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They lost a lot of credibility when they put an affiliate links automatically without any disclosure. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-

They lost a lot of credibility when they put an affiliate links automatically without any disclosure. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-affiliate-links-crypto-privacy-ceo-apology https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-aff...

agilob 6y ago
I never understood why people think affiliate are bad. I get that it's unethical do it without users consent, but I am personally OK with anyone using affiliate links for whatever I subscribe to. I don't lose anything, I don't pay for it, some company is letting other people or smaller companies increase budget. I often ask my colleagues if they can get me referral link before I signup for something. What's wrong with it?
- markdown 6y ago
  They create the wrong incentives. In a niche I operate in, there are a ton of otherwise reputable websites promoting inferior products merely because they make more money promoting those products rather than products whose owners don't have an affiliate system. A widget hand-made by an owner-operator in small-town USA who sells from his own website gets ignored while the Amazon-listed widget made in a Chinese sweatshop gets shilled because Amazon pays affiliates.
- Aaronstotle 6y ago
  There's nothing wrong with it, but it's a shady practice to do it automatically (no disclosure) on a Browser that claims to be a more privacy focused browser.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    What do affiliate links have to do with privacy?
    - dagmx 6y ago
      From a technical perspective, many affiliate links are redirect based. So the end user may only see the initial site they clicked from and the final site they go to, but there is a redirect in the middle. This can be used to track users across the web without their knowledge or consent. However I don't know Brave's implementation here. Just answering the question in the abstract.
- Slikey 6y ago
  The entire system of affiliate links piss me off for the same reason I have to pay the same in cash as people using a creditcard. It has a taste of paying too much if the vendor can afford to give a fraction to the affiliate.
- jmnicolas 6y ago
  > I don't pay for it Of course you pay for it, it's the same thing as free shipping: the seller increases its prices to take into account how much they're going to pay to affiliates.
- mustuhfa 6y ago
  So you are ok with people modifying input you put into an app you installed? What if they modified the query paramter automatically to send info from your computer/iphone? Why are you covering so much for Brave in this thread?
festivecake 6y ago
Copying from another comment: Well, a lot of reporting on the affiliate code situation partly mischaracterized what actually happened. There was an auto-complete suggestion that was auto-selecting when you pressed "enter", and it was fixed shortly thereafter. There is a blog post about it called "On Partner Referral Codes in Brave Suggested Sites". That said, it does essentially the same thing Firefox does when you do a search on Firefox. Try right now: go into Firefox, type in a search in the URL bar, press enter, and you'll see it appends/"injects" a Firefox "affiliate code" as a query parameter so that Firefox gets a cut from Google. One salient difference is that Firefox's "affiliate code" is a vanity code (human readable: "?client=firefox-b-d"), so it isn't viscerally shocking. If it read "?client=brave" like it does on Firefox, it's very likely no one would have ever cared!

agilob 6y ago

I never understood why people think affiliate are bad. I get that it's unethical do it without users consent, but I am personally OK with anyone using affiliate links for whatever I subscribe to. I don't lose anything, I don't pay for it, some company is letting other people or smaller companies increase budget. I often ask my colleagues if they can get me referral link before I signup for something. What's wrong with it?

markdown 6y ago
They create the wrong incentives. In a niche I operate in, there are a ton of otherwise reputable websites promoting inferior products merely because they make more money promoting those products rather than products whose owners don't have an affiliate system. A widget hand-made by an owner-operator in small-town USA who sells from his own website gets ignored while the Amazon-listed widget made in a Chinese sweatshop gets shilled because Amazon pays affiliates.
Aaronstotle 6y ago
There's nothing wrong with it, but it's a shady practice to do it automatically (no disclosure) on a Browser that claims to be a more privacy focused browser.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  What do affiliate links have to do with privacy?
  - dagmx 6y ago
    From a technical perspective, many affiliate links are redirect based. So the end user may only see the initial site they clicked from and the final site they go to, but there is a redirect in the middle. This can be used to track users across the web without their knowledge or consent. However I don't know Brave's implementation here. Just answering the question in the abstract.
Slikey 6y ago
The entire system of affiliate links piss me off for the same reason I have to pay the same in cash as people using a creditcard. It has a taste of paying too much if the vendor can afford to give a fraction to the affiliate.
jmnicolas 6y ago
> I don't pay for it Of course you pay for it, it's the same thing as free shipping: the seller increases its prices to take into account how much they're going to pay to affiliates.
mustuhfa 6y ago
So you are ok with people modifying input you put into an app you installed? What if they modified the query paramter automatically to send info from your computer/iphone? Why are you covering so much for Brave in this thread?

festivecake 6y ago

Copying from another comment: Well, a lot of reporting on the affiliate code situation partly mischaracterized what actually happened. There was an auto-complete suggestion that was auto-selecting when you pressed "enter", and it was fixed shortly thereafter. There is a blog post about it called "On Partner Referral Codes in Brave Suggested Sites". That said, it does essentially the same thing Firefox does when you do a search on Firefox. Try right now: go into Firefox, type in a search in the URL bar, press enter, and you'll see it appends/"injects" a Firefox "affiliate code" as a query parameter so that Firefox gets a cut from Google. One salient difference is that Firefox's "affiliate code" is a vanity code (human readable: "?client=firefox-b-d"), so it isn't viscerally shocking. If it read "?client=brave" like it does on Firefox, it's very likely no one would have ever cared!