This is the key reason I'm moving to iPhone. The mobile hardware / software that utilizes it are no longer moving quickly enough to justify buying a new phone every few years for my use case.
Getting meaningful updates for the duration of how long I want to use the hardware for is a huge differentiator to me.
You're mistaken, or simply misleading. Brave has never inserted affiliate links into any content. What you may be referring to was the offering of affiliate links within the suggestions-dropdown in the browser itself. We wrote about this back in June of this year: https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/.
When a user searched (e.g. 'binance'), the browser would check to see if an affiliate link existed. If it did, it would be displayed as a suggested URL. If the user were to press Enter at that point, they would be sent to the domain, with Brave's affiliate code in tow. We did make a mistake, however. We unintentionally matched against a fully-qualified URL as well (e.g. binance.us). We were able to fix that within a couple of days, however.
This is not in any way "sketchy". Open Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi, or Edge and perform a search for "Hacker News". You'll note that in Firefox, and Opera (IIRC) you're sent to Google with an affiliate-identifier in the URL. In Edge and Vivaldi, I believe you're sent to Bing, but with the same type of identifier.
It's weird how consistent this claim is when the ad stuff (which I personally never used when I tried Brave) was always opt-in and always an advertised feature part of Brave's (possibly misguided) mission to change the landscape of internet advertising.
It's not weird. A lot of people (especially on HN) repeat false claims they hear that "sound right" to them, especially where they have some animus against someone involved (me, in Brave's case). Brave was inspired by All Advantage, but we knew going in that Gator and worse examples of personal ad systems would be used to dismiss or disparage. Marketing challenge, not a reason to give up.
“A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.” —Mark Twain
Their entire business model is sketchy. They'll collect payments on your behalf whether you're signed up to them or not while removing your ad revenue.
This is incorrect, and based on misinformation from 2018. In 2018, Brave users could tip unverified content creators with BAT. Those tokens would go into a settlement wallet until claimed by the intended recipient. This was a bad design.
Within 48 hours we had a new build of Brave out which held the tips locally, in the browser. The tip would be attempted for up to 90 days; if the unverified publisher were to verify within that time, the tip would be sent to their wallet. If the 90 days passed, the user's BAT would be released within the browser to be distributed elsewhere.
> This is incorrect, and based on misinformation from 2018.
Great, I love being incorrect and learning something new.
> In 2018, Brave users could tip unverified content creators with BAT. Those tokens would go into a settlement wallet until claimed by the intended recipient. This was a bad design.
So it wasn't incorrect or misinformation then?
Glad you've fixed that shitty practice but that doesn't expunge it from history or make the fact anyone in a decision making position thought that was in any way ethical/acceptable.
You're missing quite a bit of context here. Brave distributed tokens to users (from our User-Growth Pool of 300M BAT) as a means of ramping-up this new support model. Users then, in turn, could send received tokens to verified creators. If they wished to send the tokens to an unverified creator, the tokens would go [back to Brave] (in a settlement wallet), where they would reside until claimed by the publisher. Meanwhile, at Brave, we would reach out to unverified creators who had a growing balance waiting.
The change we made kept the tokens on the user's device. We also introduced better UI/UX as well, with many thanks to our community for helping us spot some areas for improvement. Although I'm part of the team, I still stand in awe of those few days in December, 2018. A great, yet flawed, system was radically improved in a matter of hours with a few small (yet profound) changes. And it wouldn't have been possible without Brave's incredibly engaged community.
Getting meaningful updates for the duration of how long I want to use the hardware for is a huge differentiator to me.