
Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher - yagodragon
https://brave.com/wikipedia-verified-publisher/
======
JohnTHaller
We signed up for Brave's setup at PortableApps.com after a few users asked
about it. They hold your last 90 days in escrow, so you can find out how
successful it is once you sign up. We were looking at around 10 cents a day
for a bit under a million monthly users for that timeframe over the summer.
And we can't even access it since Brave only works with one crypto provider
and they aren't licensed in New York. The process was also pretty buggy and
the magic link email login was clunky/kinda broken.

[https://portableapps.com/node/60580](https://portableapps.com/node/60580)

~~~
jonathansampson
Uphold is working hard to acquire the bitlicense for New York. They shared on
Twitter earlier this month that they hope to have this resolved soon.

It's worth noting that Creators also have a referral program whereby $5 in BAT
can be earned for each user brought to the Brave platform. brave.com/refer

Thank you for your incredible patience and participation. We hope to see
positive developments on the bitlicense front soon. Please do let us know if
there is ever anything we can do for you in the interim.

~~~
xur17
Are there any plans to get rid of uphold on the publisher side and allow
external wallets? It was a huge turn off to me when I signed up.

~~~
BrendanEich
We need a regulated entity to do directed (tips, recurring), user-anonymous,
off-chain transactions, and to comply with OFAC and other hard regulations. We
can't do it ourselves. Wallet is the least of the issue, even if the publisher
were willing to take BAT.

Our future phase (Apollo) blockchain work will move more txns on-chain but not
solve all regulatory problems. No blockchain can do that unless you are using
p2p directly, and then on the current big chains you don't have anonymity or
low fees. This may change, we're working on it.

~~~
prop84u
Please do not require people to submit their government ID in order to
withdraw their tokens, after you inserted yourself in the donation flow of
creators by offering to accept donations on their part from a priviledged UI.

We use platforms which do not ask for our ID, and we would prefer if you would
not reduce the probability of Brave users donating to us because they think
those BAT tokens will reach us.

Yes, unverified creators are marked as such, but a donation call in the
browser UI is a powerful default, more so than the donation service preferred
by the creator, which can only be shown as a web page.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Please do not require people to submit their goverment ID in order to
> withdraw their tokens_

Not verifying ID almost certainly causes a violation of American, British and
European anti-money laundering code.

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice._

~~~
prop84u
So blockchain.com is breaking the law by not asking all their customers to
upload their government ID and a selfie in order to withdraw the crypto they
have received to a private wallet?

~~~
donaltroddyn
Blockchain.com's privacy policy states that, for anti-money laundering
purposes, they'll collect:

> Passport and/or national driver’s license or government-issued
> identification card to verify your identity

(from
[https://www.blockchain.com/legal/privacy](https://www.blockchain.com/legal/privacy)).
That's consistent with every other exchange I've used.

~~~
prop84u
Verification is only required to use their exchange, and not for withdrawing
to a crypto wallet.

Brave would be able to offer BAT withdrawals for creators in a legally sound
way.

[https://support.blockchain.com/hc/en-
us/articles/36001835987...](https://support.blockchain.com/hc/en-
us/articles/360018359871-What-Blockchain-products-require-identity-
verification-)

~~~
londons_explore
AML laws aren't anywhere near as precise as most people expect. It basicly
boils down to "if bad guys use your platform, and you can't trace them, you're
gonna go to prison".

------
zargon
I really like what Brave is doing. I wish it was built on Firefox instead of
Chromium. I just don't see myself leaving Firefox without major upheaval in
the browser space.

~~~
bsclifton
(Brave employee here)

Curious: what are some of the shortfalls you see in Chromium?

Before I joined Brave, the desktop browser was originally using Gecko (from
Firefox). Ultimately, there were some problems and the decision was made to
move to Chromium. On iOS, Brave is forked from Firefox though

You can check out more detail on Reddit where folks asked why FF was not used
(which has links to more detailed info):
[https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9jpqde/brave_br...](https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9jpqde/brave_browser_and_chromium/)

~~~
bad_user
> _On iOS, Brave is forked from Firefox_

You mean the platform that specifically disallows competing browser engines,
making Firefox just a shell over a Safari-enabled web view and that can't even
access Safari's content blockers? The only Firefox that's not running a
Firefox engine under the hood? That Firefox?

Given you're a developer for Brave, it's not possible for you to not know
this, therefore your statement is misleading at best.

The pitfalls of Chromium are obvious... it gives Google the power to impose on
the market whatever engine feature they want, they are the ones defining the
web standards and there's nothing Brave can do about it because Brave does not
have the capacity to maintain a full fork, or to fight for web standards, just
like it doesn't have the capacity to build a browser without piggybacking on
somebody else.

Don't get me wrong, nowadays even Microsoft admitted total defeat, but then
Brave should recognize its total dependence on Google and its continued
goodwill.

~~~
jefftk
_> Brave should recognize its total dependence on Google and its continued
goodwill_

What do you mean? Brave is based on Chromium, which is open source. Google
can't stop people from using it.

(Disclosure: I work for Google)

~~~
input_sh
Google is the dictator of what gets accepted into Chromium and what does not.
That's how open source development works -- even if the code is available to
everyone, its maintainers control its future.

~~~
jefftk
Regardless of how Chromium is run [1] Brave is still in a position to make
their browser work however they want. They can choose what Chromium features
to enable, and take the code any direction they want.

[1] Your categorization doesn't match what I've seen. Microsoft has been
driving substantial changes as Edge moves onto it.

------
Ayesh
I'm a publisher relying on ad revenue, and I hate Brave. It's not because it
blocks my ads (I also contribute to an ad blocker list myself), but because
Brave can swap my ads with its own. This is theft!

Brave is similar to Opera. It's not a mainstream browser, and they also want
to make money. Dipping into publisher revenue and using some broken BAT crypto
currency to reward publishers is not the way to do it. The currency itself is
mostly useless and unstable, plus you will be making peanuts compared to even
the lowest CPM country in AdSense.

What we need is an ad provider that provides a meaningful experience to
advertisers and non-invasive ads to publishers. An entirely context-based,
tracking-less, controlled (iframed and sandboxed).

A browser is a user-agent and it should stay that way. I like certain things
Brave is doing (such as proxying Google Safe Browsing API requests), but for
all this BAT nonsense, I would still stick with Mozilla.

~~~
codezero
I don't want to be uncivil and call you a liar, but can you explain why what
you are saying about the ad replacement is true?

Brendan Eich has repeatedly said that they do not replace ads:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20831627](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20831627)

For what it's worth, I find Brendan's position on homosexuality to be on the
wrong side of history and on the wrong side of faithfulness (I do not intend
to put words in his mouth, but this comment feels like a strong acceptance
that he has feelings or opinions about gay people that are hard to rationally,
and intelligently defend) [0]

I want to make it clear I have no stake in protecting Brendan or Brave (I work
for an analytics company!), but parroting bullshit you heard, or
misrepresenting a company that affects your business is not taking the high
ground even when the thing you are shitting on is led by a person whose
position many people find despicable.

[0] Brendan Eich says, "As for homophobe, I reject your definition. Call me
what you want there" //
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20792783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20792783)

~~~
BrendanEich
What shows bad faith here is you taking my rejection of a loaded word as me
being irrational. Mobs of activists including some green handles and longtime
HN users would love to drive me out of a job. I am not here to explain an
alternative point of view to you. Get to know people with whom you do not
share all superficial or even deep beliefs. I am here for hacker news about
Brave.

Thanks for calling out parroting bullshit based on personal dislike or animus.
But FWIW, I don’t see evidence of Ayesh doing that. Peace.

~~~
codezero
Yep, you are right and I do regret this back-handed defense to some extent,
thanks for engaging despite my bad faith.

You've been doing a great job of defending Brave, I wish you didn't have to,
especially to the HN crowd.

------
seren
I had never read the Brave ad model before.

They want to display ads while respecting user privacy, which is nice from a
user point of view, but do advertisers actually want that rather than being
able to target 35-40 years old in Ohio that are using shaving products twice a
week ?

~~~
jonathansampson
Brave developer here. Great question! Brave Ads are entirely opt-in, and work
via on-device machine-learning. The machine-learning bits study your browsing
habits in a private, non-leaky manner.

Once a day, your device downloads an aggregate catalog of many ad options to
be studied locally. If/when an ad is found that fits your interests (as
inferred by your browsing habits), the ad is displayed as an OS notification
and 70% of the ad revenue is deposited into your in-situ wallet.

So on the topic of targeting, Brave is able to deliver a better experience for
Advertisers and Users, without the need to leak user information across the
Web. The on-device ML bits learn about their user over time, delivering a
better experience with maturity.

I hope that helps!

~~~
vesche
I would never opt-in to ads even if there was some upside. That's like asking
if I'd like to see billboards on a beautiful drive through Colorado and in
return you'll throw some change in my center console. I'll just take the
beautiful drive and you can keep the cash.

> The machine-learning bits study your browsing habits in a private, non-leaky
> manner.

I think everyone's been around the internet long enough to know that nothing
is private forever and everything has leaks. Relevant:
[https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/1045091640480804864](https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/1045091640480804864)

~~~
jonathansampson
Your beautiful drive through Colorado requires quite a bit of maintenance and
financial support. Somebody has to pay for that. With Brave, Advertisers can
pay for it (without getting hold of your data) by way of users. Alternatively,
you may choose to "fund the roads" yourself by depositing your own tokens into
Brave's wallet—that too is possible.

Brave aims to sustain the roads that grant you access to that scenery. For
some users, they are able to pay a bit out of pocket (depositing their own
tokens). For others, they can take advantage of a private advertising system
that finds relevant ads, while paying the user 70%. This allows users to
passively support the roads, if you will.

Unlike billboards down the side of the highway (which, I agree, aren't
pleasant to see), only the users who wish to see ads are shown ads. And they
always determine how many are shown (which is not the case with billboards).
Brave Ads are tuned over time, too. As a user engages the app, the ads will
become more and more relevant (unlike billboards). All that said, the default
experience is (and will remain) an ad-free experience.

To your Krebs citation, he is absolutely correct. Give your data to somebody,
and it's likely they'll lose it, leak it, or sell it. That's why Brave avoids
your data as best we can. Brave Ads takes place _on your machine_, where your
data naturally lives. You don't entrust us or anybody else with it.

I hope this helps!

~~~
vesche
You are supremely lost. If you carry the analogy, you're saying the billboards
destroying my view through Colorado are somehow paying for my roads. Well,
actually taxes pay for my roads. And no, viewing ad's on Brave does not
somehow make my internet better or faster. It just clutters the experience.

The only thing that will opt into this crap are the selenium bots I write to
farm some Brave cash or whatever you're calling it, until I realize that the
AWS fees are more than the Brave cash I'm getting and shut them off for good.

~~~
zucker42
> If you carry the analogy, you're saying the billboards destroying my view
> through Colorado are somehow paying for my roads. Well, actually taxes pay
> for my roads.

You are entirely misinterpreting the Brave engineer's good faith argument. The
argument wasn't that billboards somehow pay for roads. You introduced that
analogy, and the reply showed where your anology falls apart. The argument was
that _unlike roads_ , most websites aren't funded by taxes and won't be for
the foreseeable future. The engineer also points out some ways Brave ads are
different from billboards: they are opt-in, they are personalized, they give
you useful tokens for your attention, etc.

It's impossible to ignore that every major browser is subsidized by either
user tracking or OS sales. Even the privacy focused Firefox, which I use and
love, is funded almost completely by Google ads.

And lastly, one great thing about Brave is it's completely (besides maybe
Widevine, which isn't their fault) FOSS, so you are free to fork it and remove
the Brave ads functionality. In fact it's probably not even hard to write a
script to do it automatically. But no one has successfully funded large scale
browser development while being FOSS and not relying on ads.

Also, I know people who would opt-in, though I wouldn't myself.

~~~
vesche
Let's break down what the the rep from Brave said... I don't think I
misinterpreted anything.

> Your beautiful drive through Colorado requires quite a bit of maintenance
> and financial support.

Roads cost money.

> Somebody has to pay for that.

Someone has to pay for the roads.

> With Brave, Advertisers can pay for it (without getting hold of your data)
> by way of users. ... Brave aims to sustain the roads that grant you access
> to that scenery.

Ad's (billboards) can pay for a great browser experience (the roads)...

So, therefore I said: Billboards don't pay for roads, taxes do. I get that the
analogy isn't 1:1. However, stating that is an easy way to demonstrate that
Brave doesn't have a market. Just like I don't need billboards to pay for my
roads, I don't need ad's to pay for my browser experience. Firefox is open-
source, and adblock exists. Come off it.

~~~
zucker42
If you use Firefox, ads pay for your browser experience. It's just one extra
level of indirection (Advertiser -> Google -> Firefox vs. Advertiser ->
Brave).

With regards to original argument, my impressions was you didn't assume good
faith and respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what the Brave
developer said, as the Hacker News commenting guidelines suggest you do. Take
that how you will.

------
bilucy
BAT token is tradable on exchanges, and price floats and is unstable. Donation
receivers need to worry about exchange rates risk -
[https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/basic-attention-
token](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/basic-attention-token)

How about USD or USD stable currencies for this?

~~~
songshuu
Does BAT fluctuate that much?

Lately I see one of two things : 1\. The market is up, BAT loses value because
BTC sucks all the air out of the room with n00b investors. 2\. The market is
down, BAT loses value because BTC valuation scares off investors.

Otherwise, Brave/BAT team can announce features & partnerships all day long
and the price literally never budges.

~~~
bilucy
Exactly it. An ICO was done and it is openly traded, there is going to be
fluctuation whether up/down it is still an FX risk for receivers of BAT. Until
we see more goods and services payable with BAT, it will a problem

------
snek
Does brave still suck up money from people even when the site owner hasn't set
up brave payments?

~~~
dymk
And not just that, they’ve moved/are moving to a model of displaying their own
ads instead, which are invariably for some scammy crypto-of-the-day which even
FB and Google ban from their ad platforms

~~~
jonathansampson
Sorry, I'm not sure what you're referring to. Brave has 2 ad-models (one still
in the works). First, the User Model. In this model, user's must first opt-in
to participate. If/when they do, advertisements are shown (at a user-
controllable rate) as OS notifications. When a notification is shown, 70% of
the revenue is deposited into the user's wallet.

The second model is the Publisher Model; this is in the works now. Under this
model, Publishers will be able to opt-in the system as well, and have ads
displayed on their pages. Under this model, publishers receive 70%, and the
user receives 15%. But both models require consent before any ads are
displayed.

~~~
dymk
We'll see how long that lasts once the VC money runs out.

Blocking ads and displaying your own certainly is an "ad replacement" model
though, and websites that don't want to participate have no choice.

~~~
jonathansampson
Ads are being blocked, already, on hundreds of millions of devices. Brave
users are usually former users of ad-blocking extensions in Chrome and
Firefox. As such, these users were beyond the advertising system, far out of
reach of Advertisers or Publishers. Brave changes this.

Brave brings security and privacy minded folks back into the system by
offering a better deal for all parties. Users get paid without giving up data,
Advertisers get better value for their spend. And Publishers don't have to
weigh their sites down with third-party scripts to monetize content.

------
RandomBacon
I understan Wikipedia does not have ads, but other websites do.

In the early 2000s, toolbars that replaced a website's ads with different ads
were considered malware. Instead of the website that bears the cost of
delivering content getting the money, the browser is now getting the money.

How is Brave Browser different in this regard than those malware toolbars?

~~~
cameronbrown
The only difference is that consumers have agreed to let the browser do this.

~~~
RandomBacon
How do we know that all the consumers realize the browser is doing this? How
do we know all consumers with those toolbars didn't know?

I imagine those consumers also "agree" to website Terms of Service that don't
allow this.

I wonder if websites will fight back, closing accounts or doing more to stop
people who use adblockers or Brave.

~~~
cameronbrown
> I wonder if websites will fight back, closing accounts or doing more to stop
> people who use adblockers or Brave.

My personal belief is that websites are free to track users as much as they
want, but users are free to respond however they want. If it becomes an arms
race, so be it, but I think in the end the result will be adtech finally
having to fix itself which is a very good thing.

~~~
RandomBacon
Same here; I block ads. I am denying revenue to the website. What I am not
doing, is giving a middleman that money instead.

My conscience is okay with ad-blocking. It is not okay with helping someone
steal.

~~~
cameronbrown
I don't block ads but I just tend to avoid abusive websites.

------
randiantech
Since Brave is usually roasted around here, I just want to say thanks to the
devs. I'm a Brave user and the experience is fantastic. Two things: I was a
Chrome user for many years, so switching to Brave was not traumatic at all
(same user experience, plugin's compatibility) and also ad blockers work as
expected. I've never pay attention to the included ad solution. Im not
interested on it. Im strictly speaking as an end user.

~~~
sedatk
Did they fix the issue of pocketing the money on behalf of content creators
who are not registered to Brave?

~~~
BrendanEich
We never pocketed the money. In past years we gave out grants to users, who
could send their tokens to unverified creators, and we would hold tokens in
settlement awaiting those creators sooner or later signing up. We are still
holding.

We switched over the end of last year to have your browser hold for 90 days,
retrying each month to reconcile anonymously in case the creator verified.
After that the tokens go back into the browser wallet, or if you have signed
up with Uphold to put in or take out your tokens, into your BAT card at
Uphold.

------
lalaland1125
Can anyone explain why Brave uses BAT? As far as I can tell Brave would be
much better if they used USD instead.

~~~
lukemulks
[https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#why-not-
bitcoin](https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#why-not-bitcoin)

~~~
lalaland1125
That explains why they can't use Bitcoin, but it doesn't explain why they
can't use USD + a database.

~~~
BrendanEich
USD does not work in all regions, believe it or not. Moreover it cannot be
sent without an intermediary that is heavily licensed and regulated. Contrary
to maximalists, we do aim in our Apollo phase for BAT moving on-blockchain
with anonymity and low fees. Current blockchains and USD do neither

------
msla
This apparently just means that Brave users can now donate BATs (Brave
Attention Tokes) to Wikipedia using an icon in their address bar. What the
exchange rate is between BATs and USDs is left artfully unstated.

~~~
eganist
For what it's worth: [https://www.coinbase.com/price/basic-attention-
token](https://www.coinbase.com/price/basic-attention-token)

~~~
nexuist
Wait, that's actually kind of really good!? Out of 50,000 views, if 0.01%
donated (500 BATs) that translates to $85! Maybe my expectations are low but
that's more than enough to cover server costs for a month. It certainly
doesn't pay rent but it's better than not making any money at all.

~~~
BrendanEich
Wikipedia relies on donations, this adds another method of donating,
automatically and regularly, plus tips on top. In the nonprofit space you
don’t turn down more and easier ways to donate.

------
buboard
\- do you plan to have a simple password instead of email link?

\- are there any brave banners i can use to promote brave?

\- will u provide a command line tool to verify websites?

\- why are referrals tied to channels instead of account?

\- will you expand to micropayments?

\- will brave always block ads everywhere or will you switch to blocking only
on verified sites?

Some form if instant payment is sorely needed. I hope regulators can catch up
with reality , or else maybe brave should move to another country

( it s also comical to witness the hostility of HN towards brave. Are we full
of google shills here? )

~~~
_corym
(disclaimer engineer @ brave on creators team)

> do you plan to have a simple password instead of email link?

security gave the A-okay to give users an option to be able to stay signed in
for 30 days. soon you will be able to check a box to stay signed in.

> are there any brave banners i can use to promote brave?

[https://brave.com/assets-for-creators/](https://brave.com/assets-for-
creators/)

> will u provide a command line tool to verify websites?

not in the foreseeable future. we have had some discussions allowing keybase
as a trusted connection and mark any properties they have verified as verified
in brave as well. we might have more news on that front in the future.

> why are referrals tied to channels instead of account?

very good question, this is a symptom of tech debt. we're hoping to move it
over to the account very soon

> will you expand to micropayments?

we're discussing more ways to spend your BAT and that's all I'll say about
that :)

> will brave always block ads everywhere or will you switch to blocking only
> on verified sites?

brave will block 3rd party ads, in the future we will be introducing publisher
ads which will allow websites to define sections of their site to for Brave to
insert local privacy-preserving advertisements. the publishers get 70% of the
revenue and users receive 30%.

~~~
true_religion
Why do users receive 30% of revenue? They are the ones being advertised to.

------
woodandsteel
Lots of specific comments here about Brave, pro and con.

I would like to explain where I think it fits in the larger scheme of things.
There is broad agreement that the web is deeply broken, with all sorts of bad
consequences, because of how web sites get their money from advertisements and
selling data.

Now the only way this is going to get fixed, as far as I can tell, is for
someone to come up with an alternative financial model that publishers will
actually adopt.

There are many projects working on coming up with this. Brave seems to be a
lot further along than anyone else, and so I hope it succeeds. Either that or
that someone else does.

~~~
Ruthalas
If you are familiar with other projects in this space, would you mind sharing?
I'd be interested in following their progress.

------
intopieces
I don’t want BATs and I don’t want ads. I want to be able to donate to content
creators through Apple Pay instantly.

~~~
mayneack
I don't see why it would matter what form you're paying the creator in. I
suppose in the absence of an apple pay direct link, you'd have to just use
apple pay to pay for BAT. I think there's some sort of "re-fill $X/month"
feature, but I can't seem to find it.

[https://brave.com/funding-your-brave-wallet/](https://brave.com/funding-your-
brave-wallet/)

~~~
vorpalhex
...Why not skip the middleman and just fund websites with, you know, USD?

Obviously in the case of Wikipedia, we can donate (and please do so!) but I'd
gladly throw $0.20 at a website to not get ads for a day or something.

~~~
mayneack
Is there a different way to automatically pay based on how long I actually
spend on a site?

~~~
jonathansampson
That's the default behavior, known as Auto Contribute in Brave. If 10% of your
time is spent on Wikipedia, they'll get 10% of your monthly budget.

You can contribute in this manner, or/also via tips (which are one-off
contributions). You can also set a fixed percentage for the property, and set
it as a recurring contribution each month.

~~~
mayneack
Yeah, that's one reason I use brave. The parent was suggesting that they
wanted to do something like this without Brave, but I don't know of a real
competitor.

------
kylehotchkiss
I switched from Chrome to Brave this week after getting overwhelmed with some
of Google's recent design decisions on Chrome. The web inspector and yubikey
support in Brave made the transition super easy. The adblocking works about
the same as ublock did for me in Chrome so the browsing experience feels
similar. Great work Brave team on giving Chrome users a privacy-friendly
option to easily switch to.

~~~
TremendousJudge
If you are still using chromium you're still part of the problem

~~~
BrendanEich
Same for oxygen breathed by bad and good alike. Or tools, where the details
and how the tool is used make problems or solutions, depending.

------
kerkeslager
Looking into this only briefly, it didn't take long to find a lot of very
questionable decisions made by Brave:

1\. They're positioning themselves as both an advertiser and a privacy
advocate[1], which strikes me as more of a strategy for bootstrapping revenue
than a trustworthy moral position. The _entire point_ of crypto micropayments
is to pay for content with crypto rather than attention/privacy. Why should I
view Brave's ads rather than the other ads on the internet from advertisers
who also claim their ads respect privacy? The fact that Brave has decided to
get into bed with advertisers at all shows they're committed to profit, not to
users: micropayments are just a way to diversify for Brave, which will quickly
fall to the wayside if it fails to provide the revenue they want.

2\. The entire concept of a Brave Verified Publisher stinks. It positions
Brave as a censor. If this system takes off, then suddenly Brave has control
over who gets paid for content on the internet, and can censor content they
don't like. And this isn't hypothetical, _they plan to do this_ : their TOS[2]
explicitly contains a code of conduct which contains a long list of things
they will terminate your account for: they _promise_ to use their power as
censors to enforce of US copyright/patent law and also a wide variety of
subjective social norms. This also shows their commitment to being an
advertiser rather than an application that serves users: if you're serving
users then you let them pay for the content they want to pay for, but if
you're serving advertisers, then you can't let advertisers brands be seen as
supporting questionable content.

3\. BAT based in Ethereum seems to be basically a way to ride the wave of
cryptocurrency hype while still positioning themselves as a central
authority/middleman. If they weren't trying to position themselves as a
middleman, they would just make the micropayments in Ether directly, or better
yet, in a cryptocurrency that doesn't have a history of forking the blockchain
to fix an bug in a major users' contract[3]. If they weren't trying to ride
cryptocurrency hype, they'd just allow micropayments via a much-simpler-and-
more-reliable REST API or similar since they're already the central authority
anyway.

I don't think we can trust Brave with our privacy or attention. I don't think
we can trust Brave with the decision of who gets paid for content. I don't
think we need Brave as a middleman to pay content publishers. I don't like the
state of how content is paid for on the internet, but I don't think Brave is
the solution.

It's disappointing to me that Wikipedia has decided to associate their name
with Brave's. A big part of why I respect Wikipedia is their long-standing
policy of keeping independent from advertisers, and it seems naive of them to
have not realized that _Brave is an advertiser_. I can understand why
Wikipedia has made this decision, but I still think it is a compromise of
Wikipedia's values, and I hope they'll reverse their decision in the future.

[1] [https://brave.com/brave-ads-waitlist/](https://brave.com/brave-ads-
waitlist/)

[2] [https://brave.com/terms-of-use/](https://brave.com/terms-of-use/)

[3] [https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-executes-blockchain-
hard-f...](https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-executes-blockchain-hard-fork-
return-dao-investor-funds)

~~~
martindale
They're just using privacy as a marketing tool, as user behavior can be
tracked externally by observing the transactions on the network. Brave makes
things objectively worse.

------
scarejunba
Brave is such a clever concept. I'm just mad I didn't think of it. But then
again, they've got some heavy technical firepower behind it.

I think they're genuinely doing all the right things:

* Opt-in advertising

* Client-side advertising

* Using a cryptocoin to avoid the microtransaction payment processor problem

They will probably do fine having had a very successful ICO but I can't
imagine anyone actually donating meaningful amounts of money to any site.
After all, you can just get it for free.

------
RyanAF7
Been using Brave for about 2 years now and here's the deal with BAT,
Advertisers and Privacy.

As soon as you offer quid-pro-quo exhanges involving digital assets you open
the door to the SEC/IRS. With even a modicum of success in market share Brave
risks opening the door to the two most openly privacy smashing bureaucracies
in financial history.

Brave can lament all they want but in the end digital assets will come to heel
and SOX/Dodd Frank still stand.

------
amelius
> The average mobile browser user pays as much as $23 a month in data charges
> to download ads and trackers — that’s $276 a year.

Is that true?

~~~
mkl
"as much as" just means one or more people have really expensive mobile
internet and visit ad-heavy sites. It's not really saying much. My entire
phone bill is ~half that.

~~~
amelius
They say "the average user".

~~~
mkl
True. It doesn't make sense. "Average" is in aggregate, but "as much as" is a
single maximum.

------
trpc
1\. Build a theme over Chromium

2\. Add your ads and tracking system over it

3\. Brand it as "X Browser"

This is not a browser, this is a skin over Chrome with a business model that's
built over a crypto scam. Your army of online shills and your attempts to
connect yourselves with reputable online entities such as Wikipedia won't
change that fact.

~~~
drusepth
I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say Brave is a scam, but it _does_ extort
companies and websites by effectively saying, "We're shutting down your
monetization sources (no longer showing your ads). If you want that money (or
a different cut), sign up for our platform instead."

~~~
BrendanEich
Our users have rights to block or unblock ads, and to try our alternative ways
of supporting sites. No site has an overriding right to force ads on its
users, not by law or by the design of the web standards.

------
kexx
Please stop promoting brave either you do it in good faith or paid or you are
a shill. everything with "Acceptable ads program" is a cancer

~~~
BrendanEich
We don't do "Acceptable ads program". Are you willing to look at what we do
more closely, in order to understand it?

/be

------
jammygit
How come more websites do not accept brave payments? If I had a website, what
is the process required to begin accepting them?

Edit: typo

~~~
Ayesh
You have to be a verified publisher. There was a whole story about Tom Scott
(English YouTuber) rightfully tweeting about it.

Brave changed themselves after to not collect donations for unverified
publishers.

------
VChhabra
Hey All - Brave BD rep here ... let me know if I can help in any way.

~~~
smsm42
I hope other Wikimedia properties, like Wikidata and Commons, get added too.

------
JustFinishedBSG
Wikipedia joins Brave "Protection Scheme" you mean.

~~~
admax88q
It could only be considered a protection scheme if you were already relying on
ads which Brave blocked. Wikipedia does not run ads.

~~~
RandomBacon
> Wikipedia does not run ads.

Most other websites do. Replacing their ads and running different ads to make
money with is unethical.

Toolbars in the early 2000s that did that were considered malware.

------
solarkraft
So finally Brave doesn't just take the money people thought they gave
Wikipedia?

------
martindale
Brave is a scam, with user funds being seized and converted into other
currencies against their will. By issuing their own token instead of just
using Bitcoin, they re-implement the same central banking system which the
technology is designed to replace.

------
miguelmota
Why doesn't brave adopt a stable coin like DAI for donations? Tokens are
pretty volatile and it would suck for the publisher to lose money because they
didn't cash out immediately. That won't be a problem though with DAI.

[https://www.coinbase.com/price/dai](https://www.coinbase.com/price/dai)

~~~
lukemulks
(Brave employee) The BAT is used for more than contributions. The token has a
distinct use case as the unit of account for attention and services on the
platform.

[https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#representation](https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#representation)

~~~
miguelmota
Thanks. I wished people would explain that instead of downvoting.

~~~
lukemulks
Glad it was helpful.

------
xacky
Wikipedia hates cryptocurrencies they constantly delete their articles even
Bitcoin was denied an article at one point. I feel Wikipedia is violating
their own conflict of interest policies with this.

~~~
the_duke
Please back that up with some references.

It should be easy by linking to the respective edits.

~~~
xacky
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Bl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Blockchain_and_cryptocurrencies)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=cryptocu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=cryptocurrency&prefix=Wikipedia%3AArticles+for+deletion%2F&fulltext=Search+archives&fulltext=Search&ns0=1)
Major cryptocurrencies deleted include Cardano, Chainlink, IOTA and Lisk. Also
the Wikipedia admin David Gerard runs an anti cryptocurrency blog.

~~~
BrendanEich
David is quite a character. I did not know he was a wp admin.

Brave has tons of verified publishers, see
[https://batgrowth.com/](https://batgrowth.com/). Our verifying a site or
channel does not thereby endorse all or any of its content. As noted elsewhere
here, we aim to distribute if not decentralize verification so it is even more
censorship resistant.

------
RonaldSchleifer
That's interesting and also essentially nullifies Brave's credibility as some
kind of privacy browser. Either they are ignorantly unaware or they are
complicit in supporting wikipedia, one of the many digital organizations that
have in the last years gone full on dystopian censorship thought police, even
if it is not apparent to the casual observer.

Case in point beyond just their close relationship and integration into
censorious and authoritarian Google and Youtube, look for a link to the
official government report on the definitely not muslim Bataclan attack in
Paris, which details the gruesome slaughter, torture, disfigurement,
dismemberment, and torment the attackers perpetrated upon their victims; which
was all of course withheld from the public until it was forced into the light
by the court case. You will not find a link to the report in spite of it being
out for many months now, and you will be unsuccessful at adding a link to the
report, let alone highlighting the brutal descriptions from the several
hundred pages long report, somewhere in the wikipedia page.

It's full on censorship, and the most pernicious and nefarious and sick part
of this digital censorship is that deletion, shadow banning, banning, or
simply colluding across organizations to erase someone's digital personality
and identity goes basically unnoticed by the general public that is none the
wiser that someone was ushered off to the digital gulag or digital mass grave
... pooof ... that comment, information, person is gone, with not trace and no
accountability or transparency.

