I don't know where else to put this, Administrative seemed the closest.
I've been using the Brave browser for about 6mo now, and every month I accumulate rewards in the currency of BAT (Brave Attention Tokens). In theory I might be able to redeem those for USD, but it's only a buck or two a month. I much prefer 'tipping' my BAT to websites that are 'Brave Verified Content Creators', i.e. websites that can receive tips.
I don't know how hard it would be for snap.berkeley.edu to get verified in the Brave network (right now Brave is telling me that "berkeley.edu" is not in their network, I don't know what it would mean to verify snap.berkeley.edu only vs all of berkeley.edu), but IF it was possible, I would be tipping to Snap, and maybe a large fraction of the Snap users could also be convinced to use Brave and tip to Snap, maybe adding up to a useful revenue stream.
Note there's also revenue share just for being browsed "The Brave Verified sites you visit will receive your contributions automatically, based on your attention as measured by Brave."
Right now the only sites I can find to tip to are DuckDuckGo and Wikipedia, so that's where my tips go.
I don't know if there's an age limit. I didn't provide a credit card or anything, I think you might be able to set it up so you accrue BAT, which you can never convert ot real currency, but you can tip to websites you like that are in the Brave Verified network (if you can find any!). That's what my setup is.
I think it's virtually certain that we aren't going to be interested in participating in their money-making scheme.
Why do I call it that? It sounds like they are paying you money to use their browser. But that just makes it an especially clear example of the rule that if you don't pay for a service, you are not the customer but the product. The actual customers are presumably advertisers. (That's no different from Chrome, really, although Chrome does have anonymous mode. But Chrome isn't asking us, Snap!, to bless them.)
Hmmm. I get that instinctive approach. I'm no shill for Brave, but I did choose to use it instead of Chrome because I wanted to not give Google so much of my identity to profit from, and I was persuaded that Brave would be better in that department.
Are they paying me money to use their browser? I guess in a sense, but since I'm not cashing that 'money' out, I look at it as them being more transparent that they get money to develop their product from the (less-obtrusive) ads they show me, and they direct a fraction to me, and are willing to send a fraction to the websites I choose to patronize. So I have a tiny bit of influence to redirect a small fraction of ad revenue to websites I like.
I got these small piles of BAT accumulating, and it's not worth my time to figure out how to exchange for real currency, so I want to Tip them. I can't find any lists of in-network sites I can choose from, so I split it between DuckDuckGo and wikipedia, and maybe they actually benefit from it.
Maybe there's a hidden cost of being entangled in a network like this, I don't see where it is.
So by using Brave, I am 'participating in their money-making scheme', because they can boast 1 more pair of eyesballs to prospective advertisers. But I'm happy to let them make that buck instead of Google, in exchange for (again, this is largely faith) being more respectful of my privacy.
If Snap! (or any content creator) joined their verified network and was thereby enabled to siphon off some little stream of ad revenue, I'm not sure how that would make Brave more money or attract advertisers. But I'm probably just missing a piece of their business model.
You have "signed" a payout contract. So Brave has a "legitimate interest" in collecting your data, browsing history, etc, strictly tied with your identity. It does not seems to be good recipe for better privacy...
Well I don't want to debate whether Brave is good or bad (largely because I'm not qualified), but I gotta believe that using Brave is better than using Chrome, and the technical nature of Brave anyways hobbles their ability to collect data as compared to what Google built into Chrome.
If you've got links explaining how Brave's claims to better privacy are a sham, I'd love to read them
the major reason why I use brave is because it blocks ads and trackers (not entirely sure if it does block trackers because those aren't visible, but it does block ads).