You could ignore my reply, but instead you decided to attack me. I don’t know what’s your problem, but it’s between two years right in your head, so please leave me out of it.
Ultimately, Brave Browser is the apparatus of an advertising company, a bloated and complicated experience for the average user, and the pet project of the person kicked out of Mozilla for continuing to defend harmful political donations. If you want a privacy-focused web browser, use Firefox or Vivaldi. If you want to support your favorite content creators and publishers, turn on advertisements or support them through the methods they already support (Patreon, Ko-Fi, and so on). Brave Browser is irredeemable, and you should not use it under any circumstances.
I don’t use brave and I am not interested in using it, so YMMV.
Not according to PrivacyTests.org. It lacks a lot of state partitioning, amongst other things. Just FYI, the front end UI is closed source, but the backend/engine is open source, because they’re just another chromium spin off.
and the pet project of the person kicked out of Mozilla for continuing to defend harmful political donations
This one is interesting to me because it begins to explains why it has the same terrible clipart lions head logo as a bunch of deadend political parties, groups, and candidates. It seems pretty obvious now
Dude, this is a Firefox. Why tell us not use something what…95% of people here are not using in the first place?
EDIT: The crypto stuff is opt-in. You don’t have to use Brave Shields (in browser ad blocker). It can be turned off. Now you can use uBlock Origin or another ad blocker.
About the CEO, I can’t see nothing about his beliefs reflecting in his work. Looks like he kept them separated. I’m not for said beliefs.
EDIT 2: Also Brendan Eich is a co-founder of Mozilla. So if you’re not going to use Brave because of him. How can you use Firefox?
Claiming it’s Firefox is a bit misleading. Claiming its suggesting it’s equivalent to saying don’t use Firefox is outright deceptive and/or downright ignorant.
Given what I had said about it, the interpretation made sense. I already apologized. There's no need to correct me after the author already did. It adds nothing but trying to be condescending.
JavaScript is also the whole reason that the web is interactive. Without JavaScript the web would be mostly just static pages without any client side dynamic behavior.
Brendan Eich is a tool, but JavaScript is a useful tool, at least.
If there’s no JavaScript, there will be another language developed to fill that void. We don’t know whether it’ll be better or not. But with TypeScript, working with JavaScript has been quite painless for me.
[Eich] donated $1,000 in support of California’s Proposition 8 in 2008, which was a proposed amendment to California’s state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
Even though I do not agree at all with the donation and support - out of the things that influence me into choosing a browser, 15 year-old private donations of appointed CEOs is pretty low on that list.
And the whole BAT thing is opt-in and they’re very transparent about it. I don’t get why people get so triggered when the C word - crypto - is involved.
I would also imagine there are a lot of people that did not support same sex marriage back in 2008 that do now. I do not know the Eich personally, but it doesn’t make sense to hold this stuff against people until we find out if they have or haven’t changed their views.
TBH it’s not that he opposed same sex marriage that bothers me. People make poor decisions. It’s:
He donated to the campaign AFTER it became clear that campaign was using the funds to put up ads claiming gays were a danger to children.
His response to people working under him who were upset and had legitimate concerns they wouldn’t be treated fairly was: “the donation does not in itself constitute evidence of animosity. Those asserting this are not providing a reasoned argument, rather they are labeling dissenters to cast them out of polite society.” He has never withdrawn this insult and made little attempt to deal with it before or after becoming Mozilla CEO.
I’m also pissed that the right wing has managed to lie about what happened to the point that if you go against the false narrative, that falsely claims Eich was fired from Mozilla for his hateful views, he was actually promoted to CEO and resigned after a lot of outside pressure made it clear he was harming Mozilla by keeping the role, then you tend to get flamed, downvoted, modded “Troll”, etc in most tech forums.
I’m inclined not to boycott products because I dislike the people who made them’s views, but that said I don’t particularly want to find I’m contributing to the monetization of something that goes to a homophobic asshole, especially at a time when LGBT people are under attack at a level I haven’t seen in 30 years. So I will not be using Brave for that reason, regardless of what I think about the product technologically.
California voters approved prop 8 by a sizable majority. It was thrown out by the courts. That kind of dilutes my “oh no” over one persons donation. We’d need to boycott a good portion of Californians.
Today I think it’s relevant to point out he was an outspoken against masks, shutdowns, and was calling Fauci a liar. Basically everyone’s conservative family member in 2020.
15 years is a long time. I know someone who did a complete 180 on their beliefs within a few years: from a conservative, homophobic, and religious pov to the exact opposite. I myself changed some political views I had 5 years ago.
I have no idea about Eich, but if I let this affect my choices of anything, frankly I won’t do anything else in my life facing the millions of variables before me.
But the data collection sounds like it's counter to its supposed goals. Multiple campaigns have been discussed that just make it believe they don't actually care about privacy considering all the ways they keep trying to do stuff is counter to that. Why stay? Tor Browser is available. Hell, Firefox itself is already able to take you pretty far and extensions can do the rest.
Why make the sacrifice of your personal data? Like, how many attempts at collecting personal data do you need to have occur before you realize it's always been their goal?
I think the only relevant criticism I see is adding affiliate codes to urls (until they were caught).
The author also forgot the polemic of adding twitter and facebook trackers to the whitelist, and impersonating people in their ads. There are some interesting criticisms against brave, I don't understand why their detractors are obsessed with the CEO and crypto.
Exactly. They do a lot of things I don’t like, which is why I don’t use them. However, I do recommend them over Chrome if someone isn’t willing to use Firefox (or Safari on iOS with an ad blocking extension).
That said, the ad replacement thing was an interesting idea, and if it got better click-through rate while preventing sites from stealing PII, they probably could’ve cut a profit sharing deal and users would’ve been better off vs the status quo. They could also have a “premium” option where they pay a certain amount for no ads, and that amount gets split with websites who would normally serve ads.
There are some good ideas there, but unfortunately the good ideas don’t seem to have really worked out as intended. I still think they’re better than Chrome, but things can change.
BAT can be distributed to publishers of content you go to based on percentage of visiting those sites. You can purchase BAT or subscribe to the ad program. Nobody in this thread knows even the basics of BAT, smh.
Well nobody is perfect, this thread is making that abundantly clear. If they were still doing all that shit years later everyone might have a point. Make mistakes and learn from it and move on is the only thing I can really ask of anyone. Brave is doing the right thing IMO. As to your comment about BAT, it’s the classic problem of what came first, the chicken or the egg? Not recommending it because it’s not being used so nobody’s recommending it lol.
I don’t recommend it because there are better options. Firefox is privacy respecting, and since it still has an independent rendering and JavaScript engine, it’s better for open web standards. On iOS, all browsers have the same rendering engine as per Apple’s rules, so I recommend Safari with an ad blocker.
If Brave actually offered something tangibly better for the open web, I would recommend it. But it doesn’t, so I recommend something that does.
However, if you need a chromium-based browser, I think Brave and Chromium are about on par, so I recommend both.
By default, pocket makes suggestions to you based on your browsing history and then the aggregate of that is sent to Mozilla. How is that privacy respecting again?
The aggregate of your interaction with sponsored content is sent to Mozilla (sponsored links you’ve seen, clicked on, and how many times you’ve clicked on them). Your browsing history is never sent, either in whole or aggregate. It also sends your region, country, state, and county, but not your IP or anything that could uniquely identify you.
Since you aren’t being identified, nor can you likely be identified, it’s privacy respecting. Other advertisers attempt to build a uniquely identifying profile on you where they grab as much information as they can. When compared, Pocket looks a lot better than every other advertiser.
Regardless, I’m not comfortable with Pocket, so I disable it. I can’t disable advertisers tracking me.
Firefox by default sends search queries to your search provider to help you discover common phrases other people have searched for and improve your search experience if your selected search provider supports search suggestions… Learn more, including how to disable this feature…
…
If you enable “Improve the Firefox Suggest Experience,” we and our partners may also receive your search queries.
So it sends search queries to get search suggestions. I didn’t see it mentioned one way or the other, but I’m assuming Firefox doesn’t send any personally identifiable information with it, though the server probably can track you somewhat with your IP address.
Stop using it with honey mustard sauce! Stop using it with tangy sweet and sour sauce! Stop eating the new fiesta Brave salad! Stop enjoying Brave on the patio, in the car, or on the boat... wherever good times are had!
Brave Software, the company behind the browser of the same name, was founded by Brendan Eich. He's best known as the creator of JavaScript from his days at Netscape Communications
I mean, regardless of whether it sounds like afterthoughts, it kind of sounds like the ulterior motive for Brave is entirely counter to its purported intent. Why ignore it just because of something unrelated? Sounds like the exact same issue people complain about the author.
You were agreeing with someone that said it led them to the opposite conclusion of the point the author wanted to make. That would require you to ignore those points or at the very least admit privacy isn't important.
When you said "yup" to a claim, it means you agree with the claim. You didn't simply only say you disliked the author's writing style and felt their focus wasn't properly targeted on the correct points.
The purpose is to make a for-profit browser that respects privacy. They’ve tried a number of different approaches, and they’ll probably try more.
I especially like the idea of replacing ads with non-tracking ads with better clickthrough rate (i.e. higher profit), and share the profit with the sites. Ad recommendations could be made from local data that never gets sent to a server. That’s privacy respecting and profitable, but unfortunately they didn’t get enough deals made with content creators to be effective.
And what a CEO chooses to do with their money is none of my business, what is my business is the quality of the product that company makes, as well as the quality of the work environment that product is made in. I don’t like the direction Brave has gone, so I don’t use it. And now that I know iOS Safari has ad blocking extensions, I’ll no longer be recommending Brave to anyone (I recommend Firefox everywhere except iOS, and I recommend Safari with ad block there).
What are you talking about? If the logic and metadata is completely stored in your machine, there’s no privacy violation. The ads themselves don’t need any PII unless you opt in to some kind of profit sharing system (e.g. you get paid to see ads), and that can simply be handled by the browser itself (i.e. a cryptographic signature that can only be verified client side).
As for not liking injecting stuff into a browser, what about browser extensions show you if another site has a better deal on something? Or accessibility tools that change the styling of the site? Or password managers that inject auto fill buttons? Or addons like RES that add features like previously viewed posts or times you’ve upvoted a user?
Injecting ads is the same idea, you’re removing features you dislike and adding features you do. The unethical part is profiting from sites, which is why those profits should be shared with those sites. I think there’s a good case to be made that sites, browsers, and users can all make more with this method and without violating user privacy (the advertiser doesn’t need to know anything about you specifically, it just needs to know that the browser can place ads effectively). All data can stay on your local machine and never sent to the browser vendor, website owners, or advertisers.
If Brave got that to work, I’d consider it. I’d prefer it to be an addon to my browser instead. Here’s how I’d prefer it to work:
I install an open source, auditable extension that tracks my browsing history locally to serve relevant ads
Sites sign up for the program and provide a tracking key that only tracks that website (unique per site, not part session/user)
Once I hit some amount of ad views on a given site in a given day, ads go away; my browser is 100% in control of that
Profits go to an open, auditable service that distributes a portion to sites, the addon vendor, and users who opt in (with anymore crypto wallets); if users opt out, those profits are donated to a charity instead (again, publicly auditable)
This way, the user:s privacy isn’t violated, sites make a profit, the addon maintainer gets paid (ideally a nonprofit org), and users can get some pocket change as well. Everything would be auditable, so nobody can pull a fast one without getting caught.
You let me know when you find a system that analyzes your data locally and chooses an ad to show without letting anyone know anything. Even just delivering the ad is violating a level of privacy because they know it targets you at the very least. But beyond that, targeted ads require statistics to build to know how to target. You need data to build a model. You can't build that without sharing.
I mean, there's a difference between targeted ads which rely on a lot more data versus sponsored content which honestly, I didn't even know what based on preferences. It is fairly hodgepodge and I figured everyone saw the same thing. It never really interested me so I turned it off.
It's light on details as to how much preferences really play into those sponsored articles. Which you can turn off.
But targeted ads that are worth money require a lot more of a model. Advertisers won't pay for potshot ads if they can get better targeting elsewhere. Advertising simply isn't a good model.
Browsers have access to all of your data and they don’t need to guess based on cookies and whatnot if searches are from the same person. So naturally, a browser is the perfect place to mine personal data for advertising purposes. If the browser is open source, the treatment of ads can be audited to ensure no personal data is being leaked.
For example, if you frequently visit gaming related websites, then the browser will know to show you gaming related ads. Google would only be able to do that if you use their search engine or if enough of those sites opt in to sharing data with Google (e.g. amp links, Google Ad integration, etc). So Google’s ads (or any other kind, for that matter) are by default less relevant because they have less information than something served by a browser.
The difference between doing it browser side vs server side is where privacy comes in. With server side (e.g. Google’s method), your data is sent to Google and they can then do whatever they please with it (depending on jurisdiction and what laws apply). With browser side, your data stays on your machine, so it never needs to go to the browser vendor or advertisers, so it cannot get sold or used for anything outside of the browser. The only thing advertisers and browser vendors would know is how many times an ad was shown and how many times it was clicked on, and that could not be traced to you specifically unless you do something to opt in to that. That’s it. No privacy violation.
So since browsers have access to more data than an advertising company would, they can be a lot more relevant. Browser vendors could pay users a bit to allow anonymous usage statistics to refine their model, but I don’t think that’s necessary.
So im trolling now because i have a different opinion? Explain that to me please. because based on the replies and upvote/downvote ratio on my comment, more people seem to agree than disagree with me.
By that same logic you use im gonna say you are trolling as you seem to defend an “article” that should be objective but is littered with personal opinion’s and facts wich are non relevant to the “product” that the article is about
Because you obviously didn’t read the article. You claim the opinions are irrelevant which shows me that you took no time to actually read it. You are a troll because you are commenting obviously contrarian opinions that no reasonable could hold. It also appears more people agree with me than you by ratio as a higher percentage of the votes on the image I shared are positive than on the ridiculous noise that you spew with your comment. Go back to your Fox News and allow people who actually take time to read the article to discuss it
I did infact read the article and the irrelevant opinion i’m referring to are things likethe fact that the ceo donated against same sex marriage wich while i don’t agree with that has nothing to do with the browser at hand.
Also saying it’s not reasonable to hold such an opinion is just another opinion to debate over, just not in this threat.
The thing with the up/downvotes: i say i stand corrected. I didn’t look at your ratio. I apologize.
Assuming i am watching fox news is:
Wrong. (I don’t even live in the us) &
Unprofessional as it seems to be used as an insult in this case. (Excuse me if i am mistake)
Also It seems like you are trying to passively (or actively with that one) insult me on multiple occasions in this discussion.
I refuse to partake in a discussion where the other person tries to reinforce their point with insult’s.
Please only reply if you can stay “formal” (or as formal as one is to strangers on the internet)
I use Brave as a second browser (mainly to separate different activities) and did not have any issues with it apart from dragging tabs between monitors (it creates an additional empty tab sometimes when doing this). Turned off all unnecessary stuff right when I first launched it and that's it. No bloat, no issues, just works. Didn't know about this CEO controversy but seeing as it was a long time ago, don't think it's a valid reason to not use Brave. And both logo and name are cool.
It's a solid option which we don't really have a lot of in open source space
I mean, there's simply just Firefox. Which is apparently not the basis for Brave. It does sound like Brave collects data so it still seems shady.
Edit: could have sworn brave was built on Firefox. It's not. It's chromium. Which in my opinion counts against it as I'd rather avoid a monopoly considering how much control Google has over chromium and the inherent biases Google has.
You might have been thinking of Mullvad Browser, which is based on Firefox and came out somewhat recently. Other privacy-focused browsers based on Firefox include Librewolf and Tor browser.
What are you talking about? Firefox doesn’t need an email address for container tabs or separate profiles, and I think you can still host your own sync server if you want that capability.
I haven’t checked if Container tabs work on Torn Browser, but that’s my go-to for anonymity.
Yup, on Firefox, profiles are just directories of settings, and you can have as many as you choose. AFAIK, few people use them, since you can get most of that behavior with container tabs. For example, at work, I have one container group for work Gmail, one for personal, and if my wife uses it, she can open another group for her stuff.
I’d use profiles for a shared login on a computer, but I’d just use separate user accounts instead. I use container tabs for multiple logins for the same service on one profile. Switching then just means opening a new tab with that container group.
I’m talking about the browser user profiles, where your user data (bookmarks, passwords, extensions) is stored.
Firefox puts them into profiles so that you can change between those sets, as if you’re a different user, without changing user accounts at the OS level.
@whou Don't forget the time they made it possible to 'donate' to creators, but when creators weren't signed up with their program #Brave would just keep the donation. So users would think they have donated for example to Tom Scott, but in reality he never received anything. Overall just a scummy company.
I’ve read the article and I don’t understand the issue.
The founder is a homophobe
I don’t care. He represents Brave just as little as he represents Mozilla or Javascript.
It didn’t do ad replacements
I don’t care. Why should that be a reason not to use the browser? It doesn’t have a feature that no other browser has either, oh no.
Setting up a system to turn BAT into money isn’t worth it for websites, since not enough people use Brave to generate relevant revenue
I don’t care. If you care about maximizing websites’ profit, you should use Chrome (with no adblock).
It’s bloated with Web3 stuff
I don’t care. Browsers are extremely bloated anyways.
They partnered with Web3 companies
I don’t care. They didn’t try to scam anyone, they just offered services/features for those interested in Web3.
They added affiliate codes to URLs
I care a little, but not much. Claiming it’s anti privacy is ridiculous. The website can see you’re using Brave no matter whether you’re using an affiliate link or not. But it’s still something a browser definitely shouldn’t do without user consent (and an option to opt out).
Add comment