this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023

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Stop using Brave Browser (www.spacebar.news)

submitted 2 years ago by billothekid2@kbin.social to c/tech@kbin.social

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Just gonna leave this here.

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[–] Alexmitter@kbin.social 41 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Its a bad chromium fork with a crypto snowball scheme attached and some very scummy practices done.

[–] Teon@kbin.social 31 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Be "Brave" use a better browser.
[winks in Firefox]

[–] WreckingBANG@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

winks in librewolf with uBlock, LocalCDN and altered UserAgent and fixed resolution of 1920×1080

PS: I am paranoid

[–] theJWPHTER88@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

There's also the lesser-known Pale Moon browser, of which I actually tried using, to quite a normal success, on our former desktop PC, two years ago.

[–] eroc1990@lemmy.parastor.net 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I would love to use librewolf but somehow it stops being able to resolve web pages where every other browser I have installed is still able to. It's the only thing stopping me from making the jump full time.

[+] ch1cken@kbin.social 31 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

[deleted]

[–] roguetrick@kbin.social 25 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I always recommend brave to less tech-savvy people,

Why exactly? The tricks like "optional things to click" are explicitly targeted on less tech savvy people and defeat the point of privacy focused browsers.

[–] umbraroze@kbin.social 27 points 2 years ago

I've literally installed Firefox and uBlock Origin for elderly people, and walked some other elderly people through installing them. In, like, 2 minutes. This is not difficult.

[+] ch1cken@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] hoodatninja@kbin.social 26 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Just getting somebody on Firefox with ublock origin is enough IMO. I’m not going to also remove their ability to use Google search. Especially if they’re older. I am very privacy oriented but you have to make some compromises for people lol.

[–] QHC@kbin.social 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Those are choices, not requirements. Using Firefox is better than using Chrome. Doing the extra stuff is even better, but if doing that means someone gives up and goes back to Chrome, that doesn't help, either.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

[–] Infiltrated_ad8271@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago

Actually, the librewolf installer for windows has included an updater for some time now.

[–] cRazi_man@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

I'm no privacy expert, but TechLore has covered Brave a lot and it's one of his recommended daily drivers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eRlAbyjKfU

[–] magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh 16 points 2 years ago

Last I checked Stallmann wasn't "CEO of Linux". Such a thing does not exist. Eich is CEO of Brave. Apples to oranges.

[–] umbraroze@kbin.social 14 points 2 years ago

Go look up all the nasty stuff stallman's said and firmly believes in. I don't see people boycotting gnu which is a vital part of linux as a result of this

People are already aware of the shit Stallman does. Hell, you don't need to read the shit he writes, dude's a real-life creep.

And besides: GNU project's tools have continued popularity despite him. Do I need to remind you of XEmacs? EGLIBC? EGCS? A whole lot of projects that reminded GNU equivalents to "oh yeah, maybe we should get gud instead of being an inferiour code base" (XEmacs) or "oh yeah, this fork is clearly superiour, we should merge and call it official" (EGLIBC, EGCS). And now people are like "Hey guys, I just found this compiler called Clang and-" and GNU is like "FFFFF-"

[Ad experiments and crypto] is opt in.

If you download an ad blocker, I'm pretty certain that you don't want to "opt in" to any advertisements by default.

Hey, you thought that was easy to debunk? How about this: When Brave advertises that content creators are able to accept BAT crypto tokens as donations, should the content creators themselves first opt in? They most certainly didn't. Brave specifically said that they would accept donations on behalf of all content creators and held the donations on their behalf until they would opt in.

If these content creators never would actually opt in, what then, I wonder? Did they just deceive the fans of those content creators?

This is dangerously close to the whole rhetoric NFT bros had during the peak. "Why, someone made illegitimate NFTs of your creations? Well you SHOULD have minted those NFTs while you had the chance. Oh, you prefer to NOT participate in this whole NFT ecosystem on principle? Have fun staying poor!"

[–] fear@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago

why do the author's politics make a difference?

In this case it makes a difference because there has been an alarming increase in harmful lies made by the far right. This is a purposeful spread of misinformation that many people hesitate to get involved with in any way, and for good reason.

I do not trust the creator of Brave to be aligned with the far right and to still be guided by ethical conduct that I can trust. If you align yourself with people who lie and put others in danger for profit and control, you're condoning such behavior and may be capable of it yourself.

[+] JackBruh@lemm.ee 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] ch1cken@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Quite the opposite, brave's defaults are very good. An alternative to brave on the firefox side would be librewolf, which gives firefox great defaults, but the issue with that is that they disabled auto updates, and there's still a lot of people on the windows side not using a package manager (even though many exist).

bullshit integrated into it.

And again, there's no "bullshit" if you don't explicitly opt into the crypto.

[+] hoodatninja@kbin.social 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] SaltySalamander@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They are constantly bugging you to sign up for it

No, the browser asks you once.

[–] linearchaos@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I run it secondary to Firefox when I need to use IPFS, have been for about 6 months now. I also occasionally use it because it also blocks Youtube ads by default, AND when combined with privacy badger, it is the only browser that still works while giving half decent anti-fingerprinting. Firefox, Chrome, nothing else even gets close. They just straight up lie about your screen rez and plugins to keep you from being fingerprinted.

Their account sync is pretty nice. Encrypted P2P syncing of configs and bookmarks. No need to make an account with them to store your settings.

Yeah, if you use their new tab page, there's an crypto option there which you can remove. Their new tab page sucks and I don't use it anyway.

There is ONE crypto button to the right of the URL bar, which you can right click and hide. The other stuff is actually the controls for their PWA install , share and privacy/ad block settings. You can just run full block everywhere and flick off the extra blocking for a site if it's a problem.

I also refuse to use their search, but it does work really well last time I tried it. DDG is good enough and the smaller the company selling my data, the better.

Updates don't generate any crypto popups for me, perhaps because I don't use their front page.

It's open source, so they at the very least aren't hiding what they're doing.

The fact that they offer shitty crypto with hideable buttons should be the least of your objections.

They replaced webpage ads with their own when you enable bat. (I don't crypto so I don't see those)

They swapped referrer links on unreferred things to make money. (which is sunset now, but is an indicator of how they DGAF)

They used their crypto as a pyramid scheme to sell to investors, even got in trouble over it with the Government.

Once their crypto pyramid scheme fails, They'll either fold up, or double down on selling data passed through them.

They have an insecure TOR implementation

They are likely to sell your data

They are likely to sell your data to AI projects.

Their CEO is a POS, but that's hardly unusual these days.

[–] QHC@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago

and there's still a lot of people on the windows side not using a package manager

I think "lots of people" here can just be simplified to "nearly everyone". Anyone that is ware of a package manager and why it's useful and thinks to look for an equivalent for Windows is not going to be bothered by a few extra configuration steps.

[–] 00@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

because you should never mix politics with technology.

What does this mean?

[–] Synthead@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

You mentioned that politics should not be mentioned with software. Consider Hans Reiser, the author of reiserfs. He murdered his wife and was sent to prison. Would you be okay with running code written by a murderer on your computer? How about a vase made by a murderer in your house? Would you enjoy the voice of a murderer in music?

[–] Rottcodd@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago

I never started in the first place.

It always seemed like snake oil to me.

[–] wave_walnut@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago

Author of this article, Corbin Davenport, should also stop using Facebook.

[–] jlarex@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

Brave has always seemed shady as hell to me. I don't understand why so many tech people keep recommending it.

[–] CaptObvious@literature.cafe 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Never started. What have they done now?

[–] billothekid2@kbin.social 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Nothing new. It's just an overview of how shady and scammy the browser is. I still see a lot of people recommending it without knowing the backstory.

[–] cutitdown@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago

AI summary:

Brave Browser has marketed itself as a privacy-preserving web browser and has gained attention from cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
The company behind Brave, founded by Brendan Eich, faced backlash due to Eich's previous donation in support of California's Proposition 8, which aimed to ban same-sex marriage.
Brave initially planned to replace ads with its own ad units and split revenue with publishers, but this idea was met with legal issues and criticism from both inside and outside the company.
Brave introduced Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) as a way to reward users for viewing ads and content, but the rewards are minimal and the value of BAT is volatile.
Brave has incorporated various cryptocurrency-related features, including a full crypto wallet, but many of its crypto partners have faced controversies and scandals.
Brave was involved in a privacy scandal in which affiliate codes were added to URLs typed into the address bar, allowing the company to collect revenue from user signups or purchases.
The article concludes that Brave is a flawed software project and should not be used, recommending Firefox or Vivaldi as privacy-focused alternatives.

[–] JelloBrains@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If you are basing the use of a product on the politics of people involved in the project, then you are going to end up with no products to use.

If you are basing it on it being based on Chromium and having a crypto scam built in, then I get that. That being said, the browser isn't super bad, just not good. Viva La Firefox.

[–] ciko22i3@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

especially with opensource stuff, a lot of devs are either extreme right or extreme left. That doesn't mean they can't make a great project. Suckless is a good example for extreme right. Lemmy for extreme left.

[–] Jaysyn@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

Can't stop using something I've never installed.

[–] Echo71Niner@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The article appears to be biased against Brave Browser and its associated company, presenting a negative viewpoint on various aspects of the browser's development, functionality, partnerships, and the background of its founder. The tone is critical and skeptical at best.

[–] julianh@lemm.ee 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This reads like ai generated text.

[–] Echo71Niner@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

It's perfectly acceptable to have reservations about a browser, but this article seems to be quite exaggerated.

[–] magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh 4 points 2 years ago

Found chatgpt.

[–] squidsarefriends@feddit.de 1 points 2 years ago

What‘s the best alternative for iOS and macOS? The first articles that come up, rank Brave as one of the best for iOS.

I liked that it blocked all YT ads by default and had tab management.

[–] austraz@aussie.zone 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It’s not a sign of intelligence to choose to ban a technology because of the opinions of its creator

[–] Ubermeisters@discuss.online 0 points 2 years ago

And if we're going to start talking about creators let's start talking about the people that made this site LMAO maybe it's not the best candlelight to hold this issue against..

[–] Norgur@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Okay, first and foremost: I do not use brave. I have used it years back (long before the URL-Rewrite-thing) and thought it felt weirdly bloated with stuff I didn't use (a little like Opera). I would not recommend Brave to anyone at this point, because it's... weird. I was out when they started to wave at you with their strange pseudo-currency-wallet that had to be set up and all. I would not recommend such a browser to someone who might then just ask me questions about the weird things the browser I told them to install does. No way, Jose!

Now for the but: The article is bad. Like... baaaad.
Let's have a look, shall we?

"Some higher-up of the company did something that is not moral"

You do not become CEO of a company íf your moral compass is a high priority for you. Period. We still need to keep the perspective here: the donation shows views I really dislike, yes. But given how much many of those suited-up nutjobs in upper managements give to really shitty causes... these 1000 dollars were peanuts. Besides: How does a CEO with indefensible political views make the product bad?

The Peter Thiel bonus fact:

Can we stop to attribute any investments by large funds as a morally motivated thing? There was a guy at Peter Thiel's fund who saw the project and went "Eyyy that's gonna get us some Dollary-doos". That's it. That's how business works. Those funds constantly shift tuckloads of money into truckloads of projects.

There was a super stupid idea in the initial plans for the browser

Yeah... thing is: They didn't do it. You'd be surprised how many really "scummy" ideas get pitched in companies every day and how often some management-guy just kinda runs with them. That's just business as usual really.

BAT

It is kinda weird, yes, but remember: At the time they started this, crypto was everywhere and it made the company money. I don't see why the mere addition of this stuff is a reason that "Brave Browser is irredeemable". It doesn't interfere with the browser's functionality, it just adds bloat. The article doesn't distill that though. It just says "It has crypto in it", goes on with something else and then concludes that "therefore bad" out of nowhere. What about the BAT thing makes the browser bad? Tell me, author!

Brave had FTX-Partnership-stuff and didn't apologize

The apologize part is what baffles me.
They some (probably paid) partnership with a company that tricked lots and lots of people. Why do they need to apologize for (unknowingly, naively perhaps) working with a firm that turned out to be fraudulent? Does your ISP have to apologize for every scammer who did scams over their landlines?

Random listing of crypto stuff

What is bad about this? Tell me, author! They went into the booming crypto sphere and got some users that way. I dislike the crypto-bubble as much as the next guy but why does that make the browser bad? My bank sponsored a local motocross-event. I do not like motocross. Is my bank account now bad, too?

Please tell me why the product is bad if you want me to think that the product is bad.

Affiliate scandal

finally something of substance. Yeah, that one was a shitshow.

But as much as I try to resist, I have to be nerdy here:
This is not an argument now, I just could let this one slide.

I’m not aware of another browser ever rewriting what the user types in the address bar.

aren't you now? So how does "does this browser rewrite stuff in the adress bar?" typed into my adress bar become
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=does+this+browser+rewrite+stuff+in+the+adress+bar%3F&atb=v388-6__&ia=web ? I didn't type that.

Again, not part of the argument, the affiliate-thing was bonkers and justifies scolding, just that one phrase ground me gears, as they say.

Ultimately, Brave Browser is the apparatus of an advertising company

hey, another real reason to dislike the product, to the point. See, author? you can do it! No need to ramble on for pages over pages without any point or conclusion! Just a few words do the trick!

Brave Browser is irredeemable, and you should not use it under any circumstances.

\ Tell me why!
No really, that's my main issue with the article: It lists a bunch of stuff and leaves it to the reader to assume that the listed stuff is devaluing the product of this company, basically because the tone of the article is "Brave bad", but the article never reasons why the things brought forth makes the browser bad. it never concludes any point, just rambles on to the next like a slightly tipsy Thomas the Tank Engine between stops.