I’ve been seeing a lot of people hate and uninstall Brave. Why? It’s not like they’re tracking us or doing anything else shady. If so, what’s the privacy alternative?

  • davehtaylor@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    The company is run by Brendan Eich who is a hateful POS who spent millions trying to strip people of their human rights, the browser is a chrome reskin contributing to Google’s domination of the web, it crams crypto bullshit in your face, and they’re now testing out AI features to add to it.

  • ram@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Brave fucks with crypto. Never fuck with crypto. It’s also Chromium, which means they’re complicit in Google’s efforts to DRM the internet.

    • jet@hackertalks.com
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      1 year ago

      I’m pro digial cash / Monero … but it doesn’t belong in a web browser. Super sketchy shit they are doing with BAT, which means they are tracking you.

      • explodicle@local106.com
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        1 year ago

        I legitimately would be fine with automatically paying authors. It’s not like I enjoy pay walls, ads, or AI garbage writing.

        But yeah that’s a job for existing crypto and a Firefox extension. Nothing about this needed a separate money supply or browser.

    • El_Rocha@lm.put.tf
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      1 year ago

      The complicit part is the most bullshit thing I have ever heard.

      They said unequivocally that they won’t support it, just like they didn’t support Manifest V3.

      • CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        It still is more browser share for Chromium. Business owners will see that share and use it as part of the business case in implementing WEI. If you want it stopped, you gotta use a real alternative such as Firefox.

        • datavoid@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Are there any non-chromium browsers other than Firefox and it’s derivatives?

          • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            Gnome and KDE both have browsers, they’re just rarely the defaults.

            Gnome Web is decent, but it tiles heavy like iPhoje Safari while still being very slow. It does support Firefox sync which is pretty cool.

            I haven’t tried the KDE browser in a long time so I can’t speak for it.

    • maniel@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Crypto isn’t mandatory in brave, I use it for it’s built-in ad block and they say they won’t implement Google’s DRM, also blockchain based since is nice

      • ram@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I’m aware, but it’s still supported, and that’s enough for me to vomit over a garbage product.

        They say they won’t implement Google’s DRM but words alone do not matter. If they continue to use Chromium, they’ll be forced to adopt that and manifest v3.

        • NaN@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          They would have to put more work into their fork, but they aren’t forced.

  • sculd@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago
    1. Say no to chromium. Use Firefox and its forks. Even Safari (webkit) maybe a better choice to support a healthy web environment.

    2. Say no to crypto. I hope I don’t need to explain this one. If you have to use Chromium browsers for whatever reasons, use Vivaldi.

    • Devjavu@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      I think it’s better to phrase the crypto part differently. Because crypto is a great tool for privacy, while Brave’s crypto crap is just annoying.

    • brie@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      since we’re on the FOSS community, I’d recommend using Ungoogled Chromium since Vivaldi isn’t fully open source.

      • sculd@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Ungoogled Chromium is a great choice. I just hope it can auto update itself. 😅

        Also I once encountered an anti-virus programme miscategorize Ungoogled Chromium as malware. It can be annoying for those uninitiated.

  • simple@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    See https://www.spacebar.news/p/stop-using-brave-browser

    The TL;DR is that while the browser is technically fine, the people that own it are really fishy and are always trying to turn a profit, whether it be pushing crypto or discussing having their own ad network. They also use Chromium which means Google can slowly push things into it. You should use Firefox with Ublock Origin and tune the browser settings for privacy. There are also forks of Firefox tuned for privacy but I don’t think most people need it.

    • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      What’s funny is that Brave Shields appear to be a fancy UI around uBlock. The element picker UI isn’t drastically changed.

      The wallet was for a whole just Metamask (it is now it’s own implementation which is nice).

    • NaN@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Firefox also cares about profit (the Mozilla Corporation makes Firefox and is a for-profit entity), that’s why they take that money from Google, try to get people to pay for email aliases and VPN, etc. If Brave maintains a chromium fork, they do not have to deal with “Google slowly pushing things into it” other than removing those things.

      • nonsense@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Firefox also cares about profit (the Mozilla Corporation makes Firefox and is a for-profit entity), that’s why they take that money from Google, try to get people to pay for email aliases and VPN, etc.

        That does seem a lot better to me than crypto and ad networks.

  • Takeshidude@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Google sure is. Brave is a chromium-based browser - a browser that is built off of Google Chrome, so anything Google wants to put in their web browser to track you and devour your internet-soul is also in Brave and all the other “web browsers” that are just chromium skins like Edge.

    • El_Rocha@lm.put.tf
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      1 year ago

      Just because Brave forks of Chromium, that doesn’t mean they have to accept every change Google does and they can also do their own changes (ex: not supporting Manifest V3).

      At least they are financially independent from Google, which you can’t say about Firefox.

      • comicallycluttered@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        At least they are financially independent from Google, which you can’t say about Firefox.

        I absolutely love it when people bring this up.

        It’s always funny, mostly because Google is, let’s see… A member of the GNOME Advisory Board, a financial supporter of the GNOME Foundation (scroll to the bottom to see their supporters), a supporting member of the KDE e.V., a Gold member of the Linux Foundation, and a major contributor to the Linux Kernel (you’ll see some other companies you absolutely hate in that list as well).

        Almost nothing in the major open source space is untouched by Google. But sure, Firefox in particular is evil because “Google money”.

        If you don’t want to use something with financial support from Google, feel free to run FreeBSD and browse the web with, I don’t know, Lynx or something. Or Apple devices with Safari only. That’s a pretty good option, actually, provided you like proprietary software and a super locked down system (except WebKit which is open source and I honestly believe more browsers should be based on it). Lol, edit: Google pays more to Apple than Mozilla to be default on Safari, so nevermind that.