Note, the affiliate links weren't "secret" either. They were quite visibly displayed in the suggestion list of the browser. The user could see them before navig

Note, the affiliate links weren't "secret" either. They were quite visibly displayed in the suggestion list of the browser. The user could see them before navigating. Brave's mistake was showing them on fully-qualified domain names (that wasn't our intention, and was fixed within 48 hours). Affiliate links aren't uncommon; definitely not worth trying to keep a secret. Open Firefox (or Opera, Vivaldi, etc.) and do a search for "hacker news" from the address bar. Every one of these browsers adds its identifier to the resulting query. By contrast, Brave offered a search suggestion with a [visible] affiliate code attached.