3 ms·

How long ago was this? Is it still the case? And why the flood of comments like this in every Brave thread, but never on Chrome threads? Chrome is purely and

How long ago was this? Is it still the case? And why the flood of comments like this in every Brave thread, but never on Chrome threads? Chrome is purely and unapologetically a portal specifically for supporting an ad network, yet I never see the same sort of comments. At least Brave is upfront about what they are doing.

yucky 4y ago
Because these are astroturfed responses attacking Brave. You see it on here anytime the browser is mentioned. Meanwhile, it's the best browser available by a mile which explains their attacks.
- suprjami 4y ago
  Got an impartial source for "best"? https://privacytests.org/ https://privacytests.org/ is created by a Brave employee, so that doesn't count
  - GeorgeWBasic 4y ago
    You're asking someone for a source for their opinion, instead of understanding what an opinion is?
    - judge2020 4y ago
      "which explains their attacks" implies "they only attack brave because they know it's objectively better than other browsers".
  - yucky 4y ago
    [flagged]
- crummy 4y ago
  people are paying hacker news commenters to post this stuff?
  - salad-tycoon 4y ago
    I think he is saying it’s group think as in “who taught you to think that?” As in, it’s a popular opinion not necessarily carried with the intention of deceit or financial gain of the individual but never the less a coaches or programmed response. Like fanboys.
  - zaroth 4y ago
    I don’t know about “astroturf” and I don’t use Brave or follow it particularly, but the qualms with Brave’s insertion of referral codes and the negative comments around their apology all seem to miss the mark or seem vendetta-ish / politicized. For example; complaining about privacy, (which was entirely unaffected) or complaining that they couldn’t have possibly done it by mistake (which is not what they said happened). When I see repeated comments saying wrong things emphatically, it certainly sets off a bit of a radar.
  - japaneseminisub 4y ago
    Probably more like a PR firm or social monitoring/management company is being paid a princely fee to monitor for things like this and then forum slide, distract, change topic etc. Source: I work in the same office as one of these companies. They don't work for Google but for another big, well known social platform.
judge2020 4y ago
TLDR: if you typed in binance.us, it autocompleted the 'suggested site' Binance US, which included a referral link that netted Brave (or maybe Eich themselves) some sum of money (not sure how much it was then, but right now it's $100 USDT when your referral deposits $50). The argument is that Brave should be considered referring users if you get to Binance (or other sites) via the Omnibox.. but it's disingenuous when it was suggested by the query "Binance", since the user already had the intention to visit and likely sign up for Binance. It would've been more acceptable if the omnibox only injected the referral code if you clicked 'Binance' when you tried to search "crypto exchange". https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269289242905042944 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269289242905042944 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269423583480082432 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269423583480082432
- colordrops 4y ago
  This doesn't address any of my questions.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
I would expect it's because Brave advertises itself as being privacy friendly. If you use Chrome you know what you're getting, if you use a browser that claims to be focused on privacy you expect better.
- zaroth 4y ago
  Doesn’t the issue you’re talking about have nothing to do with privacy?
  - drekipus 4y ago
    "yes, but that's not the point!" /s
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- NayamAmarshe 4y ago
  > I would expect it's because Brave advertises itself as being privacy friendly Yet the bug was not an privacy issue. Brave still is the most private mainstream browsers. Bugs that were fixed do not reflect the present reality: https://privacytests.org/ https://privacytests.org/
p1necone 4y ago
People love to nitpick, and hypocrisy is always perceived as worse than just doing bad things even when the bad things are much worse than the thing they did that's hypocritical. Perfect is the enemy of good and all that jazz. It's basically impossible to try to be a good actor/explain a good thing without HNers throwing whataboutisms at you. Of course maybe Brave is actually a bad actor, but none of the things people are calling them out for are meaningful evidence of that. The thing they did wasn't a tracking mechanism, it was just a sponsorship deal.
Analemma_ 4y ago
If you claim to be more ethical than the competition and that's why people should use you, you will be held to a higher ethical standard than that competition. Regardless of whether or not this is right, it is how human psychology has always worked, for all time, so it's weird that anyone is surprised or offended by it (and even more weird to build a business model which depends on people not acting this way).
0xcde4c3db 4y ago
> And why the flood of comments like this in every Brave thread For my part in such comments (I think I even managed to catch a snippy reply from Eich once), I believe the Web3 vision is toxic to the possibility of a truly pro-user web, and Brave as a company is up to its eyeballs in the stuff. I've seen a rot of siloing, appropriation, and pervasive monetization consume the web in the past 20 years, and Web3 is basically about "democratizing" that rot instead of stopping it. It's a bit like offering sharecropping as an alternative to serfdom: one can argue all day that it's better (credibly, even!), but it's a far cry from being pro-farmer. So when Brave stakes out the position of being pro-user and pro-privacy, I don't think it's meant in the ways that matter to me, and that feels like a kind of dishonesty. It's not that I envision the Brave C-suite gleefully rubbing their hands together like mustachioed cartoon villains at the prospect of deceiving people like me, but neither do I feel like they're being fully candid about the aims and implications of their project. In short, one might reasonably accuse me of viewing Brave's initiatives through thorn-colored glasses, but I think I came by it honestly.
nottorp 4y ago
That would be because no one has any hope left for Google. There's no point in complaining or using their browser, they simply cannot be trusted. Now an incumbent, that gives hope and disappointment.

yucky 4y ago

Because these are astroturfed responses attacking Brave. You see it on here anytime the browser is mentioned. Meanwhile, it's the best browser available by a mile which explains their attacks.

suprjami 4y ago
Got an impartial source for "best"? https://privacytests.org/ https://privacytests.org/ is created by a Brave employee, so that doesn't count
- GeorgeWBasic 4y ago
  You're asking someone for a source for their opinion, instead of understanding what an opinion is?
  - judge2020 4y ago
    "which explains their attacks" implies "they only attack brave because they know it's objectively better than other browsers".
- yucky 4y ago
  [flagged]
crummy 4y ago
people are paying hacker news commenters to post this stuff?
- salad-tycoon 4y ago
  I think he is saying it’s group think as in “who taught you to think that?” As in, it’s a popular opinion not necessarily carried with the intention of deceit or financial gain of the individual but never the less a coaches or programmed response. Like fanboys.
- zaroth 4y ago
  I don’t know about “astroturf” and I don’t use Brave or follow it particularly, but the qualms with Brave’s insertion of referral codes and the negative comments around their apology all seem to miss the mark or seem vendetta-ish / politicized. For example; complaining about privacy, (which was entirely unaffected) or complaining that they couldn’t have possibly done it by mistake (which is not what they said happened). When I see repeated comments saying wrong things emphatically, it certainly sets off a bit of a radar.
- japaneseminisub 4y ago
  Probably more like a PR firm or social monitoring/management company is being paid a princely fee to monitor for things like this and then forum slide, distract, change topic etc. Source: I work in the same office as one of these companies. They don't work for Google but for another big, well known social platform.

judge2020 4y ago

TLDR: if you typed in binance.us, it autocompleted the 'suggested site' Binance US, which included a referral link that netted Brave (or maybe Eich themselves) some sum of money (not sure how much it was then, but right now it's $100 USDT when your referral deposits $50). The argument is that Brave should be considered referring users if you get to Binance (or other sites) via the Omnibox.. but it's disingenuous when it was suggested by the query "Binance", since the user already had the intention to visit and likely sign up for Binance. It would've been more acceptable if the omnibox only injected the referral code if you clicked 'Binance' when you tried to search "crypto exchange". https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269289242905042944 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269289242905042944 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269423583480082432 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269423583480082432

colordrops 4y ago
This doesn't address any of my questions.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

I would expect it's because Brave advertises itself as being privacy friendly. If you use Chrome you know what you're getting, if you use a browser that claims to be focused on privacy you expect better.

zaroth 4y ago
Doesn’t the issue you’re talking about have nothing to do with privacy?
- drekipus 4y ago
  "yes, but that's not the point!" /s
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
NayamAmarshe 4y ago
> I would expect it's because Brave advertises itself as being privacy friendly Yet the bug was not an privacy issue. Brave still is the most private mainstream browsers. Bugs that were fixed do not reflect the present reality: https://privacytests.org/ https://privacytests.org/

p1necone 4y ago

People love to nitpick, and hypocrisy is always perceived as worse than just doing bad things even when the bad things are much worse than the thing they did that's hypocritical. Perfect is the enemy of good and all that jazz. It's basically impossible to try to be a good actor/explain a good thing without HNers throwing whataboutisms at you. Of course maybe Brave is actually a bad actor, but none of the things people are calling them out for are meaningful evidence of that. The thing they did wasn't a tracking mechanism, it was just a sponsorship deal.

Analemma_ 4y ago

If you claim to be more ethical than the competition and that's why people should use you, you will be held to a higher ethical standard than that competition. Regardless of whether or not this is right, it is how human psychology has always worked, for all time, so it's weird that anyone is surprised or offended by it (and even more weird to build a business model which depends on people not acting this way).

0xcde4c3db 4y ago

> And why the flood of comments like this in every Brave thread For my part in such comments (I think I even managed to catch a snippy reply from Eich once), I believe the Web3 vision is toxic to the possibility of a truly pro-user web, and Brave as a company is up to its eyeballs in the stuff. I've seen a rot of siloing, appropriation, and pervasive monetization consume the web in the past 20 years, and Web3 is basically about "democratizing" that rot instead of stopping it. It's a bit like offering sharecropping as an alternative to serfdom: one can argue all day that it's better (credibly, even!), but it's a far cry from being pro-farmer. So when Brave stakes out the position of being pro-user and pro-privacy, I don't think it's meant in the ways that matter to me, and that feels like a kind of dishonesty. It's not that I envision the Brave C-suite gleefully rubbing their hands together like mustachioed cartoon villains at the prospect of deceiving people like me, but neither do I feel like they're being fully candid about the aims and implications of their project. In short, one might reasonably accuse me of viewing Brave's initiatives through thorn-colored glasses, but I think I came by it honestly.

nottorp 4y ago

That would be because no one has any hope left for Google. There's no point in complaining or using their browser, they simply cannot be trusted. Now an incumbent, that gives hope and disappointment.