If you are keen on personal privacy, you might have come across Brave Browser. Brave is a Chromium-based browser that promises to deliver privacy with built-in ad-blocking and content-blocking protection. It also offers several quality-of-life features and services, like a VPN and Tor access. I mean, it’s even listed on the reputable PrivacyTools website. Why am I telling you to steer clear of this browser, then?
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Yeah brave has it own issue, but overall it is still more privacy respecting than chrome or edge. Brave is personally not my choice. I use librewolf. Still, if someone ask me for a browser to use for their privacy journey I will undoubtedly tell them to just use brave. Firefox(and the forks) isn’t a choice for most normal people it often break Captcha. Some website even straight up just don’t allow Firefox based then tell you to use chrome. I am not by anyway try to defend Brave action, but I can’t see much choice that just work for people who don’t even know what an OS is.
They bait and switched people promising tokens which they never ended up giving them in exchange for tracking them. Total scam.
the crypto and the asshole ceo aside, nobody should trust a browser that claims to respect privacy that’s based on chromium.
What’s wrong with ungoogled-chromium? Or Vivaldi?
ultimately they’re still chromium and they still contribute to chrome’s dominance.
Okay, but that’s not a privacy reason.
It is still a privacy reason. You are still contributing to googles plans to dominate and control the internet by using a chromium product its a privacy threat, and an everything else threat too.
But neutered Chrome (aka repurposed + degoogled Chromium) isn’t the same as Google Chrome. I 100% understand what you’re saying, but I wouldn’t file this under “privacy” (at least not without some asterisks).
its still furthering googles control of the internet, which is an inherent threat to privacy, regardless if you think you are participating in it or not.
Once again, that’s not privacy (the context of this discussion). Your point is that using Chromium encourages websites (as in, developers) to keep making sites that are Chromium-optimized, instead of browser-agnostic.
When you take all the “Google” out of a browser, they’re not getting any information from you because those mechanisms no longer exist. Again, I’m talking about Google and Chrome. You’re combining 3 different “issues” and slapping a “PRIVACY” label on them.
The real issue is that people default to Chrome, because for years it was the most performant browser (until it became a bloated shitfest). People need to become the change they wish to see (like me, who switched from Brave back to Firefox on all devices). That’s how you defeat a browser monopoly. This is just Internet Explorer from the 90s/2000s all over again. Remember how everyone used to default to it because it’s what they were taught? We (collectively) need to stop telling people “download chrome” as the default. It’s the equivalent of saying “google it”, instead of “look it up”.
A neutered fascist is still a fascist.
If one forks Chromium like Firefox has been forked to hell and back, then I view it as effectively taking the power out of Google’s hands. The issue with Chrome supremacy is that Google gets to, directly or indirectly, shape how websites/the internet operates/are built/optimized (since web devs will use it to do their web dev).
So then wouldn’t a better strategy be to make a Firefox-like, Chromium browser that is truly “neutral” (like Firefox is *on paper)? Also, remember that Mozilla receives a huge chunk of funding from Google, directly, in order to “keep Chrome from being a monopoly”.
Now, that last part depends on whether you considering Chrome to be Chromium, which I don’t. Here’s my understanding/view, overall (feel free to cherrypick or challenge any of it; I welcome and respect your opinions/corrections):
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Firefox has existed for longer than Chrome, but Chrome on release was leaner and faster (I speak from personal experience). The only other option was Internet Explorer, which was “Chrome” at the time (as in, average people defaulted to the “blue e” icon)
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Chrome became the dominant browser because it was lean and fast for its time. It’s obviously different now, but you cannot retroactively fault people for choosing an objectively-better browser [for the time]
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Genuinely not defending Google here, but my opinion is that a large reason we began to transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 is because of Chrome (and any other modern browsers). This meant Chrome-optimized sites that didn’t work well with other browsers, but I view it as a no-fault situation (it’s just how tech progresses; it breaks compatibility with existing tech sometimes)
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Most people use “Google-everything” these days; I myself have had a Gmail account since it was a closed beta. This means they’re more likely to lean towards Chrome, because Google recommends it anyway
So to me, the issues are actually that people default to Google-everything, including Chrome (thus feeding Google info about their entire lives, 24/7). But I don’t see Chromium itself as evil. On its own, it’s open-source (minus Google bits obviously), which is what allows forks to be made that not only avoid the Google bits, but outright block them. I think it’s taking power back. I don’t think “EVERYONE SHOULD SWITCH TO FIREFOX OR A FIREFOX FORK IMMEDIATELY” is realistic (and I say that as someone who switched back to Firefox months ago)
I also think that web devs themselves should stop being biased towards…“Chrome-sponsored” (figure of speech) best practices. But I also think that Mozilla should [continue] making their browser more compatible with modern websites, and even maybe get more involved in establishing web design best-practices (meaning practices/technologies that work well equally regardless of browser or rendering engine). In fact, recently Mozilla highlighted their Web Compatibility reporting tool, so that people can let them know about sites that don’t render correctly in their browser
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Forks of Firefox (like the Tor browser) are still Firefox, no matter how neutered it is.
That’s my point. So then what’s the solution when there are essentially two mainstream/mainline browsers? How far do you believe one needs to take it? Is a fork that de-Mozilla’s/de-Google’s the browser enough (and changes the name)? Or is that “still bad”?
Because eventually you’ll run out of [usable/daily-drivable] browsers, if you consider any fork to be “evil” by virtue of coming from Chromium/etc.
Eh, I think that’s a stretch. Right now, Lemmy is going nuclear on Firefox. Should I also stop using Librewolf, too, because ultimately, it contributes to Firefox? Chromium is solid and I think it’s better to show what type of chromium we want instead of outright boycotting the entire open source project.
Whats going on re Lemmy & Firefox?
I’m using brave lol. As a web developer I really need to test the work I do on a chromium based browser. Brave seems to be the best chromium based browser that still supposed ad blocking after the whole manifest v3 thing.
So let me pose this question to you. As someone that needs to use Chromium for work, what’s the best Chromium based browser that still supports ad blocking?
I get that Firefox is better. Heck Tor is even better. But realistically what is something I can actually use to get real work done?
Edit: ok I read the article. That is kinda bad. So please find me a chromium based alternative that I can use for work
This week I’m going to try out ungoogled Chromium and Vivaldi. I know Vivaldi is partially closed source, but I’m not actually in the camp that thinks all closed source is bad.
I use Apple products which are definitely more closed source. I would prefer open source but there are unfortunately more variables in play then just “is it open source”.
Chromium is much more secure than Firefox, so your privacy depends on your threat model here: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
I wonder if anyone here is going to mention SeaMonkey-Browser for fun.<br>
It’s an entire suite of applications
I really wish seamonkey still worked for modern websites. It’s so cool.
I haven’t seen sea monkey mentioned in quite a few years
Oh boy, I shared the spacebar news article a year ago or so and was hit by a shitstorm of indignant comments.
Don’t forget about the fact that a while back they secretly whitelisted Facebook trackers in their adblocker to “make pages run more smoothly” they got a lot of shit for it when people found out looking through the source code. When I heard that they did that it basically cemented in my mind that they were shady and untrustworthy, that’s in addition to the Crypto and rewards stuff.
Also don’t use Opera. They’re opera-ted by chinese mafia.
Chinese Mafia aside, opera GX sill benchmarks faster than any other browser, except maybe thorium
Thanks. I read an article yesterday about how it’s one of the best privacy browsers out there.
I prefer either TorBrowser or Waterfox.
TorBrowser is, hands down, the best privacy browser out there but it’s a bit slow because it operates like a decentralized VPN.
Waterfox browser is built on Mozilla’s Gecko Engine just like firefox, but it isn’t managed directly by Mozilla.
it isn’t managed directly by Mozilla
I was about to make a snarky comment about how it is, however, owned by an advertising company, but then I found this.
I haven’t heard of waterfox. I use TorBrowser sometimes. But mostly I use LibreWolf. Its based on Firefox also, but without Monzilla
Brave search allows misinformation goggles for anyone that believes 2 + 2 = 5.
Of course Brave would so something like this. This isn’t surprising whatsoever. It’s still horrible they’re even choosing to enable this whatsoever.
Edit: I just checked what kind of shit they pull up on Transgender issues when using those goggles. It’s as bad as I thought it would be. Fuck Brave for enabling this garbage.
Yep it’s literally half of the results. I’m astounded that this is legal. Well not that astounded.
Why I recommend against pushing people away from Brave:
Most people are still trapped in an ecosystem owned by either Microsoft, Google or Apple. We’re yet to see a perfect web browser for everyone, but in the meantime we choose one, maybe two or three if we feel a bit more picky for each task, and use them to the best of our capacity. Making anyone feel guilty and ashamed for choices like this, when the best options are few, relative, and often come at a cost, is just useless.
I suggest reading the settings guides available at privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/ or checking the browser comparison at eylenburg.github.io/browser_comparison.htm to know the details that anyone who actually wants a better browsing experience cares about. Better to lend a hand than push around.
If whoever reads this still can’t get over it and needs to play a blame game with someone about why everyone should boycott Mozilla, Brave, Proton and other privacy focused FOSS companies because of what someone said, did or thought, please at least find a decent fork, toss a coin to it’s devs, share their work and help others benefit from it.
At this point there is a pretty solid list of reasons to avoid Brave and use another FOSS privacy focused option.
Personally, everything I’ve read about Brave makes me trust them even less than Microsoft, and Google.
tldr:
- CEO was forcefully ousted from Firefox for anti-LGBTQ views and donations.
- Replaced existing ads on sites with Brave’s own “private” ads.
- Collected crypto on behalf of others without their knowledge or consent
- Injected referral links into crypto websites to steal crypto revenue
- Put ads in the new page tab
- Shipped a TOR feature that leaked DNS
- Doesn’t disclose the ID of their search engine crawler via useragent
- Removed “strict” fingerprinting protection
- CEO is generally a right-wing dick.
It’s so “weird” how the same kind of person who would be openly anti-LGBTQ would also make a such a sketchy product.
You should also add secretly whitelisted Facebook trackers in their adblocker, something they did a while back.
- Shipped a TOR feature that leaked DNS
Yikes I didn’t know they did that but I’m not surprised. There’s a reason the people behind Tor say it should only be used via the official Tor browser, because only the Tor browser can provide that level of protection against those kind s of leaks, as well as much better fingerprinting resistance than chromium-based brave is going to give you.
Those are good reasons to ditch a product. Yet, at the same time, inside the Apple ecosystem this is the only browser that allows cross platform watching of yt without any ads, therefore suffocating Google and the fat cat MKBHD influencers from income.
So it’s like an evil to tame another evil to me atm.
Of course the best path forward would be to ditch both Brave and yt and then just get Nebula/patreon or something for serious content browsing.
I’m curious though: if I just use Brace only with a few yt tabs open and never open the new empty tab or visit another site, does Brave get any revenue from me?
Librewolf users (totally not biased)
Thanks for the TLDR. Enough said, deleted Brave app. Firefox Focus is a good alternate.
I hear Vivaldi is pretty good too
I used Vivaldi for a while. It’s still Chromium, so I would recommend against it. There’s too many good Firefox options to use anything Chromium.
i notice they are all past tense save the last 3
Theres also a long list of messed up shit over the course of a long time so they’re just consistently inventing new shit. Who knows what they’re fucking up today that no one has discovered yet?
CEO was forcefully ousted from Firefox for anti-LGBTQ views and donations.
I think this is making mountains out of molehills. My understanding is that he had a very good working relationship w/ LGBTQ people in the org, and he had been working for many years at Mozilla before this point. The issue was his private donations to an anti-same sex marriage initiative. He didn’t push for any company policy change, didn’t advertise the donation, and didn’t use company funds (used personal funds), so it really shouldn’t be anyone’s business.
I personally disagree with his political views, but I think he was a fantastic candidate for CEO of Mozilla. How he votes or spends his personal money shouldn’t be relevant at all.
Replaced existing ads on sites with Brave’s own “private” ads.
I like this idea in principle, but not in implementation. Brave should have worked with major websites to share revenue, but what Brave actually did was remove website ads and insert its own, forcing websites to go claim BAT to get any of that revenue back.
My preference here is to not use a cryptocurrency and instead have users pay in their local currency into a bucket to not see ads (and that’s shared w/ the website), and that should be in collaboration w/ website owners.
Collected crypto on behalf of others without their knowledge or consent
This is a big nothing-burger.
Basically, Brave had a way to donate to a creator that wasn’t affiliated with the creator. The way it works is you could donate (using BAT), and once it got to $100 worth, Brave would reach out to the creator to give them the money. They adjusted the wording to make it clear they weren’t affiliated with the creator in any way.
Injected referral links into crypto websites to steal crypto revenue
Yeah, this is totally wrong, and they reversed course immediately.
Put ads in the new page tab
Not a fan, but at least you can opt-out.
Shipped a TOR feature that leaked DNS
Mistakes happen. If you truly need the anonymity, you would have multiple layers of defense (i.e. change your default DNS server) and probably not use something like Brave anyway (Tor Browser is the gold standard here).
Doesn’t disclose the ID of their search engine crawler via useragent
Also a bad move, though I am sympathetic to their reasoning here: they just don’t have the resources to get permission from everyone. Search has a huge barrier to entry, and I’m in favor of more competition to Google and Microsoft here.
Removed “strict” fingerprinting protection
This was for better UX, since it broke sites. Not a fan of removing this, they should have instead had a big warning when enabling this (e.g. many sites will break if you enable this).
CEO is generally a right-wing dick.
Fair, but that should be a separate consideration from whether to use a given product. Using Brave doesn’t make you a right-wing dick.
You probably wouldn’t like the CEO of any company whose products you like, so basing a decision of what product to use based on that is… dumb.
I personally use Brave as a backup browser, for two reasons:
- it’s a chrome-based browser
- it has ad-blocking
My primary browser is something based on Firefox because I value rendering-engine competition. But if I need a chromium-based browser, Brave is my go-to. I disable the crypto nonsense and keep ad-blocking on, and it’s generally pretty usable.
It’s tempting to see his donations to prop 8 as just his personal business, but like so many others you’re missing the fact that when your political beliefs are that other humans are actually subhuman and not equals, that goes beyond “personal politics.” Like outright naziism, there should be no safe place for a single ounce of this thinking. If you think it’s akin to liking shrimp more than chicken, you should deeply rethink your own “personal politics” because you’re casually glancing over the dehumanization of other people with a shrug.
My understanding is that he had a very good working relationship w/ LGBTQ people in the org
Then why betray them? He has nothing to gain from funding such a campaign. There is no logical explanation and sure as hell no justification for it.
[…] so it really shouldn’t be anyone’s business.
How he votes or spends his personal money shouldn’t be relevant at all.Oh, shut up. When this asshole funds a campaign that’s actively fighting against the rights of millions of people, it absolutely is our damn fucking business.
Yeah, this is totally wrong, and they reversed course immediately.
It’s bad enough that they even got the idea, let alone implement and actually ship it. Negative reactions shouldn’t be the first deciding factor for reversing such decisions.
Brave should have worked with major websites to share revenue
Not just share, completely give up that revenue. Blocking ads is one thing, but to then also monetise other people’s content should not allow Brave to earn even a single cent.
Your proposed solution sounds fine, though.CEO is generally a right-wing dick.
Fair, but that should be a separate consideration from whether to use a given product.
Again, no. Maybe if there weren’t any alternatives, but there are plenty.
You probably wouldn’t like the CEO of any company whose products you like,
That’s probably true, however, Eich is a different story. Despite not gaining anything from it, neither for his companies nor for himself, he was willing to go out of his way to support a campaign in favour of discriminating millions of people, proactively. This doesn’t just make me not like him, it makes me despise him.
Other CEO’s typically at least keep quiet about politics, and make me dislike them mainly because of self-interest and their resulting business decisions, which can at least still be somewhat understandable.And let me be clear that I’m not going to jump on people who use Brave for whatever reason. But under no circumstances will I defend those who downplay or justify Brave’s, and especially Eich’s, actions.
He didn’t push for any company policy change, didn’t advertise the donation, and didn’t use company funds (used personal funds), so it really shouldn’t be anyone’s business.
It’s everyone’s business that cares about those people.
How he votes or spends his personal money shouldn’t be relevant at all.
Using products from a company that benefits him is empowering him to do those things.
Brave should have worked with major websites to share revenue
That’s a monumental task. They would have had to create their own ad network similar to Google and then somehow out-compete them to get their business without any of the information that Google has about users.
they weren’t affiliated with the creator in any way.
Yes, that’s the problem.
Yeah, this is totally wrong, and they reversed course immediately.
Only because they got caught, and they didn’t refund any of the crypto they earned in the interim.
Mistakes happen.
When it comes to TOR, mistakes can be a matter of life and death. People only use TOR when they need complete anonymity.
they should have instead had a big warning when enabling this (e.g. many sites will break if you enable this).
They did indeed have exactly that. It said in the actual setting itself “Strict, may break sites”.
You probably wouldn’t like the CEO of any company whose products you like, so basing a decision of what product to use based on that is… dumb.
Not true. I like Our Lord Gaben. I like Meredith Whitaker. I like lots of CEOs.
It’s everyone’s business that cares about those people.
But is it though?
Believing that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be a government-supported institution isn’t the same as believing LGBT people are “invalid” or “wrong” or whatever.
For example, I personally oppose government-supported marriage entirely (despite being married myself) because I think marriage should be a religious/personal thing instead of an official government institution, and that we should replace it with a series of contracts that grant certain legal privileges (e.g. joint tax filing, power of attorney, etc) in an a la carte type setup (i.e. you may want to join finances w/ someone, but not give them hospital visitation rights). I think we should also allow more than two parties to enter into these agreements to cover a wide variety of unique living situations (e.g. you may want to joint file with a parent that you care for).
I don’t know Eich’s personal political views, and I honestly don’t care, as long as they don’t interfere with his role.
That’s a monumental task. They would have had to create their own ad network similar to Google and then solicit every site on the web to participate.
Not necessarily. For example, they could partner w/ someone like Axate, which basically does just this.
Only because they got caught, and they didn’t refund any of the crypto they earned in the interim.
My understanding is that they can’t really do that, because the payments are anonymous. I could be mistaken though.
When it comes to TOR, mistakes can be a matter of life and death. People only use TOR when they need complete anonymity.
And if that applies to you, you should be very careful about the tools you use. Brave is a new thing and is relatively unproven. Use established, proven tools like Tor Browser.
Not true. I like Our Lord Gaben. I like Meredith Whitaker. I like lots of CEOs.
Eh, I don’t really like Gabe Newell, but I certainly appreciate the investment into Linux. It just so happens our interests align more than they don’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if GabeN’s personal politics were quite conservative, because conservative policies generally benefit rich people like him (the closest I can see is maybe libertarian).
Meredith Whitaker is an absolute treasure, we don’t deserve her.
Believing that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be a government-supported institution isn’t the same as believing LGBT people are “invalid” or “wrong” or whatever.
That’s great and all, but we don’t live in those times yet. Not granting people the right to marry whoever they want in current times based on the premise that we should change the marital law somewhere in the future is still nothing short of discrimination. And let’s not forget that Eich supported a campaign that was very explicitly against gay marriage, not the current concept of marriage altogether. Weak argument.
and that we should replace it with a series of contracts that grant certain legal privileges (e.g. joint tax filing, power of attorney, etc)
That’s what marriage already is for the most part in many parts of the world. And in those cases, the resulting financial disadvantage for example also makes it more apparent, why being against gay marriage is not just about names on a piece of paper.
I don’t know Eich’s personal political views, and I honestly don’t care, as long as they don’t interfere with his role.
How empathetic of you. Might as well support Josef Mengele with that attitude. A bit more personal responsibility couldn’t hurt.
My understanding is that they can’t really do that, because the payments are anonymous.
Well, last I checked it’s just another ERC-20 Token and not a new Monero, so I have my doubts about that. I also assume that they must keep transaction logs somewhere to keep track of the amount of BAT donated to a creator. But I can’t be sure either.
Use established, proven tools like Tor Browser.
It’s also kind of useless for Brave to have implemented Tor in the first place. Even if Brave matures further, there’s basically no reason not to use the Tor Browser for its intended purpose.
Believing that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be a government-supported institution isn’t the same as believing LGBT people are “invalid” or “wrong” or whatever.
How is it not?
we should replace it with a series of contracts that grant certain legal privileges
I mean, legally, that’s what marriage is.
you may want to join finances w/ someone, but not give them hospital visitation rights
You don’t have to do either of those things just because you’re married. Marriage just gives you the option.
For example, they could partner w/ someone like Axate
And what would they bring to this partnership?
And if that applies to you, you should be very careful about the tools you use.
You should be. But companies also should not be creating tools that propose to give you those protections when they’re not smart enough to. Just leave it to the professionals.
I wouldn’t be surprised if GabeN’s personal politics were quite conservative
As long as he keeps his mouth shut about them and doesn’t financially support them, he’s doing worlds better than Mr. Eich.
Is it me or the people defending brave are homophobes too.
Believing that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be a government-supported institution isn’t the same as believing LGBT people are “invalid” or “wrong” or whatever.
How is it not?
It seems incredibly obvious to me. For example, here are some things I believe:
- gambling is bad - yet I support legalization of gambling; why? Personal freedom comes first.
- prostitution is bad - yet I support legalization of prostitution; why? Sex work will happen, so it’s better for it to be properly regulated than happen on the black market
- drug use is bad - yet I support legalization of recreational drugs; why? Illegal drugs laced w/ fentanyl are a big problem, and most drug users would be better off w/ a regulated service.
Personal beliefs about what government policy should be can be very different than personal beliefs about what is “good” and “bad.”
To be clear, I support same-sex marriage because it’s on the table and my preferred alternative has almost no shot of being considered. So I support it as a harm-reduction policy, not because I actually believe the government should actually regulate marriage.
I mean, legally, that’s what marriage is.
Marriage is a basket of contracts (power of attorney, joint custody, financial obligations, etc), and it’s limited to two people, which is odd. The original intent seems to be to encourage procreation, but it’s hardly enforced at all, nor is that particularly important in most countries (except maybe Japan).
We should treat marriage similarly to corporations. If you want to call your civil partnership “marriage,” more power to you. If you want to call it being BF/GF, life partners, or whatever else, more power to you. The government should only care that you meet the requirements for whatever the benefit is.
You don’t have to do either of those things just because you’re married. Marriage just gives you the option.
In many (most?) states, it is enforced unless you specifically opt-out (e.g. a pre-nup). Laws certainly vary by state, but generally speaking, if you’re legally married, anything you earn in the marriage is considered joint assets, even if you keep them in separate accounts. In some areas, things you bring into the marriage are also jointly owned, unless they are never interacted with.
That’s why divorces are so messy, the couple could have agreed to keep things separate at the start, but without any evidence of that, it’s up to the courts to decide what’s fair. And pretty frequently, they’ll lean on the side of 50/50 for all assets, regardless of when it was acquired or what the understanding was.
And what would they bring to this partnership?
Integration into the browser product, users, and marketing.
I’ve been wanting Firefox to do something like this so get more visibility w/ online services. I’d love to be able to load up an account balance and click “view article” and the website owner sucks a few pennies from that balance or whatever. But my only options are:
- find a workaround w/ my ad-blocker - reader mode, archive, etc
- make yet another account and maybe pay for a monthly subscription (why do that when I only want the one article?)
- not read the article
Axate provides more than that, but so few online services work w/ it. A browser could bring them a ton of visibility.
But companies also should not be creating tools that propose to give you those protections when they’re not smart enough to. Just leave it to the professionals.
Agreed. But like I said, users request features, bugs happen, etc. At the end of the day, the responsibility is on the user to pick the right product for their needs. Brave isn’t that product for at-risk individuals until it has been vetted by actual security experts.
As long as he keeps his mouth shut about them and doesn’t financially support them, he’s doing worlds better than Mr. Eich.
Eich did the first half of that, his only “sin” was that someone found out about his donation. That’s it. My understanding is that nobody was aware of it until someone dug into the donation records.
gambling is bad - yet I support legalization
Got it, so being gay isn’t “wrong” or “invalid”, it’s just “bad”?
it is enforced unless you specifically opt-out (e.g. a pre-nup)
Yes, that’s what I was referring to. You might call it a “contract”.
Integration into the browser product, users, and marketing.
They don’t need Brave for that. They need the website owners. If you’re talking about injecting Axate ads where Google and other ads already are, then we’re back to square 1 where you’re ripping off content creators from their revenue for their content.
I’d love to be able to load up an account balance and click “view article” and the website owner sucks a few pennies from that balance or whatever.
The problem with doing that with fiat is that there are transfer fees. You’d essential be paying a $3 to transfer 5 cents. That’s why everyone uses crypto for this.
But like I said, users request features
Users can request features all day, developers are the ones who have to implement them.
bugs happen
It’s a completely unnecessary bug from someone trying to replace a perfectly safe and secure tool with their own and build value for themselves. This isn’t just any bug. Like I said, people’s lives can hang in the balance in a very real way. They need to get it right or just stay the fuck away.
the responsibility is on the user to pick the right product for their needs
Bullshit. Both are responsible.
Brave isn’t that product for at-risk individuals until it has been vetted by actual security experts.
Then they shouldn’t have launched it.
Eich did the first half of that
Not good enough.
Got it, so being gay isn’t “wrong” or “invalid”, it’s just “bad”?
I didn’t say that.
My point here is that personal views can differ from political policy views.
Yes, that’s what I was referring to. You might call it a “contract”.
The issue is that it’s opt-out. Instead of that, people should opt-in only to the parts they want.
If you’re talking about injecting Axate ads where Google and other ads already are
No, I’m talking about creating a protocol where browser clients can inform website owners that the customer is using this separate method of payment. It could happen separate from the browser (e.g. as an extension), but the browser gives it a lot more visibility.
The UX here would be pretty simple: if the user has enabled this feature, websites would prompt users for payment or to show ads.
Browsers win because they get a revenue stream, Axate wins by having more customers, and websites win because they’re getting paid instead of customers blocking ads.
The problem with doing that with fiat is that there are transfer fees. You’d essential be paying a $3 to transfer 5 cents. That’s why everyone uses crypto for this.
That’s why you batch up transfers. General flow:
- users load up a balance (say, $20)
- service (e.g. Axate) tracks which payments have been made and bulk pays website owners monthly or whatever
Boom, total number of transfers are pretty low, no need for cryptocurrencies.
Both are responsible.
Sure, but the browser vendor has very little at stake, whereas the user has everything at stake. At the end of the day, it’s on the user.
Not good enough.
You’re welcome to your opinion. I personally don’t have an issue with how people spend their money, I only have an issue with how they treat their employees and choices they make about their product.
Fair, but that should be a separate consideration from whether to use a given product. Using Brave doesn’t make you a right-wing dick. You probably wouldn’t like the CEO of any company whose products you like, so basing a decision of what product to use based on that is… dumb.
So it’s ok to buy a Tesla nowadays in your opinion? Genuinely curious.
So it’s ok to buy a Tesla nowadays in your opinion? Genuinely curious.
Yes, if it’s the vehicle that fits your needs the best. Elon doesn’t need your money, and with Tesla getting roasted in the media, you can probably pick up a good deal.
That said, I wouldn’t buy a Tesla for other reasons, such as:
- poor manufacturing quality
- poor reliability (the Model 3 is the “best” and it’s just average)
- poor repairability
I do boycott certain products though, first among them is Wal-Mart, but that’s because I find Wal-Mart to be anti-competitive (drives smaller stores out of business) and they contribute to poor working conditions either directly (i.e. their own products) or indirectly (i.e. forcing suppliers to cut costs). I’ve been boycotting them for ~20 years, and honestly haven’t bothered checking if they’ve improved. I also try to avoid buying from Amazon for similar reasons.
Maybe Tesla is similar to those, idk. I personally don’t buy Musk’s products because I find them lacking, and I haven’t needed any more reasons to avoid his products than that.
I literally don’t care about the political views of the CEO/owner of a company. I dislike Chik-Fil-A’s founder, for example, but I like the food there and the workers seem to be treated well, so I shop there. I especially like that they’re closed on Sundays, which guarantees workers get at least one day off. Whether some idiot gets rich from a fraction of the money I spend on a certain product doesn’t bother me, I mostly care that the business is run well and the product is good.
I appreciate your perspective, and I agree that we should probably be more concerned with how the company functions than the personal character of the CEO .
Sam Walton was a hardworking, amiable, humble man by all accounts. And even when he was alive Walmart the company was cutting throats.
At the same time, if a CEO deeply ingrains himself in the political process, I can probably take a pass on his products even if they are marginally better. So these days Musk is doing so much damage to the functioning of the US government that even if Teslas were good I wouldn’t buy one.
The Chikfila guy on the other hand was just donating to a few discriminatory “Christian” charities last I checked but stopped trying to change policy, so…as fast food shops go it’s actually not too bad even if I don’t prefer to eat there.
Starbucks…evil CEO, but preemptively boycotting before the organized shops strike doesn’t help the workers.
Brave…has had too many fuckups for my taste. On the rare occasion that I need a privacy focused Chromium-based browser I just use Chromium with uBlock Origin for the one website I need to visit.
Sam Walton
Oh yeah, I absolutely respect the man, I just don’t respect his business choices. There needs to be a balance between cutting costs to bring prices down for customers and providing for your employees.
if a CEO deeply ingrains himself in the political process, I can probably take a pass on his products
But why? He doesn’t need your money anymore, and if everyone stopped buying his products and Tesla went bankrupt, he’d still be ridiculously rich.
I get that it’s sending a message, but what does that accomplish? Maybe the board boots him as CEO, but he’ll retain his ownership stake.
I don’t see it. That’s why I focus on company culture, which often survives a change in management. If the culture is busted, I go out of my way go avoid their products.
Starbucks
Starbucks has actually been fantastic, at least in the past, with even part-time employees getting great benefits and pay being very competitive. I don’t know how things are with the CEO changes (Chipotle guy now, right?), so maybe that’s no longer the case.
That said, I don’t go there because I don’t like their products.
Chromium with uBlock Origin
Does that still work?
I mostly just need something to test on, since I’m a full stack web dev, and I don’t like having ads everywhere when I need to prettify some JSON or something. Also a fallback on the few pages Firefox doesn’t work on, once in a blue moon.
That’s really it.
My take: No other browser is sustainable without advertising. Orion looks to be that guy, but we will see. We’ve already seen many other browsers stop development, like Mull and LibreWolf, due to lack of resources. Firefox itself is on the chopping block with Google potentially being forced to sell Chrome. We’ll see what Kagi is able to manage with Orion, though releasing it with pretty much all the features one could want for free doesn’t appear promising. I think taking a “private advertising” approach is the best we’re going to get. This makes Brave sustainable.
The CEO is a dick, no doubt, but they pretty much all are, and every browser has it’s drawbacks.
As far as the useragent, I kinda agree with Brave on that one. Sites want to be crawled by Google but they will block anyone else, which obviously creates an anticompetitive environment in an industry that severely needs competition.
As for the fingerprinting, I kinda get it. I’m sure some users were turning on strict protection and then complaining about the browser not working properly and ultimately ditching it while complaining to others. That being said, even with “standard” fingerprint blocking, Brave is the only browser I’ve used on CoverYourTracks and it returned “you have a randomized fingerprint”. I’m not any sort of tech genius but I think the folks at EFF are and I trust them.
We’ve already seen many other browsers stop development, like (…) LibreWolf, due to lack of resources.
Wait, what?
Two things:
-
When did Librewolf stop development?
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On funding, they say in their FAQ:
If we don’t need funding, we won’t risk becoming dependent on it. And also: no donations means no expectations. This means that people working on LibreWolf are free to move on to other projects whenever they want.
Librewolf seems to very consciously not looking for “resources” from advertising or donations, or etc. The only resource they seem to want is motivation.
Which I think is one of the big issues with OSS projects - many are based around a very small number of people being motivated to work on something for free. And it dies if that stops.
I think that having expectations and funding to continue is important, like you say.
But I’m still confused about what you mean by the “resources” comment re: Librewolf.
When did Librewolf stop development?
https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/issues/1906
“Hey all, I’m on the LibreWolf team, and it’s true that since the departure of @fxbrit the project has taken a total nosedive when it comes to keeping up to date with Arkenfox and settings in general. We’re still making releases, but settings did not get updated.”
“As @threadpanic said, since fxbrit left we have been in a kind of “maintenance” mode in terms of settings. Mainly because we are really only three people left”
“LW since fxbrit left/died/who-knows has gone to shit - I worked with him behind the scenes to make the right choices and while he would do his own analysis, we always agreed, and his voice influenced them. Now they don’t know what they are doing, and in fact have compromised security and make really stupid decisions. Same goes for all the other forks - really dubious shit going”
Which I think is one of the big issues with OSS projects - many are based around a very small number of people being motivated to work on something for free. And it dies if that stops.
Exactly.
But I’m still confused about what you mean by the “resources” comment re: Librewolf.
“Resources” can refer to many different things, in this case it is motivation/prioritization.
Oh SHIT. I had a feeling since months, as an end-user, that something wasn’t going well. But damn, i did not know that was that bad.
Thanks.
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No browser is sustainable without money because
- The infrastructure and labor costs money
- Google charges out the ass for Widevine which is a must for Netflix, Apple TV+, etc
- H.264 Licensing
I don’t understand your point.
A Web browser is a complex piece of SW that needs to provide many, many, features and work with great performance. Therefore you need a large team of experienced developers (full-time and maybe volunteers) collaborating on the development and testing. This is cost in labor and infrastructures (servers, storage, internet connection, hosting of platforms, etc)
One such feature that is a must-have is playing videos, from YouTube, Netflix, Prime, Twitch and what have you. Most widely spread video codecs are proprietary, you need a license to implement the decoder and these licenses are expensive. H.264 is one such codec, very widely spread across many content and platforms. You wouldn’t want a web browser that lacks the ability to decode H.264 videos. There are many such codecs that are considered essential, and this cost a lot of money in total.
In conclusion, this is an argument as why developing a web browser costs money and requires a sustainable financial plan, even though it is open-source and developed mostly by volunteers.
My personal opinion: advertisement sucks. I don’t want it anywhere in my life. I would prefer to pay upfront for my web browser if it come to this.
Yeah, no, I understood all of that. I think we all do. I’m just not sure why you felt the need to explain it?
[email protected] is supporting your argument.
Oh. Okay.
Since when did LibreWolf stop development? First I heard of it, and concerning if accurate.
I was just reading about it in another thread that I don’t remember. Not really “stopped” per se but one of the major devs left and the remaining have admitted they’re not able to keep up. I’ll go and see if I can find it again and I’ll edit this comment if I do.
I remember they saying the were too swamped to take on an Android version after Mull dev stopped, which is not the same as stopping. Mull actually stopped development, LibreWolf didn’t - they should not be mentioned in the same sentence like that.
I linked the thread above.
privacytools is not longer reputable. privacy guides started from it a few years ago for a reason.
Orion all the way
The CEO of brave is a homophobic bigot if that helps push anyone over the edge for changing their browser. It was the last straw for me.
Probably also has some right wing bias as well. That’s probably one of the reasons they included goggles in Brave search for right wing content.
This post shows that it’s much worse than that.
That’s not even his worst crime. His worst crime was inventing JavaScript.
Especially when the alternative they were considering was having Scheme in the browser.
That pretty much does it, yes. Staying away from brave.
Edit: that Netscape team, holy fuck, Andreesen also came from that cesspool, what a fucking drudge of parasites.
You do know that Firefox is essentially Netscape rebooted, right?
Also I don’t really know what you are trying to say here. Netscape was definitely a better option than Internet Explorer.
God damnit.
Every browser I switched to since Firefox has been a good user experience, and then I find out some horrible bullshit.
Is there any safe browser that isn’t run by hateful assholes?
FF is starting to enshittify because they depend on Google for their revenue
I’m waiting on Ladybird to come out next year into alpha
Vivaldi!
That was the headliner reason for me.
The rest was just ‘Alright, it isn’t enough this guy is a piece of shit, he’s pushing a shitty product.’
I didn’t know that, thanks for the tip : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
This is a very well written an thorough article and I highly recommend reading it. If you don’t want to however, here is a summary of the key points:
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- Brendan Eich donated to anti-LGBT political organizations, politicians, and initiatives such as CA Prop 8 which banned same-sex marriages.
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- Brave promised to replace ads with privacy friendly ads that would actually pay publishers and even users with a volatile cryptocurrency while keeping a cut for themselves. This never actually came to life and was criticized as “blatantly illegal”.
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- Brave collected donations for popular content creators without actually involving or seeking consent from said creators. In short they accepted donations in crypto for creators, but would only pay out if it reached a minimum value of $100. When called out, Brave said refunds were impossible.
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2020 — Brave injects referral links when visiting crypto wallets
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- Brave injected their own referral links for services such as Binance without informing users or asking permission.
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- Brave turned their home screen image rotator into a place to serve ads, many of which were suspicious or crypto related.
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- Brave added a Tor feature which exposed users DNS requests
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- Brave refuses to disclose their crawler bot to websites since many websites want to block Brave Search. Brave will only chose not to crawl a website if it also blocks Google’s crawler.
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2024 - So-called “privacy browser” deprecated advanced fingerprinting protection
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- Brave removed a the Strict, Block Fingerprinting privacy feature from their browser.
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- Brave paid for targeted ads for users searching for Firefox in the Play Store and ran a campaign to “Forget the Fox”. When called out on this the VP publicly denied it and claimed it was photo-shopped.
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- The VP of Brave, Luke Mulks, frequently posts about all things crypto, from NFTs to FTX, and uses AI-gen images to promote them. He also frequently re-tweets right-wing activists.
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- Brendan Eich’s feed also frequently contains right-wing content and Republican propaganda despite his claims to be “independent”.
Edit: corrected a mistake noted below.
I don’t use Brave as my main browser but I think some of the accusations are not fair.
- TOR Feature. I don’t think it was deliberately done. Similarly Firefox revealed your up address even if you used VPN while using. As long as there was no malicious intent we can’t say anything other than that they software has big bugs.
- Yes, it is questionable what they do for getting money but same can be said for most donations or schemes that FOSS use. There was long discussions about the money Mozilla receives from Google, or things Opera did (basically similar to Brave)
- Getting news from right wing is useful if you ever need to do research, I had a course in uni about anti-islam and getting really right wings news was difficult. We all knew the same 2 sites.
- The political opinion of the CEO is concerning but not important enough. In that case I’m wholly on the same boat as the developer of the Factorio, if Hitler were to make good Browsers I’d use them.
- It is also important to note most of the problems are in the past. Sure it means there are likely a lot we could not find and it is annoying to use a product where they would exploit you if they are given a chance.
That said Brave is still #1 Browser I’d recommend someone installing. If I can I’d install Firefox myself, but on the phone it is what I recommend. I don’t trust my uncle to install Firefox and install uBlock etc. on top of it. But I trust him to install Brave and use it.
Most privacy minded Browsers like Libre Wolf have restrictions, like not enabling WebRTC out of the box, meaning using Zoom, Meet etc is not possible. There are people who are forced to use such software and not able to tweak with config files. Some people think just because they can do it, everybody should be able to. I think it is a good choice to recommend to people, very good in place replacement for Chrome, you can even take your bookmarks and addons with you
Oof. It seems that most of the users simply don’t care.
I don’t care about the personal life of the CEO, and I don’t care about crypto, and everything else is a giant pile of nothing. Ads in the home screen? Like who gives a shit??
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