Mildly Infuriating

It's a for profit ad company making a "privacy first browser".

Thinking for literaly a second about that sentence should tell you all you need to know.

5. it's fucking Chromium

Go use some Firefox-derivative like Librewolf or Fennec, like a sane person.

They also tried to get away with URL injection. Do not use Brave.

They’re a for-profit advertising company. “Privacy-centric” my elbow.

a for-profit company partially funded by the billionaire Peter Thiel, of Palantir fame. the same Palantir spying on Americans in order to allow nazis to round up immigrants and throw them into concentration camps. the same Peter Thiel that said democracy is not compatible with freedom.

Just mentioned how I didn't like people recommending this like last week and got "ok" as a response lol. Some people are just ignorant and don't care.

Brave is just a shitty browser. Did not know they were anti-freedom kind of people. Makes browser no-no.

This:

https://thelibre.news/no-really-dont-use-brave/

They added referrals to links you clicked. If there is one thing a browser should do its go to the link you click without modification.

I use Firefox. I know it's not perfect, but it's not that bad.

And if I didn't, I'd use Vivaldi. Only reason I don't is I do prefer open source whenever possible and, well, Firefox isn't Chromium.

Yeah it kinda mystifies me that anyone is still recommending that shitty bigotware.

In the emulation scene, RetroArch is in a similar boat if I'm understanding things correctly. Awful maintainers, but people keep recommending it and supporting it. Sucks too, because there are even fewer alternatives there.

Also, the Brave defenders in this section… holy moly.

Some folks simply cannot admit they made a questionable choice. They picked it and use it, so everyone else must be wrong.

I’ve met people like this in real life.

It's also a chromium browser.

I have been using Brave for its out of the box ad and tracker blocking. I'd been uncomfortable with the new AI features and had always been skeptical of the crypto integration, but it wasn't until this post that I realized it was appreciably worse than Firefox on those counts, nor how bad the people running it are.

Obviously, I'm now looking for other options. I've seen some good recs for desktop browsers elsewhere on this post, but what I'm not seeing is a lot of good mobile browser suggestions that will have the desired features. What would the folks here suggest for an e/OS browsing experience with similar or better privacy and ad blocking options? I know there's Firefox, but A. With all the AI it keeps pushing, I'm sure there has to be better and B. I do also have mobile Firefox but have found it substantially less usable for my habit of browsing with a zillion tabs both non-incognito and incognito, so I mostly had only been it when I couldn't get a video to play in Brave.

I am, obviously, willing to run de-Googled Chromium, but if something else is going to actually support 100+ tabs in a performant fashion I'd be happy to totally de-Chromium too.

I also use the shit out of profiles on Brave desktop, though mobile doesn't support it. Do the Firefox forks like Waterfox have a similar option on desktop? Does another browser? I know it's a feature Chrome has because I do sadly have to use Chrome for work, so I would expect at least the de-Googled Chromium-based ones would?

It’s because no-one knows any alternatives.

If one wants a Chrome-based browser that isn’t Chrome, Brave is the highest-profile one by orders of magnitude. Next is a bunch of high-SEO scamware before honest projects like Vivaldi or Helium are even a whisper.

…So I don’t really blame folks for using Brave. They aren't omniscient, and an honest effort to avoid Chrome is still a positive.

FWIW I remember a former colleague who recommended it to me and his argument was about the cryptocurrency you "earn" from it.

I asked him if he could withdraw it. I asked him if he tried. He said not yet but he would. He came back to me few days later saying something along the line that "it's not straightforward" which was a polite way to say he didn't manage yet. He worked in IT.

To be clear I'm not saying it's a scam or that one can't use the crypto "earned" from it but at least back then, few years ago, some people were just riding on the hope, or even faith, that it would amount to something yet it seemed made in such a way to just hold.

So... not a scam but not exactly empowering users IMHO.

I had no idea about any of this. Have been using brave on android for a few weeks and very happy with it. What would you recommend instead?

Could someone please recommend an alternative? 😓 I used DuckDuckGo for a while but I NEED something that supports extensions...

I think a lot of pro-Brave people are astroturfers, or heavily influenced by astroturfers. They are definitely not a first choice by any privacy advocate worth their salt.