Sunday, December 23, 2018

Brave Rewards Update

Tom Scott (via Yan Zhu):

I don’t ask for donations or crowdfunding on any platform. If that ever changes, it’ll be incredibly obvious. If someone’s asking you for money or suggesting that you can donate to me, it’s not true and you should stay well clear.

This warning is prompted by a company called Brave, who’ve been taking cryptocurrency donations “for me”, using my name and photo, without my consent. I asked them not to, and to refund anyone who’s donated; they said “we’ll see what we can do” and that “refunds are impossible”.

[…]

Brave believes opting every creator into their system, and holding donations without consent, is ethical and in line with privacy laws. They also claim that a domain name or YouTube channel URL is not personally identifiable information. I disagree strongly with both of those.

I cannot see how ‘a YouTube URL is not personally identifiable information’ is compatible with the CEO’s statement that ‘Tom has $33 waiting for him’. Under GDPR, that’s clearly information (and money!) they’re holding that is connected to me.

Brave (tweet):

Starting tomorrow, Brave Rewards will clearly indicate which publishers and creators have not yet joined Brave Rewards, so users can better control how they donate and tip. This new message will appear in the regular donation process and in the tipping box. Moreover, creators that have not verified with Brave will no longer have their YouTube or Twitch channel images appear within Brave Rewards.

1 Comment RSS · Twitter

BrendanEich

Co-founder & CEO
‪@Brave‬ Software and ‪@attentiontoken‬

Co-founded Mozilla & Firefox. Created JavaScript.

I knew that name in the Twitter thread sounded familiar. Color me disappointed.

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