The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/06/06/the-brave-we...
What happened was a bug in a keyword and domain autocomplete tier we added. Reminder for those not aware: all browsers add reference codes identifying the browser make (not the user) to keyword queries when you type words into the address bar. This is industry standard. See https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1273327455105773568?s....
The bug in Brave was a flag set wrong for two domain names, which are not keywords: binance.us and binance.com. These should not have default-completed when typed into the address bar with a Binance affiliate code, they should have been suggested completions the user would have had to pick by arrow down and <return> or mouse equivalent. We fixed the defaulting bug and turned off the entire suggested completions feature. As noted by someone else in a comment nearby, we instructed Binance not to pay us for any referred new users who traded (Binance does not pay on the referral, they pay only after if the user trades, sharing a fixed proportion of trading fees).
So this was not "link hijacking" in any case. I'm sorry for the blunder, and we added a process step around any changes to address bar to audit harder.
This may be the change I needed to know about to try Brave at some point.
Are there any plans to get into any Linux distro's repositories? Brave wasn't in Ubuntu's last time I checked, although that was a little while ago.
E: Formatting doesn't like asterisks.
One slight gotcha, if you view the link from Tor it offers an .onion site for the apt repos string, but I wanted the regular repos as I don't use OS-level Tor but happened to be using tor-browser.
Is "first floor engineers" an SV-ism (or Brave-ism) that indicates something like "early employees"?
I don't like that there's even a need for Palantir, but given the need, I'm glad it exists and I'm glad someone like Thiel is behind it.
I don't honestly care all that much about Palantir specifically (pros and cons, though lots of cons), but one thing they do not do by simply existing is help citizens protect their data. They do a lot of things, but not that.
That's just marketing/PR nonsense.
Huh. So the argument to overcome objections to a
Huh. So the argument to overcome objections to a system designed for ingesting, canonicalizing, normalizing, and correlating private data acquired via dubious means from dubious sources is that at least the access to and use of the data is controlled monitored and auditable, reducing the incidence of LOVEINT and similar abuses as compared to ad-hoc systems constructed on the sly?
That's really damning with faint praise, especially since Jevon's Paradox ensures that both the use AND abuse of such data will increase when you reduce the 'costs' of doing so, and that's assuming there is no unsanctioned/off-book/'black' use or egress of the data (which is far from assured, IMO, given what we know about the history of these systems and projects, eg. Total Information Awareness and Trailblazer vs. ThinThread).
1: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d...
They're simply suggesting further transparency in algorithmic suggestions and research be conducted. You could even argue that they're suggesting that deplatforming simply isn't the ultimate solution.
See also
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25841660
Even more specifically because of his anti-LGBT politics.
His views do not impart themselves onto Brave of course, but I will stay with Firefox.
Nor does that article say what you think it does.
But whatever, think what you like.
Disabling most add-ons in Firefox Mobile, really? I still use the old engine (Fennec) even if it probably makes me vulnerable. And there's a bunch of other problems that make the new Fenix engine less useful then Fennec... I don't even know what is supposed to make the new engine better.
I'm a liberal. But this is fucking fascism. When you want to take your position and jam it down everyone's throat and police how people can even talk.
Fuck this. Decentralize everything.
Edit: I just re-read the article after skimming and now I feel completely different. The article title is really bad. Mozilla is just calling for more transparency into how advertisers and social media operates.
What a bad headline.
I hope Mozilla never treads into the censorship territory.
They can keep my money. :)
One has to read closely to pick up on the doublespeak. They are calling for the use of algorithms to hide ideas they disagree with and artificially promote ideas they agree with. It is soft censorship but far more sinister.
The people downvoting me would be terrified if it were Trump that had this power.
My belief is that nobody should have this power.
edit: You merry downvoters that believe we shouldn't have freedom of speech should move somewhere freedom of speech isn't permitted. That way you won't have to be offended anymore. Although I think it would be fitting if you don't have a say as to which speech is permitted.
We're on hackernews, where comments are indeed moderated