I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever.
Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency which they then added to a rewards program that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave.
Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.
Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I'd say the answer is a very clear no.
Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don't mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.
Brave is not spyware. That website you linked is horrible and full of misinformation. They also claim that Firefox, and even Tor Browser, are spyware. They act as if any and all connections a browser makes are automatically bad and used for spying/tracking.
I won't disagree with the other criticisms of Brave that you made, but just wanted to point that out. That website is just highly unreliable and makes verifiably false claims about the browsers it reviews.
Let's not forget one of the biggest investors is a right-wing billionaire who runs a corporate intelligence agency that contracts with the DoD. And the only proof we have that he doesn't collect data on Brave's users is the questionable word of the devs.
For the comments, can anyone give me an actual reason to use Brave over Firefox (and it's forks)? I guess the cryptocurrency aspect is a reason, but I wouldn't say it's a very good one.
Brave was also made by a guy who got kicked out of Mozilla for being homophobic. The cryptocurrency stuff is brave also a major scam, it's a crypto that must first be converted into another crypto before it can be converted into real money. How is that a "currency"?
If nothing else, I would recommend Firefox over Brave for the sole reason of the latter being yet another Chromium browser. It would be nice if we could eat away some of the browser marketshare from Google.
Personally I agree with the OP; and I refuse to use Brave. This isn't based in dislike of cryptocurrency in general; but I DESPISE both ADVERTISING AND SHITCOINS (Basically any token or sub-token of a main standalone blockchain that has no real, significant, usable real world value).
Therefore Brave DOES NOT reflect my values. I don't care if advertising networks make any money, I actively hate them enough I want to deprive them due to their behaviors anyway for being so violently anti-user.
I don't use Chrome or Brave because they DO NOT reflect my beliefs regarding web standards either, and I refuse to allow Google and the Chromium and Chrome project to dictate standards either. Particularly of note is their utter failure with both FLOC and WEB-INTEGRITY; both of which are stupidly retarded anti-user and anti-privacy features which are horrible.
Brave behaving like Win XP era browser with gazillion toolbars installed, with a pinch of crypto and crypto promoting ads should be a giant red flag.
FOSS =/= trusted by default. Why are there so many FOSS evangelists, but such a damn tiny part of them are programmers, let alone programmers able to examine a source code behind such a giant codebase as web browser?
I use Vivaldi, at least their business model is clear, and developer is kind of trusted, and not crypto scammer and homophobe.
The issue is wider than Brave. Nowadays, companies build uncritical communities around their products.
If you try to be critical, you loose the community in which you're involved on one side. And, if you are critical from the outside, "you don't understand" like in the "you're not the choose one".
Newsflash: everything that isn't free and entirely open source is generally spyware these days.
It's amazing how we pilloried RealPlayer and burned its parent company to the fucking ground over two decades ago for far less egregious transgressions than what we now let Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc get away with.
Might I add brave's BAT wallet is garbage. You had to sign up to some random exchange and upload your ID (I didn't), but even that you couldn't even backup your wallet into a new install, so hope that you would never have to format or reinstall or change devices - it'll be a pain to restore, if it was even possible.
I see this exact thread every week now and it's between the same people:
"Oh ok i stopped using it" to "Naw i'll keep using brave"
At this point can we stop this? Brave is trash but people are either too stubborn or just don't care anymore (which is ironic). Either mods just pin this thread and treat this as a "brave is trash" megathread or I don't know.
I used them for a few weeks before they rolled out their crypto scheme. It honestly felt like they monetized “privacy”, nothing more. So I bailed having zero faith any of their shit worked like they wanted us to think it works.
I used to use Brave, then used Bromite but that got abandoned. I think there's another fork of it, but ultimately I just use Firefox which has worked better for me overall.
Browsers are a big attack vector for exploits and security is very important. Firefox releases patches regularly and I don't have to worry about it being abandoned like some others. I disabled whatever telemetry / sponsored stuff they have enabled by default and feel it's a good balance of security & privacy + doesn't have the DRM crap chromium is trying to add.
I tried them a few years ago before I knew more about things like this, their CEO, etc. I had a problem with them continuously taking over my home page on desktop with their own homepage (much the way Firefox on android does now) after every update. I contacted them on social media where they went on a two day stent of making fun of me for having a problem and gaslighting me that there was a problem because zero other people had ever complained. Super professional there.
Never used it, I saw some twitter comments from it's CEO and this guy isn't trustable.
I go with Firefox and sometimes epiphany. Last one tries to accomplish the level of the well known ones but is mostly years behind. That's sad, because I really like it.
Look, just… just use fire fox! Sure some sights aren’t optimized for it, but it’s a minor difference in performance from a chromium based browser.
And the more people use fire fox the more sights will have a reason to optimize for it.
Anything that is using chromium is still using something built by Google, and thus if Google tries to alter chromium to make ad blockers stop working, or some other asinine idea, there isn’t much a browser can do about it.
For a lot of people, way too many people, using Brave is a political statement that is paradoxically supposedly against political statements. It's a spite choice that justifies the cryptogrifting, spyware, and the horrid political views of its owner.
Honestly, even the crypto part of Brave was a cool idea. Back when it was in beta, I was sending various websites and GitHub users 'tips', and they were able to cash out. It was genuinely supposed to be a new way to monetize the web (they later made the tips automatic based on how long you spent on each webpage), but, yeah.. Too many people didn't see the vision, and they got too much hate, so I'm pretty sure that whole program is axed now.
I used to use Firefox but have been using Brave cause I was getting tired of having to open Edge every time there would be an addon or tool that was Chrome exclusive. So unless there's other options for privacy focused chromium browsers I'm just gonna stick with brave.
I would be very curious what other browsers people recommend. I use Brave solely because of the profile feature it offers, which for my use case is an order of magnitude better than Firefox’s containers. Is there something more private/better than Brave that still has profiles?
Used to use Brave, but it became more and more bloated as time went on. Also, I realized that I wasn't opposing Google as I wanted, but choosing an alternative of Google, as brave is still based on chromium. I enjoy Firefox very much now (don't know about the performance issues people talk about at all cause it seems better than all chrome, brave, opera, and opera GX I used in the past) although I'm looking into even further simplifying and privatizing that. Any suggestions for modified Firefox browsers that keep the functionality would be appreciated.
I don't see why making money needs to be at all a part of using a piece of software. The only transaction that potentially needs to take place is paying for the software up front.
Same with social media sites like whatever BlueSky or Posts is doing. Why is money involved?
thanks for the links and info. I use brave as well as firefox and other browsers depending on what device I'm using. The spyware link is worth a quick read to understand any risks. It's great to see some analysis done there. I actually feel a little better about brave now, I'm ok with those risks for most cases and brave blocks ads better for me than what I've seen in other browsers. I'm always willing to switch though, I have no loyalty to any browser.
I wrote about the four anti-privacy cult armies 3 years ago, when I created the privatelife community (originally on reddit). https://lemmy.ml/post/34228
I actually use Brave and have been for few years. Used Firefox back when it was version 2 and switched to Brave as it's performance was better compared to Firefox.
Reading the above now, you have shed a lot of light on things I didn't know about Brave. I know I can disable a lot of stuff on it (news, rewards, VPN, chat). But the list of bloat has been increasing.
Your post is an eye opener. I will be looking for a way to switch to Firefox. Unfortunately I work for an organisation that doesn't give us the option of installing our browser. Forced to use MS Edge for now lol.
Let's be real here for just a minute. The only actual reason people here hate Brave is because the founder personally believes in traditional marriage.
if you want the best privacy but you still want to use chrome just use ungoogled chromium, you get both privacy and you're still able to use chrome, just minus the sync capability
if you want something like it for mobile on android there's bromite
if you want something like it for ios... you're fucked
Spyware is a bit of a stretch. However, let's talk about Firefox. Mozilla Corporation is a Billion Dollar Corporation that is tied at the hip to Google and uses 115+ servers to track every single thing you do.
Chromium explicitly uses shared memory and is technically able to write and execute not only shared data from private/incognito to regular windows or tabs but adjacent processes. You can search for mmap in the Chromium repo or try to use Chromium with FreeBSD or GhostBSD sysctl.conf set with kern.elf64.allow_wx = 0 - it won't run.
The Precise Geolcation Timeout for Firefox is 68 years.
I hate Brendan Eich, I hate the constant annoyances of Brave adding cards and sponsored backgrounds, I hate the dominance of Chromium, and I hate cryptocurrency.
But this is a fight I've lost.
I'm one of those insufferable Linux nerds who has spent $50+hours/month setting up a Nextcloud VPS, calling my friends Nazi-adjacent for using Twitter, etc. I'm horribly opinionated about software. I WANT everyone to use Firefox.
But I just don't have the spare time for Firefox anymore.
I've had irreconcilable, breaking issues with vanilla Firefox installs on almost every major desktop and mobile OS (excluding KaiOS and Apple WatchOS) every time I tried to switch to it during the past few years. This is not exaggeration.
From crashing because it can't handle keyboard-arrow down on iPadOS, lacking good built-in adblock controls (like Brave Shields) on Android and iOS, to being unable to load hCaptcha on desktop even after hours of user.js flitching. This is on top of the inconvenience of not having a good alternative to Chromium's Profile UI, the inconvenience of needing to test on Chrome when doing webdev, etc.
Brave is a putrid steaming pile of shit, but it's the best choice I've found. This post exaggerates a lot of the very real issues Brave has. This isn't praise for Brave, but rather an indictment on the state of browsing and personal-computing.
I write here very sparingly. With this comment, I hope someone will tell me I'm an idiot who's missing a wonderful browser out there.
Well, 1st, your sources are are weak here. However, it is a fact Brave is also run by con artists and swindlers.
The issue many users have is compatibility. Firefox zealots ignore the fact IT folks must work with Chromium. I cannot get the tools I need to work reliably on Firefox (or LibreWolf, Mullvad, etc.).
So, within the Chromium limitation, , I work on 7 systems regularly, I must have bookmark replication, MacOS/Linux/Windows/Android support:
Ungoogled Chromium = rough, no bookmark replication
Vivaldi = worse than Brave, because no full source code
Opera = Chinese
Iridium = Indian
Brave = source code available, privacy focused
Edge = lol
Chrome = lol
Winner? Brave. I use it with Pi-hole DNS on my home network, forced to use it with work DNS on their networks. I do also use LibreWolf (aka Firefox) with the Mullvad extension. I use it along with Brave, and hopefully at some point I can switch. I've tried 3 times in recent years, but too many web interfaces have Firefox issues, since it's blatantly not being used to QA websites anymore.
I've used Brave in the past because of the Rewards. Once the rewards stopped I've continued using it simply because it's one of the best Chromium options available. I
Rewards and magic internet beans stuff is easy to disable, but not as straightforward as it should be.
I see a lot of this kind of copy paste rants against Brave tossing up past behaviors - the thing is, even with that considered it's a very good browser with one of the best ad blocks I've had on the phone.
Well. I get the rating criteria of this website. But it's useful of adding telemetry to learn crashes and feature usage.
If we all obey these criteria, we would need to read every line of codes and build it by ourselves. That would be the safest way of living a digital life.
If people want to use Brave, or Windows, or install screen doors on their submarines who am I to complain?
The fact is for a lot of people, Brave offers a superior out of box experience compared to firefox or almost any other browser. In terms of ad blocking, speed and ease of use, it's pretty much second to none. The fact that you install it and go is really appealing and how easy they make the slider to adjust the aggressiveness of the script blocking is great ui that my dad mother could use.
Yes, the company isn't very good, it's headed by a guy with a questionable history and has a poor track record when it comes to monetization strategy. I stopped using Brave this year, but for ages it was my goto because I could just install it and have an improved web experience.
I understand why people don't like Brave, but for me it's the least shitty out of all of them, I dislike Mozilla (not Firefox) way more than I dislike crypto, and Firefox has awful out of the box privacy, and before you leave all of the comments about user.js, know that isn't ideal because it leaves you with a more identifiable fingerprint because all of the specific modifications.
The day Firefox has good defaults and leave all unnecessary crap with tracking (google default, pocket, etc) is the day I'll switch.
Why should I trust Mozilla over Brave? Just because Mozilla is a nonprofit subsidiary doesn't mean that they don't have an incentive to make money for their profit handling corporate division, the Mozilla Corporation. I tried playing around with Firefox and not having the option to directly add a less-used search engine than the ones given without extensions was pretty sketchy to me. All of the complaints people have about Brave like ads and the weird crypto thing are very configurable in the settings, and I have a lot less compatibility issues compared to Firefox. Also, the source linked claiming all of this is a sketchy Neocities site that anyone could have made that doesn't even prove why Brave isn't private. I get that people are loyal to their favorite browsers but this is silly. If you really want to be private, use the Tor network, but all browsers and extensions need to track you in some degree to function.
If you need a Chromium derivative, then Brave is probably the best choice. It's open-source, and includes ad blocking. Just don't use its crypto token.
I prefer Firefox over Brave, but sometimes I might need a Chromium derivative for a particular site.
I really like Brave on my Android phone, with the build-in ad-blocking it's a really nice experience. Firefox on Android sucks imo, but I do use Firefox on my laptop as my primary browser.
I use brave on android, because there's not much choice. I really-really-really loved bromite, but noupdatess for like a year
Recently I found out there's cromite so I think i will check that one out
On desktop I use librewolf, only
For any people using google chrome/yandex/edge/opera I install brave and disable all the crypto/advertising/crap. It would be nice to have a script that does it automatically. Or another browser that just doesn't have that
Does this all matter though? Afaik the browser if fully open source, even the crypto stuff so all the shady stuff would be detected (and has as in your examples). Like all of the issues you linked at this point are years in the past. I don't use Brave personally but it being completely FOSS is a huge plus even if the company itself might be weird. On the other hand you have something like Vivaldi that looks like "the good guys" but you'll always have to trust them as well because they're not fully open source.
I use FF but you just cannot deny that using a Chromium based browser has many security advantages over Gecko, especially on mobile. I takes Mozilla seemingly years and years to implement security features like Chromium. They don't put the necessary priority behind this.
I hate Mozilla more than whatever Brave has been accused of in the past. Brave makes it easy to configure a private browser, this is not an opinion. There's no browser that will ever have a monopoly on privacy.
Please just stop flooding this community with Brave-related shit. We already know what a shitty browser it is, we aren't living under the rocks you think we are.
Idc about their money ventures, I dont give them any money because I am not a complete moron, their product works, I use it. If the morons fall for it, their problem
Oh no, a shady, unknown neocities site is telling me to not trust my browser!
Yes, I can use Firefox, uBlock and uMatrix, except on iOS, where I can’t do that, and that is where Brave does a good job.
I am really tired of those „Brave baaad“ posts. Look guys, unless you are using Linux you might want to direct your attention at the huge, morally flexible company that does collect your data, no matter what browser you choose.
You sound so fucking dumb with your blind cryptocurrency hate. Brave is at least as private as any competing browser. The CEO of Brave is a total fucking asshole but you didn’t even mention that.