Why I recommend against Brave.
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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?
Thank goodness that we can post things in here without Braves astroturfed PR community like what happened when any story against brave posted on the other site
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It's not a strawman, it's the problem.
It's a strawman you're still trying to prop up because the issue is not only the Brave browser itself, but the owners of it.
Even if we took your argument in good faith, it would still be flawed since Brave is based on Chromium, of which Google essentially controls at this point, so you'd still be supporting Google hegemony. In other words, even from that stance you've brought up, it would be a bad idea to use Brave vs Firefox, Librewolf, Konqueror, etc.
the issue is not only the Brave browser itself, but the owners of it.
I mean, that an issue, sure. But I gotta be honest with you, I care far more about the practicalities of the technology than the personalities behind them. So I guess that's where we see things differently. Don't let me get in your way on that front, if that's what really matters to you.
I see browsers as being problematic in general right now and new solutions are needed. If you're happy with tracking and spying at the browser level, then fine, but I'm interested in how we can put an end to that.
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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.
It's so "weird" how the same kind of person who would be openly anti-LGBTQ would also make a such a sketchy product.
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What's wrong with ungoogled-chromium? Or Vivaldi?
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 supposed as 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?
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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 supposed as 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?
Unironically, Ecosia has been working on a browser that's currently in beta with a built in adblocker. Works really well!
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Isn't every chromium browser going to lose manifest v2 eventually, causing the real ublock origin to stop working?
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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.
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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 supposed as 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?
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.
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Isn't every chromium browser going to lose manifest v2 eventually, causing the real ublock origin to stop working?
I don't know about every Chromium-based browser, but I can tell you that I went back to Firefox and regret nothing (I was on Brave). Firefox has gotten a lot better lately, especially on desktop. For example, they added a native auto-PiP option, which is super helpful for those of us who watch YouTube/videos while flipping through tons of tabs.
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anyone believing brave is good for privacy is quite naive
Bar better than chrome, edge or Firefox without modification
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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”.
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anyone believing brave is good for privacy is quite naive
It's good for playing youtube without ads and Netflix which doesnt work with my firefox setup for some reason. That's all I use it for.
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anyone believing brave is good for privacy is quite naive
It's good for privacy from the websites you visit, from itself is up for debate though lol
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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.
You're the kind of person that gets told repeatedly that X is bad, don't do bad.
Then you do X, get in deep trouble, and cry about how could anyone possible let this happen, and expect everyone else around you to clean up the mess, arent you.
Google dominating the internet IS a privacy problem.
Taking google tracking bullshit out of your browser does nothing to address their monopolistic power that allows them to violate your privacy even without their tracking shit in their browser. Using Chrome/Chromium hurts privacy. Because using google shit in general hurts privacy. Using chrome/chromium furthers googles base, further forces the web to align with what google wants, and is bad for privacy, and for everything.
And Chrome was never the most performant. Google just sabotage their own services to run worse on competitors browsers, because end users are stupid and will just assume "not google browser = bad " and use chrome.
And if you still cant wrap your head around it, then you're hopeless.
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Is it me or the people defending brave are homophobes too.
Not just you, if they can ignore or defend Brave, they're on the side of its CEO. No questions about it.
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It's good for playing youtube without ads and Netflix which doesnt work with my firefox setup for some reason. That's all I use it for.
Ublock Origin on Firefox can also play YT without ads...
Netflix Idk
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As long as his personal life doesn't influence the product, I'll just throw him on the pile with all the other Nazi supporting CEOs. which is most of them.
Okay but the very fact that Brave is a crypto-riddled mess that REPEATEDLY SCAMMED ITS OWN USERS (in what world do you think that's stopped, and it isn't just 'we haven't found out how they're still doing it in 2025 yet') is absolutely influenced by his views. His views are baked in to everything about that browser, up to and including YET ANOTHER bloody built-in LLM constantly popping up on interaction and trying to sell you on AI hallucinations being the future while wasting heck knows how much electricity (Leo).
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I wonder if anyone here is going to mention SeaMonkey-Browser for fun.<br>
It's an entire suite of applications
I haven't seen sea monkey mentioned in quite a few years
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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
