Brave’s “shady” browser “soliciting” tips on behalf of content creators without their consent

Brave’s “shady” browser “soliciting” tips on behalf of content creators without their consent

Brave browser hit the internet with their feature of rewarding users with Basic Attention Token [BAT] for using the browser, but it is now in the spotlight as it is allegedly “soliciting” tips in form of BAT from content creators without their consent.

Tom Scott, a popular British YouTuber took to Twitter to share his woes about this matter, wherein his face and name was used to collect tips/donations without opting for it.

Scott stated on his official Twitter handle that he never asked for crowdfunding on any platform and that if he ever decided to change this pattern, it would be made “obvious”.

He continued:

“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”.”

Furthermore, Scott described that these donations/tips that were being collected will not reach the content creators including himself and that Brave team had decided to keep it.

Additionally, Scott tweeted:

“I did ask Brave how keeping profiles on untold numbers of people and assigning donations to them without consent complied with GDPR, at which point the person talking to me stopped replying to emails.”

The barrage of tweets sent out by Tom Scott grabbed the attention of Riccardo Spagni aka fluffypony, the face behind the privacy coin Monero [XMR].

Spagni, at which point agreed with Scott and tweeted that this was a “scummy behavior”. Spagni went on and stated:

“It’s purposely designed to deceive users into thinking they’re donating to the person. End of story.”

When argued that, Brave was kinda similar to XRP’s Tip bot, Spagni said:

“Brave makes it seem like the content creator is soliciting for tips, even grabbing metadata from their site to do so. A tipbot on Twitter doesn’t do that.”

A member from Brave, Sampson tweeted:

“Not quite. Tipping banner shown to those who wish to support a property. Property image (often favicon) and title are displayed, which happens to be face/name in this case. Non-refundable due to anonymity. Tom’s feedback is very helpful though. We’re going to make changes.”

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