I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever.

Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency which they then added to a rewards program that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave.

Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.

After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes into URL’s. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators.

Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I’d say the answer is a very clear no.

One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.

Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don’t mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.

  • moonmeow@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    Might I add brave’s BAT wallet is garbage. You had to sign up to some random exchange and upload your ID (I didn’t), but even that you couldn’t even backup your wallet into a new install, so hope that you would never have to format or reinstall or change devices - it’ll be a pain to restore, if it was even possible.

    Firefox over brave any day.

  • nik0@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year ago

    I see this exact thread every week now and it’s between the same people:

    “Oh ok i stopped using it” to “Naw i’ll keep using brave”

    At this point can we stop this? Brave is trash but people are either too stubborn or just don’t care anymore (which is ironic). Either mods just pin this thread and treat this as a “brave is trash” megathread or I don’t know.

  • Yuumi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Firefox + Startpage is really cool. I like how their searched don’t include the search parameters in the url + the built in proxy

  • NabeGewell@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Lol isn’t eTrash considered a scam anyways? They are the reason i got ad blocker - dumbest ads on youtube 24/7.

    Anyways sounds like you gotta be quite brave to use Brave lol

  • Samsy@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    Never used it, I saw some twitter comments from it’s CEO and this guy isn’t trustable.

    I go with Firefox and sometimes epiphany. Last one tries to accomplish the level of the well known ones but is mostly years behind. That’s sad, because I really like it.

  • gornius@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    Brave behaving like Win XP era browser with gazillion toolbars installed, with a pinch of crypto and crypto promoting ads should be a giant red flag.

    FOSS =/= trusted by default. Why are there so many FOSS evangelists, but such a damn tiny part of them are programmers, let alone programmers able to examine a source code behind such a giant codebase as web browser?

    I use Vivaldi, at least their business model is clear, and developer is kind of trusted, and not crypto scammer and homophobe.

  • WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    I used to use Firefox but have been using Brave cause I was getting tired of having to open Edge every time there would be an addon or tool that was Chrome exclusive. So unless there’s other options for privacy focused chromium browsers I’m just gonna stick with brave.

  • Wisely@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year ago

    Even if they were amazing, it would still be worth using Firefox instead to suppport an alternative to chromium.

  • Designate@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    Or just use Edge cause Microsoft is already syphoning your data so you might as well go the whole hog and use Edge

  • Don Escobar@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    Brave always marketed itself as hardened privacy browser and the second I saw their shitcoin immediately bells went off.

    Either way, I use Librewolf on PC and Mac and lately been giving Arc a try on Mac and I like it.

  • Phegan@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    I would recommend waterfox. I use it on windows, it doesn’t run great on Linux so far so on my Linux machines I use Firefox.

  • Clbull@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    Newsflash: everything that isn’t free and entirely open source is generally spyware these days.

    It’s amazing how we pilloried RealPlayer and burned its parent company to the fucking ground over two decades ago for far less egregious transgressions than what we now let Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc get away with.