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Not sure there are necessarily third parties involved, but given Brave's track record of lying about not tracking users (whilst actually inserting affiliate lin

Not sure there are necessarily third parties involved, but given Brave's track record of lying about not tracking users (whilst actually inserting affiliate links onto websites they visited and collecting revenues and data from them) as well as lying about donations they solicited going to the parties whose name they solicited them in, I don't see why any privacy-conscious person should trust them

ketamine__ 6y ago
Affiliate links were in the address bar and not injected into the webpage. You are spreading lies.
- byte1918 6y ago
  You are correct and it's equally as awful.
  - boogies 6y ago
    Equally as harmless. The affiliate codes don’t give anyone any information that they don’t already have (if you’re one of whatever tiny fraction of users edit their user agent strings, why the heck would you choose to accept the the URL suggestions‽ And if you really care about strict privacy, why would you use a Chromium-based browser in the first place, when invasive features have been discovered in Chromium’s codebase long after they were added before?). The sheer stupidity of the toxic FUD people spread about Brave makes me angry in its behalf (despite never using it beyond a test run myself).
  - jonathansampson 6y ago
    Showing suggestions in the browser isn't "equally as awful" as injecting them into pages (or modifying links on pages, as was claimed). The intent here was for users of Brave [who also happen to have an interest in product/service x] to support the former with their traffic to the latter. This isn't unethical; it's an clean and privacy-respecting way of supporting an effort.
propogandist 6y ago
Passing an affiliate code doesn’t mean they’re tracking the individual, it’s just meant to get credit for sales they’ve driven. Affiliates just get a payout of commission from the merchant, there’s no data-sharing beyond that. Affiliate cookies can be cleared by wiping browser cookies whereas Google’s data-mining (as present in Chrome) can’t be stopped. Affiliate marketing is means to generate revenue and a better than taking massive payouts from Google, which is the primary funding source for Mozilla Firefox. As a privacy conscious user I’d rather see a browser that be sustained without Google’s support. Given the co-creator of Mozilla (and .JS) is behind Brave, I trust it more than the fly by night browser.
- wzdd 6y ago
  Brave is absolutely dependent on Google, now and in the future, continuing to release their millions of dollars of engineering effort on Chromium to the public for free. If Google were to stop updating Chromium, Brave could re-architect onto... what, exactly? Firefox becomes a less viable competitor every time Mozilla issues a press release. Perhaps they could revert to Webkit, which would make them 100% dependent on Apple instead. It's sad, but there is no way for a modern browser vendor to be independent of FAANG.
  - patrickaljord 6y ago
    That's like saying using linux is being dependent on redhat and intel. Big contributors to Chromium include Microsoft, Samsung and many other giant companies. If Google abandons Chromium, it will still be maintained by other companies as too many in the industry rely on it.
  - exolymph 6y ago
    Chromium seems like one of the least-likely-to-be-killed Google projects.
  - jonathansampson 6y ago
    Chromium isn't developed by Google alone; it has many contributors. Brave doesn't rely on Google. If they stopped contributing to Chromium, we could continue without them.
jonathansampson 6y ago
You're mistaken, or misleading. Brave has never tracked users, and Brave has also never inserted affiliate links into websites. Let's discuss these claims in a bit more depth. TRACKING Brave doesn't track users. I invite anybody reading to take a look at their network activity; in fact, I'll sit down and give anybody an introductory walk-through of Telerik Fiddler and show them how to inspect their own network activity, to observe in plain-text what Brave is doing, and with whom it is communicating. I do this regularly, and share results [1]. You don't have to take my word on it either; unaffiliated third-parties have published similar results [2]. [1] https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traffic-results/ https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traff... [2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-deemed-most-private-browser-in-terms-of-phoning-home/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-deemed-most-private-brow... AFFILIATE LINKS Brave has never "inserted affiliate links onto website". This is quite misleading. What Brave did do was offer users who were performing a search from the address bar of the browser a list of suggested results. Among those results, Brave would at times show an affiliate option. We wrote about this on our blog (and included screenshots) for those interested [3]. Note, no data was involved. No network requests were made. There was no impact to privacy in any way, shape, or form. This was simply a suggestion offered in a drop-down beneath the address bar. Affiliate links are a clean way for browsers (or any app, really) to generate revenue. Open up Firefox, Vivaldi, or Opera and type 'hacker news' into the address bar. In Firefox, you'll be redirected to https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=hacker+news https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=hacker+ne... by default. Note the "client=firefox" in the query-string parameter list. In Opera you're sent to https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=hacker+news&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=hacker+news&sou... by default. Note the "client=opera" and "sourceid=opera" elements. Brave's mistake was matching a fully-qualified domain name. What we had planned for was showing a set of suggested URLs (some with an affiliate code) when a user searched for something like "binance". We mistakenly showed the same results when the user typed a fully-qualified domain name, like "binance.us" as well. That was unintended, and was corrected within 48 hours of identification. [3] https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ SOLICITING DONATIONS Brave is doing something quite different from other browsers; it aims to not only improve security on the Web, but also to offer novel support options to content creators everywhere in a privacy-respecting, and sustainable manner. Brave ships with a Tipping interface to empower users to send rewards (in the form of Basic Attention Tokens) to content creators. When we launched this model, Brave gave tokens to its users, and users could give those to the sites they visit. When a user tipped a site, the tokens would go to the Creator (if verified), or into a settlement wallet to be claimed at a later date. Brave would reach out to Creators, informing them of rewards (similar to the early days of PayPal). There were a couple issues here, which you can read about on our blog [4]. One was a UI issue. Brave marked verified domains with a checkmark (similar to Twitter's 'verified' accounts). We didn't have any special mark for non-verified properties. This was naive on our part. We remedied this by explicitly stating the status of the Creator in both cases. The second problem was allowing tokens to move out of the user's wallet when the Creator wasn't even verified. Personally, I'm incredibly thankful that this issue was found. Under that model, tons of tokens could be dropped into a wallet, and never claimed by anybody. In the update we produced within a couple days), this model was changed. Now unverified creators wouldn't receive anything; instead, tips issued to an unverified creator would stay on your device, and be retried for up to 90 days. If the Creator verified within that timeframe, they'd collect the tips. If they didn't, the tips could be sent to somebody else. Brave never solicited tips for anybody. There was simply a component of the browser which enabled users to send tips to sites and creators they appreciated. Brave's main fault here was with naive UI, and a contribution model which could have resulted in lost tokens. Thankfully, our users caught both issues and we were able to improve the feature quickly. [4] https://brave.com/rewards-update/ https://brave.com/rewards-update/ I hope this helps.

ketamine__ 6y ago

Affiliate links were in the address bar and not injected into the webpage. You are spreading lies.

byte1918 6y ago
You are correct and it's equally as awful.
- boogies 6y ago
  Equally as harmless. The affiliate codes don’t give anyone any information that they don’t already have (if you’re one of whatever tiny fraction of users edit their user agent strings, why the heck would you choose to accept the the URL suggestions‽ And if you really care about strict privacy, why would you use a Chromium-based browser in the first place, when invasive features have been discovered in Chromium’s codebase long after they were added before?). The sheer stupidity of the toxic FUD people spread about Brave makes me angry in its behalf (despite never using it beyond a test run myself).
- jonathansampson 6y ago
  Showing suggestions in the browser isn't "equally as awful" as injecting them into pages (or modifying links on pages, as was claimed). The intent here was for users of Brave [who also happen to have an interest in product/service x] to support the former with their traffic to the latter. This isn't unethical; it's an clean and privacy-respecting way of supporting an effort.

propogandist 6y ago

Passing an affiliate code doesn’t mean they’re tracking the individual, it’s just meant to get credit for sales they’ve driven. Affiliates just get a payout of commission from the merchant, there’s no data-sharing beyond that. Affiliate cookies can be cleared by wiping browser cookies whereas Google’s data-mining (as present in Chrome) can’t be stopped. Affiliate marketing is means to generate revenue and a better than taking massive payouts from Google, which is the primary funding source for Mozilla Firefox. As a privacy conscious user I’d rather see a browser that be sustained without Google’s support. Given the co-creator of Mozilla (and .JS) is behind Brave, I trust it more than the fly by night browser.

wzdd 6y ago
Brave is absolutely dependent on Google, now and in the future, continuing to release their millions of dollars of engineering effort on Chromium to the public for free. If Google were to stop updating Chromium, Brave could re-architect onto... what, exactly? Firefox becomes a less viable competitor every time Mozilla issues a press release. Perhaps they could revert to Webkit, which would make them 100% dependent on Apple instead. It's sad, but there is no way for a modern browser vendor to be independent of FAANG.
- patrickaljord 6y ago
  That's like saying using linux is being dependent on redhat and intel. Big contributors to Chromium include Microsoft, Samsung and many other giant companies. If Google abandons Chromium, it will still be maintained by other companies as too many in the industry rely on it.
- exolymph 6y ago
  Chromium seems like one of the least-likely-to-be-killed Google projects.
- jonathansampson 6y ago
  Chromium isn't developed by Google alone; it has many contributors. Brave doesn't rely on Google. If they stopped contributing to Chromium, we could continue without them.

jonathansampson 6y ago

You're mistaken, or misleading. Brave has never tracked users, and Brave has also never inserted affiliate links into websites. Let's discuss these claims in a bit more depth. TRACKING Brave doesn't track users. I invite anybody reading to take a look at their network activity; in fact, I'll sit down and give anybody an introductory walk-through of Telerik Fiddler and show them how to inspect their own network activity, to observe in plain-text what Brave is doing, and with whom it is communicating. I do this regularly, and share results [1]. You don't have to take my word on it either; unaffiliated third-parties have published similar results [2]. [1] https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traffic-results/ https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traff... [2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-deemed-most-private-browser-in-terms-of-phoning-home/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-deemed-most-private-brow... AFFILIATE LINKS Brave has never "inserted affiliate links onto website". This is quite misleading. What Brave did do was offer users who were performing a search from the address bar of the browser a list of suggested results. Among those results, Brave would at times show an affiliate option. We wrote about this on our blog (and included screenshots) for those interested [3]. Note, no data was involved. No network requests were made. There was no impact to privacy in any way, shape, or form. This was simply a suggestion offered in a drop-down beneath the address bar. Affiliate links are a clean way for browsers (or any app, really) to generate revenue. Open up Firefox, Vivaldi, or Opera and type 'hacker news' into the address bar. In Firefox, you'll be redirected to https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=hacker+news https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=hacker+ne... by default. Note the "client=firefox" in the query-string parameter list. In Opera you're sent to https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=hacker+news&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=hacker+news&sou... by default. Note the "client=opera" and "sourceid=opera" elements. Brave's mistake was matching a fully-qualified domain name. What we had planned for was showing a set of suggested URLs (some with an affiliate code) when a user searched for something like "binance". We mistakenly showed the same results when the user typed a fully-qualified domain name, like "binance.us" as well. That was unintended, and was corrected within 48 hours of identification. [3] https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ SOLICITING DONATIONS Brave is doing something quite different from other browsers; it aims to not only improve security on the Web, but also to offer novel support options to content creators everywhere in a privacy-respecting, and sustainable manner. Brave ships with a Tipping interface to empower users to send rewards (in the form of Basic Attention Tokens) to content creators. When we launched this model, Brave gave tokens to its users, and users could give those to the sites they visit. When a user tipped a site, the tokens would go to the Creator (if verified), or into a settlement wallet to be claimed at a later date. Brave would reach out to Creators, informing them of rewards (similar to the early days of PayPal). There were a couple issues here, which you can read about on our blog [4]. One was a UI issue. Brave marked verified domains with a checkmark (similar to Twitter's 'verified' accounts). We didn't have any special mark for non-verified properties. This was naive on our part. We remedied this by explicitly stating the status of the Creator in both cases. The second problem was allowing tokens to move out of the user's wallet when the Creator wasn't even verified. Personally, I'm incredibly thankful that this issue was found. Under that model, tons of tokens could be dropped into a wallet, and never claimed by anybody. In the update we produced within a couple days), this model was changed. Now unverified creators wouldn't receive anything; instead, tips issued to an unverified creator would stay on your device, and be retried for up to 90 days. If the Creator verified within that timeframe, they'd collect the tips. If they didn't, the tips could be sent to somebody else. Brave never solicited tips for anybody. There was simply a component of the browser which enabled users to send tips to sites and creators they appreciated. Brave's main fault here was with naive UI, and a contribution model which could have resulted in lost tokens. Thankfully, our users caught both issues and we were able to improve the feature quickly. [4] https://brave.com/rewards-update/ https://brave.com/rewards-update/ I hope this helps.