TIL; stay away from Brave.
Not only because of this article, but merely an hour ago I have read also this post (numerous links provided in the post) about the dubious Brendan Eich.
this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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i don't get why people choose to use brave, firefox is great and if you really need that chromium base ungoogled chromium exists
Firefox has always been my go-to. In my opinion more people should use it.
Librewolf is starting to replace Firefox for me. Either way birds of a feather!
I think LW is better out of the box. It has both UBO and Containers built in. Which is just awesome. I still use FF as my daily just because I have customized it beyond belief, but if I were to start over again I think I'd start with LW.
I think Brave did some aggressive marketing, including social media posts and comments. I did buy their narrative at first too - a browser that already tuned to block ads and trackers. But later I've noticed that it constantly connects back to brave server and it looked suspicious. Firefox is the best.
Agreed, a lot of Reddit comments felt very shilly. Firefox is king and helps prevent Google dictate web standards.
Yeah, exactly. If every browser is chromium based the web will be an unhealthy monoculture. Easy for a single player to dictate standards. Haven't seen this mentioned as much, but its really important
Brave is great for less techy people because it's defaults are good enough. It's not necessary to tweak settings and install add-ons to get basic privacy. I definitely prefer Firefox, but it takes some knowledge to get it to surpass Brave's defaults.
I don't like installing add-ons. I'd rather have it baked into the browser.
Add-ons give you a lot more choice and control than baked in options.
What's stopping Brave's blocker from just allowing ads from Brave's services? Can you see under the hood to tell if it's blocking everything or just surface level stuff?
A proprietary built in blocker is only as trustworthy as the people that made it, and as the links in this discussion suggest, Brave isn't earning much trust.
you are right about choice and more control but brave's ad blocker is not proprietary here is the github link, ublock origin is still the king though
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For me, Firefox is an inferior product in terms of security feature implementation
https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
Stock Firefox has very limited privacy protections.
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Well fuck. Thank you. Guess i need to change browsers. Any recs or is firefox best?
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I liked Brave for a while. But slowly things just started to feel sketchy to me. Their weird insistence on putting their crypto bullshit and wallet services in your face. I just felt like, "I want a browser. Can't you just be a fucking browser?" At a certain point adding all these other 'services' they just end up just a weird-ass money making scheme, like they're two steps away from using my computer for crypto mining.
This not exclusive to brave, AI copyright is still not clear. Bing and others like Bard are doing the same.
Yeah and I expect it from those companies. I guess I was naive enough to think Brave would be better than this.
But then I didn't know about Eich's homophobia, antivaxx beliefs and basic awfulness either (as mentioned in the link u/Xaeris mentions.)
Honestly I don't care about his political beliefs, and Brave search is the only competitve independent search engine out there, it's genuinely a joy to use. Until AI crawling gets banned they aren't doing anything wrong.
Brave continues to be the best mainstream private browser, backed by actions instead of empty words like Firefox.
you know that this "I don't care that this person holds bigoted beliefs and thinks that some people shouldn't have rights, they make the good computer program so who cares" attitude is why so many people think that tech guys are reactionary, right?
Well I am already used to using software from people who I don't agree with in politics.
We are using one right now, Lemmy's devs are AFAIK tankies, and that doesn't really matter.
Also not all people share your political opinions.
Also not all people share your political opinions.
how are you going to call "this group shouldn't have the rights that everyone else has" something as quaint as a "political opinion"
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You don't think there's anything wrong with selling you the 'rights' to other people's content?
You are being sold access to their AI model, not just content. OpenAI is doing the same thing, and until the court bans that, it's legally ok, if you are asking morally, then that differs from person to person, and for companies any competitve edge is worth it.
I personally stopped caring as its going to happen anyway, the only way to stop it is the courts to get involved, as any search engine won't be competitve without AI assists.
And even that isn't clear, we don't know if AI learning is fair use or not, they are many arguments on both side, with big names like the EFF siding with the fair use.
I guess I am asking morally. I expect this sort of thing from Bing and Google but it surprised me to see a company that is privacy focused basically trampling over someone elses IP to the point they feel they can offer rights to someone elses content and make money from it.
Obviously, this was before I learned what sort of person Eich is. Now I'm not surprised. I guess we all have to decide if something goes against our own principles enough to use/not use something.
It's nothing privacy invasive. It's a way to improve their search engine, these hit pieces against brave always get over amplified for no reason.
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the shady world of brave
Lol isn't that what all these ai chatbots are doing?
Whelp that’s it I’m going to Firefox. That’s all I needed to see
Edit: annnd uninstalled. That’s all she wrote
Well fuck, what am I supposed to use? I use bitwarden for passwords, so that shit works everywhere, but I want a mobile browser and a desktop browser that share history. Being able to share tabs between devices is a nice bonus.
Firefox on mobile is hot garbage with infuriating UI bugs. I keep trying to switch to it, and keep switching away after a few days.
I'm sure as shit not going to Chrome.
What issues are you encountering on android Firefox? I've used Firefox + ublock for years and I don't think I have ever encountered an issue that was fixed by using chrome instead.
I've never had any big problems with Firefox Android either. I do prefer the Fennec branch though, since it's on F-Droid and has about:config
I use Firefox on iOS and grapheneOS and it works fine. UI is not as nice as others but it works. Never seen bugs personally ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Isn't Firefox on iOS essentially a skinned Safari? Unless Apple has changed their stance, I thought all browsers had to use webkit?
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Librewolf
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Is this only referring to the Brave search engine?
But it is designed by their company. Their products represent their leadership.
Firefox and DDG for me.
I honestly just started cracking up after seeing DDG mentioned after those initial 2 sentences.
DuckDuckGo does not care about your privacy. Switch to SearX, StartPage, or Kagi.
What makes you say DDG does not care about privacy?
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I'd like to shout out Mull (Firefox based) and Mulch (Chrome based) web browsers. They are basically more secure and private versions of those app and they maintained by the devs of DivestOS which is the privacy Android OS that is recommended for devices that aren't Pixels.
Yep, I use Mull on my mobile. Supports various privacy related add-ons too.
Does anyone have another Chromium browser recommendation for Android?
Idk why you want to go with chromium based, firefox got mobile extensions!
Ublock origin on the go
- On Android, Firefox lacks per-site process isolation, which makes it less secure than Chromium browsers (not insecure, just less secure.)
- With privacy.resistFingerprinting on, Firefox on Android is stuck at 60hz, which I don't like.
- There is a noticeable difference in performance between Firefox and Chromium. Firefox is consistently slower when loading webpages, which you notice after using Chromium.
Don't get me wrong, I like Firefox. I use LibreWolf on desktop. I just can't justify using it on Android, at least not yet. Guess I'll go back to using Vanadium.
When I switched from Chrome to Firefox Mobile I didn't notice any slowdown. I'm surprised you noticed anything because presumably your phone is newer than mine, since I've only got a 60Hz display in the first place.
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Is that shady? Arent all other AI companies + many other data gather services doing exactly the same thing. We need to wait for the court cases to conclude if AI datasets can use publicly available information for training.
Just because multiple companies are doing it doesn't make it less shady. They're literally selling you 'rights' to content that isn't theirs to sell.
Yet another reason to not use Brave
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