> Correct. We are able to continue developing Brave with the remaining 30%. In this arrangement, the user chooses whether or not to opt-in, governs the degree to which they will participate, receives more than 2x what Brave gets, and never has their data harvested in the process. Win-win, no?
Not really? There's no reason you should be entitled to that money. You're effectively doing nothing in this scenario: at least traditional ads actually support the content that is delivered on the site you access. Blocking ads isn't morally objectionable, but playing the role of the middleman and the tax collector certainly is. You can pretend like you deserve the compensation all you want, but from a technical level it's a pretty petty move that's ultimately designed to take advantage of the end-user and turn them into revenue-generating cattle. Yes, they get more money per ad, but they also don't have the benefit of scale. Individually, these users make what, no more than $3 a month from opting-in to ads? Meanwhile, Brave pockets hundreds of thousands. It doesn't add up.
> Regarding the Tom Scott topic, you're quite mistaken there as well. Please see this response (to another user in this thread) for context
So, I wasn't mistaken. Reading through that comment, you're basically admitting that you made a mistake, and had to rush out an update as damage control for a pretty obviously dark pattern. Case closed, don't treat me like a moron.
> Brave offers auto-conversion of received BAT into various other types of assets and currencies. If you prefer Bitcoin, for example, you can choose to have your BAT automatically converted into that asset. No requirement to hold BAT.
But you still need to hold crypto. That's not a refutation for the ERC-20 wallet point.
Ultimately, I think the Brave team is falling into the self-righteous Apple trap. Pretending like you always know what's best for your users and hiding behind a guise of privacy is pretty laughable, and it certainly doesn't make for good optics in the eyes of the greater FOSS and privacy community.