no referral code. Chrome: type in Binance.us and immediately press enter - no referral code. Brave: type in Binance.us and immediately press enter - yes referral code.
    - lakeWater 6y ago
      Looks like their plan for resolving the outrage is an opt-in setting. https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269404443818119168 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269404443818119168

davidgerard 6y ago

OP here. Brendan Eich is now publicly calling me a liar, though he's inexplicably failed to detail the claimed lies. I've asked him to do so. https://web.archive.org/web/20200606232839/https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269403116740308993 https://web.archive.org/web/20200606232839/https://twitter.c...

llacb47 6y ago
You clearly have some personal vendetta against Eich and I don't think HN is the best place for it.
- kbumsik 6y ago
  > You clearly have some personal vendetta How so? I cannot see any evidence.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
chipotle_coyote 6y ago
A few months back typographer/programmer/lawyer/acerbic writer Matthew Butterick wrote an, ah, let's say pointed critique called "The Cowardice of Brave," in which he argued that Brave is neither innovative nor particularly honest: "It's just substituting one set of ads for another... for publishers, it's the same old shakedown, but run by Brave instead of Google or Facebook; for users, Brave is still going to collect data about you." It's worth a read, even if one ultimately disagrees with it. https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html Anyway, I bring it up because I linked to it from my Twitter and got a cranky response from Brendan Eich about how Butterick was wrong. Eich's response to Butterick was, like the one to you, not really a rebuttal of any of the critiques beyond "this is all wrong and inaccurate." I looked back at Eich's Twitter feed and discovered he was clearly searching for links to Butterick's article and tweeting links to his non-response. And sure, responding to criticism is normal, but that "must find all who referenced this critique and CORRECT THEM" approach is... just... it is sure a thing.

egypturnash 6y ago

From the same browser that brought you “Hey we’ll just start taking donations for everyone whose ads we block, and we won’t put any effort into contacting anyone to tell them about this - and if they do find out, the process to start getting those donations is a giant pain in the ass!” I’m tempted to add some browser sniffing to my site just so I can block this scammy thing. I don’t even have ads on my comics any more, just a Patreon. And I fully expect at this point that anyone clicking my Patreon link on Brave would get redirected to some weird site they built that skims my Patreon posts, makes you pay in crypto, and only pays me 5¢ out of every dollar you think you’re paying me.

chipotle_coyote 6y ago
Nothing I've read about Brave has ever made me want to use it instead of any other browser with a basic ad blocker, and this whole "we will save the web by substituting other people's ads with our own and making them all party to our business model whether they want to be or not, also something something cryptocurrency woo" shtick was the main reason. It continues to be the main reason.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  They don't substitute on page ads and viewing ads that are notifications is optin. There are also ads on new tabs. That's another chance to earn BAT. The user decides if they want to donate to a site. If the owner doesn't sign up the tips remain with the user. I have donated $10 to my favorite open source developer after convincing him to sign up. All I had to do was visit his GitHub profile and click a few times. That Brave uses cryptocurrency is not a reason to dismiss it. There is a lot of hand waving but the hand wavers have no idea how Brave works. At least be familiar with the object of your criticism. Even the author of the blog post doesn't know the difference between a link and auto complete. How is that helpful? A legitimate criticism of Brave is that competitors like Scroll have amassed quite a few publishers for their micropayments platform. Can Brave catch up?
- 6y ago

ChuckMcM 6y ago

Filed under "Things people do that are 'perfectly legal' and reprehensible at the same time."

rsynnott 6y ago

> “In short run, without sounding Nietzschean, will matters. Patreon’s is weak or corrupt. Ours is not“ What is he, a ‘Silicon Valley’ character?

ashtonkem 6y ago
Life imitates art.

waynesonfire 6y ago

i'm done with brave.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

trumpwillwinlol 6y ago

crypto-degenerate-bubble stuff. just idiots being idiots.

slashink 6y ago

Always a balance with a tradeoff, I'm not sure if to uninstall here or come to terms with the business model.

kohtatsu 6y ago

Don't they understand they're undermining the entire point of affiliate codes? This would never be sustainable long-term, it's just dumb and awful for very short-term gain.

Meekro 6y ago

You know how Firefox has a deal with Google where if you use Firefox and do a Google search and click on an ad, Firefox gets a cut of the ad money? This is sort of like that: Binance and Brave have a deal[1] where Brave promotes Binance from an in-browser widget[2], and in return Brave gets affiliate money whenever a Brave user signs up for Binance (whether by clicking on the widget or not). In cases of affiliate hijacking, the company (and not the user) is the victim because the company is made to pay referral money when the hijacker didn't actually refer the customer. This didn't happen here because, again, Brave and Binance have a deal and Brave is operating according to that deal. I suppose editing URLs out from under people is a little weird, so now that there's been an outcry they'll probably change it to identify Brave users by UserAgent or by injecting an HTTP header or something. [1] https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269289242905042944 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269289242905042944 [2] https://cointelegraph.com/news/brave-browser-brings-binance-integration-to-all-desktop-users https://cointelegraph.com/news/brave-browser-brings-binance-...

KennethSRoberts 6y ago

I use and love Brave (since beta). As usual HN making a bigger deal out of nothing. They gotta make money, and it's not like they are stealing from anyone else (replacing ref links). Chill out.

foob4r 6y ago
This. HN is so entitled - I want the perfect thing, then complain about them trying to be sustainable.

modzu 6y ago

please brave dont f this up. we really need you!

Markoff 6y ago

who even use brave on desktop? author completely misses point with alternatives for Android he recommends only Firefox which is either slow or buggy, but nowhere close to stability and speed of chromium browsers if you want chromium browser for Android with ublock your only options are Kiwi browser with outdated chromium, shady Russian yandex browser, ungoogled chromium pretty much in alpha or brave which promises extensions by the end of June

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xtat 6y ago

I get that this is a bad look but practically speaking it's not that different from Google paying Mozilla for every search query that comes in with a FF User-Agent. Article reads more like personal beef

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RJVB 6y ago

Interesting discussion. I'm probably not the only one who started using Brave (on the side) because it's being put forward as one of the fastest/leanest browsers around. And I need something like that for the hybrid Win10 PC I chose as a cheap tablet alternative that will also run desktop software. I can't attest to "leanest", but it is indeed the only browser that works reasonably well with something like Facebook on that tablet. Anything else becomes unbearably sluggish after a short while, an MS Edge just has a too much crippled UI (and general incapability to function with my filtering proxy, Privoxy). I see lots of remarks about FF being slow. It's a memory hog indeed (can't use it on my tablet because of that), but so are Chromium-based browsers, and FF is the only one I know where you can trigger a GC run that actually has some effect. I combine that with "The Great Suspender" extension to keep things manageable. Funny enough it was by far the fastest a year or 2 ago on what seemed a reasonably representative HTML5 benchmark that has been taken offline since. It's also the only option to have an up-to-date browser on my Mac that I've been keeping under OS X 10.9.5. That alone earns them my support... I do wonder why WebKit2 isn't been used more; outside of the Apple universe (where it's sadly linked to the OS version) the only "official" browser I know of that uses it is Gnome's epiphany which isn't exactly cross-platform. My tests with the rebooted QtWebkit suggest that the older (but maintained, AFAIK) WebKit codebase superior in performance and resource use to Chromium ("WebEngine") for sites that don't require newer, unsupported features (and as an embedded HTML renderer).

fulldecent2 6y ago

Project plan for a new browser: 1. Copy Brave. 2. Remove everything except the part about paying monthly and supporting websites you visit Who's with me?

ketamine__ 6y ago
Micropayments have failed many times before. I can earn BAT with Brave and donate it to sites without having to sign up and deposit money with a credit card. There is much less friction compared to solutions that came before it. Andrew Mason is forking Brave and doing some of what you describe. Being associated with Gab and Andrew Mason isn't for everyone.

ijustwanttovote 6y ago

Copied my wallets and removed Brave off all my devices. It only lasted a couple weeks, lol.

mukuz 6y ago

Most comments here are blowing things way out of proportion. Links are in no way getting modified by the browser. The issue is that when someone types binance.us(or a few other brave affiliate sites) in the address bar, the top recommended link comes to be one with the referral link appended. When enter is hit that link is automatically selected(normal chromium behaviour) and page opens with the url with referral code. This sure is problematic. As Brendan has said[1] it sure was not the right way to do it. Again, the links in pages are in no way modified as people are trying to portray. [1] https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269317625915400192 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269317625915400192

josefresco 6y ago

Vivaldi is my "third" browser. I have it setup with maximum privacy settings and extensions. https://vivaldi.com https://vivaldi.com "Vivaldi is a freeware, cross-platform web browser developed by Vivaldi Technologies, a company founded by Opera Software co-founder and former CEO Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Tatsuki Tomita."