Why I recommend against Brave.
(thelibre.news)
from Tea@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world on 24 Mar 11:11
https://programming.dev/post/27449350
from Tea@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world on 24 Mar 11:11
https://programming.dev/post/27449350
If you are keen on personal privacy, you might have come across Brave Browser. Brave is a Chromium-based browser that promises to deliver privacy with built-in ad-blocking and content-blocking protection. It also offers several quality-of-life features and services, like a VPN and Tor access. I mean, it’s even listed on the reputable PrivacyTools website. Why am I telling you to steer clear of this browser, then?
threaded - newest
Disabling Brave Rewards on a new installation is not any harder than disabling Firefox’s Pocket crap, or Edge’s Copilot integration, or Chrome’s send-everything-to-Google behaviour.
I wish one day we can get a browser that serves the user instead of browser maker, but for now i’ll keep using Brave (it’s at least open source).
Crossing my fingers for Ladybird to be that browser.
🤞🤞
Orion.
Is that even possible?
There’s Ungoogled Chromium which claims to do just that
The CEO of brave is a homophobic bigot if that helps push anyone over the edge for changing their browser. It was the last straw for me.
This post shows that it’s much worse than that.
I didn’t know that, thanks for the tip : en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
That pretty much does it, yes. Staying away from brave.
Edit: that Netscape team, holy fuck, Andreesen also came from that cesspool, what a fucking drudge of parasites.
You do know that firefox is essentially Netscape rebooted, right?
Also I don’t really know what you are trying to say here. Netscape was definitely a better option than Internet Explorer.
That was the headliner reason for me.
The rest was just ‘Alright, it isn’t enough this guy is a piece of shit, he’s pushing a shitty product.’
God damnit.
Every browser I switched to since Firefox has been a good user experience, and then I find out some horrible bullshit.
Is there any safe browser that isn’t run by hateful assholes?
Firefox? Mozilla are just stupid, not really hateful
i found one called waterfox that is a nice little firefox fork ive been using. super chill.
I’ve been loving it.
I was about to say something about Waterfox too! It feels like old Firefox.
Might give this a crack. Been waiting on Ladybird to come to PC.
Edit: OK it really doesn’t work well with bitwarden on mobile. Normal FF works fine but not this one.
Vivaldi!
I’m waiting on Ladybird to come out next year into alpha
FF is starting to enshittify because they depend on Google for their revenue
That’s not even his worst crime. His worst crime was inventing JavaScript.
Especially when the alternative they were considering was having Scheme in the browser.
Probably also has some right wing bias as well. That’s probably one of the reasons they included goggles in Brave search for right wing content.
I agree that Brave is problematic and most of the criticisms are also legitimate. But the point about the crawlers is not really a problem. If you respect the wish of websites to be indexed exclusively by Google, you support Google’s monopoly and prevent alternative search engines from having similarly good results.
I see no legitimate reason for not using a User Agent string, like all the other crawlers use, other than the desire to hide the crawler and make it difficult to block.
I don't accept his explanation. I see it as gaslighting.
Why should the crawler be blockable? That only brings disadvantages for a search engine. There is no sensible reason to allow Google but exclude other search engines.
It’s not about ‘Google’ vs ‘the other search engines’. It’s about transparency. You’ve probably read some news about how AI crawlers have been destroying infrastrucure and half the time does NOT declare themselves as crawlers in their UA.
Can confirm that nealy 90% (read hundreds of thousands) of daily visits to several of my websites are made by crawlers from datacenters and I HATE not knowing whose who. Because when I don’t know, I block and report. Website owners already have enough between AI, Page Rankings, and Research Agencies who all exploit free infra for their own business.
Do I make exceptions for Search Engine crawlers? Yeah, I do. I’ve seen Google, Bing, and Mojeek, but weirdly enough, never Brave. Now I know why. And frankly, if they can’t be bothered to be transparent about their crawlings, then I won’t be bothered to make exceptions for them. They’re freeloading just as much as the rest. If they act like shady chinese crawlers, then they have no right to go pikachu face when they’re treated like one.
Well said
Brave doesn’t have AI crawlers, they have search index crawlers.
While you may make exceptions for them, many others may not.
They explained the reason in the comment you just replied to.
‘s/ly (.) (.)/\2/’
There is nothing good about Google results. They haven’t been usable for years.
Brave bought ad space on YouTube, and showed an ad on how to block ads on YouTube.
Mozilla could have done something similar with UBO but they just keep missing so many golden chances.
Mozilla has millions of reasons to not rock the boat with Google.
I don’t use Brave but honestly there aren’t many options left. I can’t wish for Orion to launch any sooner.
Fascinating… I knew some of this and it is indeed troubling.
It seems that Brave’s mission is actually about generating revenue by any method possible (including manipulation of end users) more than anything to do with privacy.
If you’re cool with all that then Brave is for you I guess.
Wow, what scummy bastards. I used the browser for a little bit, and I kinda figured they were up to some shady shit when I noticed a crypto-wallet was included, but I ignored all that shit and it was fine. But if I’d known what the CEO or the company in general had been up to I’d have dropped that shit like a bad habit long before I did for other reasons.
The article is unfair about the fingerprinting issue. Brave utilizes a technique they call farbling and it does a really good job at keeping websites from knowing who you are, in theory anyways.
People really love to attack brave, but it can be configured to be a very fast, private, and clean browsing experience. Faster than Firefox by a long shot, open source, decentralized encrypted syncing… I get there have been controversies, and it is chromium, but at the end of the day you have to use the tool that works best for you.
EDIT I must say I am disappointed in how I was (at the time of posting) the only one to actually start a discussion about the article’s technical claims, and instead of any rational dialogue we went right to blind downvotes and immature statements. I guess I expected more from this little corner of the internet.
You’re not just licking the boot you’re giving it the good sloppy
By boot do you mean chromium? Id love to use a gecko browser, but my busy life is too short to spend extra seconds every time waiting for pages to load. If that makes me a boot licker so be it I guess :)
Does anyone have a recommendation for a browser to use on my iPhone other than Brave? I tried Firefox first, but evidently I can’t install extensions for ad blocking due to iPhone restrictions, so I’m using Brave on just this one device.
Every browser on iOS is just Safari wrapped in a different skin because of Apple’s requirements.
If you want to block youtube ads, I think it is really the only option as of now. Adguard can be downloaded on the app store and it does a mediocre job blocking ads, but the placeholder space for them remains and it straight up fails to block some for me. I am stuck with brave for now until something better comes along.
Do you use the paid version of Adguard?
For me on iOS it’s almost as good as uBO on Firefox.
No blank spaces where ads go, support for every filterlist I want, especially nice for blocking cookie notices.
Interesting. I have never paid for an adblock before, but it’s good to know there’s a backup. It seems a bit wild to pay for an adblock when free and open sourced solutions exist I guess…
This one is open source.
Adguard is an massive contributor in the adblock scene.
Many of their products are free (Adguard Home, DNS, etc.). Even this one has a free version. They want to make money as a company and on iOS you gotta pay the Apple tax.
Safari has Wipr which blocks YouTube ads
Orion. It can use Firefox, and chrome extensions
Interesting, I’ll have to check it out. I’ve been passively wanting to leave brave on iOS for some time now. Thank you!
But you can install Adblock extensions (but only in Safari)!
The best by far is Adguard.
I’ve heard enough of this stuff over the years to never be tempted to try the browser out. At this point, I feel like it’s claim to privacy is mostly marketing. Personally, I’m going to stick to LibreWolf.
Thank you for posting this! I had a vague recollection there was something scummy about Brave, and I was surprised to see it recommended in so many of the “Which browser should I use?” posts. It’s really handy to have a chronical of bullshit like this to point to when it comes up
You could make a similar “chronical” about any other browser. They’re often recommended because in many ways they are the least shitty and most sustainable.
“Other people are assholes too” is a terrible reason to support an asshole. Expect better.
Which asshole do you support?
The crazy conspiracy guy I know uses Brave, so that already put me off.
tldr:
My take: No other browser is sustainable without advertising. Orion looks to be that guy, but we will see. We’ve already seen many other browsers stop development, like Mull and LibreWolf, due to lack of resources. Firefox itself is on the chopping block with Google potentially being forced to sell Chrome. We’ll see what Kagi is able to manage with Orion, though releasing it with pretty much all the features one could want for free doesn’t appear promising. I think taking a “private advertising” approach is the best we’re going to get. This makes Brave sustainable.
The CEO is a dick, no doubt, but they pretty much all are, and every browser has it’s drawbacks.
As far as the useragent, I kinda agree with Brave on that one. Sites want to be crawled by Google but they will block anyone else, which obviously creates an anticompetitive environment in an industry that severely needs competition.
As for the fingerprinting, I kinda get it. I’m sure some users were turning on strict protection and then complaining about the browser not working properly and ultimately ditching it while complaining to others. That being said, even with “standard” fingerprint blocking, Brave is the only browser I’ve used on CoverYourTracks and it returned “you have a randomized fingerprint”. I’m not any sort of tech genius but I think the folks at EFF are and I trust them.
My take: We can have an open source browser. No resources are required. We don’t need ads to view content we make. There is no need for a megacorp or any entity taking money and controlling us.
Most browsers are already open source. They’re all funded by advertising (except Safari which is a whole other problem).
Are you planning to imagine it into existence?
When you find one that has some sort of sustainable model that isn’t advertising, please let me know. I’ll be all over it.
No browser is sustainable without money because
I don’t understand your point.
A Web browser is a complex piece of SW that needs to provide many, many, features and work with great performance. Therefore you need a large team of experienced developers (full-time and maybe volunteers) collaborating on the development and testing. This is cost in labor and infrastructures (servers, storage, internet connection, hosting of platforms, etc)
One such feature that is a must-have is playing videos, from YouTube, Netflix, Prime, Twitch and what have you. Most widely spread video codecs are proprietary, you need a license to implement the decoder and these licenses are expensive. H.264 is one such codec, very widely spread across many content and platforms. You wouldn’t want a web browser that lacks the ability to decode H.264 videos. There are many such codecs that are considered essential, and this cost a lot of money in total.
In conclusion, this is an argument as why developing a web browser costs money and requires a sustainable financial plan, even though it is open-source and developed mostly by volunteers.
My personal opinion: advertisement sucks. I don’t want it anywhere in my life. I would prefer to pay upfront for my web browser if it come to this.
Yeah, no, I understood all of that. I think we all do. I’m just not sure why you felt the need to explain it?
kingthrillgore@lemmy.ml is supporting your argument.
Oh. Okay.
Since when did LibreWolf stop development? First I heard of it, and concerning if accurate.
I was just reading about it in another thread that I don’t remember. Not really “stopped” per se but one of the major devs left and the remaining have admitted they’re not able to keep up. I’ll go and see if I can find it again and I’ll edit this comment if I do.
I remember they saying the were too swamped to take on an Android version after Mull dev stopped, which is not the same as stopping. Mull actually stopped development, LibreWolf didn’t - they should not be mentioned in the same sentence like that.
I linked the thread above.
Wait, what?
Two things:
When did Librewolf stop development?
On funding, they say in their FAQ:
Librewolf seems to very consciously not looking for “resources” from advertising or donations, or etc. The only resource they seem to want is motivation.
Which I think is one of the big issues with OSS projects - many are based around a very small number of people being motivated to work on something for free. And it dies if that stops.
I think that having expectations and funding to continue is important, like you say.
But I’m still confused about what you mean by the “resources” comment re: Librewolf.
I can somewhat understand the overall criticism, because Librewolf - as far as my understanding goes - would be in trouble without the work being done on the code upstream.
Personally, I know that this does not exist (yet), and to some people that put privacy above everything else with a more libertarian slant, this might sound like the worst option imaginable, but my “dream” way to handle it within the current economic system would be:
Have an open source, FOSS base, web-engine and all, developed with public funds similar to public broadcasting in many countries (Bonus if carried by international organisations instead of just national. Think a UN institution like UNESCO or WHO, but focused on making the internet accessible neutrally and to all). On top of that code, projects that want to put privacy above all else could still feasibly built projects like LibreWolf (an even Brave), relying somewhat comfortably on secure fundamentals.
I know, sounds like a dream, which it is at this point. But every other solution within the current economic status quo I personally thin of, I see no chance of enshittification not always encroaching and creating crises, if not outright taking over.
But that didn’t answer my questions
Oh, yes, it wasn’t a direct answer, also, I’m not the person you answered to. Ultimately, my comment was more meant as an overall addition to the discussion, building on the idea of what a solution to:
might be.
But as answers to your two points. #1 - I have no idea where they got that from, myself #2 - I think you answered that one yourself rather well, and I wanted to build on that one.
Sorry if that was confusing, my brain is also good at confusing myself at times, can’t imagine how that is for others at times.
I missed you weren’t the person I responded to. Thank you.
Personally, I’d never touch a browser funded by the gov.
I think that is utlimately valid - although I think the other options are all coming with their own problems. You will then have to instead live with the interests of tech corporations (including nonprofits who ultimately need funding) and advertisers collecting your data, whose interests will ultimately not be much less malignant - or small free software projects of a sometimes quite limited scope. The latter, I think, is also a valid niché, but will leave the overall standards of the internet to corporate interests.
Considering how the CEO here acts for Brave, in my opinion, this is not simply about him being an asshole or being politically questionable. To me - everything about him screams “grifter taking advantage of people’s legitimate concerns” - and he has a material interest in your data as well. Brave always felt to me like trying to sell and market privacy instead of proving to me, in their fundamentals, that they actually have my interests in mind.
Which is why I, personally, do not really understand choosing Brave above LibreWolf (or Tor Browse, occasionally), if privacy is your #1 priority.
github.com/arkenfox/user.js/issues/1906
“Hey all, I’m on the LibreWolf team, and it’s true that since the departure of @fxbrit the project has taken a total nosedive when it comes to keeping up to date with Arkenfox and settings in general. We’re still making releases, but settings did not get updated.”
“As @threadpanic said, since fxbrit left we have been in a kind of “maintenance” mode in terms of settings. Mainly because we are really only three people left”
“LW since fxbrit left/died/who-knows has gone to shit - I worked with him behind the scenes to make the right choices and while he would do his own analysis, we always agreed, and his voice influenced them. Now they don’t know what they are doing, and in fact have compromised security and make really stupid decisions. Same goes for all the other forks - really dubious shit going”
Exactly.
“Resources” can refer to many different things, in this case it is motivation/prioritization.
Thanks.
Oh SHIT. I had a feeling since months, as an end-user, that something wasn’t going well. But damn, i did not know that was that bad.
That thread is several months old, and is specifically about integrating Arkenfox settings changes. I wouldn’t say Librewolf has ceased development based on the fact that their default settings differ from Arkenfox. Their Codeberg site shows ongoing work.
And? You have new evidence that things have improved?
Why does that matter?
Found Brendan Eich’s alt account
Ah sick burn bro 🤘
Collaborating with Arkenfox on default settings was nice, but wasn’t fundamental to the goals of the project. You can look at their Codeberg to see that the latest activity was a few days ago, and there have been several releases since the date of the thread you linked.
It’s still being kept up to date, just not getting new features, and the security issues have been patched up as they come along. It’s not a dead project yet. Maintaining Librewolf isn’t impossible since Firefox is doing the heavy lifting.
The main issue is mostly that it relies on Firefox.
Honestly, I don’t mind the paid browser route. Browsers, and a lot of software, used to be paid, and it feels like things were less shit when some of it was.
I think ideally we’d see 2 versions of software like some used to be in the 90s - a free, stripped down version that only does basic functions (think Microsoft WordPad Vs Microsoft Word) and a pair full version. This model can still allow FOSS to exist as well, like perhaps having LibreOffice as is, and then having an enterprise version that has additional networking features and support that’s paid for businesses, with all money from that going into the maintenance of LibreOffice.
Thanks for the TLDR. Enough said, deleted Brave app. Firefox Focus is a good alternate.
I hear Vivaldi is pretty good too
I used Vivaldi for a while. It’s still Chromium, so I would recommend against it. There’s too many good Firefox options to use anything Chromium.
Librewolf users (totally not biased)
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/be6bad90-e2bb-4772-b9e8-d6b5ca7d8fe8.webp">
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/989e4fd7-f68f-4bd6-aefd-4dcbae22dbf8.jpeg">
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/aedca9d1-0ce7-41a3-bf06-f875ff525811.jpeg">
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/826c9de6-0693-4beb-9503-0c7287f806b2.jpeg">
<img alt="" src="https://infosec.pub/pictrs/image/4711203f-2272-48d9-8057-a1677851b73e.jpeg">
Please tell me you have the whole set. I have waited for someone to post this since literally 2018
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/dcca9fa7-d379-4805-a71a-4cd7577d9b6a.webp">
<img alt="" src="https://infosec.pub/pictrs/image/af090e25-d8e9-4cec-893d-09eacbb9faef.jpeg">
Simply amazing
I do not but now wish I did
I swear I saw a better version of this somewhere
always gotta be that one person who posts the ai-generated sludge
I think this is making mountains out of molehills. My understanding is that he had a very good working relationship w/ LGBTQ people in the org, and he had been working for many years at Mozilla before this point. The issue was his private donations to an anti-same sex marriage initiative. He didn’t push for any company policy change, didn’t advertise the donation, and didn’t use company funds (used personal funds), so it really shouldn’t be anyone’s business.
I personally disagree with his political views, but I think he was a fantastic candidate for CEO of Mozilla. How he votes or spends his personal money shouldn’t be relevant at all.
I like this idea in principle, but not in implementation. Brave should have worked with major websites to share revenue, but what Brave actually did was remove website ads and insert its own, forcing websites to go claim BAT to get any of that revenue back.
My preference here is to not use a cryptocurrency and instead have users pay in their local currency into a bucket to not see ads (and that’s shared w/ the website), and that should be in collaboration w/ website owners.
This is a big nothing-burger.
Basically, Brave had a way to donate to a creator that wasn’t affiliated with the creator. The way it works is you could donate (using BAT), and once it got to $100 worth, Brave would reach out to the creator to give them the money. They adjusted the wording to make it clear they weren’t affiliated with the creator in any way.
Yeah, this is totally wrong, and they reversed course immediately.
Not a fan, but at least you can opt-out.
Mistakes happen. If you truly need the anonymity, you would have multiple layers of defense (i.e. change your default DNS server) and probably not use something like Brave anyway (Tor Browser is the gold standard here).
Also a bad move, though I am sympathetic to their reasoning here: they just don’t have the resources to get permission from everyone. Search has a huge barrier to entry, and I’m in favor of more competition to Google and Microsoft here.
This was for better UX, since it broke sites. Not a fan of removing this, they should have instead had a big warning when enabling this (e.g. many sites will break if you enable this).
Fair, but that should be a separate consideration from whether to use a given product. Using Brave doesn’t make you a right-wing dick.
You probably wouldn’t like the CEO of any company whose products you like, so basing a decision of what product to use based on that is… dumb.
I personally use Brave as a backup browser, for two reasons:
My primary browser is something based on Firefox because I value rendering-engine competition. But if I need a chromium-based browser, Brave is my go-to. I disable the crypto nonsense and keep ad-blocking on, and it’s generally pretty usable.
It’s everyone’s business that cares about those people.
Using products from a company that benefits him is empowering him to do those things.
That’s a monumental task. They would have had to create their own ad network similar to Google and then somehow out-compete them to get their business without any of the information that Google has about users.
Yes, that’s the problem.
Only because they got caught, and they didn’t refund any of the crypto they earned in the interim.
When it comes to TOR, mistakes can be a matter of life and death. People only use TOR when they need complete anonymity.
They did indeed have exactly that. It said in the actual setting itself “Strict, may break sites”.
Not true. I like Our Lord Gaben. I like Meredith Whitaker. I like lots of CEOs.
But is it though?
Believing that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be a government-supported institution isn’t the same as believing LGBT people are “invalid” or “wrong” or whatever.
For example, I personally oppose government-supported marriage entirely (despite being married myself) because I think marriage should be a religious/personal thing instead of an official government institution, and that we should replace it with a series of contracts that grant certain legal privileges (e.g. joint tax filing, power of attorney, etc) in an a la carte type setup (i.e. you may want to join finances w/ someone, but not give them hospital visitation rights). I think we should also allow more than two parties to enter into these agreements to cover a wide variety of unique living situations (e.g. you may want to joint file with a parent that you care for).
I don’t know Eich’s personal political views, and I honestly don’t care, as long as they don’t interfere with his role.
Not necessarily. For example, they could partner w/ someone like Axate, which basically does just this.
My understanding is that they can’t really do that, because the payments are anonymous. I could be mistaken though.
And if that applies to you, you should be very careful about the tools you use. Brave is a new thing and is relatively unproven. Use established, proven tools like Tor Browser.
Eh, I don’t really like Gabe Newell, but I certainly appreciate the investment into Linux. It just so happens our interests align more than they don’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if GabeN’s personal politics were quite conservative, because conservative policies generally benefit rich people like him (the closest I can see is maybe libertarian).
Meredith Whitaker is an absolute treasure, we don’t deserve her.
How is it not?
I mean, legally, that’s what marriage is.
You don’t have to do either of those things just because you’re married. Marriage just gives you the option.
And what would they bring to this partnership?
You should be. But companies also should not be creating tools that propose to give you those protections when they’re not smart enough to. Just leave it to the professionals.
As long as he keeps his mouth shut about them and doesn’t financially support them, he’s doing worlds better than Mr. Eich.
It seems incredibly obvious to me. For example, here are some things I believe:
Personal beliefs about what government policy should be can be very different than personal beliefs about what is “good” and “bad.”
To be clear, I support same-sex marriage because it’s on the table and my preferred alternative has almost no shot of being considered. So I support it as a harm-reduction policy, not because I actually believe the government should actually regulate marriage.
Marriage is a basket of contracts (power of attorney, joint custody, financial obligations, etc), and it’s limited to two people, which is odd. The original intent seems to be to encourage procreation, but it’s hardly enforced at all, nor is that particularly important in most countries (except maybe Japan).
We should treat marriage similarly to corporations. If you want to call your civil partnership “marriage,” more power to you. If you want to call it being BF/GF, life partners, or whatever else, more power to you. The government should only care that you meet the requirements for whatever the benefit is.
In many (most?) states, it is enforced unless you specifically opt-out (e.g. a pre-nup). Laws certainly vary by state, but generally speaking, if you’re legally married, anything you earn in the marriage is considered joint assets, even if you keep them in separate accounts. In some areas, things you bring into the marriage are also jointly owned, unless they are never interacted with.
That’s why divorces are so messy, the couple could have agreed to keep things separate at the start, but without any evidence of that, it’s up to the courts to decide what’s fair. And pretty frequently, they’ll lean on the side of 50/50 for all assets, regardless of when it was acquired or what the understanding was.
Integration into the browser product, users, and marketing.
I’ve been wanting Firefox to do something like this so get more visibility w/ online services. I’d love to be able to load up an account balance and click “view article” and the website owner sucks a few pennies from that balance or whatever. But my only options are:
Axate provides more than that, but so few online services work w/ it. A browser could bring them a ton of visibility.
Agreed. But like I said, users request features, bugs happen, etc. At the end of the day, the responsibility is on the user to pick the right product for their needs. Brave isn’t that product for at-risk individuals until it has been vetted by actual security experts.
Eich did the first half of that, his only “sin” was that someone found out about his donation. That’s it. My understanding is that nobody was aware of it until someone dug into the donation records.
Got it, so being gay isn’t “wrong” or “invalid”, it’s just “bad”?
Yes, that’s what I was referring to. You might call it a “contract”.
They don’t need Brave for that. They need the website owners. If you’re talking about injecting Axate ads where Google and other ads already are, then we’re back to square 1 where you’re ripping off content creators from their revenue for their content.
The problem with doing that with fiat is that there are transfer fees. You’d essential be paying a $3 to transfer 5 cents. That’s why everyone uses crypto for this.
Users can request features all day, developers are the ones who have to implement them.
It’s a completely unnecessary bug from someone trying to replace a perfectly safe and secure tool with their own and build value for themselves. This isn’t just any bug. Like I said, people’s lives can hang in the balance in a very real way. They need to get it right or just stay the fuck away.
Bullshit. Both are responsible.
Then they shouldn’t have launched it.
Not good enough.
I didn’t say that.
My point here is that personal views can differ from political policy views.
The issue is that it’s opt-out. Instead of that, people should opt-in only to the parts they want.
No, I’m talking about creating a protocol where browser clients can inform website owners that the customer is using this separate method of payment. It could happen separate from the browser (e.g. as an extension), but the browser gives it a lot more visibility.
The UX here would be pretty simple: if the user has enabled this feature, websites would prompt users for payment or to show ads.
Browsers win because they get a revenue stream, Axate wins by having more customers, and websites win because they’re getting paid instead of customers blocking ads.
That’s why you batch up transfers. General flow:
Boom, total number of transfers are pretty low, no need for cryptocurrencies.
Sure, but the browser vendor has very little at stake, whereas the user has everything at stake. At the end of the day, it’s on the user.
You’re welcome to your opinion. I personally don’t have an issue with how people spend their money, I only have an issue with how they treat their employees and choices they make about their product.
That makes absolutely no sense. You would advocate for and even donate to political reform for something you don’t personally believe in?
No, it isn’t.
Nothing says more about who a person is than their political donations.
Yes. I believe in personal freedom, so I’ll support the freedom to do things that I believe are harmful like drug use, gambling, or prostitution. You doing those things doesn’t impact me or anyone else so it should 100% be your right to do it. In short, I believe principles should carry the day.
I may not agree with you doing something I believe to be bad, but I’ll defend your right to do it.
In the same vein, I believe governments should be as small as possible, and no smaller. The role of government is to protect me from you, and vice versa. It’s not to ensure I’m making good choices, in fact it shouldn’t be in the business of deciding what’s “good” or “bad,” it should merely enforce laws that protect people from eachother.
Does the government deciding which marriages are valid protect me from you? Not really, all it does is determine who can take advantage of certain benefits. That sounds exclusionary with no particular purpose, so the government shouldn’t decide that.
So I really can’t speak to why Eich donated to the prop 8 fund (or whatever it was). Was it because he hates gay people? Or because he thinks same sex marriage goes counter to the reason marriage exists as a government institution? Or something else? I don’t know, nor do I really care, provided it doesn’t get in the way of doing his job.
First of all, @Ulrich@feddit.org , thanks for calling out the bullshit of this professional far right fire hydrant apologist. You’ve stayed on track with the main issue of their argument despite them wanting to hide attention away from it.
The reason their propaganda sounds reasonable is because it pretends to be rational and sounds calm, when in reality it’s ignoring extremely glaring issues. In one of these cases for example, it’s pretending that funding intolerance isn’t intolerance. Another is ignoring details, such as how the crypto scam was essentially malware, and did cause performance hits to devices using Brave (part of the reason why it was caught).
Second of all, for everyone following along this far, I just want to point out the false equivalency between something like hard drugs and gambling - things that literally statistically bring literal harm - to marriage.
And finally, we’re done entertaining, bullshit in the tea - that’s why Teslas are burning. Remember that when shit hits the fan.
I was pretty confused when reading because it sounded like you were thanking me for calling our far right BS from the person was talking to, but I was calling our far left BS instead.
But after a couple paragraphs, I realized it was me you were talking about. So thank you for giving me a chance to see this and respond.
Everything here is incorrect. I’m not being paid, I’m not far right (I hate Trump and voted for Biden in 2020), and I call out far right BS all the time (had an argument w/ my boss the other day who supported Trump’s tariff and immigration policy).
I’ve tried to cover all of them, but my posts get long as is, so I try to combine a few. I don’t follow Brave news much, so I’ll miss some things.
If I donated to an intolerant PAC or something, sure, I’d get that. If I bought products from a corporation that openly funds intolerant PACs with a large chunk of profits, I’d get that as well.
But if the CEO uses their personal money on it, I have more trouble connecting that with the company. As long as they keep personal opinions personal and don’t drag the company into it, I’m fine. The VP seems worse than him honestly (from the article).
A CEO is not the company, and if you disable ads, don’t use their search engine, and don’t engage with their crypto nonsense, you’re not giving them any money. I do all of that for the handful of minutes each day I use it.
I use Firefox as my main browser, and that’s what I recommend to others. I use Brave as my backup browser, because I need something that runs on the Chromium engine that doesn’t have ads. I think people are overreacting about Eich. I disagree with his politics, but as long as he keeps that outside the company, I’m okay with it.
I assume you’re talking about the referral link thing? Yeah, that was bad, and I think I mentioned that. At least they quickly reversed course.
I can see an argument for them thinking it wasn’t that bad, so I’m willing to chalk it up to naïveté. It wasn’t quite as bad as Honey, which removed other referral codes. It’s still bad.
I didn’t hear that it caused performance issues though.
I never claimed they were equivalent. I merely pointed to them as fairly unpopular things that I support, and gave reasons for it.
And I agree, they can absolutely cause problems in marriage, as well as non-married people (addiction is real), hence why I said they are “bad.” But “bad” doesn’t necessarily have to mean “illegal.”
I have never used drugs, gambled, or hired a prostitute, and I don’t think anyone else should, but I will absolutely support legalizing them. In fact, I’m quite religious, and those things are 100% against my religion, but I believe personal morality shouldn’t really impact politics. My religion and moral code is for me, and I’m not going to force that on anyone.
In short, I support these probably for the same reason you oppose Eich: I believe in freedom. I guess I define that a bit more liberally than you do.
Teslas are burning as a symbol of opposition to Musk and DOGE. And I completely respect that, I also don’t like Musk and DOGE.
That said, this isn’t going to change anything. Musk has enough money that even if Tesla disappears, he’ll still be filthy rich. He does seem to care about the “richest man in the world” title, so I guess it will hurt his ego a little.
The ones that’ll suffer more are regular people who bought a Tesla years ago and are getting caught in the crossfire. Some idiots will burn privately owned Teslas, insurance coverage will get dropped, etc. That’s not worth it IMO.
Protest at Tesla dealerships, or better yet your state capital. I might even join you. But wanton destruction isn’t the way.
I know you fake mofos are the type to always need to get the last word because it makes it seem to other dumdums that getting the last say is somehow “winning”, but I’m leaving this link here for anyone who remotely might believe your take is a good one:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I’m not trying to win any argument, I’m trying to have a discussion. It seems to me that you’re not interested in that, so I’ll leave some links to relevant logical fallacies in a hope that someone going this far down the thread will make up their own mind using reason instead of emotion.
The link in the post above me is also great, I highly recommend reading it, especially the following from the person who wrote about it:
To be clear, I am not arguing that Eich’s intolerant beliefs be tolerated, I’m arguing that they’re irrelevant to the discussion about Brave browser (i.e. the Association Fallacy). By all means, protest against intolerance, be loud, and above all, completely discredit it through rational argument, and I’ll join you in that. But don’t become the thing you claim to hate by refusing rational argument. Articulate why his personal actions matter at all to the products his company makes, and why those can’t be evaluated on their own merits.
It’s not an association fallacy or poisoning the well if those things are actually being done, which has already been covered in the previous comments. Goggles is another current example of that.
You can go on and have your last word now, I’m done with your bad faith argument. I think there’s enough evidence in this comment thread by now for others to see you’re being disingenuous.
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Is it me or the people defending brave are homophobes too.
Not just you, if they can ignore or defend Brave, they’re on the side of its CEO. No questions about it.
That’s great and all, but we don’t live in those times yet. Not granting people the right to marry whoever they want in current times based on the premise that we should change the marital law somewhere in the future is still nothing short of discrimination. And let’s not forget that Eich supported a campaign that was very explicitly against gay marriage, not the current concept of marriage altogether. Weak argument.
That’s what marriage already is for the most part in many parts of the world. And in those cases, the resulting financial disadvantage for example also makes it more apparent, why being against gay marriage is not just about names on a piece of paper.
How empathetic of you. Might as well support Josef Mengele with that attitude. A bit more personal responsibility couldn’t hurt.
Well, last I checked it’s just another ERC-20 Token and not a new Monero, so I have my doubts about that. I also assume that they must keep transaction logs somewhere to keep track of the amount of BAT donated to a creator. But I can’t be sure either.
It’s also kind of useless for Brave to have implemented Tor in the first place. Even if Brave matures further, there’s basically no reason not to use the Tor Browser for its intended purpose.
I never claimed it was. I merely gave an example of how opposition to something doesn’t necessarily indicate opposition to the people it’s intending to help.
For the record, I support same-sex marriage, on the grounds that my preferred policy (which would open up marriage to more than just same-sex couples) is unlikely to get traction anytime soon, so something is better than nothing. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of better.
However, I have friends who oppose same-sex marriage and don’t hate gay people (in fact, they’re good friends with LGBT people). The world isn’t black and white, so we shouldn’t assume someone is a Nazi just because they believe a couple of the same things Nazis do. That’s a logical fallacy, and it does way more harm than good.
Exactly, and I’m arguing that those benefits shouldn’t be bundled. I’ve known couples that want to share custody but not finances, or maybe visitation rights but not power of attorney. Relationships are complicated, and I think the institution of marriage is outdated. We spend tons of time and money on divorces and prenuptial agreements, and I think that could be dramatically simplified if we separated out the specific agreements and let people pick which they want.
Marriage should be a religious/personal thing, not a legal one. Whether you want to consider yourself married shouldn’t depend on a piece of paper in much the same way that your chosen gender shouldn’t.
That’s quite the logical leap.
I don’t know, and honestly it doesn’t matter.
My preferred form of record keeping is GNU Taler. You’d load a wallet to pay for articles or whatever and the browser vendor would use a very cheap form of accounting to keep track of purchases, and lump payments to websites together with payments from other users. Taler is nice in that it protects the privacy of the purchaser, has cryptographic protections without the complexity of P2P verification (and none of the ecological impact), and is pretty easy to understand. The vendor could even audit transactions if they want without violating the privacy of the user.
But honestly, I don’t care what mechanism they use, whether crypto or some form of centralized wallet. I just want to be able to pay to remove ads without needing a million accounts.
I disagree. There’s value in having a second rendering engine in case a website doesn’t work on Tor Browser. It’s unlikely to have similar protections (e.g. finger printing resistance), but it could work in a pinch for a site you need to access that doesn’t work on Gecko for whatever reason.
That said, you could probably achieve that by pointing the browser at a running Tor service (e.g. Orbot on Android). You’d need to be extra careful about things like DNS (which Brave got wrong), but it’s an option. Having it bundled is nice though.
So it’s ok to buy a Tesla nowadays in your opinion? Genuinely curious.
Yes, if it’s the vehicle that fits your needs the best. Elon doesn’t need your money, and with Tesla getting roasted in the media, you can probably pick up a good deal.
That said, I wouldn’t buy a Tesla for other reasons, such as:
I do boycott certain products though, first among them is Wal-Mart, but that’s because I find Wal-Mart to be anti-competitive (drives smaller stores out of business) and they contribute to poor working conditions either directly (i.e. their own products) or indirectly (i.e. forcing suppliers to cut costs). I’ve been boycotting them for ~20 years, and honestly haven’t bothered checking if they’ve improved. I also try to avoid buying from Amazon for similar reasons.
Maybe Tesla is similar to those, idk. I personally don’t buy Musk’s products because I find them lacking, and I haven’t needed any more reasons to avoid his products than that.
I literally don’t care about the political views of the CEO/owner of a company. I dislike Chik-Fil-A’s founder, for example, but I like the food there and the workers seem to be treated well, so I shop there. I especially like that they’re closed on Sundays, which guarantees workers get at least one day off. Whether some idiot gets rich from a fraction of the money I spend on a certain product doesn’t bother me, I mostly care that the business is run well and the product is good.
I appreciate your perspective, and I agree that we should probably be more concerned with how the company functions than the personal character of the CEO .
Sam Walton was a hardworking, amiable, humble man by all accounts. And even when he was alive Walmart the company was cutting throats.
At the same time, if a CEO deeply ingrains himself in the political process, I can probably take a pass on his products even if they are marginally better. So these days Musk is doing so much damage to the functioning of the US government that even if Teslas were good I wouldn’t buy one.
The Chikfila guy on the other hand was just donating to a few discriminatory “Christian” charities last I checked but stopped trying to change policy, so…as fast food shops go it’s actually not too bad even if I don’t prefer to eat there.
Starbucks…evil CEO, but preemptively boycotting before the organized shops strike doesn’t help the workers.
Brave…has had too many fuckups for my taste. On the rare occasion that I need a privacy focused Chromium-based browser I just use Chromium with uBlock Origin for the one website I need to visit.
Oh yeah, I absolutely respect the man, I just don’t respect his business choices. There needs to be a balance between cutting costs to bring prices down for customers and providing for your employees.
But why? He doesn’t need your money anymore, and if everyone stopped buying his products and Tesla went bankrupt, he’d still be ridiculously rich.
I get that it’s sending a message, but what does that accomplish? Maybe the board boots him as CEO, but he’ll retain his ownership stake.
I don’t see it. That’s why I focus on company culture, which often survives a change in management. If the culture is busted, I go out of my way go avoid their products.
Starbucks has actually been fantastic, at least in the past, with even part-time employees getting great benefits and pay being very competitive. I don’t know how things are with the CEO changes (Chipotle guy now, right?), so maybe that’s no longer the case.
That said, I don’t go there because I don’t like their products.
Does that still work?
I mostly just need something to test on, since I’m a full stack web dev, and I don’t like having ads everywhere when I need to prettify some JSON or something. Also a fallback on the few pages Firefox doesn’t work on, once in a blue moon.
That’s really it.
.
Holy copium batman, imagine excusing malware and checks notes literally aiding in denying rights to LGBTQ+ people.
Let me guess, you pretend to be centrist by day, and you wear
<img alt="" src="https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/3c14f4ff-d0ed-400d-8209-89b0bd91499d.jpeg">
By night?
You got me, I guess? But don’t tell my POC SO that I’ve been happily married to for >10 years.
Seriously though, this is the kind of extreme take I’m pushing back on. I strongly disagree with the Lemmy devs’ politics, yet here I am on their platform. I’ve even contributed bug fixes. I strongly disagree with Eich’s politics, yet I use Brave as my backup browser. Why? It meets my technical requirements. Firefox is my main browser though.
I’m not a centrist either, whatever that means, but I guess of you average out my extreme takes it could look that way. Conservatives call me socialist, Progressives call me far right, so I guess the middle of that is centrist?
I made the mistake of responding to Lumiluz on a different comment thread. They haven’t responded yet, but based on this communication here I will just ignore any reply. It’s strange we live in a world where you can be accused of being a KKK member due to unrelated tools one uses to browse the Internet.
It’s not strange, people love jumping to extreme conclusions if there’s even a whiff of something they don’t like. Name calling is unfortunately very common.
I’d prefer more fact based discussions, but here we are.
The crazy thing is, I very much dislike Trump, but I get labeled as a supporter if I dare say anything positive about him or anyone who supports him, or in this case, not vehemently oppose everything a Trump supporter touches. I find that ridiculous, but here we are.
Anyway, hopefully someone finds what I write useful.
For what it’s worth, I agree 100%. I’m awfully tired of this whole “everyone who disagrees with me is a nazi/KKK” extremism. It’s a great disservice to the severity of those atrocities.
Using software made by people who are politically aligned to sell out your country to russia is stupid stupid stupid and makes you an idiot, idiot, idiot.
Its not just politics when the politics are treason and electing a kgb asset. In a normal country and time it wouldn’t be a big thing wether your browser maintainer wants feee public transit or not but in current time right wing means you literally voted to destroy the entire us in order to weaken nato for the russian invasion.
It sounds like you need to step away from social media and touch some grass.
But let’s say you’re right, pretty much every big company is sucking up to Trump, and you’d be hard pressed to find something in your shopping cart that doesn’t benefit someone that supports him. That’s an untenable position.
The better approach, IMO, is to avoid products from companies that mistreat their employees. That’s why I avoid Walmart, Amazon, and a few others, because that sends a clearer message and funnels my money to a better cause.
Avoiding Brave is just virtue signaling, it doesn’t actually accomplish anything. If Brave goes under, Eich will still be conservative and probably still donate to causes you don’t like, but we’ll have one less competitor to Google’s absolute hegemony over the web browser market.
Use Brave if it solves your problems, don’t if it doesn’t. Don’t base that decision on the personal views of the person who happens to be in charge.
Brave isn’t a competitor to Google, it’s an enabler. It uses the same engine, which is all Google cares about: Their engine, their internet.
It absolutely is a competitor. Yes, it uses the same engine, but it blocks their ads. And at the end of the day, serving ads is what Google wants to do.
But again, Firefox (and forks) is my main browser, and it’s what I recommend to everyone. But Brave is on my list of acceptable Chromium browsers, assuming you need a Chromium browser (I do for web dev at my day job).
Which means nothing, when Google can, and is, pushing technology to freely unleash their ad network on all web pages, as a function of the engine itself.
No, it’s not a competitor. Excepting in their ad markets, and frankly, it’s not a competitor, it’s a statistical blip.
AFAIK, there’s nothing in Blink (the rendering engine), V8 (the JavaScript run engine), or any other low level pieces of the browser that does this. What they’re doing is hamstringing extensions and building in a layer of tracking into the browser on top of the engine. A fork can absolutely keep the engine bits and remove the tracking bits.
The problem with Chrome’s hegemony over the rendering engine has nothing to do with their ad network, but with their ability to steer people to use their products instead of competitors’ (e.g. “Google Docs is faster on Chrome, switch today!” just because they introduced a chrome-only spec extension).
Brave absolutely is a competitor. They block Google’s ads, have their own search engine (and are building their own index), and provide a privacy friendly alternative to Chrome without any compatibility issues. That’s why it’s my backup to Firefox (and forks), sometimes things don’t work properly on Gecko and I want a privacy-friendly alternative to chrome. That used to be Chromium w/ uBlock Origin, but with that extension taken from the chrome web store, I reach for Brave, which has it built in.
And yeah, it doesn’t have a ton of users. That doesn’t mean they’re not a competitor though.
So brave is for people who want privacy and security and are fine when their private, secure software is designed by people who see no problems with not investigating russian cyberterrorism, russian bots and propaganda and see no issues with sharing some of the highest state secrets over some fucking messenger group with random people from outside the government. OH and not to menition think traitorous felons who failed a coup should be punished with 4 years in the highest office.
I do not know about you but this is not the software I want to entrust literally all data of all my finances and important personal details on.
Do you have a source for those beliefs, or are you just assuming that someone vaguely supporting Trump has that perspective?
I honestly don’t care what the devs believe, as long as they don’t intentionally put in vulnerabilities.
Same, which is why I use and recommend Firefox and derivatives.
My point is that if your requirement is a chromium-hard based browser, you can do a lot worse than Brave.
You cannot support current administration and at the same time be pro freedom, privacy and even pro common sense. These things are mutually exclusive, unless you’re lying or insanely stupid bot.
Very simple.
I guess that depends on what you mean by “support.” You can support certain things the administration does while attacking others. I dislike most of what Trump has done, but I happen to like a few things Trump has done as well. It’s totally rational to say what you do and don’t like about a given administration. I voted for Biden, for example, and I was happy that he largely stayed out of my news feed and actually pulled us out of Afghanistan, but I’m not particularly happy about much of the rest of his presidency (still don’t regret my vote though).
I don’t know how far Eich’s “support” goes, you’d have to ask him that. All I know is that he isn’t a fan of same-sex marriage at the government level. Maybe he’s a single issue voter, or maybe it’s something else. I don’t know, I haven’t seen much about his political preferences.
My point is that we shouldn’t jump down someone’s throat and start assuming a whole host of things based on very limited evidence.
The shit repubs are pulling, defending and double standarding is insane enough to not trust them as a whole for any rational person used to a functioning government. Period. You are doing the classic “hitler did some good things too” argument. Big picture doesn’t give a fuck. Any single issue voter, rational person or a non-piece of treasonous shit would distance themselves from repubs and try again with a sane political party. Anyone still not condemning republicans is untrustworthy and an enemy of democracy and freedom. Easy as
I’m really not. Hitler was a very different situation than Trump, and if you think they’re directly comparable, you need to take a break from the internet.
Yeah Trump sucks, and he’s dangerous (but mostly in an inept sort of way). I get it. But I think it’s highly unlikely that he tries to take dictatorial control of the US in any meaningful capacity.
There are some reasonable Republicans who don’t like the nonsense Trump is doing. In fact, I’d be surprised if most Republicans aren’t a fan of him flagrantly ignoring the law. Don’t lump them all into the same set of problems, that’s just going to put roughly half of the US against you. Instead of that, you could find some common ground and get a significant number to be on your side. Why fan this stupid culture war nonsense more than necessary?
Call out bad policy, acknowledge good policy, and demand accountability for lawbreaking.
Brendan Eich isn’t some secret Project 2025 mastermind, he’s just a dude that thinks privacy on the web is important and thinks his company has an interesting approach to solving that problem. Yeah, he has at least one bad political view, but that doesn’t mean everything he touches is automatically terrible.
If you can’t see trump becoming a dictator after he has said he would multible times and after a failed fucking coup, everything you said is wrong and or malicious. Thanks for outing yourself.
and this is not me reading into clues sprinkled in reddit comments found while being chronically online. THIS SHIT MAKES THE NEWS OF EVERY FUCKING COUNTRY.
He’s like 80yo. He’s not going to. There’s a better chance that he has a heart attack.
And yeah, countries watch US politics closely, and they’re very unhappy with Trump’s stupid tariffs. His strategy seems to be to jack up tariffs to devalue the dollar a bit to make exports more attractive longer-term. He doesn’t want to annex Canada (though Canadians won’t hesitate to blow that up since there’s an election coming up next month), he doesn’t want to annex Greenland (but he probably wants some land for bases), and he doesn’t want much to do with anything south of the border. He wants to create lots of blue-collar jobs, because blue-collar workers for some reason have been shifting toward the Republican Party, and it’s his job to make the Republican Party more attractive.
I think the whole strategy is dangerous and stupid from an economics standpoint, but I don’t see it as fascist. It’s certainly isolationist and nationalist though, but I see zero indication that he’s interested in nationalizing anything. Maybe I’m wrong, but what I see is a lot of people who are mad because Trump doesn’t listen to them, so they spout alarmist nonsense.
That said, what Musk is doing is absolutely dangerous on another level entirely. He’s putting sensitive data into a format that could be fairly easily attacked by state actors. There’s a good reason we have data separated, and it’s not to intentionally make government ineffective, it’s largely following the principle of least privilege, and Musk is demolishing that. It’s incredibly dangerous, and I’m surprised he hasn’t gotten more pushback on it.
You can believe what you want, of course, but my read is that Trump is pursuing stupid economic policy in a crazy attempt to be remembered long-term as the guy that “fixed” the US economy, not trying to become a dictator. He wants to be remembered.
It’s tempting to see his donations to prop 8 as just his personal business, but like so many others you’re missing the fact that when your political beliefs are that other humans are actually subhuman and not equals, that goes beyond “personal politics.” Like outright naziism, there should be no safe place for a single ounce of this thinking. If you think it’s akin to liking shrimp more than chicken, you should deeply rethink your own “personal politics” because you’re casually glancing over the dehumanization of other people with a shrug.
well said
Wait, so believing same sex marriage shouldn’t be allowed means you think gay people are sub-human? That’s quite the leap. It may be true, but you’ll need a bit more evidence than a private donation to a group pushing a bill to ban same sex marriage.
Even if he is literal Nazi trash (big doubt), his company produces FOSS, which can and should be evaluated on its own merits.
Look, I’m married to an immigrant POC. If he supported banning immigration interracial marriage, that would piss me off, but it wouldn’t have any impact on the quality of the browser. I bet CEOs of companies that make a number of products I use have terrible political takes or like Eich, but that doesn’t change the quality of the product.
If he brought his politics into his company, that would be different. But how he spends his money and free time doesn’t really matter to me.
You keep saying “but the product is fine” as if you don’t understand the concept of a boycott on moral grounds. It’s also hard to trust your privacy to someone who doesn’t believe you should have the same rights. Yes I consider that dehumanizing. If you’d been prevented from marrying your immigrant POC you would feel dehumanized as well, and I hazard to guess you might choose alternatives to products built by those who helped bring you to that state. At least fuck I hope so, because otherwise you are missing a screw.
I absolutely do boycott based on moral grounds. I’ve been boycotting Walmart for >10 years because of unfair competition actions (killing off small businesses), poor treatment of workers, and being a massive force for reducing worker treatment in other companies by forcing prices down. Likewise for Nestle and what they’ve done in Africa, I’m trying to eliminate Amazon for their warehouse policies, and I’ve been reducing or eliminating purchases from other companies as well along similar lines.
I draw the line at actual actions by companies though, and I don’t really care what c-suite types do on their own time and with their own money. If I boycotted companies based on what their execs believe, I wouldn’t be able to buy anything.
Oh absolutely, but I would funnel that anger at the people who supported and passed it, not at the companies those people work for or the products those companies produce.
It’s one thing to differentiate between a company and the staff who work for it. But I think you have to be pretty thick to gleefully patronize a company whose founder and CEO you detest. If you want to compartmentalize to such an extreme, that’s your business, but don’t argue it to me as if it makes any objective sense to ignore who you are enriching by your purchasing power.
Companies are like Soylent green, after all: they’re made of people.
The CEO isn’t the company, they’re just the ones at the helm. The CEO’s personal opinions don’t really impact my decision of whether to patronize their store, provided they keep their personal opinions out of the business. If a CEO aligns with me but their products suck, cool, but I’ll avoid the store. If a CEO is opposite to me and their products rock, I’ll probably buy from them. If a company abuses its employees or actively tries to interfere w/ democracy (more than their competitors), then I’ll avoid their products. I think it’s important to send the right message to the right person/group.
I disagree with Brendan Eich, but he seems to keep his personal politics out of his business. I can dislike him while being okay with his business, and I don’t think that’s an insane thing to do at all.
At the end of the day, a ton of distasteful people get wealthy regardless of what I do. It’s also true that they get a very small percentage of the money a company takes in, it just so happens that a small piece of a very large pie is still a ton of money.
At the end of the day, it’s absolutely a personal choice which products and organizations to support. I personally see more value in supporting ideas (e.g. privacy) than tearing things down just because an unsavory character is affiliated with it. In other words, I prefer to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Then why betray them? He has nothing to gain from funding such a campaign. There is no logical explanation and sure as hell no justification for it.
Oh, shut up. When this asshole funds a campaign that’s actively fighting against the rights of millions of people, it absolutely is our damn fucking business.
It’s bad enough that they even got the idea, let alone implement and actually ship it. Negative reactions shouldn’t be the first deciding factor for reversing such decisions.
Not just share, completely give up that revenue. Blocking ads is one thing, but to then also monetise other people’s content should not allow Brave to earn even a single cent.
Your proposed solution sounds fine, though.
Again, no. Maybe if there weren’t any alternatives, but there are plenty.
That’s probably true, however, Eich is a different story. Despite not gaining anything from it, neither for his companies nor for himself, he was willing to go out of his way to support a campaign in favour of discriminating millions of people, proactively. This doesn’t just make me not like him, it makes me despise him.
Other CEO’s typically at least keep quiet about politics, and make me dislike them mainly because of self-interest and their resulting business decisions, which can at least still be somewhat understandable.
And let me be clear that I’m not going to jump on people who use Brave for whatever reason. But under no circumstances will I defend those who downplay or justify Brave’s, and especially Eich’s, actions.
He obviously believes that same sex marriage shouldn’t be performed by the government. If you want to know why, ask him, not me.
That said, I don’t see this as “betrayal,” it was a private donation. The only reason we’re talking about it is because someone dug through his donation history (donations to such orgs are public record) and made a big deal about it. AFAIK, there were no accusations of him treating LGBT people unfairly, only opposition to his donation.
I’d like to see an explanation beyond, “yeah, we screwed up.” Who signed off on it, and what was their justification?
Thanks. The idea is that the browser has a vested interest in protecting the privacy of it’s users, so finding a workable solution for both the user and the website should provide some funding for the browser.
But yes, either the browser should block ads so nobody gets revenue or work something out where everyone wins. Profiting off someone else’s content without permission will always be wrong.
Do you have a better suggestion for a chromium-based browser that’s FOSS and has effective ad blocking and tracking protection?
I use Firefox (or fork) most of the time, but I need to test on a chromium browser and need a backup for the odd website that fails on Firefox.
Brave sticks out as the obvious solution here.
He tried to. He never advertised his political beliefs, donations, etc. Someone just found out and blasted him for it. For an org that supposedly cares about privacy, that’s pretty alarming!
Nor will I. But I will separate my criticism of them.
I’m 100% happy to jump on board an Eich’s political positions hate train, and I probably share the resentment. But I will not jump on a Brave hate train just because Eich is associated with it. I’m happy to blast Brave over technical mistakes it makes (I avoided it for a long time until BAT was deemphasized), but I won’t transfer that frustration into a personal attack on Eich. They can and should be treated separately.
i notice they are all past tense save the last 3
This is like saying “I see he was murderer until he got caught”. No shit Sherlock some of those are past tense, because he got caught. If you want to go ahead and get exploited by a dickhead and his future pending scams go ahead.
“Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, and apparently I end up supporting the right wing all the time because I’m a dunce” is apparently how it works these days.
well no you’re accusing all the contributors of brave of being a murderer
they stopped murdering a long time ago
Murderer is a noun. Once you’ve murdered that’s what you are, regardless of past or present or future. People can change, but that doesn’t change what you’ve done in the past and have become, because you can’t undo what you did.
6 months to 5 years isn’t “A long time ago” btw. I think it takes at least a decade to start considering something a long time ago.
you know murderers get rehabilitated and released all the time
After a significant amount of time. Longer than Brave’s blunders. And rehabilitation is not erasure. Likewise, murder enough and society will consider to instead remove the person from society as well instead of rewarding them.
the time can be scarily short and quite rarely ends in life terms in civilized societies
What rehabilitation have the offending parties on brave gotten beyond amassing wankers who make excuses for them?
Theres also a long list of messed up shit over the course of a long time so they’re just consistently inventing new shit. Who knows what they’re fucking up today that no one has discovered yet?
Those are good reasons to ditch a product. Yet, at the same time, inside the Apple ecosystem this is the only browser that allows cross platform watching of yt without any ads, therefore suffocating Google and the fat cat MKBHD influencers from income.
So it’s like an evil to tame another evil to me atm.
Of course the best path forward would be to ditch both Brave and yt and then just get Nebula/patreon or something for serious content browsing.
I’m curious though: if I just use Brace only with a few yt tabs open and never open the new empty tab or visit another site, does Brave get any revenue from me?
Not true. You can block ads with an extension in Safari.
Can you not use Firefox on apple products? They’ve got extensions for that I’m sure
You should also add secretly whitelisted Facebook trackers in their adblocker, something they did a while back.
Yikes I didn’t know they did that but I’m not surprised. There’s a reason the people behind Tor say it should only be used via the official Tor browser, because only the Tor browser can provide that level of protection against those kind s of leaks, as well as much better fingerprinting resistance than chromium-based brave is going to give you.
Thanks for the summary.
It’s so “weird” how the same kind of person who would be openly anti-LGBTQ would also make a such a sketchy product.
Thanks, but I’ll keep using it.
I don’t agree politically with the CEO nor I’m I fan of the crypto stuff, but I find it better than any other browser right now. And I don’t want to support Mozilla in any way, so FF and its forks forks are a no-go.
Here come the downvotes fro the supposedly tolerant
idiotsgood people out there, lollemm.ee/comment/19102164
Dude, you showed up to a post about how brave is an ad-riddled crypto scam and responded with “yeah, but fuck Firefox” with no reasoning given. Then cried about how anyone who disagreed with that assessment was an idiot.
What kind of engagement were you expecting/hoping for?
I’m just tired of these shitty posts about… A perfectly fine browser! But no problem, I’ll just keep blocking idiots who endlessly parrot bullshit while pretending that the fediverse is a paradise.
This is a very well written an thorough article and I highly recommend reading it. If you don’t want to however, here is a summary of the key points:
Brendan Eich’s anti-LGBTQ+ political involvement
2016 — Brave Browser promises to replace webpage ads
2018 — Brave runs a questionable donation campaign
2020 — Brave injects referral links when visiting crypto wallets
2020 — Brave puts ads in user’s home screens
2021 - Brave ships an insecure Tor feature
2023 - Brave hides their crawlers to websites
2024 - So-called “privacy browser” deprecated advanced fingerprinting protection
And More!
Edit: corrected a mistake noted below.
Oof. It seems that most of the users simply don’t care.
Every time I mention that brave is a bad choice that is basically the response I get.
I don’t care about the personal life of the CEO, and I don’t care about crypto, and everything else is a giant pile of nothing. Ads in the home screen? Like who gives a shit??
So the CEO of the company funding Prop 8 to overturn gay marriage is nothing? Stealing from the creators it claimed to be funding? Being a right wing hotspot is cool with you?
Good to know that’s where you stand.
As long as his personal life doesn’t influence the product, I’ll just throw him on the pile with all the other Nazi supporting CEOs. which is most of them.
Okay but the very fact that Brave is a crypto-riddled mess that REPEATEDLY SCAMMED ITS OWN USERS (in what world do you think that’s stopped, and it isn’t just ‘we haven’t found out how they’re still doing it in 2025 yet’) is absolutely influenced by his views. His views are baked in to everything about that browser, up to and including YET ANOTHER bloody built-in LLM constantly popping up on interaction and trying to sell you on AI hallucinations being the future while wasting heck knows how much electricity (Leo).
They’ve never scammed their own users.
Hello, I see you’ve been living under a rock. Welcome to 2025. This is literally every company. My pdf reader is trying to push an AI assistant on me.
Every time someone uses Brave, I know I can ignore their opinion. They’re either a useful moron who is too dumb to look around them, or they support every single one of these things.
It’s no wonder why 4chan’s /g/ loves Brave.
Might be nicer if they just didn’t care.
Check the comment section for the video version of this article by Niccolò, or the comment section of the post on r/browsers, or the replies whenever these issues are mentioned on Twitter, and so on, and you’ll find a bunch of brave people saying stuff like:
These were taken directly from the video. They’re on the mild side. Throw in also some “stop inserting politics (other than mine) into tech” comments, and a few homophobes not even trying to hide it. Rather than not caring, many of them like it a lot, especially the right-wing politics.
I don’t think every Brave user is a cunt, but fucking hell, are loud cunts seemingly attracted to Brave.
To folks bothered by this: know that the lead developer of Ladybird is a big fan of Brendan Eich.
Prop 8 was not merely proposed, it was approved by voters and actually banned same-sex marriage for several years before it was ruled unconstitutional.
Brendan Eich contributed to the actual banning of same-sex marriage in California for several years.
Corrected the mistake, thanks.
Thank you!
I don’t use Brave as my main browser but I think some of the accusations are not fair.
That said Brave is still #1 Browser I’d recommend someone installing. If I can I’d install Firefox myself, but on the phone it is what I recommend. I don’t trust my uncle to install Firefox and install uBlock etc. on top of it. But I trust him to install Brave and use it.
Most privacy minded Browsers like Libre Wolf have restrictions, like not enabling WebRTC out of the box, meaning using Zoom, Meet etc is not possible. There are people who are forced to use such software and not able to tweak with config files. Some people think just because they can do it, everybody should be able to. I think it is a good choice to recommend to people, very good in place replacement for Chrome, you can even take your bookmarks and addons with you
Good article other than I am unsure on the reputation of the PrivacyTools website.
Does Adblock even work in Brave any more since Google blocked them?
Brave has their own built-in ad blocker that still works
Last I used it, it didn’t have nearly the functionality that ubo does
It barely block most ads
What better chromium based browser is there?
I normally stick with Firefox but, when there’s the need, I use degoogled Chromium.
Thorium’s not bad.
Vivaldi if you really need a Chromium based browser.
An option, but not fully open source.
privacytools.io uses affiliate links. privacyguides.org does not.
80% of the stuff mentioned can be disabled. Not sure what the problem is. CEO is a dick though.
If you disable half of everything in windows 11 and never connect it to the internet, it does not spy on you. Not sure what the problem is.
I mean, the phrase ‘sane defaults’ comes to mind
What the frick?
privacytools is not longer reputable. privacy guides started from it a few years ago for a reason.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/811edae3-1803-4acc-8e18-28c8e31846c5.jpeg">
Brave search allows misinformation goggles for anyone that believes 2 + 2 = 5.
Of course Brave would so something like this. This isn’t surprising whatsoever. It’s still horrible they’re even choosing to enable this whatsoever.
Edit: I just checked what kind of shit they pull up on Transgender issues when using those goggles. It’s as bad as I thought it would be. Fuck Brave for enabling this garbage.
Yep it’s literally half of the results. I’m astounded that this is legal. Well not that astounded.
I mean Daily Mail should set off an alarm for any sentient being.
Am I misunderstanding something? That’s what I would expect to see from any search engine when you search for “vaccines” and “news from the right”.
Yes, the feature is working exactly as intended, and therein lies the problem.
So people would rather Brave doctored their search results than showed them what they searched for? I genuinely don’t know what else right-wing news outlets would write about vaccines 🤣
That’s crazy. Fuck them
Why I recommend against pushing people away from Brave:
Most people are still trapped in an ecosystem owned by either Microsoft, Google or Apple. We’re yet to see a perfect web browser for everyone, but in the meantime we choose one, maybe two or three if we feel a bit more picky for each task, and use them to the best of our capacity. Making anyone feel guilty and ashamed for choices like this, when the best options are few, relative, and often come at a cost, is just useless.
I suggest reading the settings guides available at privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/ or checking the browser comparison at eylenburg.github.io/browser_comparison.htm to know the details that anyone who actually wants a better browsing experience cares about. Better to lend a hand than push around.
If whoever reads this still can’t get over it and needs to play a blame game with someone about why everyone should boycott Mozilla, Brave, Proton and other privacy focused FOSS companies because of what someone said, did or thought, please at least find a decent fork, toss a coin to it’s devs, share their work and help others benefit from it.
At this point there is a pretty solid list of reasons to avoid Brave and use another FOSS privacy focused option.
Personally, everything I’ve read about Brave makes me trust them even less than Microsoft, and Google.
That is the usual effect sensationalism has, but feel free to choose what best suits your needs.
I do enjoy Cromite, Librewolf, Mullvad Browser, Tor Browser and some others, but I can’t deny each (as any) has it’s own set of drawbacks. Better to have them in mind when setting up and using those browsers than to panic and run in circles searching for a perfect solution that doesn’t exist.
Even more importantly I’d celebrate that people are using any privacy focused FOSS, even if it’s not what I’d ideally use. If they feel motivated to keep on that road they’ll end learning to use more advanced options in time. On the other hand, make them feel insecure about their options and bloat their minds with sensationalist posts and they’ll just use Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge because, “personally”, why bother when everyone and everything is so evil and complicated and we’re all doomed anyway? 😮💨
It seems to me that nothing in life is free, including browsers. Yeah, free software exists, and that works fine for many kinds of software, but not browsers. Browsers are a living thing, they have to change constantly to adapt to the changing environment. Maintaining a browser takes effort, to an extent that far exceeds that of other programs, word processing, games, image editing, etc. A browser is a primary attack surface for all manner of malware and exploits. It’s web facing and it executes code provided by external sources. That last sentence should give you chills.
So all that is to say, that it is very much non trivial to maintain a browser. So it only stands to reason that maintaining it consistently won’t actually happen without some amount of compensation.
So how do you pay for a browser? Well everyone seems to agree, with ads. This method is apparently quite viable as a business. But I probably don’t have to tell you that there are a bunch of problematic aspects to it. User data collection (and resale) is probably top on the list of problems. It’s a pretty serious breach of privacy, I hope I didn’t have to convince anyone of that.
To get to my point though, Brave is the only browser I know of attempting to use a different model to support their project. They’re trying to allow people to just pay for the web themselves, rather than let advertisers pay for the web while users give up all their data. It may not be a perfect implementation, but from where I’m standing I don’t see anyone else even trying…
Correct me if I’m wrong though, i’d love to see other viable models.
That’s a long winded way to try to excuse secretly mining crypto, far right misinformation pushing, transgender phobia, and more that Brave does / has done.
I also want to point out an operating system is a huge project to create and maintain, and yet Linux has accomplished this without all the shit Brave has pulled.
PS: technically Brave has used ads as well.
That’s a really concise and thoughtless way to excuse Google, Microsoft and Apple for monetizing spying on every person on earth for profit.
And yes, Linux distros have a business model. I’m happy that distros found a business model through offering official support to corporations, it makes it truly free to the rest of us. It also helps that their competition is very expensive. Will that model work for a browser? What do you think?
Nice strawman you got there. I think anyone with eyes can see I didn’t bring them up because most (all?) Lemmy users know Firefox and its forks exist.
That’s… Literally how browsers used to work. Netscape was a paid browser. Orion is starting to look into that model as well.
And yes, you just pointed out of possible to raise funds without pulling the shit Brave has, as Linux distros have done… So, congrats on getting the point? A little slow, but you got there.
It’s not a strawman, it’s the problem. You may not have mentioned it, but I didn’t think it needed mentioning, between the three companies I mentioned, they makeup 90% market share for browsers, that’s the vast majority of browsers. Are there others? Absolutely. I primarily use Firefox myself, but they’re starting to lean more toward sharing data as well… So I don’t know what let you think you have to stand in here.
And Netscape? When was that paid? I can’t think of an era when that was paid… Was that like during the Mozilla period, when the browser sucked, or before that? Whatever, that clearly didn’t work at any rate, cause they aren’t still doing it. But I swear I used to use Netscape in the 90s, I can’t remember it being paid…
But no it would not work for browsers just because it works for Linux. Nobody needs support for a browser, so there’s no reason to pay for that. I’m sorry presenting that to you as a question meant you wouldn’t think about it.
It’s a strawman you’re still trying to prop up because the issue is not only the Brave browser itself, but the owners of it.
Even if we took your argument in good faith, it would still be flawed since Brave is based on Chromium, of which Google essentially controls at this point, so you’d still be supporting Google hegemony. In other words, even from that stance you’ve brought up, it would be a bad idea to use Brave vs Firefox, Librewolf, Konqueror, etc.
I mean, that an issue, sure. But I gotta be honest with you, I care far more about the practicalities of the technology than the personalities behind them. So I guess that’s where we see things differently. Don’t let me get in your way on that front, if that’s what really matters to you.
I see browsers as being problematic in general right now and new solutions are needed. If you’re happy with tracking and spying at the browser level, then fine, but I’m interested in how we can put an end to that.
And brave has shown it’s not a solution to that at all, so there’s literally no reason to defend them, or use them.
Brave does not do this.
Goggles is the first part, the owner is the second part
See guys, I know people didn’t believe me when I said there are people who push for and encourage for projects to be corporatized instead of community run but here is one of them. These types of garbage arguments always bring up the idea of cybersecurity but always neglect to mention one of the biggest security and privacy threats to the corporate governed model, the corporation itself. Especially once enshittification really sets in.
And before you vomit some horrible misrepresenting argument reminiscent of Dave Plumber’s speech against backdoors in Windows, you know damn well that when I say the company itself is a privacy and security threat to the project that I’m talking about deliberate attempts by the company to make money off the project through tracking, ads, crypto mining, and any other number of shady shit. You know, things that are officially sanctioned.
Don’t forget about the fact that a while back they secretly whitelisted Facebook trackers in their adblocker to “make pages run more smoothly” they got a lot of shit for it when people found out looking through the source code. When I heard that they did that it basically cemented in my mind that they were shady and untrustworthy, that’s in addition to the Crypto and rewards stuff.
Also don’t use Opera. They’re opera-ted by chinese mafia.
Thanks. I read an article yesterday about how it’s one of the best privacy browsers out there.
I prefer either TorBrowser or Waterfox.
TorBrowser is, hands down, the best privacy browser out there but it’s a bit slow because it operates like a decentralized VPN.
Waterfox browser is built on Mozilla’s Gecko Engine just like firefox, but it isn’t managed directly by Mozilla.
Is waterfox compatible with all or most firefox extensions? Also, can you import a firefox profile, and share between devices? I’m fairly invested in firefox, and would hate loosing functionality
I don’t use very many extensions, but it works with all of the ones I’ve tried such as uBlock Origin.
Thanks for Waterfox. Looks awesome. :)
I haven’t heard of waterfox. I use TorBrowser sometimes. But mostly I use LibreWolf. Its based on Firefox also, but without Monzilla
I was about to make a snarky comment about how it is, however, owned by an advertising company, but then I found this.
alternativeto.net/…/waterfox-regains-independence…
Chinese Mafia aside, opera GX sill benchmarks faster than any other browser, except maybe thorium
Orion all the way
I second this. I simply use the FF compatible extensions and ignore the Chrome side of compatibility. It’s been awesome!
Oh boy, I shared the spacebar news article a year ago or so and was hit by a shitstorm of indignant comments.
Fuck is this a Shitshow in the Comments. And here is my contribution.
I’m using Brave and Librewolf as Desktop Browser and on my Tablet i’m using only Brave. On my GrapheneOS Phone i’m using Vanadium because its the default and its good enough that i don’t install a alternative.
What i want is a Browser with good adblocking and cookie… fingerprintresistance fast loading time but the main points are that these features must be enabled by default because i don’t have the time and strength to enable them on any new device.
I simply don’t have the capacity i’m worn down My Expirence has shown that some Webseites block my browser and then i simply switch to chromebased and in mist cases it works. And at this point in Time i don’t have a better chromium based Browser with this much default Privacy features than Brave.
And i don’t have the strengh to care about the CEO of them. I don’t care. i’m tired
you care enough to find multiple niche browsers and write comments about them
How is LibreWolf niche ?
niche:
Browser stats: gs.statcounter.com
Do you see LibreWolf on here? Do you see Brave on here? Do you see Vanadium on here?
Even Firefox, of which LibreWolf is essentially a reskin of, is at 2.6% and considered niche
Remember that, by virtue of us being here on Lemmy and talking about all of this, we are also a niche group of people. We don’t represent the average person, even if we might be the ones who influence them with our knowledge.
absolutely. people gotta realize when they put themselves in a bubble and not project that experience outwards to everyone else
there’s a word for this… lemme see if i can find it
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
the crypto and the asshole ceo aside, nobody should trust a browser that claims to respect privacy that’s based on chromium.
What’s wrong with ungoogled-chromium? Or Vivaldi?
ultimately they’re still chromium and they still contribute to chrome’s dominance.
Eh, I think that’s a stretch. Right now, Lemmy is going nuclear on Firefox. Should I also stop using Librewolf, too, because ultimately, it contributes to Firefox? Chromium is solid and I think it’s better to show what type of chromium we want instead of outright boycotting the entire open source project.
Wait, what’s wrong with Firefox?
techcrunch.com/…/mozilla-rewrites-firefoxs-terms-…
Whats going on re Lemmy & Firefox?
techcrunch.com/…/mozilla-rewrites-firefoxs-terms-…
Okay, but that’s not a privacy reason.
It is still a privacy reason. You are still contributing to googles plans to dominate and control the internet by using a chromium product its a privacy threat, and an everything else threat too.
But neutered Chrome (aka repurposed + degoogled Chromium) isn’t the same as Google Chrome. I 100% understand what you’re saying, but I wouldn’t file this under “privacy” (at least not without some asterisks).
A neutered fascist is still a fascist.
If one forks Chromium like Firefox has been forked to hell and back, then I view it as effectively taking the power out of Google’s hands. The issue with Chrome supremacy is that Google gets to, directly or indirectly, shape how websites/the internet operates/are built/optimized (since web devs will use it to do their web dev).
So then wouldn’t a better strategy be to make a Firefox-like, Chromium browser that is truly “neutral” (like Firefox is *on paper)? Also, remember that Mozilla receives a huge chunk of funding from Google, directly, in order to “keep Chrome from being a monopoly”.
Now, that last part depends on whether you considering Chrome to be Chromium, which I don’t. Here’s my understanding/view, overall (feel free to cherrypick or challenge any of it; I welcome and respect your opinions/corrections):
Firefox has existed for longer than Chrome, but Chrome on release was leaner and faster (I speak from personal experience). The only other option was Internet Explorer, which was “Chrome” at the time (as in, average people defaulted to the “blue e” icon)
Chrome became the dominant browser because it was lean and fast for its time. It’s obviously different now, but you cannot retroactively fault people for choosing an objectively-better browser [for the time]
Genuinely not defending Google here, but my opinion is that a large reason we began to transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 is because of Chrome (and any other modern browsers). This meant Chrome-optimized sites that didn’t work well with other browsers, but I view it as a no-fault situation (it’s just how tech progresses; it breaks compatibility with existing tech sometimes)
Most people use “Google-everything” these days; I myself have had a Gmail account since it was a closed beta. This means they’re more likely to lean towards Chrome, because Google recommends it anyway
So to me, the issues are actually that people default to Google-everything, including Chrome (thus feeding Google info about their entire lives, 24/7). But I don’t see Chromium itself as evil. On its own, it’s open-source (minus Google bits obviously), which is what allows forks to be made that not only avoid the Google bits, but outright block them. I think it’s taking power back. I don’t think “EVERYONE SHOULD SWITCH TO FIREFOX OR A FIREFOX FORK IMMEDIATELY” is realistic (and I say that as someone who switched back to Firefox months ago)
I also think that web devs themselves should stop being biased towards…“Chrome-sponsored” (figure of speech) best practices. But I also think that Mozilla should [continue] making their browser more compatible with modern websites, and even maybe get more involved in establishing web design best-practices (meaning practices/technologies that work well equally regardless of browser or rendering engine). In fact, recently Mozilla highlighted their Web Compatibility reporting tool, so that people can let them know about sites that don’t render correctly in their browser
Forks of Firefox (like the Tor browser) are still Firefox, no matter how neutered it is.
That’s my point. So then what’s the solution when there are essentially two mainstream/mainline browsers? How far do you believe one needs to take it? Is a fork that de-Mozilla’s/de-Google’s the browser enough (and changes the name)? Or is that “still bad”?
Because eventually you’ll run out of [usable/daily-drivable] browsers, if you consider any fork to be “evil” by virtue of coming from Chromium/etc.
its still furthering googles control of the internet, which is an inherent threat to privacy, regardless if you think you are participating in it or not.
Once again, that’s not privacy (the context of this discussion). Your point is that using Chromium encourages websites (as in, developers) to keep making sites that are Chromium-optimized, instead of browser-agnostic.
When you take all the “Google” out of a browser, they’re not getting any information from you because those mechanisms no longer exist. Again, I’m talking about Google and Chrome. You’re combining 3 different “issues” and slapping a “PRIVACY” label on them.
The real issue is that people default to Chrome, because for years it was the most performant browser (until it became a bloated shitfest). People need to become the change they wish to see (like me, who switched from Brave back to Firefox on all devices). That’s how you defeat a browser monopoly. This is just Internet Explorer from the 90s/2000s all over again. Remember how everyone used to default to it because it’s what they were taught? We (collectively) need to stop telling people “download chrome” as the default. It’s the equivalent of saying “google it”, instead of “look it up”.
You’re the kind of person that gets told repeatedly that X is bad, don’t do X.
Then you do X, get in deep trouble, and cry about how could anyone possible let this happen, and expect everyone else around you to clean up the mess, arent you.
Google dominating the internet IS a privacy problem.
Taking google tracking bullshit out of your browser does nothing to address their monopolistic power that allows them to violate your privacy even without their tracking shit in their browser. Using Chrome/Chromium hurts privacy. Because using google shit in general hurts privacy. Using chrome/chromium furthers googles base, further forces the web to align with what google wants, and is bad for privacy, and for everything.
And Chrome was never the most performant. Google just sabotage their own services to run worse on competitors browsers, because end users are stupid and will just assume "not google browser = bad " and use chrome.
And if you still cant wrap your head around it, then you’re hopeless.
I’m starting to get the picture that you don’t understand how a web browser works. Otherwise you wouldn’t be equating Chrome to Chromium/forks that remove Google-everything. Blink being the dominant renderer is a completely separate issue. The renderer itself does nothing for Google in terms of “collecting data” on its own. You’re talking about the browser as a whole (e.g. “Chrome” = Chrome + Blink). They’re two separate things that are shipped together.
I agree, but using a non-Google, Chromium-based browser/fork that removes all of the Google bits is a separate issue than Google Chrome having huge marketshare. I don’t know how old you are, and the reason I say that is because I’m old enough to remember the original beta release (and 1.0) of Chrome. Chrome then isn’t what Chrome became years later, and now. That was my point in bringing up the past; because you’re acting like it’s been like this since Day 1. It’s taken over a decade for it to become enshittified.
Sure, rewrite history. Chrome was never the most performant, and nobody had anything to say about its ludicrous speeds during the Windows XP/7 era, when it was released /s. I understand what you’re saying, but my overall point is that you’re being hyperbolic and tying together separate issues under one label. For example, Brave sucks, but not because it’s based on Chromium. It sucks because of their policies and the actual execution (e.g. removal of privacy-preserving features, whitelisting Meta ads, etc).
Also, you clearly don’t read anything because I already told you that I switched from Brave to Firefox on all of my devices. Now what I’d like to know is, what browser(s) are you using, and do you recommend, and why. Because, by your logic, it’s the rendering engine (Blink) that is the issue, since you say that even anti-Google forks of Chromium (not Chrome) are as bad as Chrome itself. Does that means that now I can’t use Firefox forks, because they’re all tied back to Mozilla, who also has inserted/removed/changed features that have to do with privacy? I’m genuinely asking you. Also what does it mean when Mozilla gets a huge chunk of their funding for Firefox directly from Google?
tl;dr – The Blink renderer used by Chrome/derivatives does nothing on its own. You should be complaining about web developers who skew (design) their sites towards it instead of following general best practices for all renderers. Separately, and additionally, people should move away from Chrome because it’s a privacy nightmare, but that has nothing to do with the renderer. Finally, I do agree with you about Google kneecapping their web properties so they work worse with other browsers, but that’s user-agent related, and Google-related (not something Chrome does).
Isn’t every chromium browser going to lose manifest v2 eventually, causing the real ublock origin to stop working?
I don’t know about every Chromium-based browser, but I can tell you that I went back to Firefox and regret nothing (I was on Brave). Firefox has gotten a lot better lately, especially on desktop. For example, they added a native auto-PiP option, which is super helpful for those of us who watch YouTube/videos while flipping through tons of tabs.
I’m using Vivaldi, and ublock origin seems to be still working for me.
June 2025 is when manifest v2 is supposed to die for good. I think the issue is that it’s not really possible for Vivaldi or Microsoft or whoever to keep the code in there long term even if they wanted to.
I’m using brave lol. As a web developer I really need to test the work I do on a chromium based browser. Brave seems to be the best chromium based browser that still supposed ad blocking after the whole manifest v3 thing.
So let me pose this question to you. As someone that needs to use Chromium for work, what’s the best Chromium based browser that still supports ad blocking?
I get that Firefox is better. Heck Tor is even better. But realistically what is something I can actually use to get real work done?
Edit: ok I read the article. That is kinda bad. So please find me a chromium based alternative that I can use for work
Unironically, Ecosia has been working on a browser that’s currently in beta with a built in adblocker. Works really well!
This week I’m going to try out ungoogled Chromium and Vivaldi. I know Vivaldi is partially closed source, but I’m not actually in the camp that thinks all closed source is bad.
I use Apple products which are definitely more closed source. I would prefer open source but there are unfortunately more variables in play then just “is it open source”.
I use Vivaldi and it is great. It does send a “user count” to its servers but AFAIK that is literally just increasing a number in a database, effectively the equivalent of one of those free hit counters you’d put on your GeoCities page.
Vivaldi sends an unstoppable user counter signal to their main server, promised to change the system and now they’re ignoring any requests for updates on the issue.
That rustles my Jimmies, dings my bell and waves my red flags.
Chromium is much more secure than Firefox, so your privacy depends on your threat model here: …github.io/firefox-chromium.html
Does it support ublock origin still, or has it gone the way of Chrome?
I wonder if anyone here is going to mention SeaMonkey-Browser for fun.<br>
It’s an entire suite of applications:
I haven’t seen sea monkey mentioned in quite a few years
I really wish seamonkey still worked for modern websites. It’s so cool.
.
Huh? The bat? I get bat…
anyone believing brave is good for privacy is quite naive
far better than chrome, edge or Firefox without modification
Why is everyone downvoting this? I haven’t used Brave as a daily driver for 3 years since I’ve been with LibreWolf, but my impression has always been the same, that it’s far better than stock Firefox, purely based on privacy (completely ignoring any ethical reasoning for not wanting to support Brave). Chrome and Edge being worse is obvious.
It’s good for playing youtube without ads and Netflix which doesnt work with my firefox setup for some reason. That’s all I use it for.
Ublock Origin on Firefox can also play YT without ads…
Netflix Idk
Yea, I dont really have problems with YT in Firefox. Just use brave because it’s on my “watching stuff” monitor. Brave did seem to work better during that period where they were being more aggressive about ad blockers but I haven’t seen that for a while.
you should be able to play all the netflix content you need on pretty much any system. here’s a community for troubleshooting that.
it will not, however, get you a second season of anything worth watching. nothing can do that.
I’ve still not forgiven them for prematurely cancelling BoJack Horseman.
it felt, like, complete, but im genuinely shocked it got as many seasons as it did, not being dog shit. feels like that or ‘stranger things’ was the last thing to slip through.
but I can only take ‘stranger things’ on others’ word; never got into it myself.
Weird, youtube with ublock origin is all I need to enjoy no ads. Are you using some additional scripts that modify youtube in some way?
I dont really have problems with YT in Firefox. Just use brave because it’s on my “watching stuff” monitor. Brave did seem to work better during that period where they were being more aggressive about ad blockers but I haven’t seen that for a while.
It’s good for privacy from the websites you visit, from itself is up for debate though lol
Thank goodness that we can post things in here without Braves astroturfed PR community galavanting to save face like what happened when any story against brave posted on the other site
Which other site? Twitter?
I’m almost certain they mean Reddit, but there are a lot of sites that aren’t lemmy.dbzer0.com … like lemm.ee and infosec.pub … even some sites that aren’t Lemmy instances like infosec.exchance or hachyderm.io.
You would be right with your first guess
What about infosec.pub? Been my home instance ever since .world blocked piracy discussions, and I never had any issues there.
Yeah brave has it own issue, but overall it is still more privacy respecting than chrome or edge. Brave is personally not my choice. I use librewolf. Still, if someone ask me for a browser to use for their privacy journey I will undoubtedly tell them to just use brave. Firefox(and the forks) isn’t a choice for most normal people it often break Captcha. Some website even straight up just don’t allow Firefox based then tell you to use chrome. I am not by anyway try to defend Brave action, but I can’t see much choice that just work for people who don’t even know what an OS is.
Over Vivaldi?
I know that I am overly paranoid but they do the weird user ID thing. It it opt in as they said in their privacy policy.
At least to my knowledge brave do not do anything like this or maybe it is opt out by default. But honesty, I think from now, I will recommend both of them and just let people choose.
There’s always Ungoogled Chromium. If you do want to suggest Brave to people, please tell them about these downsides as well.
Ofc I will try my best to tell people about up/down side of a product. When it come to ungoogled chromium do they still support manifest v2? If yes then it will be also a great choice for desktop.
Brave has great anti-fingerprinting measures I just wish I could get that without installing crypto malware on my pc
Use Firefox with the Chameleon addon, works on Fennec as well (Android fork with Mozilla telemetry removed).
You only need uBlock basically, beware of other extensions. They’re mostly snake oil and Firefox has anti-fingerprinting features per default.
github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions
Firefox has by default as well.
All the crypto stuff is opt-in.
Mullvad Browser comes with fingerprint blocking mechanisms of Tor Browser, without connecting to tor. I recommend it.
I’m mining bat.
To someone non technical you sound like you are introducing yourself like a DC villain.
I have been using Brave for many years hands up
Those reasons are all pretty goofy in my book. I use Brave on a daily basis on all my PCs. Only browser out there that offers both good privacy and actual usability. Plus, the first issue in the article is literally a nonissue for me and I actually personally really like the leadership at the company.
I present: The intellectual prowess of bigots.
It’s sort of ridiculous at this point the lengths they’re willing to go.
Yes, because using a web browser is bigotry 😂 It’s cool if you don’t like it but at least have legitimate reasons for not liking it.
We need to get some moderators in here. Lots of bigotry in this comment section…
Literally bigots, Russian trolls are defending it like they are on Reddit. Isnt there a way to lock the comments from getting out of hand
I believe there is, only available to instance mods, community mods, and possibly the OP though if I’m not mistaken.
I just installed Brave on my Ubuntu OS on my laptop to replace Chrome. It is running better than chrome was so far. Is there a way to setup Brave to safeguard against some of things mentioned or should I go with something like DuckDuckGo instead?