I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever.
Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency which they then added to a rewards program that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave.
Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.
After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes into URL’s. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators.
Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I’d say the answer is a very clear no.
One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.
Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don’t mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.
Brave is literally a grift. Too many people are falling for it.
Too many people only care about the openweb or shitty companies in the comments. They have no fucking willpower, no patience, and no follow through. Their complaints are utterly meaningless because they utterly refuse to stick to their guns.
There’s one and literally only one browser that actually stands for all the things the most vocal people around here claim to care about.
Yet, they use Brave.
I turn on youtube and see no ads
Just use uBlock Origin.
What are the better solutions for iOS users?
As I stated in a previous post, if you are using an iPhone you’ve basically given up on having privacy. For ad blockers you could use AdGuard and Safari, it’s better than nothing. You could also use something like Mullvad VPN, it has DNS ad blocking.
As I stated in a previous post, I am using AdGuard on safari. And since I’ve basically given up on privacy, I also use Brave at times.
That’s the most ridiculous statement I’ve seen today. iOS has infinitely better privacy than Android lawl
An iPhone is a give-up on privacy because you don’t get alternatives. If you don’t like your stock OS on an Android phone you can just switch OS (for example GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, ect.). If you don’t like the normal YouTube app you can just sideload a different one. You don’t get this kind of freedom with an iPhone. A prime example of this is when, during the Hong Kong Riots where Apple pulled an app that assisted protesters.
Someone mentioned Firefox Focus.
Not on iOS. Every browser on iOS is effectively just a skin for safari. There is no true Firefox for iPhone, or chrome for that matter.
If you’re using an iPhone, you willingly surrendered your freedom of choice. This is what you paid for.
Firefox focus blocks ads on YouTube.
Safari with Wipr does not.
I know because I have them both. I use them for different things.
Won’t be the case for much longer if the EU gets their way, I’m glad to say.
Something unique about the Brave browser is that it allows me to use filter lists to block ads. I can insert my own custom lists too which is cool.
I haven’t found another browser that allows this on iOS (other than safari with extensions).
Doesn’t Firefox support extensions on iOS? I’m on Android and I’m currently using uBlock Origin and Dark Reader. I also use Lemmy through it, seems to work quite well.
Firefox focus doesn’t seem to save open windows, it’s a purely incognito browser. & you can only have one page open at a time.
You’re right about the first part; it’s an incognito, tracker & ad blocking browser that clears your history and everything every time you close it… but if you long press on a link, you can open it in a new tab. Multiple, even. There’s just no option I’ve found to open a blank new tab and navigate to a website that way. So I totally understand why you’d think that!
(I hope this doesn’t come off as pedantic or rude or anything. That’s definitely not my intention here - I just want people to be able to make informed decisions with correct information, ya feel?)
Focus does indeed block YT ads!
Even safari with Wipr does not. Though it is amazing for everything else.
Orion by Kagi. It is, afaik, are the only browser that isn’t just a re-skin of Safari.
It’s not something the average person can or will do, but if you’re so inclined you can run Pi-Hole or AdGuard Home and have all your iOS devices go through it.
I even set up a VPN for when I’m away from home that I can connect to and get routed through my home internet connection which gives me ad blocking on the go.
Or if you want a simpler answer, look into using the AdGuard app on your iOS device.
PiHole does not block YouTube ads.
I haven’t used Pi-Hole in a long time to know that, but I don’t seem to have any issue with them using AdGuard Home.
AdGuard may work! PiHole has never blocked YT ads tho :c
Thanks I didn’t know you could do this with pi-hole. I’m currently testing out AdGuard but it seems you have to turn it on every time you open a new yt vid
PiHole cannot block YT ads.
Sideloading either Yatee or uYou+
Or use Piped as a PWA
I haven’t tried it but there’s also Kagi’s Orion browser which looks interesting.
This browser is helpful on iOS because it can run Firefox or chrome extensions. Ublock origin works great. I don’t see any ads.
uBlock Origin actually doesn’t work at all on Orion, it’s just that the browsers built-in ad blocker is very good.
Thanks I didn’t know about that one and I thought I went through all the alternatives. Currently I’m primarily watching YouTube vids through invidious in safari but will use brave when I watch my saved playlists.
Honestly had no idea this existed, cool!
This is why I use Brave on iOS devices. It is the best option I found. Others mention Adguard home and pihole. They just don’t work as well at blocking ads.
Don’t use iOS.
I mean, that’s it. That’s your only option. On iOS, Safari is the only real choice you have.
I chose an iPhone because I didn’t want to use googles play store. Now I know there are options around that but most users (including myself at least for now) are not willing to learn how to do that and set it up.
FYI to you or anyone who doesn’t know: If you are browsing the internet on an iOS or iPadOS device you are forced to use the Webkit rendering engine. Chrome, Safari, Brave, Firefox. All of them use Webkit to display web pages because you won’t get an app on the App store if you use anything else. The EU is forcing Apple to allow other browsing tech through the app submission process, so we will see alternatives in the future.
I read a couple months back Mozilla got some internal builds with their engine for iOS. This is the #1 reason why I don’t have an iPhone. I’d probably get one next time I am looking if this happens. That or maybe Ubuntu touch or something gets more mature.
Firefox focus blocks YouTube ads.
Brave is not spyware. That website you linked is horrible and full of misinformation. They also claim that Firefox, and even Tor Browser, are spyware. They act as if any and all connections a browser makes are automatically bad and used for spying/tracking.
I won’t disagree with the other criticisms of Brave that you made, but just wanted to point that out. That website is just highly unreliable and makes verifiably false claims about the browsers it reviews.
Let’s not forget one of the biggest investors is a right-wing billionaire who runs a corporate intelligence agency that contracts with the DoD. And the only proof we have that he doesn’t collect data on Brave’s users is the questionable word of the devs.
For the comments, can anyone give me an actual reason to use Brave over Firefox (and it’s forks)? I guess the cryptocurrency aspect is a reason, but I wouldn’t say it’s a very good one.
That’s actually one of the reasons I do not use Brave.
My guess is because Brave is a relatively known Chromium browser that’s been degoogled. Along with built in ad and tracker blocking, and it’s an easy less evil of the two.
I want to like Firefox, both as normal user and as web developer, but something about it keeps bugging me. The UI feels sluggish, sites seem to be slightly less performant, and I can’t seem to get used to it.
That said, I’ve started using Vivaldi, and while it can be considered bloated, I really like the tab options it has, while also offering a degoogled chromium that’s being kept to date.
Because all the web devs optimize for chrome because they dominate the market. If more people use Firefox then devs will start to care about performance in it
(You’re a dev so I assume you know this. This comment is mainly for other people)
You’re going to have to convince MILLIONS of people to even scratch the surface of “making a difference” or even being noticed.
Not really. I’ve gotten plenty of bugs fixed on other sites by just sending them a screenshot of something going wrong in Firefox. For the big companies like Facebook though you’re entirely correct
At what point will even the smaller companies stop providing that support, and how do we as a community combat the eventual end of it?
I guess we complain as loud and as often as we can. And give our money to companies that support Firefox. Thankfully most of my coworkers, at every company I’ve worked at, use Firefox use Firefox so the website usually works because they needed it to to do their job
We combat the eventual end of it by getting more people to use it. The more people using it the more support it gets.
It’s the same as someone not voting because they are only one person. Sure, you’re only one person, but when millions of people have that exact same thought it makes a difference.
Add a user agent checker to your website and add tag: ‘Your browser, Google Chrome, is not supported. Please open this website on Firefox.’
Thic could attract masses.
Tomorrow morning, Google could decide to program google.com to no longer work with any gecko browser. Firefox will be dead by the afternoon, no matter how many antitrust/monopoly lawsuits get filed.
I’m not sure what it is. I suppose this is the case for the heavier web-applications, but the average website (which is where my expertise is, not actual applications) also feels slightly worse on FF. And as far as I know, I don’t use any chrome-specific tricks or optimizations.
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why simply not install degoogled Chromium
Because it contributes to Google’s hegemony over web standards, and that’s bad for the Internet.
I don’t see how it contributes any more than installing the Chromium-based Brave or Vivaldi, which are the comparisons being made in this specific thread.
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Every update takes forever to compile
I want to like Firefox, both as normal user and as web developer, but something about it keeps bugging me. The UI feels sluggish, sites seem to be slightly less performant, and I can’t seem to get used to it.
I feel the exact same. I use linux with a tiling window manager and when I change format, Firefox just starts twitching like it’s trying to give me an epileptic seizure while chromium browsers do it just fine.
Also, sometime ago I tried to compare Chrome (when I still used it) and Firefox side by side with the same extensions opening the same websites and Firefox always took a bit more ram.
You sure that’s not a WM problem?
FWIW, Ubuntu 20.04, i3wm, no problems with Firefox
Idk, I use gnome with pop shell tiling and Firefox is the only program that does it.
Try another WM and see if you still have issues
The problem is that so many site hyper-optimize for chrome. Add that to Google helping create web frameworks that seem to almost intentionally break Firefox and you get a de facto standard on chrome because ANYTHING else seems broken.
Long live FF
Try basic Chromium, it’s Chrome without the Google.
You’re not wrong about Firefox, many sites are specifically optimized for Chrome and perform worse in FF. This is especially true for anything Google.
My machines are generally fast enough that FF is fine so I prefer it but I fall back to Chromium occasionally or Chrome and Edge for specific uses.
There’s nothing in particular wrong with Vivaldi, IIRC I didn’t like some features or UI bits when I used it last so it didn’t have anything to recommend itself to me over basic Chromium. I’d prefer it over Edge which, IMO, is bloated with a bunch of garbage but Edge has very good streaming site support so 🤷♂️
For me, Vivaldi had had the best performance next to Safari. FF and Chrome are easily smoked by Vivaldi when benchmarking. Idk if it’s related to M-series chipset or what, but my buddy who doesn’t have one has much worse performance on his laptop. Also, web and software dev, the saved workspaces that you can pin is killer.
Vivaldi tab management is pretty great. Vivaldi is designed for power users that always have a ton of tabs open. There are a bunch of other features as well that I use regularly, but I could see that it might be a bit of a learning curve for those that just want to install a browser and immediately know where everything is. There has been more than a few times that I discovered yet another efficiency using Vivaldi and felt like I was getting more from it. Definitely a browser for someone willing to spend time configuring it for their use case. Keyboard shortcuts ftw!
Vivaldi definitely has a learning curve. It’s great once you have it set up how you like (which, granted, is way too time consuming for the average user). But the tab stacking and tiling is so immensely useful for me, I can’t use other browsers without missing those features now.
Pretty much the only reason I use brave. 99% of the time librewolf. I don’t wanna go through the effort of installing chromium and an ad blocker and all that other stuff for the 1% of sites that are broken on firefox for me so brave it is. Really I just wish there was a chrome repackage with all this stuff out of the box. God knows chrome and chromium will never be that.
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Brave has been hyped as a privacy browser despite having several major privacy failures baked into it repeatedly. It’s 100% hype. You get the same level of privacy on paper by installing Chromium with an ad blocker and tweaking a couple settings. Firefox has better privacy defaults and is better with an ad blocker installed. Chromium has a slight edge on security (FF needs to really push tab isolation harder) but if privacy is your main concern I would always recommend FF.
I have installed Brave on my grandparents’ computer, because:
- They had only used chrome, so brave is more familiar than firefox.
- Less chance of something not working/loading properly.
Personally I use firefox.
I don’t use brave, but I use Vivaldi.
The main reason for me is native mouse gestures. They are so much better than addon mouse gestures.
And speed dials. Addon ones are okayish, but I prefer the Vivaldi implementation.
If Firefox would ever ass native mouse gestures, I would swap in an instant. Until then, no can do :(
Personally I can’t say anything about Vivaldi, but it’s proprietary and owned by people who used to work for Opera.
-
Proprietary, yes, from a Foss pov it’s not good I guess
-
Owned by ex opera ppl: that’s a good thing tbh. Old opera was fantastic. New opera is more fishy after they were acquired by a Chinese group.
There is a lot of browser love in Vivaldi tbh. They are very open and transparent. Haven’t found a single red flag about Vivaldi (aside from not being FOSS, which for me isn’t a red flag per se)
They even run their own Mastodon servers for their community ;)
I love the Vivaldi community. It might not be AS open as the Firefox community but the devs seem quite nice and are very responsive to feedback
Proprietary software is generally frowned upon in this community, however I personally don’t mind that much.
-
Being chromium based it
- has better performance
- has less bugs
- has better standards compatibility
Don’t get me wrong, I am using Firefox, but your entire post is pretty disingenuous. Criticizing Brave over privacy concerns and then suggesting Firefox instead requires disingenuity or a special kind of ignorance and/or stupidity. Firefox has had 10 times as many privacy “mishaps” as Brave with all the “experiments” of corporate affiliates they shipped to users unannounced. There’s a reason there are so many forks of Firefox.
Pretty much everything you criticize about Brave is entirely optional.
Then you title a link as Brave “getting ousted as spyware”, and the linked to page does not oust Brave as spyware at all. You would do good to adopt some of the more neutral/factual tone of that page.
And in parts that page is pretty ridiculous, too: complaining about what is set as the default search engine (the same as Firefox, btw). Who the fuck cares what search engine is set by default? Just change it. Opt out of everything you do not like. If there’s stuff you cannot opt out of which is bad, we can talk about that. But arguing about optional features is ridiculous.
Edit: little add-on: Brave factually has better out of the box (no plugins) privacy protection than Firefox: https://privacytests.org/
None of those three are true.
Some web sites are optimized for chrome.
Not remotely accurate, https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list
Not to any relevant degree. 515 VS 528 is at best a slight difference that in all likely hood is from Googlie using their position to strong arm things that benefit only them into the standards and very likely undetectable by the end user. https://html5test.com/I stated “and it’s forks” in the comment, and I did not mention Firefox (or any other browser) in the actual main post itself. Firefox can be easily de-spyware’d with something like arkenfox’s user.js (as I mentioned in another comment). There are also plenty of privacy-centric Chromium based browsers such as Ungoogled Chromium and Vivaldi.
Regarding optional features, I more used them as a segue into the last three links showcasing Brave’s malicious and downright illegal activities. Personally, the fact those features are integrated into the browser at all is a deal breaker for me.
Edit: For the record, I’m aware Vivaldi is proprietary but I don’t necessarily think that makes it bad. I haven’t done enough research on it to personally recommend it, but I’ve been told that it’s good.
Funny how you do not address most of what I said … so, disingenuous it is.
Regarding optional features, I more used them as a
seguered herring into the last three linksftfy
Nothing good will come of this conversation, so I’ll stop it right here. Have a nice day.
Funny how you do not address most of what I said … so, disingenuous it is.
I don’t address most of what you said because it’s referring to one of the six links I have in that post, and I don’t really have anything to say regarding it.
I don’t see how it is misleading to tell people that Brave created a cryptocurrency, they then added a rewards program to the browser with that cryptocurrency, and then they inserted affiliate links into URL’s when people were browsing. All of this happened, it’s not misleading, it’s just a fact.
That website you link is literally run by a Brave employee. Sure, they might have tried very hard to be independent, but when you literally work on the codebase of one browser you’re probably going to write your tests to focus on the things you already know (plus it’s not like Brave would allow their employee to run a site that says it’s shit, would they?)
Considering how many tests Brave does not pass, I’d say that page looks pretty balanced and fair. Also it is consistent with independent studies where Brave came out on top of the list.
My impression is that most opposition against Brave is largely political. And then people try to find technical reasons after the fact, which simply isn’t justified in comparison with other browsers.
By “political” do you mean that the boss is a knob? Because that’s pretty irrelevant to the quality of the browser as you say, though all the dodgy things they do like lying about donation money and injecting affiliate links are not.
The
thisisunsafebypass - although I’m pretty sure it’s a Chromium feature and not specific to Brave. One of our servers has a completely fucked-up SSL cert, which I can’t fix for reasons outside my control. Firefox won’t allow me to connect, butthisisunsafeon Brave works.It works in Chromium too.
I have no problem using firefox with my self signed cert. Just add the cert.
It’s not self-signed. I think we used to have a proper internal CA, but it’s gone along with its certs. And we can’t replace it because that particular server is held together by our desperate friday night prayers.
Defaults. Install Brave and you’re done. Site doesn’t work? Report non-working site. Wanna support creators? Top up your Brave Wallet or turn on Brave ads.
I’ve a limited budget and limited time to tip websites. I ain’t gonna tip manually every other rando on the internet. Brave takes care of that. Small amounts, yes, but better than just ad-blocking [yes, website owners have to opt-in to it].
Completely uninformed take follows: Also, Mozilla seems to be trying to ramp up their ads department – search for Mozilla Ads. And no-one gonna convert because they already have Google Adsense.
TL;DR: Firefox is faster but using recommended tools like uBlock Origin leaves websites without income.
You can always use something like AdNauseam to give website owners ad revenue and still block ads.
On iOS, unlike Android, Firefox doesn’t come with extensions. No ads are blocked. Even if I use Safari and Adguard extension, it doesn’t block YouTube ads. Brave works like a charm in this regard. I’ve opted out of all telemetry stuff that I could find, and btw even Firefox opts into everything by default. Any other open source browser you can suggest that blocks ads including YouTube on iOS?
On iOS use Orion Browser by Kagi. As for blocking ads in YouTube, you can use AltStore to sideload a YouTube app with sponsorblock and ad block built in.
(Orion might block YouTube ads, I haven’t tested it)
I can confirm Orion blocks Youtube ads (might need to tweak options). As for youtube app, no need to sideload anything, Yattee is on the app store and on testflight for betas (https://github.com/yattee/yattee/wiki/Installation-Instructions)
The only reason I use it over firefox is about tab grouping and how tab mutting work by default. I don’t feel like trying out a bunch of extensions to find one that does what I already get from another browser. Also don’t have to worry about installing ad blocker. Originally switched because it worked better than uorigin for a specific use-case that was relevant for me. I also have vivaldi, firefox, and librewolf install and will use them occasionally. Privacy isn’t a big concern for me though; when I tried to switch to librewolf, the privacy features ended up annoying me so I disabled a lot of them because they interfered with using the browser how I wanted.
Not recommending Brave. I agree at least in theory with using Firefox and I want more people to use Firefox. But its what I’m use to and there was reason for me to try it out at the time I switched to it (that’s probably irrelevant now).
Brave is better out of the box than Firefox
And an iPhone is better for privacy out of the box than most Android phones, but once you make some basic changes that’s no longer the case.
Not by much…
Due to some specific hardware issue on my end affecting all firefox based browsers, I have to use a hardened and stripped down version of Flatpak Brave, which I did manually, as a backup browser. I used to use Ungoogled Chromium but it is not reliable. Other than that there is absolutely no reason to use Brave and I would immediately switch back to Firefox only if I get newer hardware.
As a plus point, firefox (gecko based browsers in general) are the only ones I have seen which provide the best theming flexibilities.
Have you tried any forks of Firefox? They might serve you better. You could also try out Mullvad’s browser, which released a few months ago.
I have tried a wide number of Firefox Forks, some niche ones as well. I generally do not prefer non-ESR releases or Forks because of the added Fingerprinting Risks. But all of them had the same issue so I concluded that there was some incompatibility with my Hardware (which is quite old now) and the Gecko Engine.
on my very old s4 mini android phone Brave works better than any other browser by far.
i do not use Brave anywhere else :)
Given that you’ve probably not had a security update on that phone for a decade then you probably shouldn’t have any personal data on it at all!
LineageOS dude, still running on it, still being updated
Fair play! I know lineage don’t really support that many devices anymore so that’s really impressive!
I already wrote in another comment, but since you’re asking here, I’ll add i to this thread:
You probably shouldn’t use Brave over Firefox (and it’s forks), at least not as a primary browser, but it’s a great out of the box plug and play browser for average people, most of which are probably currently using chrome with no ad block.
If the average user was decently tech literate, companies wouldn’t buy ads any more, because they wouldn’t make anything off of them, since people don’t watch; but obviously they do.
The average person doesn’t want to have to install an ad-blocker - hell, the average person probably has no real idea of what an ad-blocker even is - and they don’t want to bother configuring anything either. They just want plug and play applications that will do everything they need. And for that, Brave is probably the best. E.g. if a family member called me asking for a browser recommendation, I’d probably just tell them to install Brave. I think I’ll keep doing that until I see a better plug and play browser.
Firefox is actually NOT a private browser. I don’t know where it gets this reputation because clearly those people haven’t read their privacy policy where it plainly states that they gather and sell your info to a data mining company.
For better or worse, Chromium browsers work better because the vast majority of people use Chromium so that’s how people build their sites.
Brave has tons of privacy features and settings. Including built-in ad-blocking just like uBlock so your extensions can’t be used to fingerprint you.
If you want a private browser and insist on but using Chromium there are dozens of Firefox forks that are much better for privacy.
If the (supposedly) privacy preserving ads and crypto really upset you, you can simply turn them off.
This isn’t a reason to use Brave, this is just a reason to not use stock Firefox.
There’s really not a difference. At the end of the day you need a browser so a reason not to use one is not terribly different from a reason TO use another. And the one that constantly gets recommended in these communities is Firefox, which is not as bad as Chrome but still worse than just about any privacy-preserving browser out there.
Most people recommend forks of Firefox, or Firefox with modifications to make it more privacy-centric. I don’t think anyone recommends stock Firefox (it’s spyware).
Most people recommend forks of Firefox
Not around here they don’t.
I’ve seen countless instances in this post alone of people recommending Firefox and its forks. Are we talking about the same place?
- Included TOR browsing
- Included IPFS
Built in Tor browsing… Just use Tor?
… or just use the built-in feature of my browser and don’t require running another software?
Doesn’t that kinda defeat half of Tors purpose though? Tor works best when you have a large crowd that all looks the same. Using Brave or any other browsers makes you stick out like a sore thumb because most likely not many people do this. This is the reason why the Tor people recommend only ever using the Tor browser and also not install any other extensions onto it and so on.
If you don’t care about that, that’s fine but then you don’t really need Tor either way.
Interesting take. I guess I need to check for more details if Brave hides these infos or not. Thanks for that hint!
I don’t think Brave can “hide” these infos. At most you could try to spoof them somehow to something else. If you would hide them, that inherently would make you stick out as well since the website would see that you’re hiding stuff :D
You would have to make your Brave browser look exactly like the Tor browser from a websites point of view to blend in. No clue if that is actually possible. A website can read surprisingly a lot of system information from your browser.
I use it on my phone and tablet to block YouTube ads. All the other browsers are dedicated for various other purposes, but I use Firefox as my main browser. When a site doesn’t work on FF, I have to use Safari. Brave is just another tool in my toolbox.
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I mean that’s a reason not to use Brave. It’s a Chromium based browser.
Yeah I reread your question after I posted and realized you were asking something different. Tried to delete it before anyone read it but oops… 😬
Chromium exensions
This falls under “not a good reason” because 90% of Chromium extensions have Firefox alternatives.
I wouldn’t touch Brave with a ten-foot pole, but I heard that it’s configured for privacy by default, whereas Firefox requires extensions like uBlock Origin etc. So maybe Brave is better for idiots, I guess?
Brave is slightly better than default Firefox. But there are plenty of forks of Firefox that are way better than it out of the box.
Being lazy, I wish some of those forks were available in my distro’s
aptrepo.
I don’t want to support Mozilla, for a lot of reason I don’t have the time or the will to discuss here. Is that enough for you? It is for me.
You either support Google or support Mozilla. Supporting Mozilla leads to a safer internet for all.
It’s cute how people sincerely believe Mozilla PR.
I don’t believe Mozilla PR, I believe that solely using Chromium is bad for everyone.
Ok. Nice. I’ll keep using Brave anyway. Have a good day.
My man joins the conversation and then acts like they’re a hostage to it.
Stupid conversations, stemming from stupid premises, are not going anywhere.
If nothing else, I would recommend Firefox over Brave for the sole reason of the latter being yet another Chromium browser. It would be nice if we could eat away some of the browser marketshare from Google.
Brave was also made by a guy who got kicked out of Mozilla for being homophobic. The cryptocurrency stuff is brave also a major scam, it’s a crypto that must first be converted into another crypto before it can be converted into real money. How is that a “currency”?
Personally, I trade my monopoly money into beanie babies and use that to pay my rent. I’m homeless.
mood
As I stated in another comment, I didn’t bring up the CEO’s controversies because they are subjective. Some people might be fine with what he thinks. It also doesn’t really impact the software in any way.
Also, and I hate to defend a homophobe here, but if we’re going back to the details…
It all sprang up because he gave $1000 to the Prop 8 campaign for banning same sex marriage in California.
Scummy, to be sure, but it’s not like he orchestrated the whole campaign or fully financed them. $1000 is barely enough to pay for one TV ad to play exactly one time on a local California TV station. I understand, yes, that when you add that to the rest of the donations, it was a juggernaut, but it still felt a little like punishing someone for having different politics. I also understand that it would be hard to work under someone like that knowing what his politics are, and questioning if that was going to impact fellow LGBT employees. Super valid reasons to be upset that he was put in the top leadership position.
His politics are shitty, to be sure, but a single $1000 donation definitely always seemed a little overblown to me. Especially since he chose to resign after just 11 days, while Mozilla had tried to convince him to stay on in a different role. No one in leadership roles stepped down over him, he made the choice to save the organization instead of himself. That at least showed some sense of humility. So I don’t know, not the greatest guy, and his current trajectory with Brave hasn’t been so great either, but he at least showed decorum in that situation.
However, that situation also put Mozilla on the defensive, having to put out a FAQ about how they weren’t turning into an activist organization, or how you didn’t have to ascribe to and agree on every political issue to work at Mozilla.
It was just bad business all around.
Thanks for clearing everything up along of other threads always just said he was homophobic and that’s the only reason to not use brave.
No problem. I remember being mildly irked about it at the time, because while I disagree with his choice to make that donation to that group, and understand the feelings of LGBT people working at Mozilla and how knowing his politics impacted them… He handled the public response to it professionally. He didn’t double down like conservative politicians these days and start shouting about “gays are groomers” or something. He owned it and stepped away, which should at least speak to him not being completely homophobic and able to take ownership of how his personal politics affected others. You see so little of that these days, that when someone acts professionally after perceived wrongdoing, it seems sad when people don’t recognize it.
Also, I never saw any news of him being proven to have made any discriminatory moves while in Mozilla at all. I could be wrong, but I don’t remember employee complaints of being treated differently before the news of his donation broke. Like I said, I can understand how that news can change how you feel about your boss, but if your boss never made an outward show of it in a work environment and a news report on his political donations is what it took for you to know his politics… it means he was probably being pretty fucking professional at work and trying to not let his personal politics infect how he treated his coworkers and employees. *shrugs
Prop 8 was also awhile ago so it’s possible he changed his mind. People forget how common it was to be shitty on this issue in the 2000’s. The public consensus only flipped in like 2013.
I have no evidence either way though
That said, Brave is worse software than Firefox imo so it’s a moot point.
Those beliefs do trend among the same kind of people as crypto scams though
No they don’t.
Personally I agree with the OP; and I refuse to use Brave. This isn’t based in dislike of cryptocurrency in general; but I DESPISE both ADVERTISING AND SHITCOINS (Basically any token or sub-token of a main standalone blockchain that has no real, significant, usable real world value).
Therefore Brave DOES NOT reflect my values. I don’t care if advertising networks make any money, I actively hate them enough I want to deprive them due to their behaviors anyway for being so violently anti-user.
I don’t use Chrome or Brave because they DO NOT reflect my beliefs regarding web standards either, and I refuse to allow Google and the Chromium and Chrome project to dictate standards either. Particularly of note is their utter failure with both FLOC and WEB-INTEGRITY; both of which are stupidly retarded anti-user and anti-privacy features which are horrible.
Brave behaving like Win XP era browser with gazillion toolbars installed, with a pinch of crypto and crypto promoting ads should be a giant red flag.
FOSS =/= trusted by default. Why are there so many FOSS evangelists, but such a damn tiny part of them are programmers, let alone programmers able to examine a source code behind such a giant codebase as web browser?
I use Vivaldi, at least their business model is clear, and developer is kind of trusted, and not crypto scammer and homophobe.
Might I add brave’s BAT wallet is garbage. You had to sign up to some random exchange and upload your ID (I didn’t), but even that you couldn’t even backup your wallet into a new install, so hope that you would never have to format or reinstall or change devices - it’ll be a pain to restore, if it was even possible.
Firefox over brave any day.
Newsflash: everything that isn’t free and entirely open source is generally spyware these days.
It’s amazing how we pilloried RealPlayer and burned its parent company to the fucking ground over two decades ago for far less egregious transgressions than what we now let Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc get away with.
The issue is wider than Brave. Nowadays, companies build uncritical communities around their products.
If you try to be critical, you loose the community in which you’re involved on one side. And, if you are critical from the outside, “you don’t understand” like in the “you’re not the choose one”.
Brave always marketed itself as hardened privacy browser and the second I saw their shitcoin immediately bells went off.
Either way, I use Librewolf on PC and Mac and lately been giving Arc a try on Mac and I like it.
making (presumably) thousands of dollars off their users
I agree with this post completely but for some reason you finishing with this makes me chuckle.
Oh no! Thousands! They might be able to pay rent for a month or two!
I’m just being cheeky, and while its true what they did was scummy, it also feels like a really… smallish amount of money?
If we’re literally just talking thousands, and not tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands.
But yeah, fuck Brave.
Firefox gang and Hardened Firefox gang here to stay.
Mozilla’s got its own problems but that’s a story for another day.
Even if they were amazing, it would still be worth using Firefox instead to suppport an alternative to chromium.
