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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

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.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
On the subject of Mozilla, they could very well integrate a news reader through Pocket as it already has my interests with label! Pocket now shows recommendations base on popular saves, but a proper news aggregator for daily news could serve Mozilla and its customers well considering Pocket is tightly integrated within Firefox. A banner of Firefox currently shows that 703 million links were saved on Pocket this year alone.
notahacker 6y ago
It's a perfectly legitimate way for a browser vendor to generate revenue and far from the most intrusive collection of data on internet usage, but you can't honestly claim to be a privacy conscious browser that removes all tracking and fingerprinting codes whilst surreptitiously inserting codes for the specific purpose of enabling third parties to send you money based on use of your browser. The 'sorry, but we thought leaving the source code for people to scrutinise was the appropriate level of disclosure' attitude doesn't exactly inspire confidence they won't make a worse 'mistake' next time either. If you really want to avoid being tracked, you probably want a more robust solution than simply choosing the browser vendor that's least honest about its monetisation strategy, and you're particularly unlikely to want to be getting browser history based feed recommendations from your browser vendor's CDN anyway
- Grimm1 6y ago
  That doesn't make any sense. The code from affiliate sales has nothing to do with you, the end user. It identifies the affiliate, in this case Brave. There is no user information there. Their claim then is in perfectly good faith. I think you're confusing BAT with the affiliate links which are two distinct things Brave has done. BAT I agree with you on there is still tracking there or otherwise they wouldn't be able to attribute the money to you. Affiliate links though do not have the same connotation and is the subject under discussion in this comment chain.
  - notahacker 6y ago
    The code doesn't identify the user as an individual, but it does inform Brave when its users visit particular third party websites (if they use its URL bar autocomplete), much like many supposedly anonymised analytics services privacy-conscious users often prefer to block. And the actual discussion subject I raised isn't the horrors of affiliate links and affiliates accessing metadata on trends in their user base's access to certain third party websites so much as Brave's history of "mistakes". The BAT might require considerably more storage of personal data, but at least its existence isn't a secret
    - 6y ago
freewilly1040 6y ago
In what sense have they driven the sales? By being the browser?
- propogandist 6y ago
  You went to a site, and in this case they facilitated the browsing to the website :) It’s no different than the terrible browser addons that claim they’re helping you find coupon, while stuffing affiliate cookies into your session to generate commission (and also selling your data)
  - freewilly1040 6y ago
    No different than something terrible is also terrible...
judge2020 6y ago
> . Affiliates just get a payout of commission from the merchant, there’s no data-sharing beyond that. Consider that LTT shows a spreadsheet of all the Amazon items bought of a specific item in their video "I can SEE what you Bought Online", and it includes the quantity, price, and date in which it was bought: https://youtu.be/gHHyqoU8sQM?t=310 https://youtu.be/gHHyqoU8sQM?t=310

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.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

On the subject of Mozilla, they could very well integrate a news reader through Pocket as it already has my interests with label! Pocket now shows recommendations base on popular saves, but a proper news aggregator for daily news could serve Mozilla and its customers well considering Pocket is tightly integrated within Firefox. A banner of Firefox currently shows that 703 million links were saved on Pocket this year alone.

notahacker 6y ago

It's a perfectly legitimate way for a browser vendor to generate revenue and far from the most intrusive collection of data on internet usage, but you can't honestly claim to be a privacy conscious browser that removes all tracking and fingerprinting codes whilst surreptitiously inserting codes for the specific purpose of enabling third parties to send you money based on use of your browser. The 'sorry, but we thought leaving the source code for people to scrutinise was the appropriate level of disclosure' attitude doesn't exactly inspire confidence they won't make a worse 'mistake' next time either. If you really want to avoid being tracked, you probably want a more robust solution than simply choosing the browser vendor that's least honest about its monetisation strategy, and you're particularly unlikely to want to be getting browser history based feed recommendations from your browser vendor's CDN anyway

Grimm1 6y ago
That doesn't make any sense. The code from affiliate sales has nothing to do with you, the end user. It identifies the affiliate, in this case Brave. There is no user information there. Their claim then is in perfectly good faith. I think you're confusing BAT with the affiliate links which are two distinct things Brave has done. BAT I agree with you on there is still tracking there or otherwise they wouldn't be able to attribute the money to you. Affiliate links though do not have the same connotation and is the subject under discussion in this comment chain.
- notahacker 6y ago
  The code doesn't identify the user as an individual, but it does inform Brave when its users visit particular third party websites (if they use its URL bar autocomplete), much like many supposedly anonymised analytics services privacy-conscious users often prefer to block. And the actual discussion subject I raised isn't the horrors of affiliate links and affiliates accessing metadata on trends in their user base's access to certain third party websites so much as Brave's history of "mistakes". The BAT might require considerably more storage of personal data, but at least its existence isn't a secret
  - 6y ago

freewilly1040 6y ago

In what sense have they driven the sales? By being the browser?

propogandist 6y ago
You went to a site, and in this case they facilitated the browsing to the website :) It’s no different than the terrible browser addons that claim they’re helping you find coupon, while stuffing affiliate cookies into your session to generate commission (and also selling your data)
- freewilly1040 6y ago
  No different than something terrible is also terrible...

judge2020 6y ago

> . Affiliates just get a payout of commission from the merchant, there’s no data-sharing beyond that. Consider that LTT shows a spreadsheet of all the Amazon items bought of a specific item in their video "I can SEE what you Bought Online", and it includes the quantity, price, and date in which it was bought: https://youtu.be/gHHyqoU8sQM?t=310 https://youtu.be/gHHyqoU8sQM?t=310