Tom Scott did not explicitly sign up for this service. Brave is not even telling users that Tom Scott is not signed up, and Brave has no automated way of contacting him to let him know that someone donated. The system is engineered to move the money towards Brave, with neither the benefactor nor the beneficiary being aware of that. How is that ethical?
I was interested in Brave after hearing it mentioned here a fair bit, for innovating new ways for creators to get paid... after this story though? Knowing they effectively scam users out of money under the pretense of it really being the creator? That's fraud as far as I'm concerned (maybe not legally, but to me it's a con, and scummy).
Interest has dropped to 0, and they go to my shitlist with all the other crytpo-scam stuff prevalent these days.
Edit: Now that I've seen the screenshots of just how blatantly Brave pretends the creator has a profile and actively set this up, this is absolutely fraud. From further down in the comments of OPs original link: https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1076221401353207808
We agree the UI in that screenshot tells the wrong story. It doesn't represent what we're trying to do so we're shipping a bunch of changes tomorrow that we hope will fix things: https://brave.com/rewards-update/
We'd love another shot at winning your interest. Thanks for caring about finding new ways to get creators paid.
I don't want to muddle into the legal discussion, but I would like to add that I've been a happy Brave user for several months and have never felt any misunderstanding about where my tips are going. It is very clear to me who is a -verified- publisher and who isn't one. It was also made clear to me that unverified publishers were getting their tips stored in escrow as a carrot to entice them to enroll. Since I obviously like this model as a Brave user, I am also pleased with this approach.
I'm kind of confused as to why everyone here is up in arms. The UI denotes whether a publisher is verified or not. I never believed that Brave was trying to mislead me to where my donations were going. This feels like a simple misunderstanding.
As an outsider I agree, and I think that would have headed off a lot of the complaints.
That said, I did ask the few people I know that have been using BAT. All three of them knew that there was a chance their tip wouldn't be received if it wasn't a verified user. So, from actual users, putting actual money into it, they understood how it worked.
Two of them specifically would only tip to verified accounts. The third said he saw it as an incentive to get the creators to join the platform, though he's also the most vocal and evangelistic about BAT.
"Not yet verified" would, I think, imply to many people that they will in the natural course of things be verified, and perhaps even that they've asked to be verified.
It would be better to say "Bla is not a user and will not get the money you donate now, and quite possibly not ever", or similar wording. Or just (and this is, er, the obvious approach) not allow this at all for people who haven't asked for it.
