#Brendan_Eich just directly responded to the #twat that I posted on #twatter at the top of this thread. He's obviously frustrated that even after conceivably everyone on his staff told him this was wrong, he went ahead and implemented the #link_hijacking in his #Brave_Browser.

He's trying to say now that this is some #mistake they made, and that their #opt_in widget for crypto somehow got picked up by their autocomplete, also, when pressed further, he's saying that they've now turned this #affiliate feature off by default and show how you can disable this until the next software update...

But #Git doesn't lie. You can see all the commits and see exactly what happened in their repo. This was a deliberate insertion of #URLs for link-hijacking. This is wrong, and it's been noted that this isn't the first um... hm.... #sketchy thing he's done (I"m being kind, I could have used words like, #idiotic or #nefarious or #insidious or #diabolical or #degenerate or a host of other adjectives), but I'm going to lean on the misguided rather than criminal side of things here - #Eich is just a fucking #Goombah showing his narcissism. He could have listened to his staff but when he gets it in his head that he's right, then everyone else is wrong and he just goes all #Steve_Jobs on everyone.

If Brendan's Brave Browser project was such a coveted partner of #Binance and #Coinbase, etc., then suffice it to say that the User Agent String would have been more than enough to let those companies know that it was his browser that was bringing fresh meat to the slaughter, er... I mean #BBQ.

It is, after all, his project. And it is a struggle to monetize #FOSS projects, but you don't have to do stupid fucking shit that alienates your own proponents who are privacy advocates!

How lame is that?

Anyway, as you can see, he thinks out loud on the keyboard and *just muted* the convo. lolz...

Well #Brendan, in the #Fediverse, no one can hear you #censor - sorry bub (NOT). h/t to #Sigourney_Weaver there ;)

The #Moral of the story here isn't that a FOSS champion has betrayed anyone, it's that as a user of FOSS, and #advocate and #protagonist of FOSS, and someone who is interested in your own #privacy, #intellectual_property, and freedom, you also need to take responsibility for that #freedom in the same way that Ben_Franklin points out to us all.

@OpenSource software is superior because you can audit for yourself the code it is comprised of (that's just one reason), but you must always fight for your freedom, you can't just #abdicate your own authority for ensuring you remain free, and although you can certainly #delegate some of that responsibility to watchdogs like #davidgerard.co.uk, you really must be diligent in your insistence to remain free.

Am I dumping the Brave Browser now, or am I going to stop recommending it? Um... Look, it's better than a lot of alternatives (#Firefox has always rocked, face it!), and not as good as some other #Chromium based browsers, but for the average #schmoe it does provide a lot of privacy features out of the box for your average #n00b.

Brave is but one of my backup chromium installs on #Android, and #David_Gerard makes a few decent recommendations there for those who aren't technologically challenged, I've been antithetical to Microsoft products since before I started teaching the #MCSE program for them in 1995, but at the moment, I've actually be watching and testing the new chromium based Edge Browser (it supports Chrome plugins), and that's a hard admission to make for me, the guy who's been on a mission from God to eradicate all Windows products in the Enterprise since I discovered #SLS and #Yggdrasil #Linux, but then again, I came from an early 4.2 #BSD background anyway.

So getting back to that somewhat rhetorical question, no, Eich is eating his crow now, let's hope this will suffice for the time being, while greater, more viable and effective solutions yet loom on the horizon :)

I hope that helps :)

- tallship

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