this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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Privacy

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[–] [email protected] 206 points 10 months ago (51 children)

no i dont trust brave. i did never understand why people would choose brave over firefox+ublockorigen

[–] [email protected] 55 points 10 months ago

Popular tech (a la pop sci or pop psych). Brave uses the right techy sounding buzzwords to appeal to the pseudo power user.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

At the time I switched, the built-in blocker worked on a site I regularly used while Firefox+ublock did not (I think it would just prevent things from working or cause infinite ad-loops). If I wasn't looking for an alternative adblocker, would probably have never bothered switching. There's also the "get pocket change from using our browser" thing. Some may have been speculating on the value of BATs?

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[–] [email protected] 174 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't trust Brave one bit. Its whole approach reeks of a bait-and-switch (think "we won't share or sell your data" pre-9/11 Google). Its founder is a massive homophobe and crypto-bro, and I have a massive learned distrust of homophobes and crypto-bros.

Moreover, I see no reason to use it when we already have far superior options (Firefox).

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[–] [email protected] 127 points 10 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 89 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

Absolutely not. Brave is a bloated mess with feature creep and stealing advertisements. It's ran by a right wing nut job that got fired from Mozilla after publicly stating he hated gay marriage. And the greatest sin of them all: it's chromium.

No idea why people consider them private over Firefox. Literally just install uBlock Origin on Firefox and you'll have a way better experience.

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[–] [email protected] 86 points 10 months ago (8 children)

it's involved in crypto. That's a permanent red flag for me.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The red flag is that they quietly added crypto and made it opt-out by default. They have a history of shady things like this over the years, such as using ad referral links. Immediately after they get caught, they go on a marketing campaign and drown out the controversy with an influx of new users.

They basically act like it would only take a small sack of money to get them to sell all their users down the river.

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[–] phillycodehound 69 points 10 months ago

Never trust Brave. The CEO is a horrible person too

[–] [email protected] 57 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You mean the crypto-bro browser funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, who runs the corporate intelligence agency Palantir, which contracts with the Department of Defense to spy on Americans?

Uh, no.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 10 months ago

Its entire business model is a protection racket wrapped in a crypto scam, so no, I don't trust it!

It also doesn't help that that it's run by the incompetent dipshit who inflicted JavaScript on the world and who later got kicked out of Mozilla for being a bad person. Furthermore, being based on Chromium instead of Firefox is an unforgivable sin by itself. Really, from my perspective there's basically nothing in its favor at all.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Never trust a web browser sold to you with crypto incentives.

Firefox is foss, transparent and it has more than enough add-ons to make brave pointless.

but RAM and page loading speed

Oh no!

(no one cares)

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 10 months ago (8 children)

Firefox is the only browser I trust.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

CEO is a massive bigot. no way

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[–] TheDevil 35 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I just switched to Librewolf from Brave because fuck Chromium and fuck Google.

Did I trust brave as a Browser? Yes, at least enough to use it as my daily driver. Because the worst thing they’ve done that I’m aware of is add affiliate links. When somebody noticed they didn’t bullshit their way out of it, they apologised and fixed it:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-affiliate-links-crypto-privacy-ceo-apology

There is a lot of hand wringing about various aspects of their browser and the personality of their CEO but the browser is open source and the code is watched by a lot of eyeballs. If they went truly bad somebody is going to notice quickly.

They are a company and have to find a way to make money but they never once forced anything on me. It was always relatively simple to disable anything they added that I didn’t want and they never added anything surreptitiously. Unlike Firefox: https://medium.com/@neothefox/firefox-installs-add-ons-into-your-browser-without-consent-again-d3e2c8e08587 and https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/mozillas-mr-robot-promo-backfires-after-it-installs-firefox-extension-without-permission/

I know it’s not going to be popular to criticise Firefox and I understand it’s importance as the last true alternative to chromium but my point is that none of the options are whiter than white. And in so far as the available options, Brave and Firefox stand head and shoulders above the rest.

I imagine product managers at Google and Microsoft would be very happy to see us shitting on one of the few open source browsers to gain any kind of traction, instead of focusing our outrage towards their behaviour.

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[–] CriticalMiss 30 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Anything that promotes crypto usually reeks of a scam.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No.

I'd prefer them over Chrome, jus slightly, but thank the gods for Firefox.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago (6 children)
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[–] motorheadkusanagi 28 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (10 children)

My view: Brave browser is a pretty useless Chrome reskin with crypto ads attached. Brave search is a pretty new and exciting alternative to Google.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

The crypto bit alone makes the browser super-sketchy. By now, I think everybody has realized crypto is a giant scam.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nope. And you shouldn't as well

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Brave as a whole? Brendan Eich is the next Elon Musk. Not in wealth, mind you, but dude's got the antics, is all I'm saying. (Not a good look. Look just what's going on with Reddit.) Also, a dipshit of EPIC proportions.

Brave Browser? Hell no. The whole marketing point is "oh, it's a web browser, but with ad blocker". ...installing uBlock Origin is a 2 minute job on Firefox and even on Edge. Have literally walked elderly people through the process. (It got even weirder when they talked about replacing ads with approved ones. I don't know if they still do that.)

I do draw the line on the whole BAT nonsense. "Oh, you can use cryptocurrencies to support your fave content creators? Even if they didn't opt in to the program in the first place, and you still make it seem like the donations go to them? And then say 'oh yeah the donations will eventually go to them IF they sign up for the program' oh FUCK YOU you're just deceiving fans aren't you."

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (8 children)

"Do you trust [company name] ? -No."

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[–] flop_leash_973 24 points 10 months ago

No.

The way Brave goes about making money seems more shady to me than Google. Google tells you exactly what they are going to do if you're paying attention, Brave on the other hand spends its time trying to convince everyone that they are more privacy focused than the likes of Google because they have a more off the radar money making scheme with all of the Crypto junk.

If they are not doing something underhanded with it already, they are one management shakeup from starting to.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Definitely not. The whole "allow some ads to earn rewards" thing doesn't sit right with me. The only adblockers that do that are in bed with the ad companies. Firefox with UBlock Origin and NoScript + Strict security settings is all you need.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago

Not really. Doing heaps of shady stuff

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago

Not at all.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

What's their incentive? A crypto token that relies on you viewing ads to gain more of said token.

They probably don't track you if you have all that crap disabled, but they definitely don't want you to have it disabled. So no, I don't trust them, it's like trusting a wolf that says it's vegan.

It could be saying the truth, but just like how they murdered Braver/Bold, that wolf is probably eating your neighbouring farm's sheep

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Firefox/Librewolf +containers should really be the end of the conversation every time a Chrome Clone is brought up. Throw FF a few bucks their way and you can add a different VPN per container. Shopping container with a USA VPN, social media container on an EU VPN, etc.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

No, Brendan Eich is an asshole and shady things are still shady, even if you can turn them off.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

I'm kinda ambivalent about Brave. They're a bit too into crypto for my comfort, but the search works well and the browser seems to do what it's meant to.

I don't use Brave though. I use Firefox (or a derivative) or Gnome Web. If a site doesn't work in either of those I don't use that site.

I'm just not willing to contribute the Blink monopoly.

[–] coffee_poops 16 points 10 months ago

No. The CEO is a POS.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

I don't particularly trust any Chromium-based browser, because that affords more power to Google and their efforts to bully the rest of the world with Chrome.

[–] blacklizardplanet 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Nope. Iceraven or Firefox forks or just Firefox in general are the ones I use. Don't trust those guys either but at least it's better than everything else out there.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I don't trust non-free software

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Absolutely not. They have a history of one scam after another and now they're supposed to be trusted for some of the most privacy critical tools?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

As long it's open source and audited,i trust them.

[–] jrandiny 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, I don't trust them. Their idea to replace people ad with their own ad (https://archive.is/W0k4j) and their experiment with cryptocoin are two of the biggest red flags.

Just use firefox instead of brave if you wanted a privacy respecting browser

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