Your BAT / Brave contributions probably won't go to publishers
As a website owner, I'm not loving their Publisher Terms of Service.
https://basicattentiontoken.org/publisher-terms-of-service/
IMHO the contributions should be given to the website owners irrevocably, immediately, and be available on the blockchain for publishers to claim indefinitely. They shouldn't be administered by a central party, but their terms sure make it seem like they are.
Just some examples that seem to show they are not operating this on a blockchain or in a decentralized manner:
we may require you to refund within thirty (30) days of any Publisher Contribution, or may elect to deduct from your subsequent Publisher Contributions, any amounts that were erroneously sent to you in prior periods, including over-contributions resulting from our later discovery that you were in breach of these Terms during such prior periods. If you dispute any Publisher Contribution, you must notify us at [email protected] within thirty (30) days of any such contribution. If you do not, any claim relating to any such disputed Publisher Contribution is waived.
You are required to have an Uphold account and agree to their TOS as well.
As part of creating your Publisher Wallet, you must authorize Uphold to provide us your Publisher Wallet address. You agree to comply with Uphold’s Terms and Conditions, available at https://uphold.com/en/legal/membership-agreement, in connection with your use of the Publisher Wallet.
From their FAQ:
When there is about $100.00 USD in BAT for a specific publisher, from all contributors, Brave makes three attempts to complete the publisher verification process. We will hold unclaimed funds for a minimum of 90 days, after which it will be added to the UGP (User Growth Pool).
https://brave.com/faq-payments/#theft-of-funds
So that means that most of your contributions will end up in the UGP, because how many publishers are realistically going to adopt this within 90 days. Also, why $100? That seems arbitrary, and a very high threshold for publishers in less developed countries.
So what is the UGP? A marketing fund for BAT:
An integral part of the token sale is the creation of a user growth pool of 300 million tokens. These tokens will be used to incentivize users to join the BAT platform. We anticipate that when users download the Brave browser they will be rewarded with tokens. The final number is not yet determined. Potentially, this could prompt tens of millions of users to join.
https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#UGP
All of this seems not in alignment with blockchain principles. They are basically saying, 'Your contributions MIGHT go to the publisher, if they get enough tokens and jump through enough hoops, but if not, they'll go to us to promote our thing".
Is that what users think they are getting?
So, what should they be doing? I think the simplest would be that any website owner could just post their BAT address where the want to receive funds as a DNS TXT record. If that record exists, the contributions get sent there. That's it, that is the only hoop that should be required.