OP here. Brendan Eich is now publicly calling me a liar, though he's inexplicably failed to detail the claimed lies. I've asked him to do so. https://web.archive.org/web/20200606232839/https://twitter.c...
https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html
Anyway, I bring it up because I linked to it from my Twitter and got a cranky response from Brendan Eich about how Butterick was wrong. Eich's response to Butterick was, like the one to you, not really a rebuttal of any of the critiques beyond "this is all wrong and inaccurate." I looked back at Eich's Twitter feed and discovered he was clearly searching for links to Butterick's article and tweeting links to his non-response.
And sure, responding to criticism is normal, but that "must find all who referenced this critique and CORRECT THEM" approach is... just... it is sure a thing.
A URL typed in an address bar is not "a link". It's a typed URL.
Curiously, your article seems to describe what is happening pretty accurately so it's hard to see why you chose the title you did (other than to be clickbait-y and sensationalist - you are selling a book on the topic after all).
Again, that's not to excuse what they are doing. At all. But link hijacking has come to have a specific meaning and this isn't it.
TL;DR - Link is short for hyper-link. There are no hyper-links involved here.
I assumed from the title that Brave was adding affiliate codes to links on the page. That is not the case and now the author feels that he is a victim because Eich pointed this out.
The author also added an inflammatory HN comment from this thread to his blog post. This doesn't make any substantive contribution and is sensational.
Sorry, but you're plainly wrong.
"Modifying links" implies another victim in the scheme: The party who authored the link in the first place. It implies that a third party is being deprived of their affiliate revenue because the link they wrote was "hijacked".
That's not what happened. No one is having anything stolen. If that distinction is not important to you.... then I don't know what to say.
Words matter. Never more so than when making serious accusations.
Do you have an actual argument or is that it?
Edit: This has got to be the first time I've seen an HN'er defend someone adding a clickbait title to their submission. A submission that points to their own marketing website. The guy is selling a book. Don't be so naive.
The accusation stands on its own without sensationalizing it.
Hell, I have a reasonably good knowledge of the terminology and I will regularly ask people to "send me links" or "send me URLs" interchangeably. It's just needlessly pedantic.
Furthermore, I responded directly to the OP when he pondered aloud why he would be accused of lying. I explained. Then you jumped on me for being pedantic and posting non-substantive comments? Okay, seriously?
Speaking of which, why did the OP post the comment to HN about Eich calling him a liar, if not to stir up controversy (and traffic)? That's highly unusual. Did you ever consider that Brave is not the only one selling something?
>The issue is clearly the fact that the browser deceives the user, whether it is changing a link in a page or changing the URL typed in the address bar, these are both equally deceptive from the user's point of view
That's simply not true. They are not equally deceptive.... at all. A web browser surreptitiously re-writing third party web-content is next level evil. The implications would be absolutely astronomical.
It's not the same and you know it.
How so? I cannot see any evidence.