Why I recommend against Brave.
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Please tell me you have the whole set. I have waited for someone to post this since literally 2018
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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.
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First of all, thanks for calling out the bullshit of this professional far right fire hydrant apologist. You've stayed on track with the fire issue of their argument despite them wanting to hide attention away from it.
The reason their propaganda sounds reasonable is because it pretends to be rational and sounds calm, when in reality it's ignoring extremely glaring issues. In one of these cases for example, it's pretending that funding intolerance isn't intolerance. Another is ignoring details, such as how the crypto scam was essentially malware, and did cause performance hits to devices using Brave (part of the reason why it was caught).
Second of all, for everyone following along this far, I just want to point out the false equivalency between something like hard drugs and gambling - things that literally statistically bring literal harm - to marriage.
And finally, we're done entertaining bullshit in the tea - that's why Teslas are burning. Remember that when shit hits the fan.
I was pretty confused when reading because it sounded like you were thanking me for calling our far right BS from the person was talking to, but I was calling our far left BS instead.
But after a couple paragraphs, I realized it was me you were talking about. So thank you for giving me a chance to see this and respond.
professional far right fire hydrant apologist
Everything here is incorrect. I'm not being paid, I'm not far right (I hate Trump and voted for Biden in 2020), and I call out far right BS all the time (had an argument w/ my boss the other day who supported Trump's tariff and immigration policy).
ignoring extremely glaring issues
I've tried to cover all of them, but my posts get long as is, so I try to combine a few. I don't follow Brave news much, so I'll miss some things.
funding intolerance isn’t intolerance
If I donated to an intolerant PAC or something, sure, I'd get that. If I bought products from a corporation that openly funds intolerant PACs with a large chunk of profits, I'd get that as well.
But if the CEO uses their personal money on it, I have more trouble connecting that with the company. As long as they keep personal opinions personal and don't drag the company into it, I'm fine. The VP seems worse than him honestly (from the article).
A CEO is not the company, and if you disable ads, don't use their search engine, and don't engage with their crypto nonsense, you're not giving them any money. I do all of that for the handful of minutes each day I use it.
I use Firefox as my main browser, and that's what I recommend to others. I use Brave as my backup browser, because I need something that runs on the Chromium engine that doesn't have ads. I think people are overreacting about Eich. I disagree with his politics, but as long as he keeps that outside the company, I'm okay with it.
crypto scam was essentially malware, and did cause performance hits to devices using Brave (part of the reason why it was caught).
I assume you're talking about the referral link thing? Yeah, that was bad, and I think I mentioned that. At least they quickly reversed course.
I can see an argument for them thinking it wasn't that bad, so I'm willing to chalk it up to naïveté. It wasn't quite as bad as Honey, which removed other referral codes. It's still bad.
I didn't hear that it caused performance issues though.
false equivalency between something like hard drugs and gambling - things that literally statistically bring literal harm - to marriage
I never claimed they were equivalent. I merely pointed to them as fairly unpopular things that I support, and gave reasons for it.
And I agree, they can absolutely cause problems in marriage, as well as non-married people (addiction is real), hence why I said they are "bad." But "bad" doesn't necessarily have to mean "illegal."
I have never used drugs, gambled, or hired a prostitute, and I don't think anyone else should, but I will absolutely support legalizing them. In fact, I'm quite religious, and those things are 100% against my religion, but I believe personal morality shouldn't really impact politics. My religion and moral code is for me, and I'm not going to force that on anyone.
In short, I support these probably for the same reason you oppose Eich: I believe in freedom. I guess I define that a bit more liberally than you do.
that’s why Teslas are burning
Teslas are burning as a symbol of opposition to Musk and DOGE. And I completely respect that, I also don't like Musk and DOGE.
That said, this isn't going to change anything. Musk has enough money that even if Tesla disappears, he'll still be filthy rich. He does seem to care about the "richest man in the world" title, so I guess it will hurt his ego a little.
The ones that'll suffer more are regular people who bought a Tesla years ago and are getting caught in the crossfire. Some idiots will burn privately owned Teslas, insurance coverage will get dropped, etc. That's not worth it IMO.
Protest at Tesla dealerships, or better yet your state capital. I might even join you. But wanton destruction isn't the way.
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but we’ll have one less competitor to Google’s absolute hegemony over the web browser market.
Brave isn't a competitor to Google, it's an enabler. It uses the same engine, which is all Google cares about: Their engine, their internet.
It absolutely is a competitor. Yes, it uses the same engine, but it blocks their ads. And at the end of the day, serving ads is what Google wants to do.
But again, Firefox (and forks) is my main browser, and it's what I recommend to everyone. But Brave is on my list of acceptable Chromium browsers, assuming you need a Chromium browser (I do for web dev at my day job).
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Holy copium batman, imagine excusing malware and checks notes literally aiding in denying rights to LGBTQ+ people.
Let me guess, you pretend to be centrist by day, and you wear
By night?
You got me, I guess? But don't tell my POC SO that I've been happily married to for >10 years.
Seriously though, this is the kind of extreme take I'm pushing back on. I strongly disagree with the Lemmy devs' politics, yet here I am on their platform. I've even contributed bug fixes. I strongly disagree with Eich's politics, yet I use Brave as my backup browser. Why? It meets my technical requirements. Firefox is my main browser though.
I'm not a centrist either, whatever that means, but I guess of you average out my extreme takes it could look that way. Conservatives call me socialist, Progressives call me far right, so I guess the middle of that is centrist?
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Fuck is this a Shitshow in the Comments.
And here is my contribution.I'm using Brave and Librewolf as Desktop Browser
and on my Tablet i'm using only Brave.
On my GrapheneOS Phone i'm using Vanadium because its the default and its good enough that i don't install a alternative.What i want is a Browser with good adblocking and cookie... fingerprintresistance fast loading time but the main points are that these features must be enabled by default because i don't have the time and strength to enable them on any new device.
I simply don't have the capacity
i'm worn down
My Expirence has shown that some Webseites block my browser and then i simply switch to chromebased and in mist cases it works.
And at this point in Time i don't have a better chromium based Browser with this much default Privacy features than Brave.And i don't have the strengh to care about the CEO of them. I don't care. i'm tired
And i don’t have the strengh to care about the CEO of them. I don’t care. i’m tired
you care enough to find multiple niche browsers and write comments about them
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It absolutely is a competitor. Yes, it uses the same engine, but it blocks their ads. And at the end of the day, serving ads is what Google wants to do.
But again, Firefox (and forks) is my main browser, and it's what I recommend to everyone. But Brave is on my list of acceptable Chromium browsers, assuming you need a Chromium browser (I do for web dev at my day job).
Yes, it uses the same engine, but it blocks their ads.
Which means nothing, when Google can, and is, pushing technology to freely unleash their ad network on all web pages, as a function of the engine itself.
No, it's not a competitor. Excepting in their ad markets, and frankly, it's not a competitor, it's a statistical blip.
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And i don’t have the strengh to care about the CEO of them. I don’t care. i’m tired
you care enough to find multiple niche browsers and write comments about them
How is LibreWolf niche ?
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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?
I wonder if anyone here is going to mention SeaMonkey-Browser for fun.<br>
It's an entire suite of applications
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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?
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What's wrong with ungoogled-chromium? Or Vivaldi?
ultimately they're still chromium and they still contribute to chrome's dominance.
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How is LibreWolf niche ?
niche:
relating to or aimed at a small specialized group or market
Browser stats: https://gs.statcounter.com/
Do you see LibreWolf on here? Do you see Brave on here? Do you see Vanadium on here?
Even Firefox, of which LibreWolf is essentially a reskin of, is at 2.6% and considered niche
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ultimately they're still chromium and they still contribute to chrome's dominance.
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.
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ultimately they're still chromium and they still contribute to chrome's dominance.
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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.”
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How is LibreWolf niche ?
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Orion all the way
I second this. I simply use the FF compatible extensions and ignore the Chrome side of compatibility. It's been awesome!
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Remember that, by virtue of us being here on Lemmy and talking about all of this, we are also a niche group of people. We don't represent the average person, even if we might be the ones who influence them with our knowledge.
absolutely. people gotta realize when they put themselves in a bubble and not project that experience outwards to everyone else
there's a word for this.. lemme see if i can find it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
The curse of knowledge, also called the curse of expertise[1] or expert's curse, is a cognitive bias that occurs when a person who has specialized knowledge assumes that others share in that knowledge.[2]
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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.
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.
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It is still a privacy reason. You are still contributing to googles plans to dominate and control the internet by using a chromium product.
