Why I recommend against Brave.

Thank goodness that we can post things in here without Braves astroturfed PR community galavanting to save face like what happened when any story against brave posted on the other site
- Which other site? Twitter?
  
  I'm almost certain they mean Reddit, but there are a lot of sites that aren't lemmy.dbzer0.com ... like lemm.ee and infosec.pub ... even some sites that aren't Lemmy instances like infosec.exchance or hachyderm.io.

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
- 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.
  
  Weird, youtube with ublock origin is all I need to enjoy no ads. Are you using some additional scripts that modify youtube in some way?
  
  Ublock Origin on Firefox can also play YT without ads...
  Netflix Idk
- far better than chrome, edge or Firefox without modification
  
  Why is everyone downvoting this? I haven't used Brave as a daily driver for 3 years since I've been with LibreWolf, but my impression has always been the same, that it's far better than stock Firefox, purely based on privacy (completely ignoring any ethical reasoning for not wanting to support Brave). Chrome and Edge being worse is obvious.

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?
  
  Vivaldi sends an unstoppable user counter signal to their main server, promised to change the system and now they're ignoring any requests for updates on the issue.
  That rustles my Jimmies, dings my bell and waves my red flags.
  
  ultimately they're still chromium and they still contribute to chrome's dominance.
  
  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
- Chromium is much more secure than Firefox, so your privacy depends on your threat model here: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
  
  Does it support ublock origin still, or has it gone the way of Chrome?

Brave has great anti-fingerprinting measures I just wish I could get that without installing crypto malware on my pc
- Use Firefox with the Chameleon addon, works on Fennec as well (Android fork with Mozilla telemetry removed).
  
  You only need uBlock basically, beware of other extensions. They're mostly snake oil and Firefox has anti-fingerprinting features per default.
  https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions
- Mullvad Browser comes with fingerprint blocking mechanisms of Tor Browser, without connecting to tor. I recommend it.
- Firefox has by default as well.
- All the crypto stuff is opt-in.

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.

- Huh? The bat? I get bat...

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.
- 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.
- Librewolf users (totally not biased)
  
  always gotta be that one person who posts the ai-generated sludge
  
  I swear I saw a better version of this somewhere
- Thanks for the TLDR. Enough said, deleted Brave app. Firefox Focus is a good alternate.
  
  I hear Vivaldi is pretty good too
- It's so "weird" how the same kind of person who would be openly anti-LGBTQ would also make a such a sketchy product.
- Thanks for the summary.
- 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?
  
  inside the Apple ecosystem this is the only browser that allows cross platform watching of yt without any ads
  Not true. You can block ads with an extension in Safari.
- i notice they are all past tense save the last 3
  
  This is like saying "I see he was murderer until he got caught". No shit Sherlock some of those are past tense, because he got caught. If you want to go ahead and get exploited by a dickhead and his future pending scams go ahead.
  "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, and apparently I end up supporting the right wing all the time because I'm a dunce" is apparently how it works these days.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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?
  
  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.
  
  Using software made by people who are politically aligned to sell out your country to russia is stupid stupid stupid and makes you an idiot, idiot, idiot.
  Its not just politics when the politics are treason and electing a kgb asset. In a normal country and time it wouldn't be a big thing wether your browser maintainer wants feee public transit or not but in current time right wing means you literally voted to destroy the entire us in order to weaken nato for the russian invasion.
  
  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.
- 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?
  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.
  
  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
  
  My take: We can have an open source browser. No resources are required. We don't need ads to view content we make. There is no need for a megacorp or any entity taking money and controlling us.
  
  Since when did LibreWolf stop development? First I heard of it, and concerning if accurate.

Brave search allows misinformation goggles for anyone that believes 2 + 2 = 5.
- Am I misunderstanding something? That's what I would expect to see from any search engine when you search for "vaccines" and "news from the right".
  
  Yes, the feature is working exactly as intended, and therein lies the problem.
- 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.
- I mean Daily Mail should set off an alarm for any sentient being.
- That's crazy. Fuck them

Also don't use Opera. They're opera-ted by chinese mafia.
- 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.
- Chinese Mafia aside, opera GX sill benchmarks faster than any other browser, except maybe thorium

I just installed Brave on my Ubuntu OS on my laptop to replace Chrome. It is running better than chrome was so far. Is there a way to setup Brave to safeguard against some of things mentioned or should I go with something like DuckDuckGo instead?

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.
- This post shows that it’s much worse than that.
- 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.
- 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.
- I didn't know that, thanks for the tip : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
- 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.'
- 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?
  
  Firefox? Mozilla are just stupid, not really hateful
  
  FF is starting to enshittify because they depend on Google for their revenue
  
  i found one called waterfox that is a nice little firefox fork ive been using. super chill.
  I've been loving it.
  
  I'm waiting on Ladybird to come out next year into alpha
  
  Vivaldi!
- 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.

I'm mining bat.
- To someone non technical you sound like you are introducing yourself like a DC villain.

Oh boy, I shared the spacebar news article a year ago or so and was hit by a shitstorm of indignant comments.

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:
Brendan Eich's anti-LGBTQ+ political involvement
Brendan Eich donated to anti-LGBT political organizations, politicians, and initiatives such as CA Prop 8 which banned same-sex marriages.
2016 — Brave Browser promises to replace webpage ads
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".
2018 — Brave runs a questionable donation campaign
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.
2020 — Brave injects referral links when visiting crypto wallets
Brave injected their own referral links for services such as Binance without informing users or asking permission.
2020 — Brave puts ads in user's home screens
Brave turned their home screen image rotator into a place to serve ads, many of which were suspicious or crypto related.
2021 - Brave ships an insecure Tor feature
Brave added a Tor feature which exposed users DNS requests
2023 - Brave hides their crawlers to websites
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.
2024 - So-called "privacy browser" deprecated advanced fingerprinting protection
Brave removed a the Strict, Block Fingerprinting privacy feature from their browser.
And More!
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
  
  Corrected the mistake, thanks.
- Oof. It seems that most of the users simply don't care.
  
  Might be nicer if they just didn't care.
  Check the comment section for the video version of this article by Niccolò, or the comment section of the post on r/browsers, or the replies whenever these issues are mentioned on Twitter, and so on, and you'll find a bunch of brave people saying stuff like:
  you unintentionally just made me like brave over firefox. now i can switch to a chromium based browser and not even feel bad about it
  Yes i am installing Brave after this advertisment!
  Thanks to this video I deleted Brave then redownloaded it
  These were taken directly from the video. They're on the mild side. Throw in also some "stop inserting politics (other than mine) into tech" comments, and a few homophobes not even trying to hide it. Rather than not caring, many of them like it a lot, especially the right-wing politics.
  I don't think every Brave user is a cunt, but fucking hell, are loud cunts seemingly attracted to Brave.
  To folks bothered by this: know that the lead developer of Ladybird is a big fan of Brendan Eich.
  
  Every time I mention that brave is a bad choice that is basically the response I get.
  
  Every time someone uses Brave, I know I can ignore their opinion. They're either a useful moron who is too dumb to look around them, or they support every single one of these things.
  It's no wonder why 4chan's /g/ loves Brave.
  
  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??
- 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

privacytools is not longer reputable. privacy guides started from it a few years ago for a reason.

privacytools.io uses affiliate links. privacyguides.org does not.

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.
  
  That is the usual effect sensationalism has, but feel free to choose what best suits your needs.
  I do enjoy Cromite, Librewolf, Mullvad Browser, Tor Browser and some others, but I can't deny each (as any) has it's own set of drawbacks. Better to have them in mind when setting up and using those browsers than to panic and run in circles searching for a perfect solution that doesn't exist.
  Even more importantly I'd celebrate that people are using any privacy focused FOSS, even if it's not what I'd ideally use. If they feel motivated to keep on that road they'll end learning to use more advanced options in time. On the other hand, make them feel insecure about their options and bloat their minds with sensationalist posts and they'll just use Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge because, "personally", why bother when everyone and everything is so evil and complicated and we're all doomed anyway? 😮‍💨

I wonder if anyone here is going to mention SeaMonkey-Browser for fun.
<br>
It's an entire suite of applications:
Browser
Email-Client
HTML-Editor + Web-Dev Tool
NewsGroup + Feed-Reader
IRC-Client
- I haven't seen sea monkey mentioned in quite a few years
- I really wish seamonkey still worked for modern websites. It's so cool.

We need to get some moderators in here. Lots of bigotry in this comment section…
- Literally bigots, Russian trolls are defending it like they are on Reddit. Isnt there a way to lock the comments from getting out of hand

Fascinating... I knew some of this and it is indeed troubling.
It seems that Brave's mission is actually about generating revenue by any method possible (including manipulation of end users) more than anything to do with privacy.
If you're cool with all that then Brave is for you I guess.

I've heard enough of this stuff over the years to never be tempted to try the browser out. At this point, I feel like it's claim to privacy is mostly marketing. Personally, I'm going to stick to LibreWolf.

Wow, what scummy bastards. I used the browser for a little bit, and I kinda figured they were up to some shady shit when I noticed a crypto-wallet was included, but I ignored all that shit and it was fine. But if I'd known what the CEO or the company in general had been up to I'd have dropped that shit like a bad habit long before I did for other reasons.

Thank you for posting this! I had a vague recollection there was something scummy about Brave, and I was surprised to see it recommended in so many of the "Which browser should I use?" posts. It's really handy to have a chronical of bullshit like this to point to when it comes up
- You could make a similar "chronical" about any other browser. They're often recommended because in many ways they are the least shitty and most sustainable.
  
  "Other people are assholes too" is a terrible reason to support an asshole. Expect better.

I agree that Brave is problematic and most of the criticisms are also legitimate. But the point about the crawlers is not really a problem. If you respect the wish of websites to be indexed exclusively by Google, you support Google's monopoly and prevent alternative search engines from having similarly good results.
- I see no legitimate reason for not using a User Agent string, like all the other crawlers use, other than the desire to hide the crawler and make it difficult to block.
  I don't accept his explanation. I see it as gaslighting.
  
  They explained the reason in the comment you just replied to.
  
  Why should the crawler be blockable? That only brings disadvantages for a search engine. There is no sensible reason to allow Google but exclude other search engines.
- 's/ly (.) (.)/\2/'
  There is nothing good about Google results. They haven't been usable for years.

The crazy conspiracy guy I know uses Brave, so that already put me off.

What better chromium based browser is there?
- I normally stick with Firefox but, when there's the need, I use degoogled Chromium.
  
  Thorium's not bad.
- Vivaldi if you really need a Chromium based browser.
  
  An option, but not fully open source.

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!

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.
- Every browser on iOS is just Safari wrapped in a different skin because of Apple’s requirements.
- But you can install Adblock extensions (but only in Safari)!
  The best by far is Adguard.
- Orion. It can use Firefox, and chrome extensions
  
  Interesting, I'll have to check it out. I've been passively wanting to leave brave on iOS for some time now. Thank you!
- If you want to block youtube ads, I think it is really the only option as of now. Adguard can be downloaded on the app store and it does a mediocre job blocking ads, but the placeholder space for them remains and it straight up fails to block some for me. I am stuck with brave for now until something better comes along.
  
  Safari has Wipr which blocks YouTube ads
  
  Do you use the paid version of Adguard?
  For me on iOS it's almost as good as uBO on Firefox.
  No blank spaces where ads go, support for every filterlist I want, especially nice for blocking cookie notices.

Those reasons are all pretty goofy in my book. I use Brave on a daily basis on all my PCs. Only browser out there that offers both good privacy and actual usability. Plus, the first issue in the article is literally a nonissue for me and I actually personally really like the leadership at the company.
- I present: The intellectual prowess of bigots.
  
  It's sort of ridiculous at this point the lengths they're willing to go.
  
  Yes, because using a web browser is bigotry 😂 It's cool if you don't like it but at least have legitimate reasons for not liking it.

I don't use Brave but honestly there aren't many options left. I can't wish for Orion to launch any sooner.

I have been using Brave for many years hands up

Does Adblock even work in Brave any more since Google blocked them?
- Brave has their own built-in ad blocker that still works
  
  It barely block most ads
  
  Last I used it, it didn't have nearly the functionality that ubo does

Disabling Brave Rewards on a new installation is not any harder than disabling Firefox's Pocket crap, or Edge's Copilot integration, or Chrome's send-everything-to-Google behaviour.
I wish one day we can get a browser that serves the user instead of browser maker, but for now i'll keep using Brave (it's at least open source).
- Crossing my fingers for Ladybird to be that browser.
  
  🤞🤞
- disabling ... Chrome's send-everything-to-Google behaviour.
  Is that even possible?
  
  There's Ungoogled Chromium which claims to do just that
- Orion.

Good article other than I am unsure on the reputation of the PrivacyTools website.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210730130240/https://blog.privacytools.io/the-future-of-privacytools/
https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2021/09/14/welcome-to-privacy-guides/

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.
- Over Vivaldi?
  
  I know that I am overly paranoid but they do the weird user ID thing. It it opt in as they said in their privacy policy.
  
  When you install Vivaldi browser (“Vivaldi”), each installation profile is assigned a unique user ID that is stored on your device. Vivaldi will send a message using HTTPS directly to our servers located in Iceland every 24 hours containing this ID, version, cpu architecture, screen resolution and time since last message.
  
  We anonymize the IP address of Vivaldi users by removing the last octet of the IP address from your Vivaldi client then we store the resolved approximate location after using a local geoip lookup
  At least to my knowledge brave do not do anything like this or maybe it is opt out by default. But honesty, I think from now, I will recommend both of them and just let people choose.

What the frick?

Brave bought ad space on YouTube, and showed an ad on how to block ads on YouTube.
Mozilla could have done something similar with UBO but they just keep missing so many golden chances.
- Mozilla has millions of reasons to not rock the boat with Google.

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
  
  How is LibreWolf niche ?

It seems to me that nothing in life is free, including browsers. Yeah, free software exists, and that works fine for many kinds of software, but not browsers. Browsers are a living thing, they have to change constantly to adapt to the changing environment. Maintaining a browser takes effort, to an extent that far exceeds that of other programs, word processing, games, image editing, etc. A browser is a primary attack surface for all manner of malware and exploits. It's web facing and it executes code provided by external sources. That last sentence should give you chills.
So all that is to say, that it is very much non trivial to maintain a browser. So it only stands to reason that maintaining it consistently won't actually happen without some amount of compensation.
So how do you pay for a browser? Well everyone seems to agree, with ads. This method is apparently quite viable as a business. But I probably don't have to tell you that there are a bunch of problematic aspects to it. User data collection (and resale) is probably top on the list of problems. It's a pretty serious breach of privacy, I hope I didn't have to convince anyone of that.
To get to my point though, Brave is the only browser I know of attempting to use a different model to support their project. They're trying to allow people to just pay for the web themselves, rather than let advertisers pay for the web while users give up all their data. It may not be a perfect implementation, but from where I'm standing I don't see anyone else even trying...
Correct me if I'm wrong though, i'd love to see other viable models.
- That's a long winded way to try to excuse secretly mining crypto, far right misinformation pushing, transgender phobia, and more that Brave does / has done.
  I also want to point out an operating system is a huge project to create and maintain, and yet Linux has accomplished this without all the shit Brave has pulled.
  PS: technically Brave has used ads as well.
  
  far right misinformation pushing, transgender phobia
  Brave does not do this.
  
  That's a really concise and thoughtless way to excuse Google, Microsoft and Apple for monetizing spying on every person on earth for profit.
  And yes, Linux distros have a business model. I'm happy that distros found a business model through offering official support to corporations, it makes it truly free to the rest of us. It also helps that their competition is very expensive. Will that model work for a browser? What do you think?
- See guys, I know people didn't believe me when I said there are people who push for and encourage for projects to be corporatized instead of community run but here is one of them. These types of garbage arguments always bring up the idea of cybersecurity but always neglect to mention one of the biggest security and privacy threats to the corporate governed model, the corporation itself. Especially once enshittification really sets in.
  And before you vomit some horrible misrepresenting argument reminiscent of Dave Plumber's speech against backdoors in Windows, you know damn well that when I say the company itself is a privacy and security threat to the project that I'm talking about deliberate attempts by the company to make money off the project through tracking, ads, crypto mining, and any other number of shady shit. You know, things that are officially sanctioned.

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.
- I mean, the phrase 'sane defaults' comes to mind

Thanks, but I'll keep using it.
I don't agree politically with the CEO nor I'm I fan of the crypto stuff, but I find it better than any other browser right now. And I don't want to support Mozilla in any way, so FF and its forks forks are a no-go.
- Here come the downvotes fro the supposedly tolerant ~~idiots~~ good people out there, lol
  https://lemm.ee/comment/19102164
  
  Dude, you showed up to a post about how brave is an ad-riddled crypto scam and responded with "yeah, but fuck Firefox" with no reasoning given. Then cried about how anyone who disagreed with that assessment was an idiot.
  What kind of engagement were you expecting/hoping for?

The article is unfair about the fingerprinting issue. Brave utilizes a technique they call farbling and it does a really good job at keeping websites from knowing who you are, in theory anyways.
People really love to attack brave, but it can be configured to be a very fast, private, and clean browsing experience. Faster than Firefox by a long shot, open source, decentralized encrypted syncing… I get there have been controversies, and it is chromium, but at the end of the day you have to use the tool that works best for you.
EDIT I must say I am disappointed in how I was (at the time of posting) the only one to actually start a discussion about the article’s technical claims, and instead of any rational dialogue we went right to blind downvotes and immature statements. I guess I expected more from this little corner of the internet.
- You're not just licking the boot you're giving it the good sloppy
  
  By boot do you mean chromium? Id love to use a gecko browser, but my busy life is too short to spend extra seconds every time waiting for pages to load. If that makes me a boot licker so be it I guess :)