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Can you link some other examples then? You keep using the affiliate link one but it doesn't seem very convincing to me. My takeaway from the comments on this po

Can you link some other examples then? You keep using the affiliate link one but it doesn't seem very convincing to me. My takeaway from the comments on this post has been that some people really don't like brave but are either unwilling or unable to explain with more than surface-level criticisms.

nobunaga 6y ago
I think if you just google for 'Brave controversies' you would get quite a few, like I just did now. There are also plenty of links in this submission. From content injection to taking money on behalf of people that have no idea its even happening, and this coming from a browser whose selling point is privacy. https://securityboulevard.com/2019/02/brave-browser-sacrifices-security/ https://securityboulevard.com/2019/02/brave-browser-sacrific... https://www.computerworld.com/article/3284076/brave-browser-begins-controversial-ad-repeal-and-replace-tests.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3284076/brave-browser-... https://community.brave.com/t/does-brave-inject-buttons-onto-reddit-and-other-sites-3/91188 https://community.brave.com/t/does-brave-inject-buttons-onto... https://twitter.com/vj_chidambaram/status/1076474814708310016 https://twitter.com/vj_chidambaram/status/107647481470831001...
- jonathansampson 6y ago
  Your first link is incorrect; Brave doesn't whitelist trackers. The Facebook/Twitter option enables embedded posts from those platforms on other domains. These frames, however, do not transfer cookies and do not permit the third-party access to storage. You can alter this behavior in brave://settings/socialBlocking. Your second link suggests Brave replaces ads on websites; this is also wrong. Brave removes harmful third-party ads and trackers (as these harvest user data, and violate privacy). Brave offers an alternative model (Brave's privacy-respecting opt-in model) instead, which reward users with 70% of the associated revenue, while leaving their data untouched. Your third link is, I believe, asking about our in-situ tipping buttons. These are triggers for the Tipping panel within Brave, enabling you to tip BAT to users on Twitter, GitHub, and elsewhere. I'm not sure what concerns you about this; these can be turned off in brave://rewards, if you like. The last link you provided is also quite misleading. Brave distributed BAT grants to users, enabling those users to earmark tokens for content creators. Our interface at the time identified "verified" creators as such, but didn't make an equally explicit identification of unverified creators. This lead to some confusion. But as a result of Tom Scott's feedback in 2018, we saw massive improvements made to our UI/UX and tipping model over 48 hours or so. Today unverified creators are clearly identified as such, and tips are held for them on the user's device, rather than in a settlement wallet. See also https://brave.com/rewards-update/ https://brave.com/rewards-update/
- matthewrobertso 6y ago
  That you had to google these and didn't know them offhand made me skeptical, but I'll attempt to summarize the articles to see what the criticisms are: 1. https://securityboulevard.com/2019/02/brave-browser-sacrifices-security/ https://securityboulevard.com/2019/02/brave-browser-sacrific... Brave has a whitelist for some facebook urls for loading scripts from third party domains. Found the brave community thread imaged in the post: https://community.brave.com/t/how-to-disable-facebook-twitter-secret-whitelist/44961 https://community.brave.com/t/how-to-disable-facebook-twitte... My read of this thread is not having the whitelist breaks authentication using facebook and they offer an extension to remove the whitelist. 2. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3284076/brave-browser-begins-controversial-ad-repeal-and-replace-tests.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3284076/brave-browser-... This is about the opt-in basic attention token system, where users can replace ads served by websites with ones that reward them with cryptocurrency. I have used brave for a while and don't use this system (using the built in ad block instead). I don't see this as a negative. 3. https://community.brave.com/t/does-brave-inject-buttons-onto-reddit-and-other-sites-3/91188 https://community.brave.com/t/does-brave-inject-buttons-onto... This is about some piece of the basic attention token system that apparently injects tip buttons into websites. I don't use the basic attention token system so this does not impact me. 4. https://twitter.com/vj_chidambaram/status/1076474814708310016 https://twitter.com/vj_chidambaram/status/107647481470831001... This is apparently about the basic attention token system donation feature not sending out donations that do not meet a threshold. Again, I do not use this system. But I saw this mentioned by someone else in one of the comments on this post and the response mentioned Brave has changed their policies to refund people within 90 days if the donation is not claimed.
  - jonathansampson 6y ago
    A few notes (you'll see that I also had a response below): 1. We whitelist scripts to load, so as to enable Facebook and Twitter posts to be embedded into other sites. But, we don't whitelist/enable the tracking aspect of these scripts. We block them from accessing cookies and other local storage. You can modify this behavior in brave://settings/socialBlocking 2. Brave has never replaced ads on pages. We block harmful, third-party ads and trackers. And, separately, we offer a privacy-respecting digital advertising model. As you point out, our model of showing ad notifications is opt-in. 3. These are harmless tip-triggers shown near Tweets, GitHub comments, and more. Similar to what you would see with an extension like Pocket, where buttons are added near items so you can add them to a reading list, etc. 4. Tips made to unverified creators remain in the user's wallet. There's no threshold requirement here; if you tip 1 BAT to a verified creator, that tip will go out immediately. If you tip 1 BAT to an unverified creator, it will remain in your wallet for up to 90 days. 2.

nobunaga 6y ago

I think if you just google for 'Brave controversies' you would get quite a few, like I just did now. There are also plenty of links in this submission. From content injection to taking money on behalf of people that have no idea its even happening, and this coming from a browser whose selling point is privacy. https://securityboulevard.com/2019/02/brave-browser-sacrifices-security/ https://securityboulevard.com/2019/02/brave-browser-sacrific... https://www.computerworld.com/article/3284076/brave-browser-begins-controversial-ad-repeal-and-replace-tests.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3284076/brave-browser-... https://community.brave.com/t/does-brave-inject-buttons-onto-reddit-and-other-sites-3/91188 https://community.brave.com/t/does-brave-inject-buttons-onto... https://twitter.com/vj_chidambaram/status/1076474814708310016 https://twitter.com/vj_chidambaram/status/107647481470831001...

jonathansampson 6y ago
Your first link is incorrect; Brave doesn't whitelist trackers. The Facebook/Twitter option enables embedded posts from those platforms on other domains. These frames, however, do not transfer cookies and do not permit the third-party access to storage. You can alter this behavior in brave://settings/socialBlocking. Your second link suggests Brave replaces ads on websites; this is also wrong. Brave removes harmful third-party ads and trackers (as these harvest user data, and violate privacy). Brave offers an alternative model (Brave's privacy-respecting opt-in model) instead, which reward users with 70% of the associated revenue, while leaving their data untouched. Your third link is, I believe, asking about our in-situ tipping buttons. These are triggers for the Tipping panel within Brave, enabling you to tip BAT to users on Twitter, GitHub, and elsewhere. I'm not sure what concerns you about this; these can be turned off in brave://rewards, if you like. The last link you provided is also quite misleading. Brave distributed BAT grants to users, enabling those users to earmark tokens for content creators. Our interface at the time identified "verified" creators as such, but didn't make an equally explicit identification of unverified creators. This lead to some confusion. But as a result of Tom Scott's feedback in 2018, we saw massive improvements made to our UI/UX and tipping model over 48 hours or so. Today unverified creators are clearly identified as such, and tips are held for them on the user's device, rather than in a settlement wallet. See also https://brave.com/rewards-update/ https://brave.com/rewards-update/
matthewrobertso 6y ago
That you had to google these and didn't know them offhand made me skeptical, but I'll attempt to summarize the articles to see what the criticisms are: 1. https://securityboulevard.com/2019/02/brave-browser-sacrifices-security/ https://securityboulevard.com/2019/02/brave-browser-sacrific... Brave has a whitelist for some facebook urls for loading scripts from third party domains. Found the brave community thread imaged in the post: https://community.brave.com/t/how-to-disable-facebook-twitter-secret-whitelist/44961 https://community.brave.com/t/how-to-disable-facebook-twitte... My read of this thread is not having the whitelist breaks authentication using facebook and they offer an extension to remove the whitelist. 2. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3284076/brave-browser-begins-controversial-ad-repeal-and-replace-tests.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3284076/brave-browser-... This is about the opt-in basic attention token system, where users can replace ads served by websites with ones that reward them with cryptocurrency. I have used brave for a while and don't use this system (using the built in ad block instead). I don't see this as a negative. 3. https://community.brave.com/t/does-brave-inject-buttons-onto-reddit-and-other-sites-3/91188 https://community.brave.com/t/does-brave-inject-buttons-onto... This is about some piece of the basic attention token system that apparently injects tip buttons into websites. I don't use the basic attention token system so this does not impact me. 4. https://twitter.com/vj_chidambaram/status/1076474814708310016 https://twitter.com/vj_chidambaram/status/107647481470831001... This is apparently about the basic attention token system donation feature not sending out donations that do not meet a threshold. Again, I do not use this system. But I saw this mentioned by someone else in one of the comments on this post and the response mentioned Brave has changed their policies to refund people within 90 days if the donation is not claimed.
- jonathansampson 6y ago
  A few notes (you'll see that I also had a response below): 1. We whitelist scripts to load, so as to enable Facebook and Twitter posts to be embedded into other sites. But, we don't whitelist/enable the tracking aspect of these scripts. We block them from accessing cookies and other local storage. You can modify this behavior in brave://settings/socialBlocking 2. Brave has never replaced ads on pages. We block harmful, third-party ads and trackers. And, separately, we offer a privacy-respecting digital advertising model. As you point out, our model of showing ad notifications is opt-in. 3. These are harmless tip-triggers shown near Tweets, GitHub comments, and more. Similar to what you would see with an extension like Pocket, where buttons are added near items so you can add them to a reading list, etc. 4. Tips made to unverified creators remain in the user's wallet. There's no threshold requirement here; if you tip 1 BAT to a verified creator, that tip will go out immediately. If you tip 1 BAT to an unverified creator, it will remain in your wallet for up to 90 days. 2.