As a reminder, Brave was created by the guy who brought you JavaScript and was later fired from Mozilla for donating to hate groups. Brave also profits from multiple forms of fraud including NFTs and affiliate hijacking.
If folk want to have a chromium-based browser made by a company, take a look at Vivaldi instead (which will keep the old plugin architecture, so adblockers work). It has a limited built-in blocker and extra features, but for now still runs uBlock.
Vivaldi is what I use, and it’s absolutely the best Chromium browser I’ve ever tried.
That said, I’d switch to Firefox in a heartbeat if it could duplicate that sidebar. I use that thing all the time, and it’s the only thing keeping me on Chromium.
It’s a thin, persistent bar on the left side of the page with tools and shortcuts. By default, it’s where you find bookmarks, history, downloads and things like that, but you can also add custom websites to it as well. They pop out either over or alongside the main window (depending on whether the pin button is pressed), and they display the mobile webpage when available, to be more usable in such a small window. It’s how I use Discord and Mastodon.
Opera chat-tabs. Opera has a sidebar for chat clients (eg messenger, WhatsApp, telegram,…) built-in. It works really well and is prettier than the Vivaldi implementation. Still sticking with Vivaldi though
The amount of people I see shilling for Brave like it’s God’s gift to privacy is frankly kind of disturbing given how many issues they’ve had with privacy
Update: Brave plans to address the issue in a future release. The VPN service will only be installed after a user purchases the VPN.
“Oh gee whiz did we do that?! Woopsie doodle! We’ll fix it someday!”
Furthermore, no data is sent to Brave from the VPN services. End
This might be true but the bigger problem is I have exactly zero reason to believe anything Brave says about the things they’re installing on people’s machines without consent. If you’re still using Brave at this point you’re a fool.
The only chrome variant that doesn’t seem sketchy to install is chromium. The built from open source chromium. And that’s just because some sites barely function unless you’re using chrome’s rendering.
I don’t know that I’d call that a chromium browser but I’ve only looked at its docs for 10 minutes. Hard to say where chromium integration begins and ends there without digging into the code. Seems like, at most, it’s using the web rendering engine from the chromium project. But it also seems to suggest it has its own modules for executing/rendering js/css/html.
Probably not included in the “should be avoided” category.
I’m currently using it in a browser called Falkon. It’s not as big as Firefox or Chrome, but it is endorsed by KDE. Also, Apple’s Safari is using something similar.
I used to be a Brave user. I loved it. It worked well, it blocked ads without me asking, whatever. Then Google said they’re gonna bake ad blocker blocking into the API and, knowing Brave was Chromium based, I went back to Mozilla after like 100 years.
Two observations:
I was kinda deluded
Mozilla got their shit together, Firefox is as awesome again, by comparison, as it was when they unseated Internet Explorer.
Thank you. You had the opportunity to explain why you use it and why you recommended it, and yet you had me google it myself like I could have done from the start. Now I know it’s a browser (like your comment implied) based on Firefox with additional privacy features. But I still don’t know why you recommended it. Oh well.
There’s no built in crypto anything except for the odd ad on the homepage to buy crypto. Which, sure, is kinda lame, but they don’t mine crypto in the background or anything like that.
Damn the negative stories just keep coming in regards to Brave. It’s a shame, I liked using their iOS app but I said fuck it awhile ago already. Firefox is my main b ^rowser^
I’m still not sure what to use on my iPad for adblocking. Someone please tell me what to use instead on iPad! Everything else is Firefox + uBlock Origin, of course.
Apple makes it quite difficult. Honestly, I don’t think there’s a good option. Maybe try DNS based adblocking, by either setting your DNS to one that blocks ads or by setting up a Pihole, which gives you more control.
VPN is a paid service, it doesn’t connect to anywhere if one doesn’t pay. This is just a service installed just in case. And complaining about this while using Windows , the OS with unavoidable telemetry, spyware and ads is just laughable.
Mozilla did far worse “mistakes” over the time (Pocket , Cliqz, Mr. Robot, deal with the worst privacy offenders on the Earth such as Google Facebook, Amazon, CEO pay rise while firing devs and losing market share, while begging for donations… and so on) but they somehow always get a free pass, with people swallowing Mozilla’s corpo PR every single time.
Only stupid people care about downvotes. And who are these “all”? A lot of people use Brave happily every day, while a lot of people deservedly leaves Firefox everyday because they realize the scam Mozilla is:
I mean, it’s not like Mozilla runs their own crypto wallet with the browsers keeping a mayor cut for themselves only because they are distributing the browser.
Mozilla does not run a crypto based ad network and inserts it into webpages.
Mozilla has never been caught inserting their own affiliated links into crypto related websites to receive a cut.
So you probably misplaced Mozilla with Brave there.
Sure, Mozilla is not perfect and they deserve criticism when they do things wrong (and they tend to). But Brave is just a chromium skin + a crypto based scam built-in.
Mozilla have some immunity because they do the hard work and actually develop a browser, while for Brave everything that matters is leeched from Google’s Chromium.
Mozilla isn’t some paragon of free open source non-profit charity like everyone is claiming, they need to make a profit just like everyone else to keep themselves up there as a competitor to Google. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation
Currently use Firefox and Brave for different applications but I am considering switching to Vivaldi, I definitely want to do more research on all of them though.
Each of them is trying to make a cut with the browser.
I’d advise against Vivaldi because they have telemetry and it’s proprietary.
What I suggest instead are free software, community managed projects that have no monetary interests in distributing the browsers: Librewolf and Ungoogled Chromium. Unlike Brave, Vivaldi or even Mozilla, these devs don’t have incentives to put anti features into their browsers.
Just a reminder, Brave was using people’s likenesses to solicit donations without their consent, and without necessarily give those people the donations.
Just a reminder, one of the largest investors in Brave is a right-wing billionaire who runs a corporate espionage agency that contracts with the US Department of Defense to spy on people.
Wow, I actually had no idea. I haven’t used Brave in awhile now but they’ve been making some strange decisions lately. This makes the picture a little clearer
Well, it’s about Peter Thiel, who also founded the Palantir surveillance technology company. As a source for his involvement with Brave, Wikipedia cites this TechCrunch article, which mentions funding from Thiel’s “Founders Fund”.
I’d rather criticize Brave for other reasons though, like being led by Brendan Eich or supporting crypto.
the brave experience was less than ideal for me, the brave search is unusable, i switched back to firefox, which i had moved to from chrome
also, related, but a side note, word to the wise, never ever ever use a free vpn ever, someones gotta foot the bill for the exit server bandwidth, and either they're keeping logs or they're not keeping logs, but you'll never know, and you won't know when they sell their settup to the next guy. always use a major vpn service who's audited and shown proof they're not keeping logs, they're in the business of secure and private vpn service. free vpns like what brave are offering are not in that business, and server, rack space, bandwidth costs actual money
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