Brave's aggressive marketing

frequency@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 333 points –

Was reading an answer to the question about fresh Amazon tablet and saw this. They used up the question as a hook to promote their browser. Pretty sure I'm avoiding Brave from now on.

Q: Does the fire max 11 have YouTube app on it. A: I have installed Google Playstore , but I skip installing Youtube app . There is better option . Brave Browser in Playstore !! That thing has AWESOME popup Blocker and it's own integrated Youtube Ads and other Nuisances blocker . My point ? You don't need youtube on Fire max , You don't need Google Maps , You don't need Facebook App . Just Use Brave .

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There are controversies around Brave itself and also its CEO, Brendan Eich (also inventor of JavaScript and also former Mozilla CEO).

  • Brave was altering search results by adding crypto redirects to links. Source.

  • Eich was forced to resign from Mozilla CEO because he made donations against gay marriage. Also, he basically is a covid conspiracy theorist. Source

You might not care about a company's CEO behavior, as long as they do a good job. I usually do not. In this case, I can't help but feel that the whole project is kinda shady.

Regarding the covid stuff, hasn't he been proven right?

Masks have been determined to be minimally effective against covid (barring N95 I believe) and Fauci has been proven to be dishonest as shown in the leaks surrounding gain of function research in Wuhan. It's effectively been proven the U.S. knew about the research, was funding(?) the research and in essence is at least partially responsible for the outbreak under Fauci's watch. They attempted to downplay the actual origins of Covid-19 due to this association.

I reeeeeaally don't want to go into that, but no: masks have been proven to be effective, if worn correctly, even non-n95 ones. It's not a mystery that, if something is in the way of your spit, you're not going to infect as many people. As for the whole outbreak origin debate, scientists went back and forth between the "wet market" theory and the "lab escape" theory. The last research I've seen was pretty confident in the "wet market" theory. No Fauci involved there.

Disappointing that false information will propagate here, just like on Reddit: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/16/cochrane-study-masks-covid-pandemic/

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full

Review "the science".

It’s not a mystery that, if something is in the way of your spit, you’re not going to infect as many people.

The virus is so much smaller than whatever material you're putting over your mouth that it hardly seems to matter at all. This "seems logical" but isn't if you actually think about it.

As for the Fauci gain of function link: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-function-research/ It's less clear cut than I had previously though. It looks suspicious, but there isn't certainty.