
Brave’s browser has been autocompleting websites with referral codes - rfcenturies
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/67594/braves-browser-has-been-autocompleting-websites-with-referral-codes
======
3131s
I honestly assume that 80% of what I've seen pushing Brave against all basic
common sense is astroturfing.

Just use Firefox! Why would anyone ever choose Brave when it is proprietary
and better free alternatives exist? This company's track record of
disrespecting their users and sketchy monetization is so blatant, and its
creator is a homophobic tool who is responsible for all of us writing
Javascript instead of Scheme.

~~~
eredengrin
I don't use brave myself, but I appreciate that it's actually taking serious
efforts trying to fix the problem of ads. I'm kind of a little surprise hn
seems to be so blind to this issue, considering the number of people here who
are employed by companies that literally live off of ads. If ads are bad and
annoying (which most here would agree they are) but I still want to support
certain websites (because some websites produce good content that I value),
there's no convenient way to do that right now outside of allowing ads on that
website, which is not particularly desirable. Brave seems to be the only one
seriously trying to address that.

Do you know of any other major effort being put into alternative (convenient)
mechanisms for monetization? I'd be interested in looking into it if you do,
since I don't use brave (Firefox has too many useful features to me).

~~~
jsterSC
I've seen a couple of comments in this direction across sites and would like
to take a moment to point out that while advertisements are certainly annoying
and a hassle, the root of the problem comes with the mining of behavior data
that is then transformed into profile packages sold for advertising (and
whatever other) purposes.

So, even if a browser is blocking ads, or changing the way ads are interacted
with, the more important worry (imo) is whether the browser (or its features)
are successful in blocking the behavior profile being built by aggregators
such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.

~~~
eredengrin
Yeah in my view there are 2 main problems with ads. One is as you say -
collecting data profiles of people that are shared around with no respect for
the user's preferences. The other is they are an unpleasant experience
(resource hogs, obscure the content, etc). In my understanding, brave actually
tries addressing both. For the issue of data collection, I believe its goal is
to eventually enable (if it hasn't already) local profiling, so that you can
still build profiles, but none of the data ever leaves your machine (and
presumably they'd allow you to disable this feature - also it's open source so
worst case you could always hack it out). For the user experience, since the
ads (if you enable them) are served locally, they don't incur the same level
of performance penalty as normal ads. Or (I believe) you can also just buy bat
separate without ever enabling ads and use those to contribute to content
creators (this is probably how I'd use it). I might have gotten a few details
wrong but I think the overall direction is definitely worth exploring.

As for blocking the existing ads until the unlikely future where the brave
style of ads becomes so common that the ads as we know them today entirely
disappear - that's definitely a valid question. It doesn't help to be on the
brave model if websites are still able to collect your data anyway. I think
brave might have some special features helping obscure the data but I'm not
too knowledgeable on that.

------
pull_my_finger
Brave seems to push the line as to what is acceptable ways to monetize the
browser. Every time they will just call it a mistake and "fix" it, but why do
they keep trying to push the limit? They had the "safe" ads replacing websites
ads. They had the "shadow accounts" wrt the tip thing. Now they're trying to
sneak in referral codes. How many "oopsies" do you get in good faith?

~~~
BrendanEich
[https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/1269512276605759489?s...](https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/1269512276605759489?s=21)
Et seq. Stop repeating falsehoods.

~~~
pull_my_finger
Well that's not my twitter (nice dox attempt) but since that poster didn't
know the history and is here on HN, I've got some links wrt ad replacement [1]
and the shadow accounts + tipping where you don't know you aren't even
notified you received money until you break a certain threshold and if you
don't claim it within a certain amount of time it gets "recycled" back into
the growth pool [2] conversation.

I did mention that Brave "fixes" these issues when the public inevitably
freaks out, but it's still worth noting the pattern of intent.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/01/mozil...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/01/mozilla-co-founder-unveils-brave-a-web-browser-that-blocks-
ads-by-default/?comments=1)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999)

------
npiit
People, especially non-technical people, still don't ask themselves, how can a
company be profitable from a browser? Especially if the browser itself is 100%
made by another company but the license permits to be used and rebranded by
others. Brave browser is nothing but skin and some config modifications to
block Google tracking. But how can a company that raised 42 million dollars
make money from a skin and some config modifications that can be developed by
a student in his weekend?

The real business model of Brave is obviously to gain enough market share by
smearing Google, the company that actually created and still developing the
browser, and block its main resource of revenue, Adsense and then make money
by replacing the blocked ads with their own, of course this time "private" ad
platform. In the mean time they can play with cryptocoin scams but in the end
this is the only viable business model. Take and rebrand a browser as
"private" alternative to evil big corp that created the browser that their
entire business relies on, block ads, wait until gain enough market share and
then extort publishers and advertisers to migrate to their own ad platform.

------
monotypical
Can't wait to see what scummy monetization tactic brave is found to be using
next.

Here's a question for any employees of brave who happen to be reading this:
how did this get out the door? It's not like this is the first time the
company has been found doing something that most people disagree with, and the
fact that it keeps happening means that the process is still very much broken.
I have not yet seen any response from brave that gives me confidence that _the
company_ has changed from when they were taking youtube donations of creations
not signed up to the BAT program

------
ebalit
I don't see this as particularly problematic if it's not replacing an existing
referral code. It should definitely be opt-in and more transparent though.

In fact, as a Firefox user, I would like to be able to activate a feature that
would make Firefox the default beneficiary of affiliate rewards linked to my
purchases. After all, I would not be visiting this website without it.

Am I missing some way this could be hurting someone?

~~~
Smithalicious
Brave is getting paid for having their referral code used, but they aren't
actually referring anyone. The people that accept referral codes are being
ripped off in a sense.

~~~
ketamine__
Brave has a partnership with Binance. They aren't replacing random affiliate
links as your comment suggests.

------
fsflover
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027)

The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes
(davidgerard.co.uk)

205 points by davidgerard 1 hour ago | 82 comments

~~~
BrendanEich
David is obsessed with smearing me, and fact free high spin as ever. We hijack
nothing, no link rewriting. But what is more, based on user feedback, we are
flipping the default on Brave site suggestions to “off”, even though it was
aimed at showing the value of omnibox Binance affiliation where, if it worked,
we would share back with users via BAT. Good job tanking this effort, and
helping Chrome cement Google’s monopoly. (Firefox is dead.)

------
factfindingisfn
Are there any good alternatives to Brave? Read the twitter response from their
CEO and it was terrible...

~~~
burgerzzz
Pretty nuts, he asked one fellow why he liked his own comment, which seems
super juvenile. And, he's just repeating ad nauseam that they will "never
revise typed in domains again", which leaves a lot of wiggle room to me in
what they will or won't revise with ref codes.

------
RNCTX
If it’s associated with a cryptocurrency, it’s a scam. Just a matter of
uncovering the details.

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN, or shallow dismissals of other
people's work. Maybe you don't owe cryptocurrency better, but you owe this
community better if you're participating in it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
Daishiman
He's not wrong though.

~~~
dang
A comment needn't be wrong to be bad.

