If you are keen on personal privacy, you might have come across Brave Browser. Brave is a Chromium-based browser that promises to deliver privacy with built-in ad-blocking and content-blocking protection. It also offers several quality-of-life features and services, like a VPN and Tor access. I mean, it’s even listed on the reputable PrivacyTools website. Why am I telling you to steer clear of this browser, then?
Thank goodness that we can post things in here without Braves astroturfed PR community 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.
What about infosec.pub? Been my home instance ever since .world blocked piracy discussions, and I never had any issues there.
Brave search allows misinformation goggles for anyone that believes 2 + 2 = 5.
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.
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?
i found one called waterfox that is a nice little firefox fork ive been using. super chill.
I’ve been loving it.
Might give this a crack. Been waiting on Ladybird to come to PC.
Edit: OK it really doesn’t work well with bitwarden on mobile. Normal FF works fine but not this one.
Edit2: ended up installing bitwarden add-on in the app and that resolved the issue of the phone level app not working.
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.
Librewolf users (totally not biased)
Please tell me you have the whole set. I have waited for someone to post this since literally 2018
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.
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.
We can have an open source browser.
Most browsers are already open source. They’re all funded by advertising (except Safari which is a whole other problem).
No resources are required.
Are you planning to imagine it into existence?
When you find one that has some sort of sustainable model that isn’t advertising, please let me know. I’ll be all over it.
Okay are you ready?
The model:
- We program it
- For literally fun
- Together many people, that find different parts of bringing the web to people safely
- We do it completely altruistic
I don’t think you understand. It would take you time to do that. A whole lot of time. Probably thousands of hours. Time is what’s known as a “resource”.
I understood perfectly, your claim is that it takes advertisement. Not time. And nobody has said it doesn’t take time.
I understood perfectly
You very clearly did not and still do not.
your claim is that it takes advertisement. Not time.
Somehow you managed to gloss over the only point of my statement while also simultaneously fabricating things that I never said anything about.
And nobody has said it doesn’t take time.
You said “no resources are required”. As I’ve just finished mentioning, time is a resource.
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
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?
Uninstall it. Firefox and chromium are the most secure browsers you can get. I like to put this in money terms. A 0 day for those two is tens of thousands of dollars. An Opera or brave exploit? Maybe a couple grand
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.
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.