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I think a lot of people don’t know any of the controversy related to brave and just use it because they know it as the most private chromium browser
I know of the controversies, I just don’t think they’re all that big when you actually examine them.
Homophobia
I’m part of the LGBT community and I just think there are bigger fish to fry. One of the guys involved made a $1k donation to an anti-prop 8 campaign like 15 years ago. That’s it. That’s the controversy. Like, yea it’s shitty, but there was a lot more hate toward the community back then. People have grown and changed their views a lot in the years since. If we boycott every single company or individual who ever did anything even remotely homophobic, no matter their actions since, we’d essentially have to be living in a commune growing and making literally everything ourselves. Btw, this same guy is the one who developed JavaScript and I don’t see even remotely the same level of hate for that, so it really feels like people are just being selectively upset.
Cryptocurrency
It’s opt-in. It asks you once, and then never again. It was developed at a time when crypto was popular and was a feature people wanted. It was seen as a good thing when it first came out. Public opinion on crypto has soured, but plenty of people who wanted it still use the feature on brave. They have no good reason to scrap it. Especially because, again, it’s opt-in only. Don’t like it? Cool, don’t use it. They aren’t pushing it on you. But people hear the word crypto and immediately break out the pitchforks.
Do you even know what the goal of their cryptocurrency was? I think it’s safe to say its failed at this point, but the goal was to completely rework how ads function on the internet. It would have killed the modern advertisement methods where ads are shoved in your face and you get nothing for it. Instead, it would have directly paid you a tiny amount any time you saw an ad, with you being able to choose how many you saw, or even if you saw any at all. Then you’d either be able to either keep the money for yourself, or donate it to websites/content creators of your choice. Take away the crypto part of it, and that’s actually a pretty admirable goal in my book.
Ad affiliate links
Brave’s biggest, actual, controversy is that they replaced some affiliate links with their own. Specifically links to binance.us, which is a crypto market. When it was found, Brave changed their code extremely quickly and claimed it was a bug. Now, companies have often lied through their teeth and claimed malicious actions were a “mistake” or a “bug”, so maybe that is the same case here. But considering it was one site only, it was fixed almost immediately, and when you look at how it was actually replacing links (suggested auto fill in the address bar, pulled from browsing history) I am leaning toward it actually being unintentional.
Conclusion
I think people just like to hate things, and will find any reason to continue to do so as long as their little corner of the internet tells them they should hate it. People most vocal with their complaints rarely take the time to dig into the facts and see if it’s really as bad as they claim; or they fully know it’s not as bad, but never want to let the truth get in the way of a good ol’ fashion, hate-boner, circle-jerk.
Is Brave the best browser? Hahahaha no. It’s still a chromium fork and has been a little too eager to integrate AI in my opinion. But it’s FAR from the worst and is the probably the best privacy focused browser for those that don’t understand technology and struggle to use third-party ad-ons. It’s just a little ridiculous that while there are legitimate things to complain about, most people’s arguments seem to always stem from the 3 topics above.
Now cue the downvotes because I’m clearly some crypto fascist boot-licker for daring to believe “nuance” isn’t a made up word.
A couple points: Brendan Eich, the one that made the prop-8 donation, is the current CEO of Brave, not just “one of the guys involved”. In a related problem, I find it a little difficult to believe that someone who doesn’t still hold their anti-gay views would be quite so eager to take cash from Peter Thiel (via his Firm Founder Fund) and I especially do not want to be involved with a browser supported by Thiel when the terms of his investment are private (like, does he have access to brave’s user data? We’d like to think no, but boy are they shaking hands with the devil while asking us to trust them.)
Another big piece of criticism that was excluded: Brave created a bunch of profiles for content creators without telling them then used those to solicit donations on behalf of those content creators, then not only refused to refund users who were deceived they kept all the money they said would go to the content creators.
I think people just like to hate things, and will find any reason to continue to do so as long as their little corner of the internet tells them they should hate it.
Trying to present aspects of this as overblown is possibly true - their affiliate link scam was just to binance.us and that gets left out of a lot of this, but at the same time that’s a damned difficult thing to sell as just having been a mistake when it was auto-replacing the links to something they were the beneficiaries of.
Btw, this same guy is the one who developed JavaScript and I don’t see even remotely the same level of hate for that, so it really feels like people are just being selectively upset.
Well sure, but he’s not actively the CEO of javascript, and as far as I’m aware hasn’t ever been involved with javascript since it was rolled into the OpenJS Foundation.
(Also: Brendan Eich shared a bunch of covid conspiracy theory / misinformation stuff. Sure that’s a minor point, absolutely everyone sure was doing that back then and why should we judge, but still it’s not a great look.)
Trying to present aspects of this as overblown is possibly true - their affiliate link scam was just to binance.us and that gets left out of a lot of this, but at the same time that’s a damned difficult thing to sell as just having been a mistake when it was auto-replacing the links to something they were the beneficiaries of.
And this is why an Open Source browser is so important. Because we can audit it. You are saying like it is a bad thing to audit it.
(like, does he have access to brave’s user data? We’d like to think no, but boy are they shaking hands with the devil while asking us to trust them.)
You can audit it. actually there is this video doing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JNg4Ox2Hvc
A wireshark audit isn’t relevant to their reasons for having included the link redirect in the first place, and even a full code audit wouldn’t turn up a user datasharing agreement with Thiel? Obviously auditing OS software is a good thing, I never made any claims about that being bad or presented like it wasn’t possible?
I’m really not sure what you’re trying to say here, none of that refutes any of the points I made.
datasharing agreement What kind of data they could be collecting if they just connect for checking the version and 1 or 2 connections more, as shown in the wireshark scan? Really, oh a computer downloaded Brave, big deal. Even assuming the worst that everything goes to Thiel it just doesn’t matter because it is not relevant for tracking.
What?
Removed by mod
Wow this is so… sane.
Being childish and reductive I wanted to downvote anything supporting Brave, but I find you’ve challenged my views on this.
That said, I think I’m just going to re-frame my dislike for Brave users by assuming they’re all crypto-weirdos.
That’s really well said.
In the end they are just browsers. It’s great to have people that inform others and lead them to better alternatives and Firefox has many of them who are very passionate. But then many of them are way too passionate.
Appreciate the write up!
I agree with you on all these. The only problem I have with Brave is they choose to exclusively shit on Firefox recently as their marketing strategy, while there are apparently much much bigger fish to fry. I thought their whole mission is to stop people from using Chrome, not another way more privacy focused browser.
Dude you are the most logical and coherent person in this thread, congrats. I should add that most of the bloat Brave has can be disabled via policies, even IA things.
While I’m sure you are right I think Brave also likely pays for maintaining opinion on social media and posting positive comments supporting it. Many others learned of doing that (for example musk has bots astroturfing its image pretty much everywhere.) Similarly for example you don’t see controversies section about Brave.
There is so much controversy with every browser and people working on them that I find is better just not to read anything about any browser anymore.
Can anyone reccomend good options fo browsers?
These are all the browsers I personally think are good and privacy-respecting. Sorry if I accidentally included too many options.
Desktop
Firefox-Based
Firefox
The standard for browsers where you aren’t the product. For maximum privacy it does require tweaking settings, but it is reasonably privacy-friendly out of the box. It has light customization options including a sidebar and customizable button placement, and can be much more heavily customized with user themes.
Librewolf (Most reccomended for privacy)
A custom version of Firefox with enhanced privacy by default. Comes with Ublock Origin installed. May break some websites.
Waterfox
A Firefox-based browser with some additional privacy features, enhanced speed, and additional features.
Floorp
A browser based on Firefox with much more advanced customization options and many additional features, like workspaces and web panels. Doesn’t add any additional privacy-focused features. They recently also added support for chrome extensions. This is my personal choice of browser (with the Natsumi modification).
Zen Browser
A Firefox-based browser with a sidebar+workspace workflow, and lots of stylistic changes and customizations that help put the focus on the webpage. Very nice and usable for productivity, but doesn’t add any additional privacy-focused features.
Chromium-Based
Ungoogled Chromium
It’s Chromium, but without Google. Pretty self-explanatory, it’s simple, and it works.
Vivaldi
An extremely customizable browser packed with a massive quantity of additional features that can be toggled and tweaked for varying needs and methods of usage. Doesn’t add any significant privacy-focused features. It supports MV2 extensions.
Helium
A chromium-based browser with enhanced privacy and speed. Comes with Ublock Origin pre-installed, and supports MV2 extensions. It’s a pretty new project.
Android
Firefox-Based
Firefox
The de-facto privacy-friendly browser, although for maximum privacy it does require tweaking settings. It (and its forks) are the only privacy-friendly browsers on android that support extensions.
Waterfox
A fork of Firefox with more private defaults, and extra bloat removed.
IronFox
A hardened private Firefox fork. Heavily focused on privacy and security, it sacrifices some usability for privacy.
Chromium-based
Cromite (Most reccomended for privacy)
A chromium fork with enhanced privacy and built-in ad blocking.
Vivaldi
Very customizable chromium-based browser. It does not come with an ad-blocker.
iOS
All browsers on iOS are limited to the WebKit engine which Safari is built on, so just use Safari. The benefits of other browsers on iOS are negligible.
Oh wow ya thank you. This is very helpful
Literally just use Firefox for Android with uBlock. People act like this is difficult.
*uBlock Origin
I’ve seen the following types of people:
- People who ask how to do it, and get amazed.
- People who legitimately are not bothered by ads.
- Who think it to be a “headache”, and to just “let it be”.
- Who are incredibly tech illiterate to the point of frustration.
I’ve been on Firefox since the very, very, very earliest days, back from when it started as Phoenix. I’ve been diehard believer in Firefox from Day 1.
But as usage has declined (and declined), many websites that I actually need to use no longer test for Firefox. A key website I use doesn’t allow me to log in with Firefox. Not as a “we don’t support Firefox” but quite literally it doesn’t work.
I’m all for flying the banner but I can’t live with a browser that no longer works on the websites I need. And yes, I’ve filed a bug, but because it relates to a login Mozilla closed it (they can’t verify logging in to this website).
I happen to be moving my account to a different website so I may be able to dodge it this time but Firefox really is sinking and at what point does one choose to abandon the ship?
Name and shame those sites. Those sites are the problem not firefox.
You’re not wrong. But I’m not on social media so have no channels to shout on. I doubt any newspaper would accept a reader contribution about this.
Name them here
Not available for IOS. For android firefox is bad at sandboxing and security. Vanadium if it had adblocking would be perfect for me.
It’s not a difficulty issue It’s that lots of us have tried Firefox and don’t like it.
Personally I don’t use Firefox because it is buggy, is missing critical features, implements some web standards weirdly and has weird user agent styles. The end result is that many websites don’t look right and don’t work correctly and/or fully
Interesting. I use Firefox for everything and haven’t had any issues. Maybe I’m just not that picky?
They’re pretty much just hating to hate or basing themselves on very outdated information, ‘missing critical features’ is a joke, because if it actually were critical it would’ve been implemented already (plus firefox is very extensible, with many plugins existing and forks adding specific features), if they actually had a point they maybe would’ve given a single example.
Weirdly implementing some web standards kinda did apply a bit until a few years ago where all the big browser engine developers got together and pinned down the standard. If something still breaks that probably means the website used some out-of-spec workaround that only works in Chrome. Some things do indeed behave differently between firefox and chrome (an example of my own: file input fields with multiple types, eg allow both video and image are handled differently at least in the mobile apps). Yet again if they had a point maybe an example would’ve been great.
Weird user agent styles?..?? I’m just confused honestly.
Buggy? Huh.
I do this as much as possible. However the Firefox in-page translation software seems to do something that actually changes the page (and this can break things like forms) whereas chromium browsers do some kind of translation layer on top, so the page can run normally beneath it.
It’s an infuriating reason but right now it means I have to split my browser use depending on if I need translations or not.
Is that new in the last couple years or so? I recall chrome breaking form entry left and right when translating before i could read the language.
Right now chromium is my best choice for translations in-page
I used to keep it installed just for that too so I’m not judging. I just also recall forms being broken by the translate tool.
Yeah I think it’s something about breaking the attributes of html elements. If it translates some id or data value then the form can’t find it.
The same for if it replaces elements or otherwise breaks hooks and event listeners.
You know you can install the “chromium-like” translation thing on Firefox as well, as an extension? E.g. this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/traduzir-paginas-web/
Objectively more insecure and underperformant than ANY other chromium based browser.
Got a source for that incredible claim?
If you’re going to make wild claims that most people would disagree with, you better be able to back it up with objective facts
Peter Theil is the primary investor in Brave.
For those not in the know, Peter Theil is a MAGA Christian-Nationalist fascist, and owner of Palantir.
Palantir, is the military industrial complex company Trump has entrusted to create a mass surveillance network on US citizens, completely against the 4th Amendment, and dwarfing the NSA spying that was exposed by Snowden.
You can garuntee any activity you do in Brave is being tracked and sent to that network.
You can garuntee any activity you do in Brave is being tracked and sent to that network.
Source:??? BTW, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JNg4Ox2Hvc
People here up upvoting baseless conspiracies based on a braindead notice that technology is like magic.
If everything was tracked and harvested by Brave, it’d destroy them much more than the bullshit “homophobe” allegation. Just use network traffic monitors to see if it does. You think people haven’t tried?
Or do you think software can covertly send data without users being able to determine?
It’s open source for fucks sake. Stop with the Alex Jones tier analysis.
Time to break out the article: https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/
Time to break out the narrative about chromium vs gecko:
https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
This article was last updated in 2022. I wonder how much of it is still true.
Time to warm up the popcorn machine.
Sadly some of it is that the folks at Brave are very good at burying their bad reputation under marketing
Under marketing? I’ve seen a steady growth. The last Eich report told that It have 100 millon active users. duplicated in just 2 or 3 years.
Oh shit I didn’t know about this! I remember when Brave came out and I just instinctively knew there was something fishy about it, never used it. It’s like a sixth sense, like how you know when something is an ad.
I remember feeling the exact same when Facebook first rolled out and everyone was raving about it- I just knew it was a big scam, I couldn’t articulate it, but I knew.
It’s a good intuition to have, we should all keep our bullshitometers up to code and well maintained.
When tiktok came out I imagine you just fell ill due to sensory overload.
It absolutely did, and I went on a crusade trying to stop people around me from using it- to no avail.
The first time I saw it used in person was by a friend in a group of us all mid shroom trip. Sensory overload is an understatement.
Tried it when it first came out, noticed that it had an option to allow some ads to “support the developers” or whatever, immediately noped out of there and uninstalled it. The only adblockers that do that are the shady ones who are in bed with the ad companies.
I ditched Adblock Plus for Ublock Origin many years ago over this shit; not about to use an entire browser that secretly collects data on me and sells it to the ad companies.
Careful. Trying to sell Brave as a homophobe web browser won’t hurt it like you guys think.
Same reason they used Chrome. “What else is there?”
Software discoverability is kind of bad these days, and getting worse.
Chromium based browsers have no cookie isolation like FF with multi account containers. They recommend Profiles but a separate window eats way more RAM and the experience is just much worse. I use Zen
I love zen Such a great browser
I used to use brave when I just started becoming privacy aware. Here are the reasons why:
- it’s chromium based. I loved the way chromium based browsers looked, especially when compared to Firefox. They had a comforting feel to them, whereas Firefox had a very “office-ey” feel to it.
- I wasn’t aware of the issues of chromium dominating the market share that it does and how monopolization in this manner can be harmful.
- I wasn’t aware of the people behind brave.
- I had seen older people use Firefox (with the default UI, which I didn’t like). That’s why, I associated Firefox with “old and outdated”. I hadn’t seen anyone use brave, and it looked quite good at the time for me.
Now, I use Mercury, a Firefox fork (ikik, it hasn’t seen an update in a long time, shush). I’ve loaded it up with my custom CSS, so its appearance is exactly the way I like.
Mercury has had a open high criticality cve for almost a year and a half now, that is being actively exploited.
Either switch to Firefox or a fork that is actually being maintained, or just block your machine from the Internet.
I agree with all you said, but suggesting to use a specific browser only when not connected to the web is kinda funny.
Noted
If you get this level of paranoia, better not to use any FF related browser: https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
What is paranoia about it?
They are using a browser fork that isn’t being maintained, so any current vulnerabilities it has will likely not be solved, including the one i know of that is currently being exploited and was fixed in firefox over a year ago.
I’m not saying that Firefox and other forks of it won’t get vulnerabilities, but as they are maintained, and this goes especially for Firefox which they are forks of, the vulnerabilities will likely be fixed in a timely manner.
Too many times people who have been monitoring or are deep in a field overestimate how much knowledge an average person or even newly interested person has in the same field (oh hey, there’s an xkcd about that!).
People scoffing at anyone who thought Elon Musk was just a meme a nerd CEO before the cave thing, people who expect everyone to know who is running every browser, OS, or other company, and lots of other minor things they think should be common knowledge, when at the time it was something only someone invested in the overall field or someone who knew how search much better than the average person.
Not just that, it’s that Brave has this cult-like following for being out-of-the-box, Fisher Price My First Privacy BrowserTM easy to use.
Oh…oh, hey, Apple, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.
Imagine criticizing an app just because it is usable and useful for the normal user, instead of thinking that is such a big goal. Fucking elitism and snobism devours leftism.
Imagine being so ideologically primed that a comment about a browser requires inventing a leftist to argue with.
Criticizing my critic about your ideology and not the argument.
Brave has this cult-like following
Criticism is of the cult-like following. Not that I expect you know anything about that ;)
What does apple have to do with brave? i dont get it
Apple has a reputation as the Fisher Price version of smartphones and laptops/desktops because the user can’t change much themselves. It’s an old meme, but it checks out
I cringe hard every time a “tech/privacy” youtuber says they use Brave.
Probably getting paid to say it?
Maybe, but In some cases (someordinarygamers), I don’t think so (because of how he brings it up).
I think the only real solution to protect ourselves is to stop using any browsers.
don’t throw the good stuff out with the bad. just deprecate until shit’s secure again. Lynx and Pine baby.
My daily drivers in 1994 <3
there were hundreds of us. HUNDREDS!
I remember leaving academia and wondering how all these poor slobs existed without ethernet connected university services… dial in? SLiRP? like a fucking peasant?
I only stopped using Firefox when an update broke GPU acceleration on my PC. Would be happy to switch back if it gets fixed, but it seems they’re more interested in adding AI slop, which doesn’t bode well for the last bastion of anti-Google monopoly resistance. 🤷
They have said they’re adding an off switch for all their AI stuff in Q1 next year. We’ll see how well it works, though.
Wtf hardware do you have? Arc?
