When it must be said, it must be said. And this time it is appropriate to say it. The boys of Brave have done a ruckus and have not even managed to admit it to the end, rerouting everything to a "mistake". Brave is an open-source browser based on Chromium. I also talked about it in the past: the purpose of the browser is to revolutionize the world of online advertising and focus on cutting-edge user experience, on privacy, and on BAT, a cryptocurrency that eliminates intermediaries from the advertising process. The users are rewarded for their attention in watching ads and publishers receive the majority of advertising revenue.
So let's get to the facts. A user found that the browser, when a user went on platforms such as Binance and Coinbase, famous cryptocurrency exchanges, secretly made a small redirect by inserting a referral link.
You should know that Binance, for example, has a very interesting affiliate program. If you introduce a friend, who registers using your ref link, you will be "rewarded for life" with a part of the fees that he will use with his account to trade on the platform. This means that users who access this link by creating an account are unwittingly registering using Brave's reference link, helping the browser generate revenue from the user's trading activities. Considering all users who use the browser, inserting a ref link in this way that is not very transparent will certainly have generated tens of thousands of affiliations.
The same thing was also done with the sites of Ledger and Trezor, two major manufacturers of hardware wallets for cryptocurrencies. Furthermore, the results deriving from a simple search (such as "bitcoin" or "ethereum") were also manipulated, so as to make the Binance site appear as the first result with access to the affiliate page via ref link. Find the source code on GitHub.
Brave Browser: error, apology, and ethics
Shortly thereafter, however, Eich opened a thread in which he explained the fraud, apologizing and calling it a "mistake". Since Brave's mission has been entirely focused on building trust with users, many now feel betrayed by the browser.
The BAT token - the cryptocurrency that moves the Brave ecosystem - is down 4% at the time of writing, probably following short-selling caused by this half-scandal.
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