I don't trust homophobes or cryptobros, especially not those with a history of selling users out like Brendan Eich
Especially when there is Firefox and Firefox-based, privacy-focused alternative with great add-blocking and privacy extensions.
I don’t trust anyone who invented Javascript.
Very strongly worded, but yes.
Brave have had a history of controversy since their inception. Every time something happens, the CEO went on a marketing campaign across social media and drummed up enough new users to drown it out. However the attitude of the business is clear: it would take a very small sack of money for Brave to sell out its users.
If you're going to use a Chromium web browser, there are non-commercial open source projects that don't have a history of shady shit. However Firefox forks are better.
Which forks do you suggest?
Not the OP, but here are some alternatives anyway.
Ok, but why? What’s wrong with Firefox and how do the forks address those points?
I posted the list of alternatives simply because OP asked for forks.
What’s wrong with Firefox
Me posting this list shouldn't be an implication that I believe Firefox to be bad. I'm offering alternatives as the OP requests.
and how do the forks address those points?
Every one of the links I shared have detailed information about how their product mutates the original Firefox or Chromium browser. Do you really need me to copy-paste that information into a comment?
Mullvad , LibreWolf and Tor.
Other people have given desktop examples. For Android, I use Mull, which also has a companion Android System Webview implementation (Chromium) called Mulch. These are baked into the DivestOS ROM, which itself is a fork of LineageOS.
Does it support extensions like Firefox?
Yes, full support for desktop Firefox extensions. I think it also comes with uBlock Origin by default.
Just saw it does support custom add-on collections like Firefox beta and nightly... I'm going to give it a try
Edit: it supports startpage as search engine out of the box as well!
All I can say is try DivestOS :)
My opinion: It doesn't have full customisation (compared to eg. CRDroid) but it does at least have call recording and long press back button = kill app process, along with traffic monitors for the status bar. All regular phone calls have a banner at the top reminding you that they're not secure (as opposed to E2E encrypted chat calls over the internet) and Location permission settings seem to be a bit more expansive than other ROMs.
Absoutely. I mostly use Firefox because I'm so familiar with it by now but the privacy is generally much better and it doesn't have a massive monopoly on the web. I'm just a lot more comfortable with it.
When I have to, I use ungoogled-chromium on desktop and Bromite on mobile. I recommend those to anyone familiar with Chrome.
Unfortunately Bromite has been abandoned, however someone has made a fork called Cromite.
Why was appointing Eich as CEO so controversial? It's because he donated $1,000 in support of California's Proposition 8 in 2008, which was a proposed amendment to California's state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
Which is all the reason I need.
If he had changed his tune since then and done something to offset that, I might be willing to cut him some slack.
But, instead, he seems to have doubled down...
They had me at invented JavaScript
People that use Brave always remind of the people pushing crypto.
Seems like the Venn diagram of those two groups approaches a circle, if the OP is any indication.
I use firefox as my main but have brave as my chromium/PWA browser because I don't really fancy using edge or chrome
What other browsers out there support PWAs that are less spyware-ey than the big names
Chromium is pretty safe to use. There are also builds of "de-googled Chromium" available.
Vivaldi, though it's source available rather than fully open source. It's mostly the frontend JavaScript (I think?) code which is proprietary.
Apparently, if you know enough to understand it, you can technically work out what all the proprietary code is and does because it's all fairly simple stuff and separate from the Chromium base (which they make available on their site), although distributing it would be against their ToS (I guess it's technically reverse engineering, which is also against their ToS).
It's been a very long time and I can't actually confirm that for the current release, but it was at least true a few years ago when someone who knew far more about programming than me mentioned it on their forums. I think some people took a look at it and found some basic theming stuff, but nothing nefarious.
They have a fairly solid privacy policy last I checked. They also have no intention of sticking with Google's v3 plans.
The only thing I don't like is they run a daily user count check by pinging their servers. They've made it so that there are no IDs, anonymized or otherwise, but it's still a bit of a black mark on an otherwise decent piece of software.
Firefox supports them
Firefox does not support PWAs on desktop, but there is an extension to enable them which works well.
Out of curiosity, why would you use PWA on desktop?
test my own PWA of websites I'm developing
changing browsers or keeping both open breaks the workflow and sucks. and it's pretty damn slow for me too
There's sometimes desktop functionality like saving music on yt music
Also having them in their own window/their own shortcut is pretty handy and firefox doesn't support shortcuts either nowqdays
Not a single solid reason given in this unhinged rent except a mention of that affiliate link fiasco, which even they themselves agree was a major fuckup.
All BAT and crypto stuff are completely opt-in and it barely takes a few clicks to set the browser to never let you see that side of it again. As for Brendan's political affiliations, most users couldn't care less. He might as well be a furry flat-earther but if the product is good, it is good. Stop acting like you're sure all the things you use throughout the day aren't made by people with doubtful leanings.
I personally don't use Brave on desktop, Firefox is good enough; but it is the best option on Android currently since Bromite is almost always a Chromium version behind whatever is current.
Edit: Just learnt that I was wrong in my perception of what "furry" meant. Reading the replies objecting to that reference made me dig a bit deeper and realise that it's just a type of fandom, and not some sex-deviant cult that pop media made me believe.
Sorry for the wrong example.
mf really conflated being a homophobe to being a furry 💀
Can we please let this meme hate die? How have you people not adjusted to the concept of putting on a costume and roleplaying, we do it every October.
what a goofball...
Corrected now
As for Brendan’s political affiliations, most users couldn’t care less. He might as well be a furry but if the product is good, it is good. Stop acting like you’re sure all the things you use throughout the day aren’t made by people with doubtful leanings.
People do care about Eich's beliefs, or this discussion wouldn't even be happening.
There's nothing wrong with being a furry, and trying to compare it as though it's equivalent or worse than being a shitbag bigot is bullshit.
If you know that the people who run a company are bigots and you continue to use their products and services, you are giving your explicit approval to who they are and what they do. "if the product is good, it is good" absolutely fucking not. Goods and services don't exist in a vacuum.
Bro, most people don't even care about their own privacy and keep using edge/chrome in windows. Some lemmy users care about Eich's beliefs, like you, but most people don't.
I am not even sure what that list supposed to prove either...
I am sure CEOs of banks or oil companies are totally not bigots who absolutely despise poor's, that's I feel fine using their products!
Please tell me this is sarcasm
Not a single solid reason given in this unhinged rent except a mention of that affiliate link fiasco, which even they themselves agree was a major fuckup.
That's pretty dismissive of a feature that could only have been added intentionally. It's not like there was some accidental glitch that was adding affiliate suffixes on the end of links.
What we have here is a business poking and prodding and seeing what they can get away with. You've said that there's only one thing they did that's truly out of line, while glossing over the fact that most of what they do is borderline. Their intent is clear.
Imagine comparing furries to homophobes lol. Sit down you goofball.
Corrected, sorry for that
If directly funding homophobic policies isn't a good enough reason for you, you need to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself why that is
The very first reason seems valid to me. No way anyone should be supporting a hateful asshole like that. Anybody going around saying homosexuality is any less valid than heterosexuality has no place in our society anymore.
Well not to you, but that doesn't mean much considering you think spyware is fine as long as it's opt-in (and that being a furry is equivalent in severity to being homophobic, wtf). The fact that you think this article is bad is basically a ringing endorsement.
"Funding awful people doesn't make me awful"
Say sike right now
it is the best option on Android currently since Bromite is almost always a Chromium version behind whatever is current.
Right now Bromite is unmaintained and has been for a long time. I shudder to think how many versions it's behind.
If you want a FOSS Chromium-based Android browser, use Mulch. It gets updates fairly quickly and serves much of the same purpose that Bromite did, while actually having a (very slightly) larger dev team.
Edit: Oops. Didn't realize that Mulch doesn't have a content blocker. Someone else mentioned Cromite (which does have a built-in content blocker), so that might be a good option as well.
Or Cromite, a fork of Bromite that's kept up to date and has more features.
Huh. Didn't know about that one. Thanks for mentioning it!
To anyone reading this article, only the first quarter of it is about the beliefs and political stance of the developers. The rest of the article after that goes into more technical reasons.
All I needed to read was in the first paragraph.
Brave Software, the company behind the browser of the same name, was founded by Brendan Eich. He's best known as the creator of JavaScript from his days at Netscape Communications
I mean, JS is his baby that's all there needs to be said about the person's motivations.
"JS is his baby that’s all there needs to be said about the person’s motivations."
"During these formative years of the Web, web pages could only be static, lacking the capability for dynamic behavior after the page was loaded in the browser. There was a desire in the flourishing web development scene to remove this limitation, so in 1995, Netscape decided to add a scripting language to Navigator. They pursued two routes to achieve this: collaborating with Sun Microsystems to embed the Java programming language, while also hiring Brendan Eich to embed the Scheme language."
During these formative years of the Web, web pages could only be static, lacking the capability for dynamic behavior after the page was loaded in the browser.
And it was better. Frankly, http was a mistake, humanity would be healthier and happier if we stopped at gopher.
I love Brave, use it daily, and this article didn't convince me at all. Vaguely motioning at the founder's ancient political donations or the optional crypto features, doesn't make a strong case.
2008 is not ancient. Nor is same-sex marriage some minor technical legal point.
Nor has he repented.
Nor has he repented.
That's the important point for me.
People can change after 20 years. But he prefers to double-down instead.
So? He’s the CEO of a company that already gets no money from me.
Online forums pick the weirdest hills to die on sometimes. You’ve probably used hundreds of products today alone made by companies whose CEOs are worse dickwads than Eich. But this gave you a chance to feel superior online so you had to take it lmao
As a gay Californian, I took prop 8 personally. I spurn its supporters as I would spurn a rabid dog.
Chromium should be enough of a reason to get rid of it.
You see, when someone is known to make bad choices it makes sense to approach what they do with apprehension. This guy not only has a history of bad choices, he's also the CEO.
You're free to do as you like of course, but I'd say it's hardly fair to say the article is unconvincing.
Depends. As long as he doesn't rub it in my face by putting it into the browser, I don't care much.
So I understand people who are pissed off because crypto is being rubbed in your face with Brave. But since I can disable that (and disabling it syncs to my other devices), I am also fine with that.
In return I get a browser where I like the sync model, with integrated Tor private browsing mode, and which is based on Chromium (which has sadly still the best dev tools, IMO).
Even MS Edge has some nice features and I used it for a while (I very much like that you can specify in which browser profile you want to open external links in). But they started to put more and more of their Microsoft bullshit into it with each version trying to sell me on all the different fucked up services they offer. Saying "no" once or twice: no problem. Saying "no" every fucking time they update the browser: fuck off.
Given their crypto functionality uses a third party which has been found to skirt the legal system I'd be a lot more concerned about this integration even if I don't intend to use it.
Keep in mind the stuff you read about is only what has been surfaced so far. Who knows what skeletons are still hiding?
Personally, I don't see any point risking it when there are perfectly viable alternatives such as Firefox. Granted the same guy infected Mozilla, but they stood up and ousted him so credit where credit is due.
My argument is that Brave is a Chromium browser with questionable business goals, but it is also the most private and secure, open-source, mainstream* Chromium browser. These keywords cannot be said about Vivaldi, Ungoogled Chromium and many other projects unfortunately.
That said, I primarily use Vivaldi because of its customizability and added features, something Firefox seems to reduce with every new version.
Not quite on Edge or Opera level, and no accurate data can be found due to the removal of unique user agent, but nonetheless I'd argue it is more popular than others of similar kind.
Being open-source doesn't automatically make you secure or reputable. Especially considering the open-source ecosystem in particular is a big target for exploitation right now. And auditing a software project of this size by its source code alone is no small feat.
it is also the most private and secure, open-source, mainstream* Chromium browser
"Mainstream chromium browser" is doing most if not all the heavy lifting there. Fair enough if that's what you're after, but mixing "private and secure, open-source" in feels disingenuous.
That said, I primarily use Vivaldi because of its customizability and added features, something Firefox seems to reduce with every new version.
Last time I played with either Vivaldi or Brave you had to literally monkey patch the source code in order to customize things further than what the extension SDK allowed you to. You could do the same thing with Firefox, except they make it slightly harder because much of the source code is shipped in archives.
That said it's been years, maybe this can now be done purely through the extension SDK? It'd be news to me.
Given their crypto functionality uses a third party which has been found to skirt the legal system I’d be a lot more concerned about this integration even if I don’t intend to use it.
They offered a tenuous high yield lending program, that the SEC only jumped on after it collapsed from the FTX contagion. Litigation is pending afaik and depends on whether the program qualifies as a security, but the SEC has been losing ground in their optimistic claims of what they think qualifies as a security (outcome of Ripple lawsuit etc.).
Don't get me wrong, any such program is sketchy and I trust Gemini less for having offered it, but IMO it doesn't put them on the same tier as an exchange like FTX or make me think they would inject malware into software they have a connection with.
Yeah that's fair. I'd say it falls into the same boat as the argument against the CEO; they haven't done anything clearly malicious, but their bad decisions are enough to give you pause and reconsider.
Yeah this article is not very convincing
Brave is great! No ads, Tor built in, and can install Chrome extensions. I don't use their crypto wallet and it's never bothered me
Ad will be injected soon. Tor is not built in.
Tor is not built in
Source? I've used Tor with Brave
You've used onion links. Brave implemented unsecured onion protocol in thier Chromium browser.
Anything using Firefox as a base can run onion links with a simple add on because Tor is just Firefox. Vivaldi comes with onion support right out of the box, doesn't support hate and is malware free.
I use brave and think it's the best browser available, so I'm not arguing against it or anything, but technically it just supports use of the onion protocol, it does not provide the same full suite of protections that the tor browser does
As Brave says themselves:
For users who currently require leakproof privacy, we recommend using the Tor Browser, which provides much stronger and well-tested protection against websites or eavesdroppers using advanced techniques to uncover a true IP address.
The moment my cryptofan buddy started talking up brave, I knew it was time to uninstall.
It should've been as simple as stop using any chromium-based browser, but the CEO is also super bigoted, doing ad theft, and pushing crypto scams.
Even the crypto people don't generally like him. He tried for Bitcoin integration first and got booed away before starting an ICO - nothing about this needed another coin. Pay-to-surf is a Turing test; his idea doesn't even work in theory.
Don't need to tell me twice. I've distrusted Brave since I saw their advertisement for it. It just feels like they sell the browser in same mood as pyramid schemers does their products.
But its just my gut feeling. Got no good reason why people should avoid the browser. And because the CEO is an ass isn't a good enough reason for most people.
Now it makes sense why some of the Fox News-parroting, right wing people I know use Brave. I had no idea about what the author mentioned about the browser, I just know it is based on Chromium which I will not use. Thus, I am on Firefox. And for many reasons, including those the author laid out, I'm happy I chose wisely.
if you useanything alphabet like chromium, then YOU are the problem.
I think it’s pretty unfair to put all of the blame on everyone who uses a chromium browser, considering that most people with a computer have no idea what the hell you are talking about.
Google Chrome is the single most popular web browser. Everyone’s work uses it, everyone’s school uses it, why would they possibly question it? And then they discover a new browser someone recommended - why would they look into “chromium” and what it all means? It’s just not reasonable to expect of nearly the entire population at this stage.
Take your anger out on the company and educate people. This is a problem of education, not selfishness (on the part of the user).
If you've found your way to the technology community on a federated lemmy instance, youre techy enough to take the blame for using chromium
Isn't this like the fourth time this has been posted? the conversation always goes around in circles with nobody changing their mind.
I never used brave. I wasn't interested in it since I learned it was chromium and all the crypto stuff.
I used to think Brave was good until I found out they are into crypto.
Nope Nope and Nope!
Not using that thing again. Firefox is my friend now.
I don't use Brave, won't use Brave, and have my reasons for it.
Brave is Chromium based; a project which is slave to the whim of Google.
Brave integrates an unnecessary cryptocurrency.
::: spoiler I hate shitcoins
I don't trust small crypto projects, and I doubly do not want this to be integrated into my browser. It's a good way to lose your stable crypto-holdings if you have them. (I don't; but I've seen lots of anecdotes about catching malware that subsequently stole their crypto wallets, including any BAT tokens they owned)
:::
Brave does not block ads! It does not 'enhance' your privacy. It just absorbs some ads, replaces some, and blatantly lets first-party advertisements through the filter. That's not ad-blocking
Brave does not protect your privacy. As per my previous point; it does not block ads, it injects it's own right into browser chrome! That's worse than plain Chrome! Your privacy is automatically violated when you watch/view even a single ad.
Brave does not have many benefits above "Ungoogled Chromium" or other competing projects. It just doesn't. Unless you like marketing fluff.
Brave is NOT BETTER THAN Firefox. It's worse; because it's Chromium; which is enslaved to Google whims. Don't believe me? Try to contribute something to Chromium that goes contrary to Google's stated goals and watch how fast you get shot down.
::: spoiler But sometimes...
Yes, Sometimes a programmer does succeed. But only sometimes; and this is usually because they have the clout, coding skills, chops and public reach to embarrass the fuck out of the Google PMs. This will never be you, unless you put an extraordinary amount of effort into becoming a very well known and respected contributor in the OSS space. If you already are a respected contributor in the OSS space, Congrats! You're still likely to be forced to fight a long and protracted battle against the Google nerds to get "Google-Hostile" code changes approved.
:::
Your last point is laughable.
Yes Brave cannot make commits to Chromium, but it makes changes to their own repos (well, obviously) and can also accept/reject changes Google makes to Chromium.
In my opinion, Firefox is more of a slave to Google than Brave will ever be because they rely entirely on Google giving them money for the default search engine.
Is Brave's revenue model scammy? Maybe. But at least they aren't Google little bitch.
I don't know how you can follow web development and say Mozilla is a slave to Google. They go against nearly everything Google proposes.
I get it that Mozilla makes money off of Google but in practice they are anything but slaves.
I find nothing morally or ethically superior to Mozilla vs Google. Nothing. As for the browsers, I'll admit I have kept Firefox and ditched Chrome, as I suspect (cannot prove) the former might be a tad less invasive than the latter. I rarely use it now that I have Waterfox. That said I do use Comodo IceDragon, Epic Privacy Browser and Brave...I assume all based on Chromium/Chrome. I'd guess Brave is the most up-to-date browser for Windows 7. It works well when various sites flip the birdie to the other browsers, so I use it.
They can do whatever they want, they only do it because Google allows it.
By that logic, Brave is also completely against Google because they block their ads and go against them.
Tf did you smoke today? I definitely want that stuff too!
Some counterpoints:
I like the idea of a system where users get a share of the revenue from the ad networks, which then can be used to support other content creators or businesses online. I think that if most of the web worked like this, we wouldn't have people being treated as eyeballs and we would still have the power to vote with our wallets to choose who is actually worth of our attention. Is there any other browser or company doing anything like that?
People keep talking about Firefox as if it's a paragon of virtue, but casually forget that they are only alive because they are completely dependent on Google to survive and are nothing more than "controlled opposition" nowadays. They also have done a ton user-hostile shit like sponsored links in the frontpage and completely crippled pocket, and let's not forget that current Mozilla execs are raking in millions while laying off people and disbanding key projects.
The crypto part keeps called a scam, but their system has been working perfectly fine and it has always been liquid enough for me at the exchanges. Is their BAT token needed? Certainly not, and I would be fine if the 3-8 euros worth of BAT I receive every month (depending on my mobile usage and on their success as an network) were sent to me directly via SEPA. But can anyone realistically say that there is any efficient worldwide way to distribute payouts? For every dollar you sent to someone via Patreon (or Ko-Fi, or any alternative), how much do they get to keep? With the Brave creators program, all of the $15/month that I send to the different people get to them.
All in all, I will stop using Brave in a heartbeat if there is anyone else providing any alternative with a slight chance to fight Surveillance Capitalism. None of the Chromium or Mozilla forks are doing that.
Brave's objective is to create a system that looks altruistic but they control it and take a ever increasing cut. Google started off the same way. I like the idea, but it's one that needs to be controlled by a not for profit or by the people. Giving that control to a for profit company is just repeating history.
Firefox isn't perfect, but my argument for choosing them or a fork of FF is to combat the market share of chromium based browsers. With google pushing for Web Environment Integrity (aka web DRM) using a different browser is one of the few good ways to protest.
I would also like to point out that popular open source projects often get contributions (both code and financial) from large corporations. Sometimes it's their main source of revenue. This isn't just a Mozilla problem. I wouldn't even say it is a problem. A problem would be if those contributions affect the project in a negative way.
Just like in most things these days our choices are limited to the shitty and the less shitty. Obviously where Brave and Firefox lands on that shitty spectrum will depend on your priorities, but for me at least Firefox is less shitty and far from perfect, but decent.
Edit: grammer
Brave’s objective is to create a system that looks altruistic but they control it and take a ever increasing cut.
I don't see how? All they control is the ad network. Viewing the ads is opt-in. The ads they displayed are stored in device, and the code that selects which ads to show you is open source. The system for verifying ad views can be audited by any party. The token is on the blockchain so they can't manipulate and the contract does not have any special rules.
Assuming a world where Brave gets significant market share, the "worst" they could do would be to change the promised revenue share, but if they went to do that then users would lose the incentive to opt-in into the ads, and they would more likely lose revenue and open themselves for competition. (That's a risk that could run even if they did everything right, by the way)
using a different browser is the only good way to protest.
A problem would be if those contributions affect the project in a negative way.
And I could make the argument this is in the case with Mozilla and Firefox. Mozilla being so dependent of Google's revenue means that they will never take any measure that could be seen by Google as a credible threat to their business. Ask yourself why Firefox never included an ad-blocker by default or has kept its mobile browser crippled for so long, or got rid of FirefoxOS...
Firefox never included an ad-blocker by default because an Ad-blocker kinda does the opposite of what the web-browser is supposed to do.
A web browser shall render the web page according to specification. Blocking content hinders this behavior and will even break some websites.
I think most people have forgotten that 15 years ago web browsers had barely started becoming standards compliant, with Opera being the first(?) to pass the Acid2 rendering test in 2006.
A user installing an ad-blocker is perfectly fine, and hopefully the user makes an informed decision of advantages and the possible disadvantages that said ad-blocker might have.
And it’s also fine for fringe browsers like Brave to have a default ad-blocker, but there’s a big difference from that to just putting one in a product that’s used by millions, even though most users would likely be happy with the change.
Sorry, this is a terrible and senseless pontification. They could have always bundled an ad-blocker without having it enabled out-of-the-box.
Sure they could have.
But why would they?
Just because you, clearly, disagree with my opinion doesn’t make it terrible or senseless.
The strength of your conviction, or in which you convey it, isn’t a stand-in for rational arguments and logic based debate.
But why would they?
Because it would be one very interesting marketing point? For a browser that promotes itself as "focused on protecting users" and "not selling you out", having a built-in (even if not enabled by default) ad-blocker would make a lot more sense than adding integration with Pocket.
rational arguments and logic based debate.
There is nothing logical about claiming "Firefox is a browser and browser need to render the page as is". First, even that were true it does not require them to enable the ad-block by default. Second, this definition is contrived and seems picked up just to give a rationalization that gives them some moral ground about their omission. We could just as easily say something like "a web browser is the user agent to access the www and as such it can always modify the web page in favor of the user". Why is that you choose to go for a definition that just happens to favor the business of their biggest source of revenue?
I dislike that you used quotes to misrepresent what they said by making them sound like a cartoon caveman. Poor form.
Also I remember why I and, presumably, a lot of others moved to chrome in the first place. Firefox started getting really bloated and adding a bunch of default features that people either didn't want or already used an extension for, the main selling point of firefox back then was extensions and customising your own browsing experience. Adding a first party ad blocker just seems like a waste of time when third party ones likely do a better job.
I get your point, though, I can definitely see why a default one might be a nice marketing note, but no need to be rude about someone disagreeing with your speculation.
Orion does everything you’re asking for and has none of the baggage. Also, Safari? I mean it sucks, but it literally does what you say you want.
Both are for MacOS (I'm on Linux) and neither are open source, which is also something important to me.
Also, where do any of these provide "a system where users get a share of the revenue from the ad networks"?
You didn’t say that was a requirement. You said
All in all, I will stop using Brave in a heartbeat if there is anyone else providing any alternative with a slight chance to fight Surveillance capitalism
Both of those browsers accomplish that.
I despise argumentation-by-gotcha. if you need to be so pedantic, here is another qualifier to my choices: "these alternatives must not violate my basic freedoms, so anything closed source is out."
Dude it’s not argumentation by gotcha, whatever the fuck that is. All I have to go on is what you said. I don’t know anything else about you, your one comment is all the context I get. What you said and what you clearly meant seem to be two different things.
Look at the very first item in the list of counterpoints in "my one comment". Do Safari or Orion provide anything like that?
All in all, I will stop using Brave in a heartbeat if there is anyone else providing any alternative with a slight chance to fight Surveillance Capitalism.
Your first item in the list literally says “I like the idea” not “this is a requirement”. Then later on you literally say “all in all”, indicating that the only thing that matters to you is what you are about to say next. Maybe you speak English as a second language, but I literally only have what you wrote to go on. And what you wrote was clear that all that mattered was the final sentence
I know what I wrote, and I wrote a list of counterpoints that work as reasons that I have to use Brave. I thought it was clear that one of the things that are important about is that it can give a way to pay to users and that no one else (that I know of) does it.
""All in all" was meant as way to summarize what I wrote above, not overrule it. I can't force you to interpret it in the way that I meant it, but in case you are in doubt: Safari or anything else from/for Apple is automatically disqualified.
I thought it was clear that one of the things that are important about is that it can give a way to pay to users and that no one else (that I know of) does it.
Ok, it is now. Thank you for making it clear to me. I misunderstood
Safari or anything else from/for Apple is automatically disqualified.
Ok, thank you for making that clear. May I ask why you're against Apple, but not Google? I consider Google a much higher risk at this point in time.
I'm very much against Google when their actions are taken to enforce their monopoly and that give no other choice to people. For all the flak that Chromium gets, it is still open source and the browsers that are built on it do not necessarily need to implement all the things exactly like Chrome. Brave has not adopted manifest v3 and already stated that will not implement WEI.
Anyway it’s clear you want crypto in your browser. You’ve made that very clear. Good luck finding a browser that has the features you want.
it’s clear you want crypto in your browser.
Careful, you are already inching into dishonest rhetoric. I explicitly said "The token is not needed and I would be fine if they could pay in cash". Are you also going to blame my language skills for that or can you simply agree that there is no existing better alternative for worldwide micropayments?
I explicitly said “The token is not needed and I would be fine if they could pay in cash”.
I think that must have been in another thread, because I see no mention of cash anywhere in this thread. I reread all your comments that I've been a part of and still don't see anything like that. I see you mentioning paying someone with patreon, but it seems like you are advocating for crypto in that third bullet, so maybe I'm misunderstanding what you wrote.
Are you also going to blame my language skills for that or can you simply agree that there is no existing better alternative for worldwide micropayments?
I wasn't blaming your language skills, all I was saying is that the only thing I have to go on here is what you've written in this thread. I'm not going into your profile and reading every comment you make so if you have something else in there that I need context on then it's not really a language issue, just a context one.
And yes you are completely right. There are no better alternatives for worldwide micropayments. I don't think crypto is the answer (in fact I've written quite a number of very very long comments over the years on all of the stuff that crypto claims to solve and doesn't), but it would be nice to have a solution to it.
I wrote:
Is their BAT token needed? Certainly not, and I would be fine if the 3-8 euros worth of BAT I receive every month (depending on my mobile usage and on their success as an network) were sent to me directly via SEPA.
how about you just use which ever shitty browser you like?
and i'll use firefox
I have stopped using Brave. Fuck those guys.
I just wish Firefox would update less frequently. It's way too often.
would you rather they leave security holes open exposing your computer to bad things?
You know there's another option besides not passing security holes to the users and then patching them later right?
you realize modern browsers have millions of lines and over a decade (or two!) of legacy code running that are under constant scrutiny by actors who spend all their time finding exploits in binary executables, right?
you realize your operating system also ships system updates on a regular, often daily basis, right?
How is any of that the user's problem
This is a common excuse for a lot of box checking nonsense and we both know it.
You could switch to the ESR branch, which gets feature updates much less frequently.
Thanks. A helpful response instead of a smarmy one. Refreshing.
There is nothing wrong with Brave. It's a great browser. I like the cryptocurrency aspect of it.
you like baked in ads, crypto, falsely using people to promote your browser... oof
The browser works well. I am very much into crytpocurrency. I think Bitcoin and Ethereum are the future of money.
You don't need to turn on ads in Brave. It blocks ads really well.
Crypto is a scam and you're being duped.
"Crytpto" is not a scam. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the future of money.
There are a lot of shitcoins out there, but don't let them fool you into staying poor. Fiat money is dying.
All money is fiat money. It has an agreed upon value outside of its intrinsic worth. If you want to get away from fiat money you have to go back to barter.
That's not true. Fiat money is money created and managed by a government. We need separation of State and Money.
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
noun Legal tender, especially paper currency, authorized by a government but not based on or convertible into gold or silver.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun economics Money that is given legal value or made legal tender for money debts by government fiat.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun money that the government declares to be legal tender although it cannot be converted into standard speci
So you prefer your currency to backed by the full faith and credit of... nobody? And you think you're not being duped. Hilarious.
It's backed by math. There is a fixed amount of Bitcoin. We have never had the concept of "digital scarcity" before. There are thousands of computers running independently that are following a consensus algorithm. it's an open, permisionless, trustless system that anyone on the planet can be part of.
You would rather have money controlled by corrupt governments? Hilarious.
There is a fixed amount of Bitcoin.
That is part of the problem. As long as the economy grows, then Bitcoin is deflationary. This encourages people who have it to hoard it, rather than to move it around and drive the economy. It is almost perfectly designed to be used as a speculative investment rather than an actual day-to-day currency.
Having a fixed pool of money to represent your economy only makes sense if the total value of the economy will never change. This doesn't happen in the real world. Populations grow, new technologies add value, and poverty generally goes down. This is all fairly simple math.
Bitcoin is digital gold. Other cryptocurrencies will become used as well for basic payments. Eventually you will be able to pay cross chain so it wont even matter which coins you hold.
Amid all of this, nobody has managed to give me a reason why I would want to use crypto for transactions instead of my debit/credit card.
Crypto doesn’t come with any of the consumer protections I expect from my current payment methods. And in fact, it is designed to make some of them literally impossible (I.e. chargebacks). This might be appealing to sellers, but financial transactions are a buyers market. Sellers hate dealing with PayPal, but they put up with it because consumers trust PayPal and demand to use it.
So right now, crypto has these problems:
It is riskier to me than my current solutions.
Even with PoS, it is an order of magnitude more energy intensive than current centralized solutions. The the energy cost for just McDonald’s to replace all their credit card transactions with Ethereum would be staggering.
Most importantly, it does not solve any problems I have that other solutions do not. There needs to be a reason for consumers to change their habits. You can’t build your sales pitch on intangible benefits that are only relevant to a tiny minority.
It’s been over a decade and blockchains are still a neat technology without a useful practical application.
It’s backed by math.
No, it's backed by the power grid. Shut off the power, and you have nothing.
Also trying to create scarcity in a realm where none actually exists shows how greedy and scammy it is.
It's worse than any other fiat currency. There's literally nothing behind it.
Ah, I see, you think that because you can mint Schmecklebux or whatever and use it as a medium of exchange, you're somehow exempt from the laws of whatever country you're in when the trade goes down? Tell me, does your flag have a fringe on it?
Why do you assume I think I'm exempt from laws? I paid over $300,000 usd in taxes last year! I'm not using crypto to break laws, I'm using to to become wealthy.
Then how are you free from "corrupt governments"? You're still paying taxes on income and on property, so even if you acquired property with funny money the government is still getting its cut. And if the government felt like crypto was getting out of hands it would apply further laws to it or outlaw it.
Free in the sense that the place I store my wealth can't be confiscated (e.g. Cypress, Greece, etc...) or it's value inflated away by money printing.
Bitcoin is peer-to-peer digital cash. Governments can't ban it, that's why they are regulating it and accepting it as a thing.
Why do you think they can't ban it? If they can regulate it they can ban it. Use of an illicit currency would be a financial crime that they would investigate like any other.
ipv4 addresses. Also bitcoin is the worst example here, as it's just an asset. It's not bearable as real money, you can't trust its always changing value. It's also a victim of constant market manipulation. XMR on the other hand is a relatively stable currency.
Bitcoin is also a privacy and ecological nightmare.
In general it's also really fun that you can lose all your money without doing anything wrong.
yeah, but we have ipv6 now. ipv4 was never designed to be a scarce asset, and it's managed by a centralized authority.
XMR is one of the best cryptocurrencies. Big fan of privacy!
I've been holding bitcoin since 2011. Haven't had any instances of "losing all my money without doing anything wrong".
But that's digital scarcity, even if not designed like that.
You didn't lose anything because it's completely random. There are big pools just randomly generating wallets to see if they get a used one. And they had multiple hits.
Even when not talking about people not good with computers, people mess up backups and forget passwords. They shouldn't lose their belongings just because of that.
I think crypto could have its place as the cash of the internet. No one can watch your transaction, but if the other person takes your money and runs you are shit outta luck. No way to revert transactions, perfect for money laundering, but also anonymous, which can be a plus.
But all this makes it completely unsuitable in everyday use.
Also: yes, there is a fixed amount of Bitcoin. But you know what governments all over the world did when Inflation was sky high? Change the interest rates to change the amount of money that goes into the economy to make everyday items affordable again.
And for Bitcoin in particular, if everyone actually uses it as intended the artificial limit of the transaction rate would only allow you to perform one transaction every two yearsor something like that.
Fiat money can be:
* Any money that is not backed by a commodity.
* Money declared by a person, institution or government to be legal tender,[5] meaning that it must be accepted in payment of a debt in specific circumstances.[6]
* State-issued money which is neither convertible through a central bank to anything else nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard.[7]
* Money used because of government decree.[2]
* An otherwise non-valuable object that serves as a medium of exchange[8] (also known as fiduciary money).[9]
Doesn't have to come from a government. Crypto is three of these. The article even starts with "Fiat money is a type of currency that is not backed by a commodity, such as gold or silver." Nothing about government there either.
at this point we are just arguing over semantics.
The differences and implications are important, and it's hard to make a convincing argument if your base premise is incorrect.
Money is a social construct that only has value because people agree it has value. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the best forms of money humans have ever invented. Once we have privacy at the base layer, fiat money is dead.
Ha. Hu ha ha. Ha. Hahaha.
Money has value because it is an efficient medium to facilitate trade. Specific forms of money have value because of what backs it and it acts as a medium for trade. And yeah I'm sure what society really values will at some point be a money that limits the ability to deal with economic crises. Or that slowly disappears, because privacy Bob didn't believe in banks but his SSD failed, or because Crypto Karen forgot her password. Or a hacker loots an exchange.
I mean, it's not like those are fundamental problems that could bring an economy to it's knees right? But hey, at least the money has privacy (it won't) and we don't have to worry about inflation (deflation on the other hand...).
Cryptocurrency is the most efficient money we have. It doesn't require any middle man bankers. Sure, hackers can hack and loot exchanges, but right now we have the government looting us with inflation.
The problems you mentioned are being worked on. There are ways to backup and restore your wallet that will become easy.
The global economy doesn't need to only rely on Bitcoin, so the argument that we have to worry about deflation is just wrong.
This is the wild west of innovation. Scammers like money, so of course they will be attracted to cyrptocurrency. They are also very attracted to fiat currency.
All of the references on that page have to do with random NFT projects and shitcoins.
You should try to separate the concept of "Crypto" from the concept of base layer blockchain protocols that actually have value.
There is plenty wrong with Brave, the business.
Brave, the browser, is very useful in a practical sense. It has some nice features out of the box, and if you disable the naughty out of the box features it's pretty decent. However, you have to trust that each update from the developer is good, and past experience raises very serious questions with this particular business.
Maybe you might be seeing some returns from the cryptocurrency. My undestanding is that users have lost far more than they've gained - and that's before you actually look into the true value of what users are sacrificing in exchange for their tokens. Meanwhile, Brave are pulling a steady revenue making money from their users, milking them just so.
Pwrsonally I don't use Brave due to it being chromium, outside of that itis a good browser. If they were a firefox fork I would absolutely use them.
I love firefox. It's my main browser for everything. When I need a chrome based browser for testing things, Brave is my go to browser.
Yepp, I started just using vanilla chromium though instead, as that offers a barebones option to guarantee I don't need to mess around to test something works.
Brave has built in ad-blocking that is good to test against. One of our tools wasn't able to submit new issues to jira because atlassian.net was being blocked by the browser.
I use Brave as a secondary browser for PWAs on the desktop. I wish Firefox would support it again.
what do you need PWA support for? any clue why Mozilla reduced/removed support?
There is a bugzilla entry that states the removal was due to too little user benefit for the development effort required. And since I don't necessarily need this feature, I can understand they directed the resources to where they are needed more. Nevertheless, it would be nice to have.
The way I use it is primarily for applications that produce audio output, so I get appropriately named per-app volume sliders in pulseaudio/pipewire and not just a bunch of audio streams titled “Firefox”.
Thank you for the excellent answers to both of my questions! I understand your earlier comment perfectly now 👌
They dropped it during or right after (can't remember for sure) their massive layoffs where they fired like half of their best employees for no reason, that's also when Servo died! :(
STOP USING JAVACRIPT
Here’s my current problem: I use Firefox mainly, but I need a chromium browser for work occasionally. I feel like brave is better than chrome proper right? But the CEO is also terrible. Is there something I can use that’s chromium based (occasional usage) that is at least “the least bad” option?
If you need chromium, your best option is probably ungoogled-chromium which is basically just bare bones chrome with as much telemetry and tracking taken out as possible.
don't forget the absence of easy to install addons! such a delight!
Yeah it takes a few extra steps to get extensions/chrome store stuff like that. Probably not the best option if you’re just trying to slap it on a work computer in 5 mins.
That's where Firefox comes in!
True that’s what I use the vast majority of the time, but the OP specifically needed something chromium based.
What, you don't like to install the Web Store through a separate extension crx download, mess around in the settings, and enable dev mode? Wait til you hear what you have to do to get DRM working (Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, etc). Hint: It's a separate zipped download of Widevine that you have to extract deep in the AppData folder, assuming you're on Windows.
Use one of the "clean" versions of Chromium (not Chrome) from Woolyss.com
If you want updates to be handled automatically, you can use ChrLauncher
EDIT: I guess you can't use the latter on OSX.
Ungoogled Chromium
While I agree with this, it's kind of a pain in the ass if you use extensions. You have to roundabout install the Web Store through a crx download, tinkering in the settings and enabling dev mode, then use that extension to install other extensions. And may the cosmos grant you mercy if you need to use DRM for Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, etc, and have to download the Widevine DRM stuff separately and unzip it deep in the AppData folder.
It's not impossible, but I guess I'm just saying that this probably isn't going to be the answer for the everyday, average person.
OC said for occasional use, I do agree that it's difficult to get it set up
I use brave because it doesn't apply chrome or edge group policies. If someone can tell me a better chromium based Browser (or firefox based) that does this, I'm all ears...
Also Mull for Android, with Mulch for Android System Webview.
I use Brave as a secondary browser mostly for government websites because sometimes my firefox privacy settings breaks them and since many of them are poorly designed a technical issue over your account may result in hours on the phone to resolve.
Why not use chromium or one of the many other chrome forks? What about Brave works better?
Because it works, has okay configurations out of the box, and I just don't really care enough about the points mentioned in this article to make the switch. I only use it for cases where I don't expect privacy like government websites. As soon as you open an account there they got all your info anyway.
Name an alternative browser that has the same level of ability to block trackers built in.
LibreWolf.
That was easy.
why does it need to be built in? What's wrong with downloading one extension and being set afterwards?
bobthened
Okay, so name an extension that will provide the same level of tracker blocking as Brave does.
mullvad browser?
I currently use brave on iOS to block YouTube ads. Is there any other option right now? I’d be willing to switch.
The best solution on iOS is Yattee. You can add Piped or Invidious instances as locations and stream ad-free YouTube from there.
Another solution that doesn't involve Piped and Invidious is AdGuard. Open a YouTube link in Safari, hit actions, then hit Block YouTube Ads (by AdGuard).
Hey, thanks for the link/suggestion for Yattee! Never knew something like this existed for iOS.
If you don’t mind sideloading and refreshing the app from your PC every 7 days, I recommend (and use) uYou+ as a sideloaded app. It has PiP capabilities w/o needing premium, along with a built-in video downloader, sponsorblock, and adblock.
When visiting the govt. Website, it says you're using unsupported browser and some feature won't work but when I use brave, I dont get that message.
sane tab management and behavior on mobile versions along with proper syncing is apparently too huge of a hurdle to handle for the devs. these two are pretty much the only reason why i still use brave and not firefox
Lol seriously? I am using firefox from past 5, -8 years and never crashed once.
What do you think about Torch Browser? Falkon? Dot browser?
Torch Browser is not open source, and it still is based on chromium. It's the worst browser combination possible.
Falkon is pretty cool! I prefer using qutebrowser if it's gonna use QtWebEngine anyway. It is slower and less featureful than the main browsers, though. If you don't mind it, I'd say go for it!
I didn't know about Dot Browser, but it looks... unfinished? It's based on Firefox, so that's cool. But it seems someone would be better off just using something like LibreWolf (or Tor if you actually want some privacy).
This is madness. How does this keep getting upvoted when the article has nothing to do with the actual code integrity and functionality of this browser.
At least it's open source, if there is something shady point it out in the code.
I'm personally like to stop using Brave, and I will, however while LibreWolf will be what I'll switch to on desktop, I'm not sure what I would want to switch to on my Android phone. I see that LibreWolf doesn't have an Android version (and potentially never will; fine, developers will do whatever they want). I've heard about IceRaven, however, I'm not sure how good it is. Also would like an actually privacy focused search engine, but I think LibreWolf might have a good list on that front.
(Note: please do suggest in replies, not sure I made that apparent)
Check out Mull or Mulch. Mull is a more private Firefox and Mulch is a more private Chrome. They are made by the DivestOS team, they also make DivestOS which is a lot more private Android version that supports a huge number of phones. That's how I'm also runing the latest version of Android 13 with the latest security updates on a phone from 2019. And there are much older devices supported.
Since I'll be moving to LibreWolf and it's based on FF, I'll check out Mull. Unfortunately I don't see my device on DivestOS's site (it's a Motorola Moto G Power 2022), but it's also quite new so it's understandable. I'll switch it to Lineage or something like that whenever it gets support for it but I'm fine with a degoogled Android for now.
Are there any brave forks that throw out all the bullshit? Bold browser seems pretty dead
@whou wish someone else would build an easy to set up and use chromium browser for windows that blocks telemetry and isn't run by an asshole... something i could get friends and family to use.
I don't trust homophobes or cryptobros, especially not those with a history of selling users out like Brendan Eich
Especially when there is Firefox and Firefox-based, privacy-focused alternative with great add-blocking and privacy extensions.
I don’t trust anyone who invented Javascript.
Very strongly worded, but yes.
Brave have had a history of controversy since their inception. Every time something happens, the CEO went on a marketing campaign across social media and drummed up enough new users to drown it out. However the attitude of the business is clear: it would take a very small sack of money for Brave to sell out its users.
If you're going to use a Chromium web browser, there are non-commercial open source projects that don't have a history of shady shit. However Firefox forks are better.
Which forks do you suggest?
Not the OP, but here are some alternatives anyway.
Firefox:
Chrome:
I use fennec from F-droid on mobile
Also Mull and Iceraven from F-Droid
Ok, but why? What’s wrong with Firefox and how do the forks address those points?
I posted the list of alternatives simply because OP asked for forks.
Me posting this list shouldn't be an implication that I believe Firefox to be bad. I'm offering alternatives as the OP requests.
Every one of the links I shared have detailed information about how their product mutates the original Firefox or Chromium browser. Do you really need me to copy-paste that information into a comment?
Mullvad , LibreWolf and Tor.
Other people have given desktop examples. For Android, I use Mull, which also has a companion Android System Webview implementation (Chromium) called Mulch. These are baked into the DivestOS ROM, which itself is a fork of LineageOS.
Does it support extensions like Firefox?
Yes, full support for desktop Firefox extensions. I think it also comes with uBlock Origin by default.
Just saw it does support custom add-on collections like Firefox beta and nightly... I'm going to give it a try
Edit: it supports startpage as search engine out of the box as well!
All I can say is try DivestOS :)
My opinion: It doesn't have full customisation (compared to eg. CRDroid) but it does at least have call recording and long press back button = kill app process, along with traffic monitors for the status bar. All regular phone calls have a banner at the top reminding you that they're not secure (as opposed to E2E encrypted chat calls over the internet) and Location permission settings seem to be a bit more expansive than other ROMs.
Absoutely. I mostly use Firefox because I'm so familiar with it by now but the privacy is generally much better and it doesn't have a massive monopoly on the web. I'm just a lot more comfortable with it.
When I have to, I use ungoogled-chromium on desktop and Bromite on mobile. I recommend those to anyone familiar with Chrome.
Unfortunately Bromite has been abandoned, however someone has made a fork called Cromite.
Which is all the reason I need.
If he had changed his tune since then and done something to offset that, I might be willing to cut him some slack.
But, instead, he seems to have doubled down...
They had me at invented JavaScript
People that use Brave always remind of the people pushing crypto.
Seems like the Venn diagram of those two groups approaches a circle, if the OP is any indication.
I use firefox as my main but have brave as my chromium/PWA browser because I don't really fancy using edge or chrome
What other browsers out there support PWAs that are less spyware-ey than the big names
Chromium is pretty safe to use. There are also builds of "de-googled Chromium" available.
Vivaldi, though it's source available rather than fully open source. It's mostly the frontend JavaScript (I think?) code which is proprietary.
Apparently, if you know enough to understand it, you can technically work out what all the proprietary code is and does because it's all fairly simple stuff and separate from the Chromium base (which they make available on their site), although distributing it would be against their ToS (I guess it's technically reverse engineering, which is also against their ToS).
It's been a very long time and I can't actually confirm that for the current release, but it was at least true a few years ago when someone who knew far more about programming than me mentioned it on their forums. I think some people took a look at it and found some basic theming stuff, but nothing nefarious.
They have a fairly solid privacy policy last I checked. They also have no intention of sticking with Google's v3 plans.
The only thing I don't like is they run a daily user count check by pinging their servers. They've made it so that there are no IDs, anonymized or otherwise, but it's still a bit of a black mark on an otherwise decent piece of software.
Firefox supports them
Firefox does not support PWAs on desktop, but there is an extension to enable them which works well.
Out of curiosity, why would you use PWA on desktop?
test my own PWA of websites I'm developing
changing browsers or keeping both open breaks the workflow and sucks. and it's pretty damn slow for me too
There's sometimes desktop functionality like saving music on yt music
Also having them in their own window/their own shortcut is pretty handy and firefox doesn't support shortcuts either nowqdays
Not a single solid reason given in this unhinged rent except a mention of that affiliate link fiasco, which even they themselves agree was a major fuckup.
All BAT and crypto stuff are completely opt-in and it barely takes a few clicks to set the browser to never let you see that side of it again. As for Brendan's political affiliations, most users couldn't care less. He might as well be a
furryflat-earther but if the product is good, it is good. Stop acting like you're sure all the things you use throughout the day aren't made by people with doubtful leanings.I personally don't use Brave on desktop, Firefox is good enough; but it is the best option on Android currently since Bromite is almost always a Chromium version behind whatever is current.
Edit: Just learnt that I was wrong in my perception of what "furry" meant. Reading the replies objecting to that reference made me dig a bit deeper and realise that it's just a type of fandom, and not some sex-deviant cult that pop media made me believe. Sorry for the wrong example.
mf really conflated being a homophobe to being a furry 💀
Can we please let this meme hate die? How have you people not adjusted to the concept of putting on a costume and roleplaying, we do it every October.
what a goofball...
Corrected now
People do care about Eich's beliefs, or this discussion wouldn't even be happening.
There's nothing wrong with being a furry, and trying to compare it as though it's equivalent or worse than being a shitbag bigot is bullshit.
If you know that the people who run a company are bigots and you continue to use their products and services, you are giving your explicit approval to who they are and what they do. "if the product is good, it is good" absolutely fucking not. Goods and services don't exist in a vacuum.
Bro, most people don't even care about their own privacy and keep using edge/chrome in windows. Some lemmy users care about Eich's beliefs, like you, but most people don't.
I am not even sure what that list supposed to prove either...
I am sure CEOs of banks or oil companies are totally not bigots who absolutely despise poor's, that's I feel fine using their products!
Please tell me this is sarcasm
That's pretty dismissive of a feature that could only have been added intentionally. It's not like there was some accidental glitch that was adding affiliate suffixes on the end of links.
What we have here is a business poking and prodding and seeing what they can get away with. You've said that there's only one thing they did that's truly out of line, while glossing over the fact that most of what they do is borderline. Their intent is clear.
Imagine comparing furries to homophobes lol. Sit down you goofball.
Corrected, sorry for that
If directly funding homophobic policies isn't a good enough reason for you, you need to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself why that is
The very first reason seems valid to me. No way anyone should be supporting a hateful asshole like that. Anybody going around saying homosexuality is any less valid than heterosexuality has no place in our society anymore.
Brave is the browser for the far right.
Well not to you, but that doesn't mean much considering you think spyware is fine as long as it's opt-in (and that being a furry is equivalent in severity to being homophobic, wtf). The fact that you think this article is bad is basically a ringing endorsement.
"Funding awful people doesn't make me awful" Say sike right now
Right now Bromite is unmaintained and has been for a long time. I shudder to think how many versions it's behind.
If you want a FOSS Chromium-based Android browser, use Mulch. It gets updates fairly quickly and serves much of the same purpose that Bromite did, while actually having a (very slightly) larger dev team.
Edit: Oops. Didn't realize that Mulch doesn't have a content blocker. Someone else mentioned Cromite (which does have a built-in content blocker), so that might be a good option as well.
Or Cromite, a fork of Bromite that's kept up to date and has more features.
Huh. Didn't know about that one. Thanks for mentioning it!
To anyone reading this article, only the first quarter of it is about the beliefs and political stance of the developers. The rest of the article after that goes into more technical reasons.
All I needed to read was in the first paragraph.
I mean, JS is his baby that's all there needs to be said about the person's motivations.
"JS is his baby that’s all there needs to be said about the person’s motivations."
"During these formative years of the Web, web pages could only be static, lacking the capability for dynamic behavior after the page was loaded in the browser. There was a desire in the flourishing web development scene to remove this limitation, so in 1995, Netscape decided to add a scripting language to Navigator. They pursued two routes to achieve this: collaborating with Sun Microsystems to embed the Java programming language, while also hiring Brendan Eich to embed the Scheme language."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript
I think you're confusing the reasons behind the initial intent of JS versus what it has evolved into almost 30 years later.
Imagine a world where Java integrated into the web was just as standard as JavaScript is now.
we were really close.... I remember lots of placeholders for where Java applets were meant to be
And it was better. Frankly, http was a mistake, humanity would be healthier and happier if we stopped at gopher.
I love Brave, use it daily, and this article didn't convince me at all. Vaguely motioning at the founder's ancient political donations or the optional crypto features, doesn't make a strong case.
2008 is not ancient. Nor is same-sex marriage some minor technical legal point.
Nor has he repented.
That's the important point for me.
People can change after 20 years. But he prefers to double-down instead.
So? He’s the CEO of a company that already gets no money from me.
Online forums pick the weirdest hills to die on sometimes. You’ve probably used hundreds of products today alone made by companies whose CEOs are worse dickwads than Eich. But this gave you a chance to feel superior online so you had to take it lmao
As a gay Californian, I took prop 8 personally. I spurn its supporters as I would spurn a rabid dog.
Chromium should be enough of a reason to get rid of it.
You see, when someone is known to make bad choices it makes sense to approach what they do with apprehension. This guy not only has a history of bad choices, he's also the CEO.
You're free to do as you like of course, but I'd say it's hardly fair to say the article is unconvincing.
Depends. As long as he doesn't rub it in my face by putting it into the browser, I don't care much. So I understand people who are pissed off because crypto is being rubbed in your face with Brave. But since I can disable that (and disabling it syncs to my other devices), I am also fine with that.
In return I get a browser where I like the sync model, with integrated Tor private browsing mode, and which is based on Chromium (which has sadly still the best dev tools, IMO).
Even MS Edge has some nice features and I used it for a while (I very much like that you can specify in which browser profile you want to open external links in). But they started to put more and more of their Microsoft bullshit into it with each version trying to sell me on all the different fucked up services they offer. Saying "no" once or twice: no problem. Saying "no" every fucking time they update the browser: fuck off.
Given their crypto functionality uses a third party which has been found to skirt the legal system I'd be a lot more concerned about this integration even if I don't intend to use it.
Keep in mind the stuff you read about is only what has been surfaced so far. Who knows what skeletons are still hiding?
Personally, I don't see any point risking it when there are perfectly viable alternatives such as Firefox. Granted the same guy infected Mozilla, but they stood up and ousted him so credit where credit is due.
Go and have a look? https://github.com/brave/brave-browser
My argument is that Brave is a Chromium browser with questionable business goals, but it is also the most private and secure, open-source, mainstream* Chromium browser. These keywords cannot be said about Vivaldi, Ungoogled Chromium and many other projects unfortunately.
That said, I primarily use Vivaldi because of its customizability and added features, something Firefox seems to reduce with every new version.
Being open-source doesn't automatically make you secure or reputable. Especially considering the open-source ecosystem in particular is a big target for exploitation right now. And auditing a software project of this size by its source code alone is no small feat.
"Mainstream chromium browser" is doing most if not all the heavy lifting there. Fair enough if that's what you're after, but mixing "private and secure, open-source" in feels disingenuous.
Last time I played with either Vivaldi or Brave you had to literally monkey patch the source code in order to customize things further than what the extension SDK allowed you to. You could do the same thing with Firefox, except they make it slightly harder because much of the source code is shipped in archives.
That said it's been years, maybe this can now be done purely through the extension SDK? It'd be news to me.
They offered a tenuous high yield lending program, that the SEC only jumped on after it collapsed from the FTX contagion. Litigation is pending afaik and depends on whether the program qualifies as a security, but the SEC has been losing ground in their optimistic claims of what they think qualifies as a security (outcome of Ripple lawsuit etc.).
Don't get me wrong, any such program is sketchy and I trust Gemini less for having offered it, but IMO it doesn't put them on the same tier as an exchange like FTX or make me think they would inject malware into software they have a connection with.
Yeah that's fair. I'd say it falls into the same boat as the argument against the CEO; they haven't done anything clearly malicious, but their bad decisions are enough to give you pause and reconsider.
Yeah this article is not very convincing
Brave is great! No ads, Tor built in, and can install Chrome extensions. I don't use their crypto wallet and it's never bothered me
Ad will be injected soon. Tor is not built in.
Source? I've used Tor with Brave
You've used onion links. Brave implemented unsecured onion protocol in thier Chromium browser.
Anything using Firefox as a base can run onion links with a simple add on because Tor is just Firefox. Vivaldi comes with onion support right out of the box, doesn't support hate and is malware free.
I use brave and think it's the best browser available, so I'm not arguing against it or anything, but technically it just supports use of the onion protocol, it does not provide the same full suite of protections that the tor browser does
As Brave says themselves:
https://brave.com/tor-tabs-beta/
The moment my cryptofan buddy started talking up brave, I knew it was time to uninstall.
It should've been as simple as stop using any chromium-based browser, but the CEO is also super bigoted, doing ad theft, and pushing crypto scams.
Even the crypto people don't generally like him. He tried for Bitcoin integration first and got booed away before starting an ICO - nothing about this needed another coin. Pay-to-surf is a Turing test; his idea doesn't even work in theory.
Stop telling me what to do
Don't stick your fork in the light socket!
Don't need to tell me twice. I've distrusted Brave since I saw their advertisement for it. It just feels like they sell the browser in same mood as pyramid schemers does their products.
But its just my gut feeling. Got no good reason why people should avoid the browser. And because the CEO is an ass isn't a good enough reason for most people.
Now it makes sense why some of the Fox News-parroting, right wing people I know use Brave. I had no idea about what the author mentioned about the browser, I just know it is based on Chromium which I will not use. Thus, I am on Firefox. And for many reasons, including those the author laid out, I'm happy I chose wisely.
if you useanything alphabet like chromium, then YOU are the problem.
I think it’s pretty unfair to put all of the blame on everyone who uses a chromium browser, considering that most people with a computer have no idea what the hell you are talking about.
Google Chrome is the single most popular web browser. Everyone’s work uses it, everyone’s school uses it, why would they possibly question it? And then they discover a new browser someone recommended - why would they look into “chromium” and what it all means? It’s just not reasonable to expect of nearly the entire population at this stage.
Take your anger out on the company and educate people. This is a problem of education, not selfishness (on the part of the user).
If you've found your way to the technology community on a federated lemmy instance, youre techy enough to take the blame for using chromium
Right, but if I take your perfectly reasonable and mature position then I can't prove to the web how edgy and superior I am!
Firefox ftw
Isn't this like the fourth time this has been posted? the conversation always goes around in circles with nobody changing their mind.
I never used brave. I wasn't interested in it since I learned it was chromium and all the crypto stuff.
I used to think Brave was good until I found out they are into crypto.
Nope Nope and Nope! Not using that thing again. Firefox is my friend now.
I don't use Brave, won't use Brave, and have my reasons for it.
::: spoiler But sometimes... Yes, Sometimes a programmer does succeed. But only sometimes; and this is usually because they have the clout, coding skills, chops and public reach to embarrass the fuck out of the Google PMs. This will never be you, unless you put an extraordinary amount of effort into becoming a very well known and respected contributor in the OSS space. If you already are a respected contributor in the OSS space, Congrats! You're still likely to be forced to fight a long and protracted battle against the Google nerds to get "Google-Hostile" code changes approved. :::
Your last point is laughable.
Yes Brave cannot make commits to Chromium, but it makes changes to their own repos (well, obviously) and can also accept/reject changes Google makes to Chromium.
In my opinion, Firefox is more of a slave to Google than Brave will ever be because they rely entirely on Google giving them money for the default search engine.
Is Brave's revenue model scammy? Maybe. But at least they aren't Google little bitch.
I don't know how you can follow web development and say Mozilla is a slave to Google. They go against nearly everything Google proposes. I get it that Mozilla makes money off of Google but in practice they are anything but slaves.
https://digdeeper.club/articles/mozilla.xhtml
I find nothing morally or ethically superior to Mozilla vs Google. Nothing. As for the browsers, I'll admit I have kept Firefox and ditched Chrome, as I suspect (cannot prove) the former might be a tad less invasive than the latter. I rarely use it now that I have Waterfox. That said I do use Comodo IceDragon, Epic Privacy Browser and Brave...I assume all based on Chromium/Chrome. I'd guess Brave is the most up-to-date browser for Windows 7. It works well when various sites flip the birdie to the other browsers, so I use it.
They can do whatever they want, they only do it because Google allows it.
By that logic, Brave is also completely against Google because they block their ads and go against them.
Article, brought to you by Google.
Brave is chromium.
Tf did you smoke today? I definitely want that stuff too!
Some counterpoints:
I like the idea of a system where users get a share of the revenue from the ad networks, which then can be used to support other content creators or businesses online. I think that if most of the web worked like this, we wouldn't have people being treated as eyeballs and we would still have the power to vote with our wallets to choose who is actually worth of our attention. Is there any other browser or company doing anything like that?
People keep talking about Firefox as if it's a paragon of virtue, but casually forget that they are only alive because they are completely dependent on Google to survive and are nothing more than "controlled opposition" nowadays. They also have done a ton user-hostile shit like sponsored links in the frontpage and completely crippled pocket, and let's not forget that current Mozilla execs are raking in millions while laying off people and disbanding key projects.
The crypto part keeps called a scam, but their system has been working perfectly fine and it has always been liquid enough for me at the exchanges. Is their BAT token needed? Certainly not, and I would be fine if the 3-8 euros worth of BAT I receive every month (depending on my mobile usage and on their success as an network) were sent to me directly via SEPA. But can anyone realistically say that there is any efficient worldwide way to distribute payouts? For every dollar you sent to someone via Patreon (or Ko-Fi, or any alternative), how much do they get to keep? With the Brave creators program, all of the $15/month that I send to the different people get to them.
All in all, I will stop using Brave in a heartbeat if there is anyone else providing any alternative with a slight chance to fight Surveillance Capitalism. None of the Chromium or Mozilla forks are doing that.
Brave's objective is to create a system that looks altruistic but they control it and take a ever increasing cut. Google started off the same way. I like the idea, but it's one that needs to be controlled by a not for profit or by the people. Giving that control to a for profit company is just repeating history.
Firefox isn't perfect, but my argument for choosing them or a fork of FF is to combat the market share of chromium based browsers. With google pushing for Web Environment Integrity (aka web DRM) using a different browser is one of the few good ways to protest.
I would also like to point out that popular open source projects often get contributions (both code and financial) from large corporations. Sometimes it's their main source of revenue. This isn't just a Mozilla problem. I wouldn't even say it is a problem. A problem would be if those contributions affect the project in a negative way.
Just like in most things these days our choices are limited to the shitty and the less shitty. Obviously where Brave and Firefox lands on that shitty spectrum will depend on your priorities, but for me at least Firefox is less shitty and far from perfect, but decent.
Edit: grammer
I don't see how? All they control is the ad network. Viewing the ads is opt-in. The ads they displayed are stored in device, and the code that selects which ads to show you is open source. The system for verifying ad views can be audited by any party. The token is on the blockchain so they can't manipulate and the contract does not have any special rules.
Assuming a world where Brave gets significant market share, the "worst" they could do would be to change the promised revenue share, but if they went to do that then users would lose the incentive to opt-in into the ads, and they would more likely lose revenue and open themselves for competition. (That's a risk that could run even if they did everything right, by the way)
That is not true. "Though Brave uses Chromium, Brave browsers do not (and will not) include WEI".
And I could make the argument this is in the case with Mozilla and Firefox. Mozilla being so dependent of Google's revenue means that they will never take any measure that could be seen by Google as a credible threat to their business. Ask yourself why Firefox never included an ad-blocker by default or has kept its mobile browser crippled for so long, or got rid of FirefoxOS...
Firefox never included an ad-blocker by default because an Ad-blocker kinda does the opposite of what the web-browser is supposed to do.
A web browser shall render the web page according to specification. Blocking content hinders this behavior and will even break some websites.
I think most people have forgotten that 15 years ago web browsers had barely started becoming standards compliant, with Opera being the first(?) to pass the Acid2 rendering test in 2006.
For reference: https://hyperborea.org/journal/2006/03/opera-passes-acid2/
A user installing an ad-blocker is perfectly fine, and hopefully the user makes an informed decision of advantages and the possible disadvantages that said ad-blocker might have.
And it’s also fine for fringe browsers like Brave to have a default ad-blocker, but there’s a big difference from that to just putting one in a product that’s used by millions, even though most users would likely be happy with the change.
Sorry, this is a terrible and senseless pontification. They could have always bundled an ad-blocker without having it enabled out-of-the-box.
Sure they could have.
But why would they?
Just because you, clearly, disagree with my opinion doesn’t make it terrible or senseless.
The strength of your conviction, or in which you convey it, isn’t a stand-in for rational arguments and logic based debate.
Because it would be one very interesting marketing point? For a browser that promotes itself as "focused on protecting users" and "not selling you out", having a built-in (even if not enabled by default) ad-blocker would make a lot more sense than adding integration with Pocket.
There is nothing logical about claiming "Firefox is a browser and browser need to render the page as is". First, even that were true it does not require them to enable the ad-block by default. Second, this definition is contrived and seems picked up just to give a rationalization that gives them some moral ground about their omission. We could just as easily say something like "a web browser is the user agent to access the www and as such it can always modify the web page in favor of the user". Why is that you choose to go for a definition that just happens to favor the business of their biggest source of revenue?
I dislike that you used quotes to misrepresent what they said by making them sound like a cartoon caveman. Poor form.
Also I remember why I and, presumably, a lot of others moved to chrome in the first place. Firefox started getting really bloated and adding a bunch of default features that people either didn't want or already used an extension for, the main selling point of firefox back then was extensions and customising your own browsing experience. Adding a first party ad blocker just seems like a waste of time when third party ones likely do a better job.
I get your point, though, I can definitely see why a default one might be a nice marketing note, but no need to be rude about someone disagreeing with your speculation.
Orion does everything you’re asking for and has none of the baggage. Also, Safari? I mean it sucks, but it literally does what you say you want.
Both are for MacOS (I'm on Linux) and neither are open source, which is also something important to me.
Also, where do any of these provide "a system where users get a share of the revenue from the ad networks"?
You didn’t say that was a requirement. You said
Both of those browsers accomplish that.
I despise argumentation-by-gotcha. if you need to be so pedantic, here is another qualifier to my choices: "these alternatives must not violate my basic freedoms, so anything closed source is out."
Dude it’s not argumentation by gotcha, whatever the fuck that is. All I have to go on is what you said. I don’t know anything else about you, your one comment is all the context I get. What you said and what you clearly meant seem to be two different things.
Look at the very first item in the list of counterpoints in "my one comment". Do Safari or Orion provide anything like that?
Your first item in the list literally says “I like the idea” not “this is a requirement”. Then later on you literally say “all in all”, indicating that the only thing that matters to you is what you are about to say next. Maybe you speak English as a second language, but I literally only have what you wrote to go on. And what you wrote was clear that all that mattered was the final sentence
I know what I wrote, and I wrote a list of counterpoints that work as reasons that I have to use Brave. I thought it was clear that one of the things that are important about is that it can give a way to pay to users and that no one else (that I know of) does it.
""All in all" was meant as way to summarize what I wrote above, not overrule it. I can't force you to interpret it in the way that I meant it, but in case you are in doubt: Safari or anything else from/for Apple is automatically disqualified.
Ok, it is now. Thank you for making it clear to me. I misunderstood
Ok, thank you for making that clear. May I ask why you're against Apple, but not Google? I consider Google a much higher risk at this point in time.
I'm very much against Google when their actions are taken to enforce their monopoly and that give no other choice to people. For all the flak that Chromium gets, it is still open source and the browsers that are built on it do not necessarily need to implement all the things exactly like Chrome. Brave has not adopted manifest v3 and already stated that will not implement WEI.
Anyway it’s clear you want crypto in your browser. You’ve made that very clear. Good luck finding a browser that has the features you want.
Careful, you are already inching into dishonest rhetoric. I explicitly said "The token is not needed and I would be fine if they could pay in cash". Are you also going to blame my language skills for that or can you simply agree that there is no existing better alternative for worldwide micropayments?
I think that must have been in another thread, because I see no mention of cash anywhere in this thread. I reread all your comments that I've been a part of and still don't see anything like that. I see you mentioning paying someone with patreon, but it seems like you are advocating for crypto in that third bullet, so maybe I'm misunderstanding what you wrote.
I wasn't blaming your language skills, all I was saying is that the only thing I have to go on here is what you've written in this thread. I'm not going into your profile and reading every comment you make so if you have something else in there that I need context on then it's not really a language issue, just a context one.
And yes you are completely right. There are no better alternatives for worldwide micropayments. I don't think crypto is the answer (in fact I've written quite a number of very very long comments over the years on all of the stuff that crypto claims to solve and doesn't), but it would be nice to have a solution to it.
I wrote:
SEPA (in case you don't know), is the money transfer network between banks in Europe.
this whole thing is terribly written... lol
how about you just use which ever shitty browser you like?
and i'll use firefox
I have stopped using Brave. Fuck those guys.
I just wish Firefox would update less frequently. It's way too often.
would you rather they leave security holes open exposing your computer to bad things?
You know there's another option besides not passing security holes to the users and then patching them later right?
you realize modern browsers have millions of lines and over a decade (or two!) of legacy code running that are under constant scrutiny by actors who spend all their time finding exploits in binary executables, right?
you realize your operating system also ships system updates on a regular, often daily basis, right?
How is any of that the user's problem
This is a common excuse for a lot of box checking nonsense and we both know it.
You could switch to the ESR branch, which gets feature updates much less frequently.
Thanks. A helpful response instead of a smarmy one. Refreshing.
Try Waterfox. It is pretty good.
Thanks.
There is nothing wrong with Brave. It's a great browser. I like the cryptocurrency aspect of it.
you like baked in ads, crypto, falsely using people to promote your browser... oof
The browser works well. I am very much into crytpocurrency. I think Bitcoin and Ethereum are the future of money.
You don't need to turn on ads in Brave. It blocks ads really well.
Crypto is a scam and you're being duped.
"Crytpto" is not a scam. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the future of money.
There are a lot of shitcoins out there, but don't let them fool you into staying poor. Fiat money is dying.
All money is fiat money. It has an agreed upon value outside of its intrinsic worth. If you want to get away from fiat money you have to go back to barter.
That's not true. Fiat money is money created and managed by a government. We need separation of State and Money.
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
So you prefer your currency to backed by the full faith and credit of... nobody? And you think you're not being duped. Hilarious.
It's backed by math. There is a fixed amount of Bitcoin. We have never had the concept of "digital scarcity" before. There are thousands of computers running independently that are following a consensus algorithm. it's an open, permisionless, trustless system that anyone on the planet can be part of.
You would rather have money controlled by corrupt governments? Hilarious.
That is part of the problem. As long as the economy grows, then Bitcoin is deflationary. This encourages people who have it to hoard it, rather than to move it around and drive the economy. It is almost perfectly designed to be used as a speculative investment rather than an actual day-to-day currency.
Having a fixed pool of money to represent your economy only makes sense if the total value of the economy will never change. This doesn't happen in the real world. Populations grow, new technologies add value, and poverty generally goes down. This is all fairly simple math.
It's a great place to store and hold wealth.
The concept you are describing is Gresham's Law. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/how-does-greshams-law-relate-to-bitcoin
Bitcoin is digital gold. Other cryptocurrencies will become used as well for basic payments. Eventually you will be able to pay cross chain so it wont even matter which coins you hold.
Edit: Using ChainLink: https://twitter.com/0xShmn/status/1696169139168059896
Amid all of this, nobody has managed to give me a reason why I would want to use crypto for transactions instead of my debit/credit card.
Crypto doesn’t come with any of the consumer protections I expect from my current payment methods. And in fact, it is designed to make some of them literally impossible (I.e. chargebacks). This might be appealing to sellers, but financial transactions are a buyers market. Sellers hate dealing with PayPal, but they put up with it because consumers trust PayPal and demand to use it.
So right now, crypto has these problems:
It’s been over a decade and blockchains are still a neat technology without a useful practical application.
No, it's backed by the power grid. Shut off the power, and you have nothing.
Also trying to create scarcity in a realm where none actually exists shows how greedy and scammy it is.
It's worse than any other fiat currency. There's literally nothing behind it.
Ah, I see, you think that because you can mint Schmecklebux or whatever and use it as a medium of exchange, you're somehow exempt from the laws of whatever country you're in when the trade goes down? Tell me, does your flag have a fringe on it?
Why do you assume I think I'm exempt from laws? I paid over $300,000 usd in taxes last year! I'm not using crypto to break laws, I'm using to to become wealthy.
Then how are you free from "corrupt governments"? You're still paying taxes on income and on property, so even if you acquired property with funny money the government is still getting its cut. And if the government felt like crypto was getting out of hands it would apply further laws to it or outlaw it.
Free in the sense that the place I store my wealth can't be confiscated (e.g. Cypress, Greece, etc...) or it's value inflated away by money printing.
Bitcoin is peer-to-peer digital cash. Governments can't ban it, that's why they are regulating it and accepting it as a thing.
Why do you think they can't ban it? If they can regulate it they can ban it. Use of an illicit currency would be a financial crime that they would investigate like any other.
ipv4 addresses. Also bitcoin is the worst example here, as it's just an asset. It's not bearable as real money, you can't trust its always changing value. It's also a victim of constant market manipulation. XMR on the other hand is a relatively stable currency.
Bitcoin is also a privacy and ecological nightmare.
In general it's also really fun that you can lose all your money without doing anything wrong.
yeah, but we have ipv6 now. ipv4 was never designed to be a scarce asset, and it's managed by a centralized authority.
XMR is one of the best cryptocurrencies. Big fan of privacy!
I've been holding bitcoin since 2011. Haven't had any instances of "losing all my money without doing anything wrong".
But that's digital scarcity, even if not designed like that.
You didn't lose anything because it's completely random. There are big pools just randomly generating wallets to see if they get a used one. And they had multiple hits.
Even when not talking about people not good with computers, people mess up backups and forget passwords. They shouldn't lose their belongings just because of that.
I think crypto could have its place as the cash of the internet. No one can watch your transaction, but if the other person takes your money and runs you are shit outta luck. No way to revert transactions, perfect for money laundering, but also anonymous, which can be a plus.
But all this makes it completely unsuitable in everyday use.
Also: yes, there is a fixed amount of Bitcoin. But you know what governments all over the world did when Inflation was sky high? Change the interest rates to change the amount of money that goes into the economy to make everyday items affordable again.
And for Bitcoin in particular, if everyone actually uses it as intended the artificial limit of the transaction rate would only allow you to perform one transaction every two yearsor something like that.
you should read "what is money" by mitchel innes. he shows very well that pretty much any money ever has been fiat money
Fiat money via WIkipedia:
Doesn't have to come from a government. Crypto is three of these. The article even starts with "Fiat money is a type of currency that is not backed by a commodity, such as gold or silver." Nothing about government there either.
at this point we are just arguing over semantics.
The differences and implications are important, and it's hard to make a convincing argument if your base premise is incorrect.
Crypto is a dead end at best, a scam at worst. I mined for years and can’t believe I drank the koolaid tbh
“What if Chromium had its own fake money?”
Money is a social construct that only has value because people agree it has value. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the best forms of money humans have ever invented. Once we have privacy at the base layer, fiat money is dead.
Ha. Hu ha ha. Ha. Hahaha.
Money has value because it is an efficient medium to facilitate trade. Specific forms of money have value because of what backs it and it acts as a medium for trade. And yeah I'm sure what society really values will at some point be a money that limits the ability to deal with economic crises. Or that slowly disappears, because privacy Bob didn't believe in banks but his SSD failed, or because Crypto Karen forgot her password. Or a hacker loots an exchange.
I mean, it's not like those are fundamental problems that could bring an economy to it's knees right? But hey, at least the money has privacy (it won't) and we don't have to worry about inflation (deflation on the other hand...).
Cryptocurrency is the most efficient money we have. It doesn't require any middle man bankers. Sure, hackers can hack and loot exchanges, but right now we have the government looting us with inflation.
The problems you mentioned are being worked on. There are ways to backup and restore your wallet that will become easy.
The global economy doesn't need to only rely on Bitcoin, so the argument that we have to worry about deflation is just wrong.
Definitely the best form ever made, no funky things going on with it, at all.... (/s)
This is the wild west of innovation. Scammers like money, so of course they will be attracted to cyrptocurrency. They are also very attracted to fiat currency.
All of the references on that page have to do with random NFT projects and shitcoins.
You should try to separate the concept of "Crypto" from the concept of base layer blockchain protocols that actually have value.
There is plenty wrong with Brave, the business.
Brave, the browser, is very useful in a practical sense. It has some nice features out of the box, and if you disable the naughty out of the box features it's pretty decent. However, you have to trust that each update from the developer is good, and past experience raises very serious questions with this particular business.
Maybe you might be seeing some returns from the cryptocurrency. My undestanding is that users have lost far more than they've gained - and that's before you actually look into the true value of what users are sacrificing in exchange for their tokens. Meanwhile, Brave are pulling a steady revenue making money from their users, milking them just so.
Pwrsonally I don't use Brave due to it being chromium, outside of that itis a good browser. If they were a firefox fork I would absolutely use them.
I love firefox. It's my main browser for everything. When I need a chrome based browser for testing things, Brave is my go to browser.
Yepp, I started just using vanilla chromium though instead, as that offers a barebones option to guarantee I don't need to mess around to test something works.
Brave has built in ad-blocking that is good to test against. One of our tools wasn't able to submit new issues to jira because atlassian.net was being blocked by the browser.
Im just waiting for Firefox mobile to add back support for all add-ons.
FireFox Beta and Nightly, and forks like Fennec and Mull from F-Droid support all add-ons.
https://www.androidpolice.com/firefox-beta-107-android-install-any-browser-add-on/
Mull supports add-ons. Also has a companion to replace the system browser Android System Webview, called Mulch.
I use Brave as a secondary browser for PWAs on the desktop. I wish Firefox would support it again.
what do you need PWA support for? any clue why Mozilla reduced/removed support?
There is a bugzilla entry that states the removal was due to too little user benefit for the development effort required. And since I don't necessarily need this feature, I can understand they directed the resources to where they are needed more. Nevertheless, it would be nice to have.
The way I use it is primarily for applications that produce audio output, so I get appropriately named per-app volume sliders in pulseaudio/pipewire and not just a bunch of audio streams titled “Firefox”.
Thank you for the excellent answers to both of my questions! I understand your earlier comment perfectly now 👌
They dropped it during or right after (can't remember for sure) their massive layoffs where they fired like half of their best employees for no reason, that's also when Servo died! :(
STOP USING JAVACRIPT
Here’s my current problem: I use Firefox mainly, but I need a chromium browser for work occasionally. I feel like brave is better than chrome proper right? But the CEO is also terrible. Is there something I can use that’s chromium based (occasional usage) that is at least “the least bad” option?
If you need chromium, your best option is probably ungoogled-chromium which is basically just bare bones chrome with as much telemetry and tracking taken out as possible.
don't forget the absence of easy to install addons! such a delight!
Yeah it takes a few extra steps to get extensions/chrome store stuff like that. Probably not the best option if you’re just trying to slap it on a work computer in 5 mins.
That's where Firefox comes in!
True that’s what I use the vast majority of the time, but the OP specifically needed something chromium based.
What, you don't like to install the Web Store through a separate extension crx download, mess around in the settings, and enable dev mode? Wait til you hear what you have to do to get DRM working (Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, etc). Hint: It's a separate zipped download of Widevine that you have to extract deep in the AppData folder, assuming you're on Windows.
Use one of the "clean" versions of Chromium (not Chrome) from Woolyss.com
If you want updates to be handled automatically, you can use ChrLauncher
EDIT: I guess you can't use the latter on OSX.
Ungoogled Chromium
While I agree with this, it's kind of a pain in the ass if you use extensions. You have to roundabout install the Web Store through a crx download, tinkering in the settings and enabling dev mode, then use that extension to install other extensions. And may the cosmos grant you mercy if you need to use DRM for Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, etc, and have to download the Widevine DRM stuff separately and unzip it deep in the AppData folder.
It's not impossible, but I guess I'm just saying that this probably isn't going to be the answer for the everyday, average person.
OC said for occasional use, I do agree that it's difficult to get it set up
Vivaldi seems to be one of the least bad options.
Vivaldi is proprietary, which makes security and privacy virtually impossible to guarantee
If you’re on Mac I would suggest Arc browser
Safari might be worth a try
Cromite was suggested to me and it seems to work well: https://github.com/uazo/cromite
I use brave because it doesn't apply chrome or edge group policies. If someone can tell me a better chromium based Browser (or firefox based) that does this, I'm all ears...
From another user:
Also Mull for Android, with Mulch for Android System Webview.
I use Brave as a secondary browser mostly for government websites because sometimes my firefox privacy settings breaks them and since many of them are poorly designed a technical issue over your account may result in hours on the phone to resolve.
Why not use chromium or one of the many other chrome forks? What about Brave works better?
Because it works, has okay configurations out of the box, and I just don't really care enough about the points mentioned in this article to make the switch. I only use it for cases where I don't expect privacy like government websites. As soon as you open an account there they got all your info anyway.
Name an alternative browser that has the same level of ability to block trackers built in.
LibreWolf.
That was easy.
why does it need to be built in? What's wrong with downloading one extension and being set afterwards?
Okay, so name an extension that will provide the same level of tracker blocking as Brave does.
mullvad browser?
I currently use brave on iOS to block YouTube ads. Is there any other option right now? I’d be willing to switch.
The best solution on iOS is Yattee. You can add Piped or Invidious instances as locations and stream ad-free YouTube from there. Another solution that doesn't involve Piped and Invidious is AdGuard. Open a YouTube link in Safari, hit actions, then hit Block YouTube Ads (by AdGuard).
Hey, thanks for the link/suggestion for Yattee! Never knew something like this existed for iOS.
If you don’t mind sideloading and refreshing the app from your PC every 7 days, I recommend (and use) uYou+ as a sideloaded app. It has PiP capabilities w/o needing premium, along with a built-in video downloader, sponsorblock, and adblock.
Link: https://github.com/qnblackcat/uYouPlus
Firefox + ublock origin.
I just clicked through a few long youtube videos without hitting any ads.
edit: my apologies, I missed your iOS problem.
They said iOS. There's no extension support in iOS Firefox.
It’s only a matter of time until Eich sells all of Brave’s users down the river.
I'm pretty sure I've read this news a couple of times now the past week or weeks?
mullvad browser is a great choice
we need a list of apps that incorporates chromium, otherwise i put sketchy apps in the app freezer to avoid them running in the background
Steam is a huge one.
Apparently we need separate lists for pc and android. In android u could freeze apps, idk what could be the equivalent for it on pc(linux, win,..)
Can someone please fork brave?
Which feature do you want that isn't already in better, Firefox-based browsers?
Not crashing my computer after using it for a few minutes would be nice.
What the hell kind of rickety rig are you running?
When visiting the govt. Website, it says you're using unsupported browser and some feature won't work but when I use brave, I dont get that message.
sane tab management and behavior on mobile versions along with proper syncing is apparently too huge of a hurdle to handle for the devs. these two are pretty much the only reason why i still use brave and not firefox
Lol seriously? I am using firefox from past 5, -8 years and never crashed once.
What do you think about Torch Browser? Falkon? Dot browser?
Torch Browser is not open source, and it still is based on chromium. It's the worst browser combination possible.
Falkon is pretty cool! I prefer using qutebrowser if it's gonna use QtWebEngine anyway. It is slower and less featureful than the main browsers, though. If you don't mind it, I'd say go for it!
I didn't know about Dot Browser, but it looks... unfinished? It's based on Firefox, so that's cool. But it seems someone would be better off just using something like LibreWolf (or Tor if you actually want some privacy).
This is madness. How does this keep getting upvoted when the article has nothing to do with the actual code integrity and functionality of this browser.
At least it's open source, if there is something shady point it out in the code.
I'm personally like to stop using Brave, and I will, however while LibreWolf will be what I'll switch to on desktop, I'm not sure what I would want to switch to on my Android phone. I see that LibreWolf doesn't have an Android version (and potentially never will; fine, developers will do whatever they want). I've heard about IceRaven, however, I'm not sure how good it is. Also would like an actually privacy focused search engine, but I think LibreWolf might have a good list on that front.
(Note: please do suggest in replies, not sure I made that apparent)
Check out Mull or Mulch. Mull is a more private Firefox and Mulch is a more private Chrome. They are made by the DivestOS team, they also make DivestOS which is a lot more private Android version that supports a huge number of phones. That's how I'm also runing the latest version of Android 13 with the latest security updates on a phone from 2019. And there are much older devices supported.
Since I'll be moving to LibreWolf and it's based on FF, I'll check out Mull. Unfortunately I don't see my device on DivestOS's site (it's a Motorola Moto G Power 2022), but it's also quite new so it's understandable. I'll switch it to Lineage or something like that whenever it gets support for it but I'm fine with a degoogled Android for now.
Are there any brave forks that throw out all the bullshit? Bold browser seems pretty dead
@whou wish someone else would build an easy to set up and use chromium browser for windows that blocks telemetry and isn't run by an asshole... something i could get friends and family to use.