Why I recommend against Brave.
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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.
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 solicit every site on the web to participate.
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.
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Which asshole do you support?
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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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80% of the stuff mentioned can be disabled. Not sure what the problem is. CEO is a dick though.
If you disable half of everything in windows 11 and never connect it to the internet, it does not spy on you. Not sure what the problem is.
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80% of the stuff mentioned can be disabled. Not sure what the problem is. CEO is a dick though.
I mean, the phrase 'sane defaults' comes to mind
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Brave has their own built-in ad blocker that still works
Last I used it, it didn't have nearly the functionality that ubo does
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I hear Vivaldi is pretty good too
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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 solicit every site on the web to participate.
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.
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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.
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.
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That pretty much does it, yes. Staying away from brave.
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.
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Does anyone have a recommendation for a browser to use on my iPhone other than Brave? I tried Firefox first, but evidently I can’t install extensions for ad blocking due to iPhone restrictions, so I’m using Brave on just this one device.
Orion. It can use Firefox, and chrome extensions
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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.
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.
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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.
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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?
privacytools is not longer reputable. privacy guides started from it a few years ago for a reason.
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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 was a proposed ban on 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".
Prop 8 was not merely proposed, it was approved by voters and actually banned same-sex marriage for several years before it was ruled unconstitutional.
Brendan Eich contributed to the actual banning of same-sex marriage in California for several years.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
