Brendan Eich's donation to Proposition 8, opposing same-sex marriage.
Backlash and resignation from Mozilla CEO position due to controversy.
Creation of Brave Software and fundraising despite backlash.
Plan to replace ads with Brave's own ad network faced legal challenges.
Introduction of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) cryptocurrency for ad incentives.
Privacy scandal involving affiliate codes added to URLs for revenue collection.
Please at least copypaste the content when you post...
I don't usually judge by looks, but you can just tell that Brendan Eich is an insecure fragile person with many mental problems.
I don't know what's worse: The whole anti same-sex marriage deal or inventing Javascript.
Probably Javascript..
Oh he's THAT guy?!
Fuck that guy. He basically is the reason popups was so damn widespread.
JavaScript is also the whole reason that the web is interactive. Without JavaScript the web would be mostly just static pages without any client side dynamic behavior.
Brendan Eich is a tool, but JavaScript is a useful tool, at least.
I think I'd prefer a mostly static web. Guess I should finally check out ublock origins medium mode or whatever its called.
Forms are interactive and dont require me to run your shitty code and execute it on my computer.
Keep that shit running on your server. I dont need another vector for malicious code to run on my machine
If there's no JavaScript, there will be another language developed to fill that void. We don't know whether it'll be better or not. But with TypeScript, working with JavaScript has been quite painless for me.
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
Say no more fam.
Truly no atonement can be sufficient for a sin that grave
TL;DR: The article claims that the Brave web browser is bad and should not be used.
The author points out that Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, co-founder (and ex-CEO) of Mozilla, and founder of Brave, donated 1,000 USD in support of a proposition to ban same-sex marriage. Along with making the claim that Brave's goal is not to act as an ad-blocker, but instead to build and grow their own advertisement network, and he also believes that the network has several flaws:
Brave Ads paysout in a form of cryptocurrency, called BAT (🦇).
As BAT is a cryptocurrency there is high volatility.
BAT can not be redeemed for fiat ("actual") money directly from within the Brave Wallet.
The author also believes that "it [the network] has largely failed" but that it "has generated a lot of revenue for Brave," via the ICO (Initial Coin Offering; IPO for crypto).
In addition to these key points the author also:
Claims that Brave prompted FTX, before the scandal.
Cites the The Brave Marketer Podcast where ex-CMO of Crypto.com Steven Kalifowitz shares an ambitious goal of being a "'brand like Coke and Netflix.'" The author then mentions that:
In 2023 there was a report from The Financial Times that Crypto.com traded against their customers.
In 2022 the company try to hide the severity of its layoffs.
Mentions Brave's integration with Gemini, and how the crypto exchange is under investigation for lying about FDIC insurance.
Mentions a partnership with the the 3XP Web3 Gaming Expo where they sponsored the Esports Arena and rewarded contestants with the BAT token.
Claims that Brave added affiliate/referral codes to URLs, such as "binance.us."
Finally, the author lists Firefox and Vivaldi as alternatives to Brave, and ends the article with "Brave Browser is irredeemable, and you should not use it under any circumstances."
I am human, please let me know if I've made a mistake.
Edit: Fixed bat emoji and typo.
The author points out that Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, co-founder (and ex-CEO) of Mozilla, and founder of Brave, donated 1,000 USD in support of a proposition to ban same-sex marriage.
My impression was Brave got started after he got hoofed out of Mozilla or left on his own accord after the backlash for showing his ass to be a homophobe. Redditor types were of course very angry about this blatant disregard for frozen peaches and jumped onto his new venture in droves
afaik he was pushed out of mozilla over the same 1k dono
As BAT is a cryptocurrency there is high volatilability (I don’t know if I spelled that right :/ ).
Volatility :-)
But Volatilability sounds cool
Very volatibable word
Agree :-D
Thank you, I fixed it!
These guys tried to get a previous employer of mine to advertise with them. It works great if your entire audience is tech bros. Ours was not.
If he's bad, shouldn't everything he touches be bad? Why web site that uses JavaScript should be just as bad. Any browser based on Mozilla should be bad. Why is it just Brave that's bad for what he did in 2008?
As I understand it, the argument isn't so much "if you use a thing made by a bad person, you are a bad person by association" but rather that using a commercial product made by a bad person, who spends his money on bad causes, is directly helping him spend more money on said bad causes. Since he has never apologized or shown any indication that he has become a better person, not wanting to monetarily support him is a valid reason to not use his product.
It's really hard for the creator of Javascript to make money off of javascript, and it's unlikely he has any financial interest in the Mozilla corporation anymore since they're a nonprofit and thus don't have share holders. However, he directly profits off of Brave.
Because it is cool thing to cancel everything in 2023.
No. Couldn't care less what the founder did or didn't do.
We need as many non-Google browsers as possible. The problem with Brave is that it is a chromium browser.
I'd say being chromium makes it a Google browser...
I mean, does that mean Edge is a Google browser, too?
Chromium is open-source. Even if Google adds something malicious to the source code (such as that Web Environment Integrity stuff), it can be removed by someone else creating their own browser based on Chromium. That's the very definition of open-source.
Related side-note: Lemmy itself is open-source, too. If the creator of Lemmy added something to the software that someone running an instance didn't agree with, they could simply fork the original software and remove the unwanted addition. Some people do disagree with that person's views, and yet they're still here. Many of them joined .world and other instances instead of .ml because they disagreed with the creator's views.
While Google, the creator of Chromium, isn't a good company for the consumer, I personally think Chromium itself isn't a bad idea. It's just that Google and some other companies modify it for their own means, and those means aren't always consumer-friendly.
All that to say: while the company that originally created Chromium is bad, the software isn't. And while some of the companies and people using that software are bad (including Brave, IMO), some of them are looking out for their users' interests, and those forks of Chromium are generally ok. (You should still actually do research and not pick a fork because the company developing it said it's okay, though. Take a look at what others are saying and verify it.)
I mean, does that mean Edge is a Google browser, too?
Yes.
All that to say: while the company that originally created Chromium is bad, the software isn’t.
Only to the extent that websites are built for chromium compatibility, due to its monopoly on the internet. It's great software because it's the most popular software so all other smaller providers that serve that software have to focus their resources into ensuring compatibility. Chromium(Blink) itself is pretty mid, and definitely equal to WebKit or Gecko, not better or significantly worse.
Brave works for what I need it to do. I don't like lending credence to bigots(secret or otherwise) but if someone is gonna say "don't use this browser" they need to list a replacement that has the same functionality. And it can't be "just use duckduckgo" because we all fucking have that on our phones and none of us can use it as our primary browser and we all know exactly why. 😒
What's wrong with Firefox?
Nothing. I use it all the time.
A little slower, but nothing. Mullvad is pretty good. A mix of Firefox and Tor.
For me personally, the one and only reason I don't main Firefox is because it doesn't work with Chromecast and I use that a LOT. I would switch to FF tomorrow if I could easily and reliably cast with it.
getting addicted to proprietary software is a terrible idea. this is just the first of many losses you will have if you stick to that tech
As far as I'm aware, the ddg browser collects data and they sell it to Microsoft.
The search by itself is fine though.
Do you have a source for the claim that DuckDuckGo browser is selling user data to Microsoft?
You might be referring to the time when the DuckDuckGo browser was blocking all known trackers except Microsoft trackers. After that information was made public and users complained, DuckDuckGo was able to renegotiate its agreement with Microsoft so that it can block their trackers.
Furthermore, DuckDuckGo now publish their blocklist on GitHub.
So this privacy issue has been rectified now. But even if it hadn’t, failing to block Microsoft trackers isn’t the same as collecting data and selling it to Microsoft.
But if you are aware of DDG browser selling data to Microsoft, please share a source.
Really?
I thought that used Bing search as backend but not that they sell your data
No, you have it right. That person is just conflating the controversy over their agreement with Microsoft as "ThEY're sELLiNg yOuR DaTa". 🙄
In fact. Mozilla rely more in Google. If i wasn't mistaken 90% of their money came from Google and they rely Google safebrowsing wherein it exposes your IP to Google
The fact is i don't care about these things. All it matters is that Brave uses Chromium, therefore I'll never touch it.
Had me in the first half not gonna lie. But yeah I agree with you.
plus they have Google Advert ID Permission in Android. Tell me who is more creep. Crypto-things can be disabled within a few clicks, While mozilla's trash can be disabled using a bunch of configuration in about:config
@whou Don't forget the time they made it possible to 'donate' to creators, but when creators weren't signed up with their program #Brave would just keep the donation. So users would think they have donated for example to Tom Scott, but in reality he never received anything. Overall just a scummy company.
after 90 days, they just send the BAT back to you. They don't keep it.
He could receive it, if he signed up though, right?
[Eich] 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.
Even though I do not agree at all with the donation and support - out of the things that influence me into choosing a browser, 15 year-old private donations of appointed CEOs is pretty low on that list.
And the whole BAT thing is opt-in and they're very transparent about it. I don't get why people get so triggered when the C word - crypto - is involved.
I think the only relevant criticism I see is adding affiliate codes to urls (until they were caught).
The author also forgot the polemic of adding twitter and facebook trackers to the whitelist, and impersonating people in their ads. There are some interesting criticisms against brave, I don't understand why their detractors are obsessed with the CEO and crypto.
Exactly. They do a lot of things I don't like, which is why I don't use them. However, I do recommend them over Chrome if someone isn't willing to use Firefox (or Safari on iOS with an ad blocking extension).
That said, the ad replacement thing was an interesting idea, and if it got better click-through rate while preventing sites from stealing PII, they probably could've cut a profit sharing deal and users would've been better off vs the status quo. They could also have a "premium" option where they pay a certain amount for no ads, and that amount gets split with websites who would normally serve ads.
There are some good ideas there, but unfortunately the good ideas don't seem to have really worked out as intended. I still think they're better than Chrome, but things can change.
But the data collection sounds like it's counter to its supposed goals. Multiple campaigns have been discussed that just make it believe they don't actually care about privacy considering all the ways they keep trying to do stuff is counter to that. Why stay? Tor Browser is available. Hell, Firefox itself is already able to take you pretty far and extensions can do the rest.
Why make the sacrifice of your personal data? Like, how many attempts at collecting personal data do you need to have occur before you realize it's always been their goal?
Of appointed CEOs who quit after 11 days to boot. But he was CTO prior.
But looks like he was largely ousted very fast with all the negative PR Mozilla was getting.
I would also imagine there are a lot of people that did not support same sex marriage back in 2008 that do now. I do not know the Eich personally, but it doesn't make sense to hold this stuff against people until we find out if they have or haven't changed their views.
15 years ago isn't that long ago - and there is a huge difference between "not supporting same sex marriage" and "donating against same sex marriage".
15 years is a long time. I know someone who did a complete 180 on their beliefs within a few years: from a conservative, homophobic, and religious pov to the exact opposite. I myself changed some political views I had 5 years ago.
I have no idea about Eich, but if I let this affect my choices of anything, frankly I won't do anything else in my life facing the millions of variables before me.
Sure, he donated $1000.
California voters approved prop 8 by a sizable majority. It was thrown out by the courts. That kind of dilutes my “oh no” over one persons donation. We’d need to boycott a good portion of Californians.
Today I think it’s relevant to point out he was an outspoken against masks, shutdowns, and was calling Fauci a liar. Basically everyone’s conservative family member in 2020.
I mean… I've been using Firefox since Google silo'd all log-ins together.
On the other hand, search.brave.com is freaking incredible. It's so much better than Google, Bing or DDG at this point, it's shocking. I switched a couple weeks ago and it's surreal to see so many usable, useful results on the first page again.
Tried it for a couple of weeks and went back to DDG. It's way better for programming and other geekie stuff imo.
You mean DDG is better for programming or Brave Search is? I'm finding a lot more useful stuff via Brave for whatever reason currently.
(I guess results may vary though if that's not the case for you!)
I meant that DDG is better for programming.
Try Startpage
And you can use addons to filter out bad results, if that helps.
Brave search definitely is potent.
Cool! I didn't think of that, but it would do the trick, you're right.
(I was hoping for it to be in the popup list of search engines, I guess.)
Please stop reposting this crap every fucking day. What's up with you and this exact article in particular anyway? Are you getting paid or something?
well, I just came across the article on Mastodon and wanted to share it. I mean jeez, imagine sharing and wanting to discuss interesting topics just for fun?
and I posted the article on !technology@beehaw.org and then cross-posted it here, because I thought it was also an interesting community to discuss it. I saw a bunch of people cross-posting it elsewhere, so if you're seeing it a bunch of times then it's probably because those communities probably also have something in common with the article. I personally think every community have different people and different discussions to have, so I don't see it as particularly bad.
I don't get it either. It's in the front in 5 different subs
Fine, but, like, don't recommend Vivaldi.
Also, if you disable the Brave ads, you're not really supporting them, while still getting the benefits.
— Sent from Librewolf
why not vivaldi? i know it’s not open-source, but is there any other reason?
Vivaldi is chromium
oh right, of course! for some reason i was only thinking of which chromium-based alternatives we could recommend.
For something as important as your web browser, that's a pretty good reason to me.
reasonable!
You shouldn't use Brave simply because it's heavily infected with crypto shit and tries to monitorize your web browsing time by default. Not everything you do has to be a side hustle.
Sure you can "switch it off" but then why not use something else in the first place that's focus isn't trying to make money out of you. If Brave ever gained any decent market share the web would be an even shitter place than what Google is suggesting at the moment.
did not know about the founder’s past, cheers for this. whenever i’m forced to open a chromium browser for something from now on, i’ll be using vivaldi.
Is Vivaldi good? I've heard it's like the old Opera, which I used to love (I used Opera from 2003 until around when they switched to Chromium, 2012ish)
I used to use it and I liked it quite a bit, I even replaced my gmail accounts with vivaldi.net accounts, though I may migrate to proton sometime. I use Firefox exclusively but if I needed to use a chromium-based browser, that’s the one I’d use. I’m not a power user by any stretch so my opinion probably has less weight than those of others on here, but that’s my two cents anyway.
i like vivaldi a lot :) mostly because of its UI and extremely easy in-depth customization. in my opinion it is the greatest-looking web browser (if you don’t factor in all the css fiddling you can do in a text editor with firefox, of course. but even then i don’t recall seeing any custom firefox user style that looked better than vivaldi to me).
the reason why i switched away from vivaldi and back to firefox after ~2 years of straight usage was that vivaldi had a weird performance bug for me where if i had too many tabs open for too many days in a row (laptop, no shutdown), it would randomly start freezing and i’d have to restart it. but when it was running on a fresh start, it was amazing. also the more ethical choice of using a non-chromium browser was part of the reason
it would randomly start freezing and i’d have to restart it. but when it was running on a fresh start, it was amazing
Weird, that's the exact problem I had on my old desktop and have on my laptop with Firefox. Both were 8gigs of memory and I figured out that the freezing coincided with memory being depleted. My new desktop has, funnily enough, no problems with its 32gigs of memory. I need to purchase a new ram block for my laptop...
yeah I switched to Vivaldi from Firefox after a few years. was just sick of the incompatibility issues
To be honest the best chromium based browser I've used (when I'm forced to use a chromium based browser) is the Samsung internet one. It has a dark mode that actually works and protects my vampire eyes lol.
Never used brave because I heard all of the scammy ad network and crypto stuff years ago, immediately put me off it. Now learning that the creator probably hates me, it's just another reason not to touch it.
Unfortunately that Samsung flavour of chrome is hopekessly outdated. Always a few releases behind and shouldn't be used for security reasons.
It has the same dark mode plus much more. I'll leave you to reading through it yourself though.
I've tried it, looks cool, and using the flag "enable with selective inversion of non image elements" really helps eliminate all the issues with dark mode
I don't use it because if I had to pause to laugh at the self-seriousness every time I opened a browser, I would get even less work done than I do now
What a shitty fucking article.
Why is it shitty? TBH my biggest problem with Brave is their push for the crypto ad tokens. Any company pushing crypto shit instantly gets put on my shit list.
Brave is terrible. But while not entirely relevant, so is DuckDuckGo. These mfs have enough money to appear in superbowl commercials lol. How can anyone trust their privacy claims when their shit is in the US and I don’t believe they’ve been audited. I suppose it’s good to find alternative results, but for privacy? Come on
Fuck chromium and fuck Google
Never used it to begin with.
Well reading this had the opposite effect than intended. Now i just hate the author
Yup, half of it is just "I don't like this person, so no one should use anything they have anything to do with".
The points about the browser itself are clearly just afterthoughts.
I mean, regardless of whether it sounds like afterthoughts, it kind of sounds like the ulterior motive for Brave is entirely counter to its purported intent. Why ignore it just because of something unrelated? Sounds like the exact same issue people complain about the author.
I'm not ignoring those things, there's a reason why I use firefox.
I'm just criticizing the article.
You were agreeing with someone that said it led them to the opposite conclusion of the point the author wanted to make. That would require you to ignore those points or at the very least admit privacy isn't important.
When you said "yup" to a claim, it means you agree with the claim. You didn't simply only say you disliked the author's writing style and felt their focus wasn't properly targeted on the correct points.
Touché, I can see how this leads to misunderstanding.
The purpose is to make a for-profit browser that respects privacy. They've tried a number of different approaches, and they'll probably try more.
I especially like the idea of replacing ads with non-tracking ads with better clickthrough rate (i.e. higher profit), and share the profit with the sites. Ad recommendations could be made from local data that never gets sent to a server. That's privacy respecting and profitable, but unfortunately they didn't get enough deals made with content creators to be effective.
And what a CEO chooses to do with their money is none of my business, what is my business is the quality of the product that company makes, as well as the quality of the work environment that product is made in. I don't like the direction Brave has gone, so I don't use it. And now that I know iOS Safari has ad blocking extensions, I'll no longer be recommending Brave to anyone (I recommend Firefox everywhere except iOS, and I recommend Safari with ad block there).
You can't respect privacy by violating it. Just because you're ok with the amount of violation doesn't make it ok.
I'm fine with blocking things on someone else's site. I'm not ok with injecting things on someone else's site.
What are you talking about? If the logic and metadata is completely stored in your machine, there's no privacy violation. The ads themselves don't need any PII unless you opt in to some kind of profit sharing system (e.g. you get paid to see ads), and that can simply be handled by the browser itself (i.e. a cryptographic signature that can only be verified client side).
As for not liking injecting stuff into a browser, what about browser extensions show you if another site has a better deal on something? Or accessibility tools that change the styling of the site? Or password managers that inject auto fill buttons? Or addons like RES that add features like previously viewed posts or times you've upvoted a user?
Injecting ads is the same idea, you're removing features you dislike and adding features you do. The unethical part is profiting from sites, which is why those profits should be shared with those sites. I think there's a good case to be made that sites, browsers, and users can all make more with this method and without violating user privacy (the advertiser doesn't need to know anything about you specifically, it just needs to know that the browser can place ads effectively). All data can stay on your local machine and never sent to the browser vendor, website owners, or advertisers.
If Brave got that to work, I'd consider it. I'd prefer it to be an addon to my browser instead. Here's how I'd prefer it to work:
I install an open source, auditable extension that tracks my browsing history locally to serve relevant ads
Sites sign up for the program and provide a tracking key that only tracks that website (unique per site, not part session/user)
Once I hit some amount of ad views on a given site in a given day, ads go away; my browser is 100% in control of that
Profits go to an open, auditable service that distributes a portion to sites, the addon vendor, and users who opt in (with anymore crypto wallets); if users opt out, those profits are donated to a charity instead (again, publicly auditable)
This way, the user:s privacy isn't violated, sites make a profit, the addon maintainer gets paid (ideally a nonprofit org), and users can get some pocket change as well. Everything would be auditable, so nobody can pull a fast one without getting caught.
You let me know when you find a system that analyzes your data locally and chooses an ad to show without letting anyone know anything. Even just delivering the ad is violating a level of privacy because they know it targets you at the very least. But beyond that, targeted ads require statistics to build to know how to target. You need data to build a model. You can't build that without sharing.
I think Mozilla's Pocket does this. Here's an article about it. It's light on details, so maybe there are better sources out there.
I mean, there's a difference between targeted ads which rely on a lot more data versus sponsored content which honestly, I didn't even know what based on preferences. It is fairly hodgepodge and I figured everyone saw the same thing. It never really interested me so I turned it off.
It's light on details as to how much preferences really play into those sponsored articles. Which you can turn off.
But targeted ads that are worth money require a lot more of a model. Advertisers won't pay for potshot ads if they can get better targeting elsewhere. Advertising simply isn't a good model.
Browsers have access to all of your data and they don't need to guess based on cookies and whatnot if searches are from the same person. So naturally, a browser is the perfect place to mine personal data for advertising purposes. If the browser is open source, the treatment of ads can be audited to ensure no personal data is being leaked.
For example, if you frequently visit gaming related websites, then the browser will know to show you gaming related ads. Google would only be able to do that if you use their search engine or if enough of those sites opt in to sharing data with Google (e.g. amp links, Google Ad integration, etc). So Google's ads (or any other kind, for that matter) are by default less relevant because they have less information than something served by a browser.
The difference between doing it browser side vs server side is where privacy comes in. With server side (e.g. Google's method), your data is sent to Google and they can then do whatever they please with it (depending on jurisdiction and what laws apply). With browser side, your data stays on your machine, so it never needs to go to the browser vendor or advertisers, so it cannot get sold or used for anything outside of the browser. The only thing advertisers and browser vendors would know is how many times an ad was shown and how many times it was clicked on, and that could not be traced to you specifically unless you do something to opt in to that. That's it. No privacy violation.
So since browsers have access to more data than an advertising company would, they can be a lot more relevant. Browser vendors could pay users a bit to allow anonymous usage statistics to refine their model, but I don't think that's necessary.
Dude, this is a Firefox. Why tell us not use something what...95% of people here are not using in the first place?
EDIT: The crypto stuff is opt-in. You don’t have to use Brave Shields (in browser ad blocker). It can be turned off. Now you can use uBlock Origin or another ad blocker.
About the CEO, I can’t see nothing about his beliefs reflecting in his work. Looks like he kept them separated. I’m not for said beliefs.
EDIT 2: Also Brendan Eich is a co-founder of Mozilla. So if you're not going to use Brave because of him. How can you use Firefox?
Just ignore everything I said here. I misinterpreted stuff. My bad.
this is a Firefox
It's obvious that op meant that we are on r/Firefox, therefore there's no need to shill against brave.
Given what I had said about it, the interpretation made sense. I already apologized. There's no need to correct me after the author already did. It adds nothing but trying to be condescending.
Claiming it’s Firefox is a bit misleading. Claiming its suggesting it’s equivalent to saying don’t use Firefox is outright deceptive and/or downright ignorant.
I'm sorry but what?
Sorry, I thought you were saying it's based on Firefox. Just realized it was an attempt at the Wendy's meme.
I made the switch last month from Brave for years, back to firefox. Brave is easy more effective at blocking tablets and ads, even with ublock/adblock. You can install it and just start using a cleaner web, and it's really easy to customize gow much of an effect the sanitization is. I defended a lot of what Brave did in the early days, because what I was hearing from developers is that they were trying to monetize it in anyway possible that maintained the privacy of the user, and I understand that ethos.
It's the years and years of missteps that finally got to me. I started to feel like I had to keep up on what they were doing to make sure nothing slipped through, and that's not trust.
I still think they have the best ad blocking tech, it beats my pihole, it beats Firefox with extensions. It's fast, and it displays websites reliably.
But, we do need to consider the roads we pave and the tools we use. Brenden Eich has not apologized for his donation, but at the time he did write a blog post about supporting LGBT initiatives at Mozilla and he had support from people that he worked with. He resigned because at the time there was nothing you could do to assuage an internet hate mob but resign. There is information around stating that three board members left because of his appointment, but only one actually said that,
But, we do need to consider the roads we pave and the tools we use
This is the part that every "lol just turn off the crypto crap, no problem!" responses don't understand. There are short-term issues, and there are long-term issues. Disabling undesired stuff fixes the short-term issue. Letting Brave build up their market share, at the expense of user-first options, creates long-term problems.
fwiw, Brave ad blocking for me has been far less effective than using Ublock Origin on literally any other browser
Stop using it with honey mustard sauce! Stop using it with tangy sweet and sour sauce! Stop eating the new fiesta Brave salad! Stop enjoying Brave on the patio, in the car, or on the boat... wherever good times are had!
🎵 Pop a poppler in your mouth
When you come to Fishy Joe's
What they're made of is a mystery
Where they come from no one knows 🎵
These are pretty unconvincing reasons to tell people to stop using brave...
Stop respawning this post again and again.
Seriously.
Every so much time someone wakes up and decides to bash Brave, which is fair, but they always have leave out all the nuance
The best browsers are forked ones. Use librewolf,mullvad,ungoogled chromium,vanadium,mulch (android).
I've had my firefox settings/setup with multi-account containers, etc. dialed in for years. Never had any reason to change that. Librewolf is nice for people who don't already have existing & configured installations of firefox to have it basically configured by default.
Genuine question: I use brave currently. I really heavily on multiple profiles (work, side-business, personal) that are easy to switch between or have active all at the same time in separate windows.
I tried firefox, but in my experience, the method for changing “profiles” was unintuitive and cumbersome. Was I just doing it wrong, or does Firefox not have that same kind of feature?
I really wanna use Firefox, but that’s a deal-breaker.
use container tabs, not separate profiles. profiles are for installing separate sets of addons and the like.
That’s why I need the separate profiles. Some work add-ons I don’t care to have on personal, and vice versa. I like totally segmented preferences.
Edit: I get it now. It’s worth the overlapping add ons. This should do it.
I've never had a problem with them and I really like the Facebook container feature for when I have to use Messenger to contact friends
There are a few ways! I have separate Firefox profiles for everything.
The least effort way is to visit about:profiles, then you get a list of them all and can add/remove them. I have it bookmarked or pinned as a tab in all of my different profiles.
Second, but takes more effort is you can make desktop or start menu shortcuts to the profiles. In short (on windows at least) you copy the Firefox shortcut, edit it, then add -p "Profile Name".
There might be more to it? Maybe good to Google this one for a better description. But I literally have a start menu shortcut for all like 7 of mine, then it's just like launching a different application.
I use Brave as a second browser (mainly to separate different activities) and did not have any issues with it apart from dragging tabs between monitors (it creates an additional empty tab sometimes when doing this). Turned off all unnecessary stuff right when I first launched it and that's it. No bloat, no issues, just works. Didn't know about this CEO controversy but seeing as it was a long time ago, don't think it's a valid reason to not use Brave. And both logo and name are cool.
It's a solid option which we don't really have a lot of in open source space
mainly to separate different activities
Firefox has profiles AND container tabs for exactly this though.
I mean, there's simply just Firefox. Which is apparently not the basis for Brave. It does sound like Brave collects data so it still seems shady.
Edit: could have sworn brave was built on Firefox. It's not. It's chromium. Which in my opinion counts against it as I'd rather avoid a monopoly considering how much control Google has over chromium and the inherent biases Google has.
Brave is based on Chromium, not Firefox.
My bad. Not sure why I thought that. Still. Firefox is still a better alternative in my opinion.
You might have been thinking of Mullvad Browser, which is based on Firefox and came out somewhat recently. Other privacy-focused browsers based on Firefox include Librewolf and Tor browser.
Same here.
I use it for streaming because the ad block works on spotify and YouTube. I could never get spotify working on Firefox consistently.
I only use brave for iOS because it is the best there is
FYI every browser on iOS has to use webkit under the hood as per crapple's diktat, it's just a fork of safari like PC brave is a fork of chromium, eve Firefox on iOS uses webkit AFAIK
It’s the only one that blocks ads everywhere though
Honestly, I only use it for when a site will not work in FFX-based browsers
why not vivaldi?
Vivaldi is proprietary
Degoogled Chromium then? And try Epiphany & WebKit too
DGC is good
Vivaldi’s only proprietary part is the UI. Because it differentiates them from other chromium based browsers. Under the hood it’s open source.
it was a similar article that made me switch from Brave to Ungoogled Chromium a few weeks ago, as a backup browser for the handful of sites that don't work in Firefox.
Common folks you are supposed to use a Computer only to assist at your job.
If your going to use a chromium browser brave isn't the worst choice
I don't see any of this as legitimate reasons to stop using Brave.
yes the CEO donated $1k some 10 years ago to anti-LGBT stuff, and that's bad, but kinda small fries in the totality of factors.
ads. Firefox has ads and trackers just like Brave. You can disable them on either.
you can also disable crypto.
hijacking affiliate codes is unethical and should be stopped but don't actually affect me in any way.
What else ya got?
The "anti-LGBT stuff" is enough imo. It may be "small fries", but I'd rather not support someone (or their company) when they clearly don't support me.
hijacking affiliate codes is unethical and should be stopped but don't actually affect me in any way.
I mean, alright. But you could say "I don't care" about any infraction of freedom and/or trust.
I trust software to not modify my intent, any software that does so without asking can not be trusted in any way.
hijacking affiliate codes is unethical and should be stopped but don’t actually affect me in any way.
It does affect you because it would have meant that you couldn't claim cashback offers from sites like TopCashback and Rakuten, as the cashback site's affiliate code would have been replaced with Brave's.
Summary:
Please at least copypaste the content when you post...
I don't usually judge by looks, but you can just tell that Brendan Eich is an insecure fragile person with many mental problems.
I don't know what's worse: The whole anti same-sex marriage deal or inventing Javascript.
Probably Javascript..
Oh he's THAT guy?!
Fuck that guy. He basically is the reason popups was so damn widespread.
JavaScript is also the whole reason that the web is interactive. Without JavaScript the web would be mostly just static pages without any client side dynamic behavior.
Brendan Eich is a tool, but JavaScript is a useful tool, at least.
I think I'd prefer a mostly static web. Guess I should finally check out ublock origins medium mode or whatever its called.
Me too, gemini looks promising https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
Forms are interactive and dont require me to run your shitty code and execute it on my computer.
Keep that shit running on your server. I dont need another vector for malicious code to run on my machine
If there's no JavaScript, there will be another language developed to fill that void. We don't know whether it'll be better or not. But with TypeScript, working with JavaScript has been quite painless for me.
JavaScript?
Like, we use JavaScript everywhere.
I'm viewing this comment without JavaScript.
Heh. Made me smile.
Here, have an upvote! ;)
oh sorry! forgot about it adding a description. will do next time.
Say no more fam.
Truly no atonement can be sufficient for a sin that grave
TL;DR: The article claims that the Brave web browser is bad and should not be used.
The author points out that Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, co-founder (and ex-CEO) of Mozilla, and founder of Brave, donated 1,000 USD in support of a proposition to ban same-sex marriage. Along with making the claim that Brave's goal is not to act as an ad-blocker, but instead to build and grow their own advertisement network, and he also believes that the network has several flaws:
In addition to these key points the author also:
Finally, the author lists Firefox and Vivaldi as alternatives to Brave, and ends the article with "Brave Browser is irredeemable, and you should not use it under any circumstances."
I am human, please let me know if I've made a mistake.
Edit: Fixed bat emoji and typo.
My impression was Brave got started after he got hoofed out of Mozilla or left on his own accord after the backlash for showing his ass to be a homophobe. Redditor types were of course very angry about this blatant disregard for frozen peaches and jumped onto his new venture in droves
afaik he was pushed out of mozilla over the same 1k dono
Volatility :-)
But Volatilability sounds cool
Very volatibable word
Agree :-D
Thank you, I fixed it!
These guys tried to get a previous employer of mine to advertise with them. It works great if your entire audience is tech bros. Ours was not.
If he's bad, shouldn't everything he touches be bad? Why web site that uses JavaScript should be just as bad. Any browser based on Mozilla should be bad. Why is it just Brave that's bad for what he did in 2008?
As I understand it, the argument isn't so much "if you use a thing made by a bad person, you are a bad person by association" but rather that using a commercial product made by a bad person, who spends his money on bad causes, is directly helping him spend more money on said bad causes. Since he has never apologized or shown any indication that he has become a better person, not wanting to monetarily support him is a valid reason to not use his product.
It's really hard for the creator of Javascript to make money off of javascript, and it's unlikely he has any financial interest in the Mozilla corporation anymore since they're a nonprofit and thus don't have share holders. However, he directly profits off of Brave.
Because it is cool thing to cancel everything in 2023.
No. Couldn't care less what the founder did or didn't do. We need as many non-Google browsers as possible. The problem with Brave is that it is a chromium browser.
I'd say being chromium makes it a Google browser...
I mean, does that mean Edge is a Google browser, too?
Chromium is open-source. Even if Google adds something malicious to the source code (such as that Web Environment Integrity stuff), it can be removed by someone else creating their own browser based on Chromium. That's the very definition of open-source.
Related side-note: Lemmy itself is open-source, too. If the creator of Lemmy added something to the software that someone running an instance didn't agree with, they could simply fork the original software and remove the unwanted addition. Some people do disagree with that person's views, and yet they're still here. Many of them joined .world and other instances instead of .ml because they disagreed with the creator's views.
While Google, the creator of Chromium, isn't a good company for the consumer, I personally think Chromium itself isn't a bad idea. It's just that Google and some other companies modify it for their own means, and those means aren't always consumer-friendly.
All that to say: while the company that originally created Chromium is bad, the software isn't. And while some of the companies and people using that software are bad (including Brave, IMO), some of them are looking out for their users' interests, and those forks of Chromium are generally ok. (You should still actually do research and not pick a fork because the company developing it said it's okay, though. Take a look at what others are saying and verify it.)
Yes.
Only to the extent that websites are built for chromium compatibility, due to its monopoly on the internet. It's great software because it's the most popular software so all other smaller providers that serve that software have to focus their resources into ensuring compatibility. Chromium(Blink) itself is pretty mid, and definitely equal to WebKit or Gecko, not better or significantly worse.
Brave works for what I need it to do. I don't like lending credence to bigots(secret or otherwise) but if someone is gonna say "don't use this browser" they need to list a replacement that has the same functionality. And it can't be "just use duckduckgo" because we all fucking have that on our phones and none of us can use it as our primary browser and we all know exactly why. 😒
What's wrong with Firefox?
Nothing. I use it all the time.
A little slower, but nothing. Mullvad is pretty good. A mix of Firefox and Tor.
For me personally, the one and only reason I don't main Firefox is because it doesn't work with Chromecast and I use that a LOT. I would switch to FF tomorrow if I could easily and reliably cast with it.
getting addicted to proprietary software is a terrible idea. this is just the first of many losses you will have if you stick to that tech
Why?
As far as I'm aware, the ddg browser collects data and they sell it to Microsoft. The search by itself is fine though.
Do you have a source for the claim that DuckDuckGo browser is selling user data to Microsoft?
You might be referring to the time when the DuckDuckGo browser was blocking all known trackers except Microsoft trackers. After that information was made public and users complained, DuckDuckGo was able to renegotiate its agreement with Microsoft so that it can block their trackers.
Furthermore, DuckDuckGo now publish their blocklist on GitHub.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/duckduckgo-microsoft-tracking-scripts
So this privacy issue has been rectified now. But even if it hadn’t, failing to block Microsoft trackers isn’t the same as collecting data and selling it to Microsoft.
But if you are aware of DDG browser selling data to Microsoft, please share a source.
Really? I thought that used Bing search as backend but not that they sell your data
No, you have it right. That person is just conflating the controversy over their agreement with Microsoft as "ThEY're sELLiNg yOuR DaTa". 🙄
In fact. Mozilla rely more in Google. If i wasn't mistaken 90% of their money came from Google and they rely Google safebrowsing wherein it exposes your IP to Google
The fact is i don't care about these things. All it matters is that Brave uses Chromium, therefore I'll never touch it.
Had me in the first half not gonna lie. But yeah I agree with you.
plus they have Google Advert ID Permission in Android. Tell me who is more creep. Crypto-things can be disabled within a few clicks, While mozilla's trash can be disabled using a bunch of configuration in about:config
@whou Don't forget the time they made it possible to 'donate' to creators, but when creators weren't signed up with their program #Brave would just keep the donation. So users would think they have donated for example to Tom Scott, but in reality he never received anything. Overall just a scummy company.
after 90 days, they just send the BAT back to you. They don't keep it.
He could receive it, if he signed up though, right?
Even though I do not agree at all with the donation and support - out of the things that influence me into choosing a browser, 15 year-old private donations of appointed CEOs is pretty low on that list.
And the whole BAT thing is opt-in and they're very transparent about it. I don't get why people get so triggered when the C word - crypto - is involved.
I think the only relevant criticism I see is adding affiliate codes to urls (until they were caught).
The author also forgot the polemic of adding twitter and facebook trackers to the whitelist, and impersonating people in their ads. There are some interesting criticisms against brave, I don't understand why their detractors are obsessed with the CEO and crypto.
Exactly. They do a lot of things I don't like, which is why I don't use them. However, I do recommend them over Chrome if someone isn't willing to use Firefox (or Safari on iOS with an ad blocking extension).
That said, the ad replacement thing was an interesting idea, and if it got better click-through rate while preventing sites from stealing PII, they probably could've cut a profit sharing deal and users would've been better off vs the status quo. They could also have a "premium" option where they pay a certain amount for no ads, and that amount gets split with websites who would normally serve ads.
There are some good ideas there, but unfortunately the good ideas don't seem to have really worked out as intended. I still think they're better than Chrome, but things can change.
But the data collection sounds like it's counter to its supposed goals. Multiple campaigns have been discussed that just make it believe they don't actually care about privacy considering all the ways they keep trying to do stuff is counter to that. Why stay? Tor Browser is available. Hell, Firefox itself is already able to take you pretty far and extensions can do the rest.
Why make the sacrifice of your personal data? Like, how many attempts at collecting personal data do you need to have occur before you realize it's always been their goal?
Of appointed CEOs who quit after 11 days to boot. But he was CTO prior.
But looks like he was largely ousted very fast with all the negative PR Mozilla was getting.
I would also imagine there are a lot of people that did not support same sex marriage back in 2008 that do now. I do not know the Eich personally, but it doesn't make sense to hold this stuff against people until we find out if they have or haven't changed their views.
15 years ago isn't that long ago - and there is a huge difference between "not supporting same sex marriage" and "donating against same sex marriage".
15 years is a long time. I know someone who did a complete 180 on their beliefs within a few years: from a conservative, homophobic, and religious pov to the exact opposite. I myself changed some political views I had 5 years ago.
I have no idea about Eich, but if I let this affect my choices of anything, frankly I won't do anything else in my life facing the millions of variables before me.
Sure, he donated $1000.
California voters approved prop 8 by a sizable majority. It was thrown out by the courts. That kind of dilutes my “oh no” over one persons donation. We’d need to boycott a good portion of Californians.
Today I think it’s relevant to point out he was an outspoken against masks, shutdowns, and was calling Fauci a liar. Basically everyone’s conservative family member in 2020.
It's not like he's backed down from his position against gay people over the years.
I don’t use it because the UI and logo are ugly
Honestly...
Based
I don't use it because it has crypto bullshit.
I mean… I've been using Firefox since Google silo'd all log-ins together.
On the other hand, search.brave.com is freaking incredible. It's so much better than Google, Bing or DDG at this point, it's shocking. I switched a couple weeks ago and it's surreal to see so many usable, useful results on the first page again.
Tried it for a couple of weeks and went back to DDG. It's way better for programming and other geekie stuff imo.
You mean DDG is better for programming or Brave Search is? I'm finding a lot more useful stuff via Brave for whatever reason currently.
(I guess results may vary though if that's not the case for you!)
I meant that DDG is better for programming.
Try Startpage And you can use addons to filter out bad results, if that helps. Brave search definitely is potent.
Cool! I didn't think of that, but it would do the trick, you're right.
(I was hoping for it to be in the popup list of search engines, I guess.)
I use Mojeek and Brave.
Please stop reposting this crap every fucking day. What's up with you and this exact article in particular anyway? Are you getting paid or something?
well, I just came across the article on Mastodon and wanted to share it. I mean jeez, imagine sharing and wanting to discuss interesting topics just for fun?
and I posted the article on !technology@beehaw.org and then cross-posted it here, because I thought it was also an interesting community to discuss it. I saw a bunch of people cross-posting it elsewhere, so if you're seeing it a bunch of times then it's probably because those communities probably also have something in common with the article. I personally think every community have different people and different discussions to have, so I don't see it as particularly bad.
I don't get it either. It's in the front in 5 different subs
Fine, but, like, don't recommend Vivaldi. Also, if you disable the Brave ads, you're not really supporting them, while still getting the benefits.
— Sent from Librewolf
why not vivaldi? i know it’s not open-source, but is there any other reason?
Vivaldi is chromium
oh right, of course! for some reason i was only thinking of which chromium-based alternatives we could recommend.
For something as important as your web browser, that's a pretty good reason to me.
reasonable!
You shouldn't use Brave simply because it's heavily infected with crypto shit and tries to monitorize your web browsing time by default. Not everything you do has to be a side hustle.
Sure you can "switch it off" but then why not use something else in the first place that's focus isn't trying to make money out of you. If Brave ever gained any decent market share the web would be an even shitter place than what Google is suggesting at the moment.
did not know about the founder’s past, cheers for this. whenever i’m forced to open a chromium browser for something from now on, i’ll be using vivaldi.
Is Vivaldi good? I've heard it's like the old Opera, which I used to love (I used Opera from 2003 until around when they switched to Chromium, 2012ish)
I used to use it and I liked it quite a bit, I even replaced my gmail accounts with vivaldi.net accounts, though I may migrate to proton sometime. I use Firefox exclusively but if I needed to use a chromium-based browser, that’s the one I’d use. I’m not a power user by any stretch so my opinion probably has less weight than those of others on here, but that’s my two cents anyway.
i like vivaldi a lot :) mostly because of its UI and extremely easy in-depth customization. in my opinion it is the greatest-looking web browser (if you don’t factor in all the css fiddling you can do in a text editor with firefox, of course. but even then i don’t recall seeing any custom firefox user style that looked better than vivaldi to me).
the reason why i switched away from vivaldi and back to firefox after ~2 years of straight usage was that vivaldi had a weird performance bug for me where if i had too many tabs open for too many days in a row (laptop, no shutdown), it would randomly start freezing and i’d have to restart it. but when it was running on a fresh start, it was amazing. also the more ethical choice of using a non-chromium browser was part of the reason
Weird, that's the exact problem I had on my old desktop and have on my laptop with Firefox. Both were 8gigs of memory and I figured out that the freezing coincided with memory being depleted. My new desktop has, funnily enough, no problems with its 32gigs of memory. I need to purchase a new ram block for my laptop...
yeah I switched to Vivaldi from Firefox after a few years. was just sick of the incompatibility issues
To be honest the best chromium based browser I've used (when I'm forced to use a chromium based browser) is the Samsung internet one. It has a dark mode that actually works and protects my vampire eyes lol.
Never used brave because I heard all of the scammy ad network and crypto stuff years ago, immediately put me off it. Now learning that the creator probably hates me, it's just another reason not to touch it.
Unfortunately that Samsung flavour of chrome is hopekessly outdated. Always a few releases behind and shouldn't be used for security reasons.
I got a nice open source recommendation I think you'll like: https://github.com/uazo/cromite
It has the same dark mode plus much more. I'll leave you to reading through it yourself though.
I've tried it, looks cool, and using the flag "enable with selective inversion of non image elements" really helps eliminate all the issues with dark mode
I don't use it because if I had to pause to laugh at the self-seriousness every time I opened a browser, I would get even less work done than I do now
What a shitty fucking article.
Why is it shitty? TBH my biggest problem with Brave is their push for the crypto ad tokens. Any company pushing crypto shit instantly gets put on my shit list.
It's reposted every few days this community just loves it
Did you mean "blog post"?
As if people really using a browser with a built-in advertising network.
Apparently yeah. For 1 US dollar a month in highly volatile crypto.
Brave is terrible. But while not entirely relevant, so is DuckDuckGo. These mfs have enough money to appear in superbowl commercials lol. How can anyone trust their privacy claims when their shit is in the US and I don’t believe they’ve been audited. I suppose it’s good to find alternative results, but for privacy? Come on
Fuck chromium and fuck Google
Never used it to begin with.
Well reading this had the opposite effect than intended. Now i just hate the author
Yup, half of it is just "I don't like this person, so no one should use anything they have anything to do with".
The points about the browser itself are clearly just afterthoughts.
I mean, regardless of whether it sounds like afterthoughts, it kind of sounds like the ulterior motive for Brave is entirely counter to its purported intent. Why ignore it just because of something unrelated? Sounds like the exact same issue people complain about the author.
I'm not ignoring those things, there's a reason why I use firefox. I'm just criticizing the article.
You were agreeing with someone that said it led them to the opposite conclusion of the point the author wanted to make. That would require you to ignore those points or at the very least admit privacy isn't important.
When you said "yup" to a claim, it means you agree with the claim. You didn't simply only say you disliked the author's writing style and felt their focus wasn't properly targeted on the correct points.
Touché, I can see how this leads to misunderstanding.
The purpose is to make a for-profit browser that respects privacy. They've tried a number of different approaches, and they'll probably try more.
I especially like the idea of replacing ads with non-tracking ads with better clickthrough rate (i.e. higher profit), and share the profit with the sites. Ad recommendations could be made from local data that never gets sent to a server. That's privacy respecting and profitable, but unfortunately they didn't get enough deals made with content creators to be effective.
And what a CEO chooses to do with their money is none of my business, what is my business is the quality of the product that company makes, as well as the quality of the work environment that product is made in. I don't like the direction Brave has gone, so I don't use it. And now that I know iOS Safari has ad blocking extensions, I'll no longer be recommending Brave to anyone (I recommend Firefox everywhere except iOS, and I recommend Safari with ad block there).
You can't respect privacy by violating it. Just because you're ok with the amount of violation doesn't make it ok.
I'm fine with blocking things on someone else's site. I'm not ok with injecting things on someone else's site.
What are you talking about? If the logic and metadata is completely stored in your machine, there's no privacy violation. The ads themselves don't need any PII unless you opt in to some kind of profit sharing system (e.g. you get paid to see ads), and that can simply be handled by the browser itself (i.e. a cryptographic signature that can only be verified client side).
As for not liking injecting stuff into a browser, what about browser extensions show you if another site has a better deal on something? Or accessibility tools that change the styling of the site? Or password managers that inject auto fill buttons? Or addons like RES that add features like previously viewed posts or times you've upvoted a user?
Injecting ads is the same idea, you're removing features you dislike and adding features you do. The unethical part is profiting from sites, which is why those profits should be shared with those sites. I think there's a good case to be made that sites, browsers, and users can all make more with this method and without violating user privacy (the advertiser doesn't need to know anything about you specifically, it just needs to know that the browser can place ads effectively). All data can stay on your local machine and never sent to the browser vendor, website owners, or advertisers.
If Brave got that to work, I'd consider it. I'd prefer it to be an addon to my browser instead. Here's how I'd prefer it to work:
This way, the user:s privacy isn't violated, sites make a profit, the addon maintainer gets paid (ideally a nonprofit org), and users can get some pocket change as well. Everything would be auditable, so nobody can pull a fast one without getting caught.
You let me know when you find a system that analyzes your data locally and chooses an ad to show without letting anyone know anything. Even just delivering the ad is violating a level of privacy because they know it targets you at the very least. But beyond that, targeted ads require statistics to build to know how to target. You need data to build a model. You can't build that without sharing.
I think Mozilla's Pocket does this. Here's an article about it. It's light on details, so maybe there are better sources out there.
I mean, there's a difference between targeted ads which rely on a lot more data versus sponsored content which honestly, I didn't even know what based on preferences. It is fairly hodgepodge and I figured everyone saw the same thing. It never really interested me so I turned it off.
It's light on details as to how much preferences really play into those sponsored articles. Which you can turn off.
But targeted ads that are worth money require a lot more of a model. Advertisers won't pay for potshot ads if they can get better targeting elsewhere. Advertising simply isn't a good model.
Browsers have access to all of your data and they don't need to guess based on cookies and whatnot if searches are from the same person. So naturally, a browser is the perfect place to mine personal data for advertising purposes. If the browser is open source, the treatment of ads can be audited to ensure no personal data is being leaked.
For example, if you frequently visit gaming related websites, then the browser will know to show you gaming related ads. Google would only be able to do that if you use their search engine or if enough of those sites opt in to sharing data with Google (e.g. amp links, Google Ad integration, etc). So Google's ads (or any other kind, for that matter) are by default less relevant because they have less information than something served by a browser.
The difference between doing it browser side vs server side is where privacy comes in. With server side (e.g. Google's method), your data is sent to Google and they can then do whatever they please with it (depending on jurisdiction and what laws apply). With browser side, your data stays on your machine, so it never needs to go to the browser vendor or advertisers, so it cannot get sold or used for anything outside of the browser. The only thing advertisers and browser vendors would know is how many times an ad was shown and how many times it was clicked on, and that could not be traced to you specifically unless you do something to opt in to that. That's it. No privacy violation.
So since browsers have access to more data than an advertising company would, they can be a lot more relevant. Browser vendors could pay users a bit to allow anonymous usage statistics to refine their model, but I don't think that's necessary.
Dude, this is a Firefox. Why tell us not use something what...95% of people here are not using in the first place?
EDIT: The crypto stuff is opt-in. You don’t have to use Brave Shields (in browser ad blocker). It can be turned off. Now you can use uBlock Origin or another ad blocker.
About the CEO, I can’t see nothing about his beliefs reflecting in his work. Looks like he kept them separated. I’m not for said beliefs.
EDIT 2: Also Brendan Eich is a co-founder of Mozilla. So if you're not going to use Brave because of him. How can you use Firefox?
Just ignore everything I said here. I misinterpreted stuff. My bad.
It's obvious that op meant that we are on r/Firefox, therefore there's no need to shill against brave.
Given what I had said about it, the interpretation made sense. I already apologized. There's no need to correct me after the author already did. It adds nothing but trying to be condescending.
I'm sorry but what?Sorry, I thought you were saying it's based on Firefox. Just realized it was an attempt at the Wendy's meme.
np
I made the switch last month from Brave for years, back to firefox. Brave is easy more effective at blocking tablets and ads, even with ublock/adblock. You can install it and just start using a cleaner web, and it's really easy to customize gow much of an effect the sanitization is. I defended a lot of what Brave did in the early days, because what I was hearing from developers is that they were trying to monetize it in anyway possible that maintained the privacy of the user, and I understand that ethos.
It's the years and years of missteps that finally got to me. I started to feel like I had to keep up on what they were doing to make sure nothing slipped through, and that's not trust.
I still think they have the best ad blocking tech, it beats my pihole, it beats Firefox with extensions. It's fast, and it displays websites reliably.
But, we do need to consider the roads we pave and the tools we use. Brenden Eich has not apologized for his donation, but at the time he did write a blog post about supporting LGBT initiatives at Mozilla and he had support from people that he worked with. He resigned because at the time there was nothing you could do to assuage an internet hate mob but resign. There is information around stating that three board members left because of his appointment, but only one actually said that,
This is the part that every "lol just turn off the crypto crap, no problem!" responses don't understand. There are short-term issues, and there are long-term issues. Disabling undesired stuff fixes the short-term issue. Letting Brave build up their market share, at the expense of user-first options, creates long-term problems.
fwiw, Brave ad blocking for me has been far less effective than using Ublock Origin on literally any other browser
Stop using it with honey mustard sauce! Stop using it with tangy sweet and sour sauce! Stop eating the new fiesta Brave salad! Stop enjoying Brave on the patio, in the car, or on the boat... wherever good times are had!
🎵 Pop a poppler in your mouth
When you come to Fishy Joe's
What they're made of is a mystery
Where they come from no one knows 🎵
These are pretty unconvincing reasons to tell people to stop using brave...
Stop respawning this post again and again. Seriously.
Every so much time someone wakes up and decides to bash Brave, which is fair, but they always have leave out all the nuance
The best browsers are forked ones. Use librewolf,mullvad,ungoogled chromium,vanadium,mulch (android).
I've had my firefox settings/setup with multi-account containers, etc. dialed in for years. Never had any reason to change that. Librewolf is nice for people who don't already have existing & configured installations of firefox to have it basically configured by default.
Genuine question: I use brave currently. I really heavily on multiple profiles (work, side-business, personal) that are easy to switch between or have active all at the same time in separate windows.
I tried firefox, but in my experience, the method for changing “profiles” was unintuitive and cumbersome. Was I just doing it wrong, or does Firefox not have that same kind of feature?
I really wanna use Firefox, but that’s a deal-breaker.
use container tabs, not separate profiles. profiles are for installing separate sets of addons and the like.
That’s why I need the separate profiles. Some work add-ons I don’t care to have on personal, and vice versa. I like totally segmented preferences.
Edit: I get it now. It’s worth the overlapping add ons. This should do it.
Maybe multi account containers for Firefox could work for you? I find it very useful.
Interesting! I’ll give it a whirl.
I've never had a problem with them and I really like the Facebook container feature for when I have to use Messenger to contact friends
There are a few ways! I have separate Firefox profiles for everything.
The least effort way is to visit about:profiles, then you get a list of them all and can add/remove them. I have it bookmarked or pinned as a tab in all of my different profiles.
Second, but takes more effort is you can make desktop or start menu shortcuts to the profiles. In short (on windows at least) you copy the Firefox shortcut, edit it, then add -p "Profile Name". There might be more to it? Maybe good to Google this one for a better description. But I literally have a start menu shortcut for all like 7 of mine, then it's just like launching a different application.
I use Brave as a second browser (mainly to separate different activities) and did not have any issues with it apart from dragging tabs between monitors (it creates an additional empty tab sometimes when doing this). Turned off all unnecessary stuff right when I first launched it and that's it. No bloat, no issues, just works. Didn't know about this CEO controversy but seeing as it was a long time ago, don't think it's a valid reason to not use Brave. And both logo and name are cool.
It's a solid option which we don't really have a lot of in open source space
Firefox has profiles AND container tabs for exactly this though.
I mean, there's simply just Firefox. Which is apparently not the basis for Brave. It does sound like Brave collects data so it still seems shady.
Edit: could have sworn brave was built on Firefox. It's not. It's chromium. Which in my opinion counts against it as I'd rather avoid a monopoly considering how much control Google has over chromium and the inherent biases Google has.
Brave is based on Chromium, not Firefox.
My bad. Not sure why I thought that. Still. Firefox is still a better alternative in my opinion.
You might have been thinking of Mullvad Browser, which is based on Firefox and came out somewhat recently. Other privacy-focused browsers based on Firefox include Librewolf and Tor browser.
Same here.
I use it for streaming because the ad block works on spotify and YouTube. I could never get spotify working on Firefox consistently.
I used to but it got bloated to hell and back.
I only use brave for iOS because it is the best there is
FYI every browser on iOS has to use webkit under the hood as per crapple's diktat, it's just a fork of safari like PC brave is a fork of chromium, eve Firefox on iOS uses webkit AFAIK
It’s the only one that blocks ads everywhere though
Honestly, I only use it for when a site will not work in FFX-based browsers
why not vivaldi?
Vivaldi is proprietary
Degoogled Chromium then? And try Epiphany & WebKit too
DGC is good
Vivaldi’s only proprietary part is the UI. Because it differentiates them from other chromium based browsers. Under the hood it’s open source.
qutebrowser ftw
it was a similar article that made me switch from Brave to Ungoogled Chromium a few weeks ago, as a backup browser for the handful of sites that don't work in Firefox.
I use Firefox + Brave Search.
I did too for a while. I've since switched to librex.
It's kinda like ten years ago google. It may use google as it's source for all I know. It does a pretty great job of stripping out SEO fluff.
Link to firefox plugin.
Make me
i'll give you a cookie. not the shitty browser kind either: a full fledged double fudge. the clock is ticking
All I read is cryptocurrency hating.
Do they do anything that's bad for my privacy?
The affiliate links are enough to stop using brave tho
Cryptocurrency hating is good.
I guess if you like protest movements to have their funding cut-off by corporations (eg Occupy Wall Street)
Brave is a better choice than Google Chrome / Opera / Edge by miles.
Still, the only ethical choice is Firefox.
It's chromium with a different hat. If you trust chromium, you can probably trust this as easily.
Common folks you are supposed to use a Computer only to assist at your job.
If your going to use a chromium browser brave isn't the worst choice
I don't see any of this as legitimate reasons to stop using Brave.
yes the CEO donated $1k some 10 years ago to anti-LGBT stuff, and that's bad, but kinda small fries in the totality of factors.
ads. Firefox has ads and trackers just like Brave. You can disable them on either.
you can also disable crypto.
hijacking affiliate codes is unethical and should be stopped but don't actually affect me in any way.
What else ya got?
The "anti-LGBT stuff" is enough imo. It may be "small fries", but I'd rather not support someone (or their company) when they clearly don't support me.
I mean, alright. But you could say "I don't care" about any infraction of freedom and/or trust. I trust software to not modify my intent, any software that does so without asking can not be trusted in any way.
It does affect you because it would have meant that you couldn't claim cashback offers from sites like TopCashback and Rakuten, as the cashback site's affiliate code would have been replaced with Brave's.
I don't use sites like that 🤷♂️
What a shitty article. Firefox should use mirror.