Technology

I tried Brave for maybe 2 days before going back to literally anything else. The heavy push for Crypto made me wary, and it really didn't seem to be doing anything specific to increase my privacy online.

Out of the box Firefox is definitely not very privacy conscious, better than Chrome no doubt, but worse than Brave. It can be configured to be better than both or one can use Librewolf/Mullvad browser

Okay, so the creator of Brave might be a bigot and some of the stuff it does with crypto currency is a little sketchy? And the ads it replaces with the blocked ads are somewhat invasive?

So disable the crypto stuff and use ad-blocking software along with its own adblocking functions.

If a mechanic fixes my car and does a really good job, but he might have some shitty opinions of gay people, as long as he fixes my car I don't care about what he might think of gay people.

Everyone needs to be aware that there's propaganda everywhere. microsoft and google REALLY want you to use their browsers and people are tired of the data MS Edge and chrome collect.

I for one, hate that chrome constantly connects other shit to your google account with just one accidental click sometimes. Edge does the same shit, but brave is the only chromium based browser that doesn't deceptively do shit like that.

I still like firefox better and I only have brave for those rare instances where firefox won't work on a website. And I don't actually believe that the creator of brave is actually a bigot. Pro-liberty, Pro-privacy and anti-surveillance types are always getting smeared as bigots when they aren't.

This article did not present a compelling case for abandoning brave. Who cares what the founder thinks about various political issues. If the software is good, then that’s all that matters.

Don’t get me wrong, I support same sex marriage, but people have a right to oppose the concept as marriage is a government idea that is tied up in politics.

If you put aside the crypto crap, Brave is an okay browser. Sometimes I use it for web development. But I don't like the direction the company is heading towards.

Most of the time I use Firefox with Extensions and Librewolf for everything. Firefox has been my go-to for years and I sure hope it stays that way.

I don't use Brave because they screwed me (banned my Brave Creators without them providing a reason) and I think I would disagree with their CEO on many points - including same sex marriage - but if I did this with every piece of software I use, then I wouldn't be able to use a computer at all. Even if you go all open source, you'll quickly find wild and weird people involved with these projects...

I used brave in the past sometimes still do. I don't care for the leadership. The browser is opensource and solid. I use librewolf as my main browser now though.

urghhhhh but firefox just doesn't perform as well. i tried, i really did. i found a 15 year old (!!) bug affecting svg drawing performance that was fucking up a page i was working on, i'm not imagining it.

I'm not sure if it's the same one but i just found a similar bug with a five year old comment saying i guess we're not fixing it anytime soon... https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=483868

I do have it installed and check in occasionally but it feels like a downgrade when i try to use it as a daily driver.

is there any way to get a functional de-googled chromium build with settings sync across devices?

Don't use Brave because of the ads and crypto currency stuff

I don't see why how one person even the CEO and founder's political beliefs from 15 years ago should stop anyone from using a product today. Unless we want to expose all 7 million+ people who voted for and passed prop 8 in 2008 and cancel them all into oblivion.

Why was appointing Eich as CEO so controversial? It's because he donated $1,000 in support of California's Proposition 8 in 2008, which was a proposed amendment to California's state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

That has nothing to do with the software. And that's a tiny donation. I'm not going to stop using an excellent tool because one of the guys in charge is a bigot. If that were the case, I wouldn't be able to eat, drink, breathe, make a phone call, or do anything really. There's a lot of people out there. Some of them are bigots. We should work to reduce their influence but we can't boycott literally everything. Every alternative to Brave has at least one bigot involved in it, I guarantee it.

Brave’s replacement for ads doesn’t reward users in a meaningful amount

Not enough > 0, which is what you get without adblock. And I'm fine with occasional non-targeted and unobtrusive ads to help fund a service I use.

Brave’s BAT was built around the cryptocurrency ecosystem

Who gives a shit except crypto bros? And who gives a shit about crypto bros anyway?

Brave was also caught up in a privacy scandal in 2020, when it was revealed that the browser was adding affiliate codes to some URLs typed into the address bar.

Are these affiliate codes tracking you? No? Who gives a shit? It's more money for Brave, same webpage for you.

That should have been enough to swear off Brave as a privacy-centric browser forever, considering the entire point of affiliate links is to collect data about the user and traffic source. For example, when you click an Amazon affiliate link in a web article, the publisher can see the exact products you purchase in the timeframe the tracking cookie remains active

Brave blocks cookies by default. Unless they specifically made an exception in their own browser for these codes, then this carefully-worded paragraph is just bullshit.

Much like the rest of this article. Bunch of poo-flinging. "Brave is involved in crypto, here's all the bad things crypto has done, that's why you shouldn't use Brave". Stupid guilt by association and a lot of hot air. Bringing a smoke machine to make people think there's fire.

There's a lot of effort going into making Brave seem like a bad browser and I don't know why.

They just started showing ads again on YouTube when watching on Brave. Which is a very good way to get me to permanently switch elsewhere! Thanks Brave!