Privacy
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.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
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. 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.
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.
- 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
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.
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 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.
How about we just let users use what they want? I don't use Brave, but it has some legitimate anti-fingerprinting tech.
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.