Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Please, do not use Brave. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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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.

After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes into URL's. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators.

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.

One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.

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.

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[–] hottari@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've got a better question. Why do you love Mozilla?

[–] Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Who said I love moZilla? It wasn't me. I like Mozilla because they have directly had an impact of making my web browsing experience better. They have put a focus on security and privacy and continue to ship a product that is objectively better than the competition.

How is "why do you love Mozilla" a better question than "why do you hate Mozilla"? You are the one that said you hate Mozilla, and then you decided in your own mind that me calling your take weird was me saying that I love Mozilla.

So I'll ask the question directly... why on earth do you hate Mozilla? Imo, that is a bizarre take.

[–] hottari@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You asked for it so here's my 'bizarre' take;

Mozilla is tangled up with social/political advocacy and virtue signals too hard.

Tries to censor content on Firefox. Recently saw they are introducing a 'Fake' Amazon reviews detector.

Even though they tell anyone who will listen that Firefox is a private browser, they push their own ads in the browser and have even tried pushing 3rd party ads (for some animation movie).

And is poorly run. Example, fired a lot of developers and shortly afterwards increased CEO pay. But most importantly, share of Firefox users have dropped over the past decades from a comfortable lead to less than 3% today.

[–] Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I've used Firefox for years and never seen an ad pushed by it.

This:

Even though they tell anyone who will listen that Firefox is a private browser, they push their own ads in the browser and have even tried pushing 3rd party ads (for some animation movie).

Is straight up horseshit.

Mozilla is tangled up with social/political advocacy and virtue signals too hard.

This leads me to believe that you're a right winger. So yeah, a company trying to better the lives of others would naturally feel like oppression to you.

I had to look up firings, because that sounded weird to me, and I was right, you are delusional. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firefox-maker-mozilla-lays-off-250-workers-says-covid-19-lowered-revenue/

Mozilla Corporation is laying off 250 people, about a quarter of its workforce, explaining that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly lowered revenue. Mozilla previously had about 1,000 employees.

But most importantly, share of Firefox users have dropped over the past decades from a comfortable lead to less than 3% today.

Firefox was memory hungry back in the 2010ish era and kinda sluggish. Chrome came along and was sleek and fast and Google was a good guy back then. Firefox has since been completely rewritten and is now blazingly fast and provides for an excellent browsing experience.

So I was right, your take is bizarre.

[–] hottari@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Touche. I'll leave you to wallow in your own ignorance.