The funny thing is that make a big deal about blocking Brave on "ethical" grounds, but don't e tend the logic to Chrome, Edge or Safari. Talk about punching down/virtue signaling.

Where did they make a big deal of blocking Brave on "ethical" grounds?

https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters-ansible/issues/45

They outline a very specific behaviour that Brave engaged in but Chrome, Edge, and Safari do not. Brave was engaging in fraudulent behaviour, wherein it posed a fake donations scheme to users of the browser under the guise of supporting website owners with their implicit but nonexistent consent, and in actuality took the money for itself. Brave then also specifically and publicly singled out Lobsters in an issue. Lobsters devs do not want to spend dev time engaging with scammers operating in bad faith. Seems fair to me.

See also an HN thread about the fraud scheme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999

> Brave was engaging in fraudulent behaviour.

Allegedly. This, the "Brave was putting ads of their own on other pages" and "adding the referrer code for Binance" stories get thrown around like they were (a) are all huge sources of profit (b) carried on with malicious intent and (c) on par with the BILLIONS of dollars in ad fraud that goes around and Google so conveniently turns a blind eye.

I don't particularly care how much money Brave made off the scheme. If Brave put my name and picture on an advertisement shown to Brave users, said that I was soliciting donations and would receive the money, and then took the money, that is immediately far more personally offensive than virtually anything Google does. I was not myself actually affected by this, but it's incredibly easy for me to understand why someone would want nothing to do with Brave.

Also, it's basically a given that Brave is not in a position to generate billions through such a scheme. It simply doesn't have the market share for that. If Chrome did the same thing that Brave did, they probably would generate billions. It is equally unethical either way.

Moreover, Google has an effective monopoly. Even if you wanted to protest Chrome, you can't do so without effectively shutting down your website. Chrome coerces consent into whatever they do. Brave does not have that power. You describe that as punching down, but just because Chrome has the capability to coerce consent does not mean we should be surrendering our consent to anyone and everyone.

> said that I was soliciting donations

They didn't do that. They were not actively promoting creators. it was the opposite. They were letting people mark someone as a potential recipient of contributions as a way to bootstrap their network.

> just because Chrome has the capability to coerce consent does not mean we should be surrendering our consent to anyone and everyone.

Your bias is showing.

Brave did not "coerce" anything to anyone. Their crypto stuff is opt-in. The ad blocker is opt-in.

Rationalize all you want, if you think that is justified to have a website blocking a browser like Brave because "of what they do to users", then it should be a moral imperative to help others to stop using chrome, edge and Safari.

I've seen the screenshot of the half-screen overlay pop-up advertisement that was displayed to Brave users. The "Welcome!" banner together with an actual photo of the person in question, together with the wording of the solicitation, is something that would absolutely give many, if not most, uninformed users the impression that the solicitation originated from the person featured.

Neither I, nor the linked issue, cite that Brave was blocked "because of what they do to users". If this had happened to me, I would block them based on what they did to me. As I said, the act in question is personally offensive in a way that what Google does is not. It plays on the border of identity fraud. If a browser is using my identity to solicit donations, I'm well within my right to do what I can to interfere with that.

Regards to coercion, I did not say that Brave coerced anyone. I pointed out that Google effectively does via its monopoly power, and that is why that people cannot realistically choose to block Chrome. The matter of coercion is addressing your complaint that they aren't also blocking Chrome, not a criticism of Brave.

> the act in question is personally offensive in a way that what Google does is not.

A perceived, harmless, unintentional and nonetheless remediated offense is worse than the continuous abuse of power and anti-user practices from Google, Microsoft and Apple. It might seem justified to you, but to me it's just displaced indignation and illustrates why we will forever live in this corporate dystopia.

I wonder if you would be describing it as perceived, harmless, and unintentional if Google had done the same thing.

It certainly wasn't remediated, given that the donations received were not refunded. "Stops doing fraud when caught" is not remediation.

My moral compass does not change based on who is being accused, but context is fundamental to make a proper judgment.

It is hard to come up with a situation where Google would be doing these types of tricks, because Google is already the dominant player in the market and they don't want to create products that cannibalize their own revenue streams.

I think this is about being mad at Brendan Eich, the current CEO of the company behind Brave, for his opposition to legal gay marriage in the late 2000s/early 2010s. A lot of Lobsters moderators are queer and/or politically sympathetic to queer activism.

Which goes to show the importance of judging people by their actions and not their opinions: are they going to boycott Apple as well, since Tim Cook gave millions to Trump?

People's opinions inform their actions, and people's actions have meaningful effects on the daily lives of others (like my own).

Brendan Eich donated money to the campaign in favor of Prop 8, the 2008 California ballot proposition that banned gay marriage and that was overturned by the courts some time later. He didn't publicize this himself IIRC but the donations were public information and became well-known when he was (briefly) appointed CEO of Mozilla.

Yeah, I am not interested in playing this tape again. The actions from Brendan as an individual are completely separate from his actions at Mozilla. Mozilla did not change any policy during his tenure and Brave is not accused of any discrimination practices or hostile to any minority group.