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> 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 Brav

> 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". Brave is just a "pop-privacy" company. I will skip this one...

jonathansampson 5y ago
That's not accurate. Brave offered affiliate link options to users who were searching for particular terms (screenshot: https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png). These were presented to users as a way of optionally supporting Brave development. Our mistake was matching fully-qualified URLs too (screenshot: https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image2-1.png https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image2-1.png). When we were made aware of this, we corrected the issue promptly. No revenue was made from this feature either. No user data was involved. No privacy or security was compromised. This was nothing more than traffic attribution as a means of optionally supporting an open-source, free-to-use browser. Read more about this feature at https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/. Compare this with traffic attribution in other browsers: open Firefox and begin typing a search query. If you monitor your network activity, you'll find that your keystrokes are not only sent to Google behind the scenes, but those requests also contain an identifier so that Firefox gets paid for sending you and your queries to Google. Brave users were shown the affiliate options before any network activity. Read more at https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/ https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/. As for the question of privacy, Brave was compared to Chrome, Firefox, and more in a review by Trinity College in Dublin, and they found that Brave exists uniquely in its own category as the "most private" browser tested. Read their technical paper here: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf.
- kowlo 5y ago
  What about Safari?
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Safari was covered in the aforementioned browser-privacy study as well: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf. It finished with Chrome and Firefox in 2nd place (behind Brave).
- Clewza313 5y ago
  Disclosure: the author of this comment appears to be a Senior Developer Relations Specialist at Brave.
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Correct. Note the use of "we" in my comments, pointing out that I am part of the Brave team. Thank you for stating it more explicitly.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- howolduis 5y ago
  you work for Brave. I can't take what you say on face value
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Please don't take my words for granted. Verify everything. If you wish to prod a little, I'm always happy to chat :-)
    - string 5y ago
      Appreciate you taking part in the conversation. So often people complain about companies not communicating like humans, but when they do people almost seem to get more pissed off. You can't win really.
smoldesu 5y ago
It shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Their attitude towards advertisement and cryptocurrency is the reddest flag imaginable.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Elaborate, please? The blockchain enables everybody to participate, earn, and support content creators in an low-friction, anonymous manner. Advertisements serve as a great way to introduce revenue into the system (by way of advertisers who wish to reach an audience). Brave pulls it all together into a single, OPTIONAL component, which guards the user's privacy and security by conducting its operation locally, on the user's device with client-side machine-learning. No red flags here.
  - someperson 5y ago
    Brave blocks webpage's existing ads then replace the ads with their own ad network that earns the website owner Brave-money that the website owner then has to redeem. That tactic is definitely a red flag.
    - jonathansampson 5y ago
      That's not how it works. Brave blocks third-party ads and trackers (which are known to be dangerous) on behalf of its users (the same users who were installing uBlock Origin in Chrome and Firefox before coming to Brave). This is a security and privacy necessity on the Web today. Users are then able to opt-in, if they like, to a novel advertising platform within the Brave ecosystem. These users can earn rewards for their attention (70% of the associated ad-revenue). Ads are displayed within Brave and on the user's desktop; ads are not displayed in any publisher-owned space (e.g. a website or YouTube channel). With these rewards, users are able to contribute to [verified] sites, channels, etc. The publisher/content-creator must already be verified to receive any rewards from users. If a user attempts to contribute to a non-verified site, the tokens remain on the user's device for up to 90 days. This isn't much different from how PayPal allows you to send money to an arbitrary email address, regardless if it is associated with a verified PayPal account or not. This model simply addresses the problem of blocking harmful ads and trackers, while offering no alternative means of supporting those same content creators.
pmurt7 5y ago
"Mozilla’s Mr. Robot promo backfires after it installs a Firefox extension without permission": https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/mozillas-mr-robot-promo-backfires-after-it-installs-firefox-extension-without-permission/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/mozillas-mr-robot-promo-ba... All companies make mistakes. That's part of the journey. This affiliate referral code thing is becoming boring at this point. It was 2 years ago. Move on. Better look at what Brave is doing good right now, but I suspect you have an agenda, so you can't.
propogandist 5y ago
Honey, a browser extension that harvests user data and injects its own affiliate links was acquired by Paypal for $4 Billion. Publishers are shilling amazon's prime day because they're all amazon affiliates wanting to earn their commission. Similarly, all those "price comparison" and coupon sites are injecting affiliate codes and just redirecting you to the merchant. I don't see how Brave did something egregious injecting affiliate codes to earn commission from certain vendors, if one of their users signed up for a service. Keep in mind the dominant, alternative browser (Chrome), built by an advertising company, is privacy hostile and trying to use new tracking technology (FLOC) as they phase out cookies. Firefox is kept alive largely by $ paid by Google and seems to be getting worse with each release also. I'd rather see a competitive browser that doesn't have to take $$ from Google to stay alive.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Patching a few things in chrome is radically easier than maintaining and improving a completely different browser engine. And just because Google pays some money to firefox for their own selfish reason to not be caught in monopoly busting doesn’t create any twisted incentives for Firefox. It is the privacy-oriented browser fighting for a worthy case. Also, it is improving all the time - it’s just that for some reason the few missteps are way overpronounced.
  - ntp85 5y ago
    > Also, it is improving all the time - it’s just that for some reason the few missteps are way overpronounced. I don't understand why Firefox gets this benefit of doubt and other browsers (e.g. Brave) do not.
    - getcrunk 5y ago
      Well for one, because Mozilla has contributed significantly to the world and have a long history of doing so. (Thunderbird, mdn)
      - ntp85 5y ago

jonathansampson 5y ago

That's not accurate. Brave offered affiliate link options to users who were searching for particular terms (screenshot: https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png). These were presented to users as a way of optionally supporting Brave development. Our mistake was matching fully-qualified URLs too (screenshot: https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image2-1.png https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image2-1.png). When we were made aware of this, we corrected the issue promptly. No revenue was made from this feature either. No user data was involved. No privacy or security was compromised. This was nothing more than traffic attribution as a means of optionally supporting an open-source, free-to-use browser. Read more about this feature at https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/. Compare this with traffic attribution in other browsers: open Firefox and begin typing a search query. If you monitor your network activity, you'll find that your keystrokes are not only sent to Google behind the scenes, but those requests also contain an identifier so that Firefox gets paid for sending you and your queries to Google. Brave users were shown the affiliate options before any network activity. Read more at https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/ https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/. As for the question of privacy, Brave was compared to Chrome, Firefox, and more in a review by Trinity College in Dublin, and they found that Brave exists uniquely in its own category as the "most private" browser tested. Read their technical paper here: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf.

kowlo 5y ago
What about Safari?
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Safari was covered in the aforementioned browser-privacy study as well: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf. It finished with Chrome and Firefox in 2nd place (behind Brave).
Clewza313 5y ago
Disclosure: the author of this comment appears to be a Senior Developer Relations Specialist at Brave.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Correct. Note the use of "we" in my comments, pointing out that I am part of the Brave team. Thank you for stating it more explicitly.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
howolduis 5y ago
you work for Brave. I can't take what you say on face value
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  Please don't take my words for granted. Verify everything. If you wish to prod a little, I'm always happy to chat :-)
  - string 5y ago
    Appreciate you taking part in the conversation. So often people complain about companies not communicating like humans, but when they do people almost seem to get more pissed off. You can't win really.

smoldesu 5y ago

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Their attitude towards advertisement and cryptocurrency is the reddest flag imaginable.

jonathansampson 5y ago
Elaborate, please? The blockchain enables everybody to participate, earn, and support content creators in an low-friction, anonymous manner. Advertisements serve as a great way to introduce revenue into the system (by way of advertisers who wish to reach an audience). Brave pulls it all together into a single, OPTIONAL component, which guards the user's privacy and security by conducting its operation locally, on the user's device with client-side machine-learning. No red flags here.
- someperson 5y ago
  Brave blocks webpage's existing ads then replace the ads with their own ad network that earns the website owner Brave-money that the website owner then has to redeem. That tactic is definitely a red flag.
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    That's not how it works. Brave blocks third-party ads and trackers (which are known to be dangerous) on behalf of its users (the same users who were installing uBlock Origin in Chrome and Firefox before coming to Brave). This is a security and privacy necessity on the Web today. Users are then able to opt-in, if they like, to a novel advertising platform within the Brave ecosystem. These users can earn rewards for their attention (70% of the associated ad-revenue). Ads are displayed within Brave and on the user's desktop; ads are not displayed in any publisher-owned space (e.g. a website or YouTube channel). With these rewards, users are able to contribute to [verified] sites, channels, etc. The publisher/content-creator must already be verified to receive any rewards from users. If a user attempts to contribute to a non-verified site, the tokens remain on the user's device for up to 90 days. This isn't much different from how PayPal allows you to send money to an arbitrary email address, regardless if it is associated with a verified PayPal account or not. This model simply addresses the problem of blocking harmful ads and trackers, while offering no alternative means of supporting those same content creators.

pmurt7 5y ago

"Mozilla’s Mr. Robot promo backfires after it installs a Firefox extension without permission": https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/mozillas-mr-robot-promo-backfires-after-it-installs-firefox-extension-without-permission/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/mozillas-mr-robot-promo-ba... All companies make mistakes. That's part of the journey. This affiliate referral code thing is becoming boring at this point. It was 2 years ago. Move on. Better look at what Brave is doing good right now, but I suspect you have an agenda, so you can't.

propogandist 5y ago

Honey, a browser extension that harvests user data and injects its own affiliate links was acquired by Paypal for $4 Billion. Publishers are shilling amazon's prime day because they're all amazon affiliates wanting to earn their commission. Similarly, all those "price comparison" and coupon sites are injecting affiliate codes and just redirecting you to the merchant. I don't see how Brave did something egregious injecting affiliate codes to earn commission from certain vendors, if one of their users signed up for a service. Keep in mind the dominant, alternative browser (Chrome), built by an advertising company, is privacy hostile and trying to use new tracking technology (FLOC) as they phase out cookies. Firefox is kept alive largely by $ paid by Google and seems to be getting worse with each release also. I'd rather see a competitive browser that doesn't have to take $$ from Google to stay alive.

kaba0 5y ago
Patching a few things in chrome is radically easier than maintaining and improving a completely different browser engine. And just because Google pays some money to firefox for their own selfish reason to not be caught in monopoly busting doesn’t create any twisted incentives for Firefox. It is the privacy-oriented browser fighting for a worthy case. Also, it is improving all the time - it’s just that for some reason the few missteps are way overpronounced.
- ntp85 5y ago
  > Also, it is improving all the time - it’s just that for some reason the few missteps are way overpronounced. I don't understand why Firefox gets this benefit of doubt and other browsers (e.g. Brave) do not.
  - getcrunk 5y ago
    Well for one, because Mozilla has contributed significantly to the world and have a long history of doing so. (Thunderbird, mdn)
    - ntp85 5y ago