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You make it sound like Brave has intentionally done wrong; that isn't the case. Brave is designed in every way to preclude abuse from the design stage, and with

You make it sound like Brave has intentionally done wrong; that isn't the case. Brave is designed in every way to preclude abuse from the design stage, and with a Can't Be Evil mindset, as opposed to the Don't Be Evil of Google. If you have questions about Brave, or Brave Search, we're always happy to chat. - 2018 Rewards Update documented at https://brave.com/rewards-update/ https://brave.com/rewards-update/ - Affiliate Codes explained at https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ - The Tor/DNS issue resulted from https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/ https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/

tnorthcutt 5y ago
I appreciate the response! I stand by what I said, but I do appreciate you adding your perspective and sharing links so that others can read what Brave as an organization has to say about these incidents.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Fair enough; I can respect that :) Always happy to chat if anybody has any other questions about Brave.
judge2020 5y ago
> You make it sound like Brave has intentionally done wrong; They're not saying Brave did anything intentionally wrong, they're just big enough mistakes that it's not possible for them, personally, to trust the organization. > those are enough for me to choose not to trust them as an organization
- howolduis 5y ago
  then what about this?: > On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users type a URL of Binance into the address bar, which earns Brave money. Further research revealed that Brave redirects the URLs of other cryptocurrency exchange websites, too. In response to the backlash from the users, Brave's CEO apologized and called it a "mistake" and said "we're correcting". Seems intentional... Don't insult our intelligence and tell us that this was an "accident" or "unintended mistaken".
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    That was addressed in my comment (the one you're responding to) with this link: https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/. Briefly, we added a way for users to support Brave without having to make financial contributions. They could simply opt to use one of our affiliate codes for a few poplar sites/services. We added a feature to Brave which responded to user search input, and offered affiliate links for relevant results. You can see a screenshot of what that looked like at https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png. This didn't involve any user data, didn't rewrite links on pages, didn't redirect network requests, or touch the area of privacy/security in any way. Seemed like a good idea :) When the feature actually launched, users quickly realized that the logic was handling fully qualified URLs in additional to search input. You can see a screenshot of that at https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image2-1.png https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image2-1.png. This was the mistake that needed to be corrected. I hope that helps clarify things a little. Again, there was no impact to user data or privacy, and Brave made $0 on this feature. Thankfully, our community is attentive, and yields prompt feedback when mistakes are made. Fortunately we were able to resolve the issue quickly and get a fix out to users.
    - bagacrap 5y ago
      So "can't be evil" then "whoops, that bit of evil was an honest mistake".

tnorthcutt 5y ago

I appreciate the response! I stand by what I said, but I do appreciate you adding your perspective and sharing links so that others can read what Brave as an organization has to say about these incidents.

jonathansampson 5y ago
Fair enough; I can respect that :) Always happy to chat if anybody has any other questions about Brave.

judge2020 5y ago

> You make it sound like Brave has intentionally done wrong; They're not saying Brave did anything intentionally wrong, they're just big enough mistakes that it's not possible for them, personally, to trust the organization. > those are enough for me to choose not to trust them as an organization

howolduis 5y ago
then what about this?: > On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users type a URL of Binance into the address bar, which earns Brave money. Further research revealed that Brave redirects the URLs of other cryptocurrency exchange websites, too. In response to the backlash from the users, Brave's CEO apologized and called it a "mistake" and said "we're correcting". Seems intentional... Don't insult our intelligence and tell us that this was an "accident" or "unintended mistaken".
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  That was addressed in my comment (the one you're responding to) with this link: https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/. Briefly, we added a way for users to support Brave without having to make financial contributions. They could simply opt to use one of our affiliate codes for a few poplar sites/services. We added a feature to Brave which responded to user search input, and offered affiliate links for relevant results. You can see a screenshot of what that looked like at https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png. This didn't involve any user data, didn't rewrite links on pages, didn't redirect network requests, or touch the area of privacy/security in any way. Seemed like a good idea :) When the feature actually launched, users quickly realized that the logic was handling fully qualified URLs in additional to search input. You can see a screenshot of that at https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image2-1.png https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image2-1.png. This was the mistake that needed to be corrected. I hope that helps clarify things a little. Again, there was no impact to user data or privacy, and Brave made $0 on this feature. Thankfully, our community is attentive, and yields prompt feedback when mistakes are made. Fortunately we were able to resolve the issue quickly and get a fix out to users.
  - bagacrap 5y ago
    So "can't be evil" then "whoops, that bit of evil was an honest mistake".