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Please don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about or that the idea that Brave is 'scammy' is anything new - Brave is very controversial and its ethical

Please don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about or that the idea that Brave is 'scammy' is anything new - Brave is very controversial and its ethical lapses have been discussed extensively including here on HN. You went thru various dubious business models before you even got to your current incarnation. But the most current of your controversies is covered here: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/06/06/the-brave-web-browser-is-hijacking-links-and-inserting-affiliate-codes/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/06/06/the-brave-we... And discussed here on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027 That alone is enough for me to call Brave 'scammy'.

BrendanEich 6y ago
We never injected ads in publisher pages; we proposed doing this but only with publisher as partner and user opt-in. Brave Rewards are opt-in and put ads in the user's inventory, not the publisher's. Gerard lies about us "hijacking links", which I'm sure he knows has a well-defined meaning: changing the URL of a link the user clicks on in a page. We've never done any such thing, either. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25841456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25841456 If you want to believe we did these things, you're believing misinformation. If you can't verify these claims are false, I can help; many neutral third parties can help too. But it seems to me you want to believe such misinformation. Why?
bsaul 6y ago
That's exactly why i think knowing that a famous and respectable person (in the sense that he already accomplished great things) is behind the project is important. When someone creates a browser around token and adtech, and offers to be a gateway between content and ad money, it better has a serious reputation of integrity for me to even start digging into the technical details and see what it's really all about. Until now, the whole project looked scammy because i only paid a cursory glance at it, because i didn't know who was behind it. Now that i've watched the podcast and understand the whole reasoning behind it actually makes a lot of sense.

BrendanEich 6y ago

We never injected ads in publisher pages; we proposed doing this but only with publisher as partner and user opt-in. Brave Rewards are opt-in and put ads in the user's inventory, not the publisher's. Gerard lies about us "hijacking links", which I'm sure he knows has a well-defined meaning: changing the URL of a link the user clicks on in a page. We've never done any such thing, either. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25841456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25841456 If you want to believe we did these things, you're believing misinformation. If you can't verify these claims are false, I can help; many neutral third parties can help too. But it seems to me you want to believe such misinformation. Why?

bsaul 6y ago

That's exactly why i think knowing that a famous and respectable person (in the sense that he already accomplished great things) is behind the project is important. When someone creates a browser around token and adtech, and offers to be a gateway between content and ad money, it better has a serious reputation of integrity for me to even start digging into the technical details and see what it's really all about. Until now, the whole project looked scammy because i only paid a cursory glance at it, because i didn't know who was behind it. Now that i've watched the podcast and understand the whole reasoning behind it actually makes a lot of sense.