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.

  • trailing9@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    Why are there daily posts against Brave but not against other browsers? Is Google more trustworthy than Brave?

    • seaQueue@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Because Brave likes to portray itself as privacy friendly. We already know Chrome, Edge and others aren’t.

  • Gooey0210@sh.itjust.works
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    2 years ago
    1. 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
    2. On desktop I use librewolf, only
    3. 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
    • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Too many people only care about the openweb or shitty companies in the comments. They have no fucking willpower, no patience, and no follow through. Their complaints are utterly meaningless because they utterly refuse to stick to their guns.

      There’s one and literally only one browser that actually stands for all the things the most vocal people around here claim to care about.

      Yet, they use Brave.

      • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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        2 years ago

        Ehh there is only so much a single person can care about. If you have a life and aren’t effectively an activist/lobbyis by profession you can’t care about politics both local and global, preserving nature and ecolody, world hunger & disease, and a million other things like which software company is less evil all at once and follow through 100%, supporting all of the causes meaningfully.

        Not to mention we have to make compromises, too.

        There’s one and literally only one browser that actually stands for all the things the most vocal people around here claim to care about.

        Hard disagree. Firefox had its fair share of controversies, it’s still technically funded by Google (while not accepting donations), and Mozilla Foundation as a nonprofit is pretty questionable too.

        The leadership of Mozilla Corporation is shit too like any other corp; they lay off engineers and give themselves huge bonuses.

        It takes them years to even acknowledge simple bugs, let alone actually getting to fix them.

        A huge part of why Firefox lost the “browser wars” is also that they failed to make it easy to build into other apps so it could work more like Electron, while also pissing off users with surface changes that break their workflow.

        Overall it’s better than Chrome especially if you care about privacy, but it’s not a huge win.

            • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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              2 years ago

              Not on iOS. Every browser on iOS is effectively just a skin for safari. There is no true Firefox for iPhone, or chrome for that matter.

              If you’re using an iPhone, you willingly surrendered your freedom of choice. This is what you paid for.

          • eya@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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            2 years ago

            As I stated in a previous post, if you are using an iPhone you’ve basically given up on having privacy. For ad blockers you could use AdGuard and Safari, it’s better than nothing. You could also use something like Mullvad VPN, it has DNS ad blocking.

            • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              2 years ago

              That’s the most ridiculous statement I’ve seen today. iOS has infinitely better privacy than Android lawl

              • eya@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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                2 years ago

                An iPhone is a give-up on privacy because you don’t get alternatives. If you don’t like your stock OS on an Android phone you can just switch OS (for example GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, ect.). If you don’t like the normal YouTube app you can just sideload a different one. You don’t get this kind of freedom with an iPhone. A prime example of this is when, during the Hong Kong Riots where Apple pulled an app that assisted protesters.

  • droidpenguin@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I used to use Brave, then used Bromite but that got abandoned. I think there’s another fork of it, but ultimately I just use Firefox which has worked better for me overall.

    Browsers are a big attack vector for exploits and security is very important. Firefox releases patches regularly and I don’t have to worry about it being abandoned like some others. I disabled whatever telemetry / sponsored stuff they have enabled by default and feel it’s a good balance of security & privacy + doesn’t have the DRM crap chromium is trying to add.

    Their extension support is nice too.

  • Designate@lemmy.ml
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    2 years 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
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    2 years 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
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    2 years 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
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    2 years 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.

  • gasull@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    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.

  • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    All you need to know is the Brave guy is a pedophile who is 100% using your ad revenue to buy csam.

  • kworpy@lemm.ee
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    2 years ago

    Please just stop flooding this community with Brave-related shit. We already know what a shitty browser it is, we aren’t living under the rocks you think we are.

    • eya@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      2 years ago

      I’ve seen multiple people recommend it as a browser, so clearly some people need to hear this. There’s no reason to not have a post like this, if you don’t like it collapse it.