If it was just random and occasionally, it wouldn’t be an issue. What Brave tends to look for are things that indicate intentional abuse. It can sometimes catch innocent people, but generally they notice this when a ticket is submitted and they look more closely.
They literally pull averages too. If out of millions of users, the average person uses the browser for less than 8 hours and sees maybe 800 ads per month. But then they have someone who actively uses their device 24 hours a day (without sleep), this will be suspicious. It’s impossible. Therefore the assumption is they are using automation or doing something to manipulate services.
Or perhaps a person is seeing more than 1,000 ads a month regularly. In fact, they always hit 60 Brave News ads and 20 NTP ads every single day. It’s a ritual that every 15 minutes they open the NTP ads and every hour they go through Brave News. Maybe add other ltitle things, like people never click on links in Brave News either, they load it only to get ads and then leave. This would be a sign.
Personally, I kind of agree. I used to more staunchly be mad about how they don’t explain why accounts were flagged and wanted then to be more transparent. However, as I have spent many hours here helping people and reading topics, I began to understand. I won’t go into details, but I have consistently been seeing a lot of people lie about things and a constant attempt at deceit. The more people were told, the more they tried to push boundaries and then got upset when they would get in trouble.
And the other big headache is when Brave was more transparent, people just liked to challenge them. Like let’s say they spoke about “no automation” and they told you this is why they were flagged. Now suddenly the person complains and demanded Brave show evidence. They’d create multiple topics, keep opening multiple tickets complain, etc. So in the end, it just became easier to keep silent so as to not give any info that people can use to try to circumvent the antifraud system.
It is, but as with many things, it is also vague. The Terms of Service can be found at https://basicattentiontoken.org/user-terms-of-service/ and is something we’re linked to before we start using Rewards. Though, admittedly, many people skip clicking to read Terms of any website.
They have things scattered throughout. There are a few primary things in this that covers the majority of offenses:
This one below is a standalone mixed in. It has no bullet point or anything.
You may not make any attempt to view ads not intended for your region.
So this is where VPN plays a part. But it could also impact people traveling on vacation and all. But you’re not allowed to view ads not intended for your region. If you’re in USA and you see an ad from France, you violated. Though they try to look at how often this occurs and all.
Below is from 10. Prohibited Conduct.
While using or accessing our Services, you will not:
- (a) violate any applicable law, contract, intellectual property or other third-party right or commit a tort;
- (b) engage in, encourage or promote any activity that violates these Terms;
- (c) attempt to circumvent any content-limiting techniques we employ;
- (d) develop or use any non-Brave scripts or applications designed to scrape, or extract data from the Services;
- (e) use the Services in any manner that could interfere with, disrupt, negatively affect or inhibit other users from utilizing the Services or that could damage, disable, overburden or impair the functioning of the Services in any manner;
- (f) use the Services for benchmarking purposes or for the purpose of developing a competitive product; or
- (g) manipulate, or attempt to manipulate, the Services in any way.
Many things can fall under these prohibitions, including people trying to view the maximum amount of ads daily or trying to use as many devices as possible. And sometimes, things just should be a bit of common sense.
I’m going to say something that might seem unrelated and perhaps one might argue is a strawman argument, but try to slow down and look at this with me. I am not sure if France does similar, but here in the United States many ice cream places will let you have free samples of their ice cream to help you determine what flavor ice cream you want. And many grocery stores will give away a free cookie to kids (and sometimes adults) if you visit their bakery. They don’t post rules that there is a limit to these free samples. All it says is to ask if you would like one.
Does that mean the company would need to give away unlimited samples to the people who visit? If you came and asked for a sample of all of their ice cream once a day or even multiple times a day, should they be required to give that to you? Should it be required to provide a long list of things to explain limits and why they might not give you a sample? Or should it be common sense?
Now what happens is someone might come back and argue, “but John has dementia and doesn’t remember he had the ice cream the day before!” Would that change anything and create an obligation? Or they say “but I really like ice cream and I buy a scoop each time, so what’s wrong with me asking for samples?” (considering samples would be equal to or greater in quantity than they are buying). These are the types of arguments people have with things like Rewards.
Or even worse then, are the people who want to figure it out. They start asking questions like:
- Well, how often can I get a sample then?
- If I bring 10 people with me, can they get samples?
- Can I combine them all into a cup or ice cream cone?
- What if I bring my own ice cream cone and add the ice cream to that?
- Can my dog get a sample?
- What if I want a sample to bring to my child or wife at home?
- Oh, but her little doll needs a sample too.
Now imagine you owned or worked at the ice cream place and giving samples is coming out of your bank account. What would you start to think as people did all of these stuff?
It’s not a direct comparison which is why I said it might be seen as more of a strawman argument, but I have seen things very close to this being done by people using Brave. Just looking to stretch out and abuse things as much as possible, all for their own profit. But it does go back to ask, should the business really have to be so extremely specific to every single situation or should there be a lot of room for common sense?