whotd uses brave

Marketing has really worked for Brave.

I know of the controversies, I just don't think they're all that big when you actually examine them.

Homophobia

I'm part of the LGBT community and I just think there are bigger fish to fry. One of the guys involved made a $1k donation to an anti-prop 8 campaign like 15 years ago. That's it. That's the controversy. Like, yea it's shitty, but there was a lot more hate toward the community back then. People have grown and changed their views a lot in the years since. If we boycott every single company or individual who ever did anything even remotely homophobic, no matter their actions since, we'd essentially have to be living in a commune growing and making literally everything ourselves. Btw, this same guy is the one who developed JavaScript and I don't see even remotely the same level of hate for that, so it really feels like people are just being selectively upset.

Cryptocurrency

It's opt-in. It asks you once, and then never again. It was developed at a time when crypto was popular and was a feature people wanted. It was seen as a good thing when it first came out. Public opinion on crypto has soured, but plenty of people who wanted it still use the feature on brave. They have no good reason to scrap it. Especially because, again, it's opt-in only. Don't like it? Cool, don't use it. They aren't pushing it on you. But people hear the word crypto and immediately break out the pitchforks.

Do you even know what the goal of their cryptocurrency was? I think it's safe to say its failed at this point, but the goal was to completely rework how ads function on the internet. It would have killed the modern advertisement methods where ads are shoved in your face and you get nothing for it. Instead, it would have directly paid you a tiny amount any time you saw an ad, with you being able to choose how many you saw, or even if you saw any at all. Then you'd either be able to either keep the money for yourself, or donate it to websites/content creators of your choice. Take away the crypto part of it, and that's actually a pretty admirable goal in my book.

Ad affiliate links

Brave's biggest, actual, controversy is that they replaced some affiliate links with their own. Specifically links to binance.us, which is a crypto market. When it was found, Brave changed their code extremely quickly and claimed it was a bug. Now, companies have often lied through their teeth and claimed malicious actions were a "mistake" or a "bug", so maybe that is the same case here. But considering it was one site only, it was fixed almost immediately, and when you look at how it was actually replacing links (suggested auto fill in the address bar, pulled from browsing history) I am leaning toward it actually being unintentional.

Conclusion

I think people just like to hate things, and will find any reason to continue to do so as long as their little corner of the internet tells them they should hate it. People most vocal with their complaints rarely take the time to dig into the facts and see if it's really as bad as they claim; or they fully know it's not as bad, but never want to let the truth get in the way of a good ol' fashion, hate-boner, circle-jerk.

Is Brave the best browser? Hahahaha no. It's still a chromium fork and has been a little too eager to integrate AI in my opinion. But it's FAR from the worst and is the probably the best privacy focused browser for those that don't understand technology and struggle to use third-party ad-ons. It's just a little ridiculous that while there are legitimate things to complain about, most people's arguments seem to always stem from the 3 topics above.

Now cue the downvotes because I'm clearly some crypto fascist boot-licker for daring to believe "nuance" isn't a made up word.

Which it isn't, and also Chromium sucks, so they're really just mag dumping into their foot

While I'm sure you are right I think Brave also likely pays for maintaining opinion on social media and posting positive comments supporting it. Many others learned of doing that (for example musk has bots astroturfing its image pretty much everywhere.) Similarly for example you don't see controversies section about Brave.

Can anyone reccomend good options fo browsers?

There is so much controversy with every browser and people working on them that I find is better just not to read anything about any browser anymore.

*uBlock Origin

I've seen the following types of people:

• People who ask how to do it, and get amazed.
• People who legitimately are not bothered by ads.
• Who think it to be a "headache", and to just "let it be".
• Who are incredibly tech illiterate to the point of frustration.

and then disable your YouTube app and save a link to webpage to your home screen. I haven't seen a YouTube ad in years with this method.

I’ve been on Firefox since the very, very, very earliest days, back from when it started as Phoenix. I’ve been diehard believer in Firefox from Day 1.

But as usage has declined (and declined), many websites that I actually need to use no longer test for Firefox. A key website I use doesn’t allow me to log in with Firefox. Not as a “we don’t support Firefox” but quite literally it doesn’t work.

I’m all for flying the banner but I can’t live with a browser that no longer works on the websites I need. And yes, I’ve filed a bug, but because it relates to a login Mozilla closed it (they can’t verify logging in to this website).

I happen to be moving my account to a different website so I may be able to dodge it this time but Firefox really is sinking and at what point does one choose to abandon the ship?

I do this as much as possible. However the Firefox in-page translation software seems to do something that actually changes the page (and this can break things like forms) whereas chromium browsers do some kind of translation layer on top, so the page can run normally beneath it.

It's an infuriating reason but right now it means I have to split my browser use depending on if I need translations or not.

I'd rather use Librewolf than waste an hour wrestling Firefox configuration for better privacy.

Heck... I'd even rather use Brave than Firefox.

Canonical are a puppet for Google, long time, enshitifying.

Not available for IOS. For android firefox is bad at sandboxing and security. Vanadium if it had adblocking would be perfect for me.

It's not a difficulty issue It's that lots of us have tried Firefox and don't like it.

Personally I don't use Firefox because it is buggy, is missing critical features, implements some web standards weirdly and has weird user agent styles. The end result is that many websites don't look right and don't work correctly and/or fully

Objectively more insecure and underperformant than ANY other chromium based browser.

People here up upvoting baseless conspiracies based on a braindead notice that technology is like magic.

If everything was tracked and harvested by Brave, it'd destroy them much more than the bullshit "homophobe" allegation. Just use network traffic monitors to see if it does. You think people haven't tried?

Or do you think software can covertly send data without users being able to determine?

It's open source for fucks sake. Stop with the Alex Jones tier analysis.

You can garuntee any activity you do in Brave is being tracked and sent to that network.

Source:??? BTW, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JNg4Ox2Hvc

Time to break out the narrative about chromium vs gecko:

https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html

Lynx is all the UI you need.

it's still around, just renamed to seamonkey

I use “nc” and parse like a real man.

Mosaic or gtfo.

konqueror is all i ever needed

Normal browser icon vs incognito browser icon comes to mind

Under marketing? I've seen a steady growth. The last Eich report told that It have 100 millon active users. duplicated in just 2 or 3 years.

When tiktok came out I imagine you just fell ill due to sensory overload.

Tried it when it first came out, noticed that it had an option to allow some ads to "support the developers" or whatever, immediately noped out of there and uninstalled it. The only adblockers that do that are the shady ones who are in bed with the ad companies.

I ditched Adblock Plus for Ublock Origin many years ago over this shit; not about to use an entire browser that secretly collects data on me and sells it to the ad companies.

Like Markiplier doubting Honey years before they were called out, something really was off about it.

I could care less about the personal beliefs of the creator if the product works as intended, especially if funding the creator is optional

Persistent and unavoidable ads are the reason I don’t use original Firefox, so it’s the reason I don’t use Brave anymore. There were other issues too, and although it’s supposedly open source, the Palantir connection is shadier than their Prop 8 connection, which I don’t even consider that relevant since it was so long ago

What does apple have to do with brave? i dont get it

Imagine criticizing an app just because it is usable and useful for the normal user, instead of thinking that is such a big goal. Fucking elitism and snobism devours leftism.

I love zen Such a great browser

Ive found alternativeto.net pretty useful.

Probably getting paid to say it?

Mercury has had a open high criticality cve for almost a year and a half now, that is being actively exploited.

Either switch to Firefox or a fork that is actually being maintained, or just block your machine from the Internet.

Too many times people who have been monitoring or are deep in a field overestimate how much knowledge an average person or even newly interested person has in the same field (oh hey, there's an xkcd about that!).

People scoffing at anyone who thought Elon Musk was just a meme a nerd CEO before the cave thing, people who expect everyone to know who is running every browser, OS, or other company, and lots of other minor things they think should be common knowledge, when at the time it was something only someone invested in the overall field or someone who knew how search much better than the average person.

I personally disagree with homophobia but setting that entirely aside, Brave browser sucks, all the cool kids like Vivaldi now, and they're right

Vivaldi said they won’t include AI.

….Buuuut, it’s still Chromium. Yay, I guess?

They have said they're adding an off switch for all their AI stuff in Q1 next year. We'll see how well it works, though.

Wtf hardware do you have? Arc?

But why should i use proprietary software in the first place, when a perfectly fine free alternative exists?

You mean Ungoogled Chromium? Vanadium? Chromium?

that hasn’t been kneecapped by manifest v3.

I have to disagree with this point. Brave Shields are not as performant as UBO MV2.

Firefox mobile fucking hurts!

Yes! Thank you! I mentioned Vivaldi in a different post on the same topic, and almost got eaten alive by rabid GitHub neckbeards. It's not fully open source, but who gives a fuck? It's a great browser.

don't throw the good stuff out with the bad. just deprecate until shit's secure again. Lynx and Pine baby.

What would that look like, do you think? In terms of how people would fulfil or replace those web activities?

Whenever my coworker shares his screen and opens Brave the entire screen turns into a gigantic ad. 😭

This is correct, but normies have the right to block ads too...

Would newpipe, pipepipe, or Firefox on android with ublock origin extension work?

I use newpipe and it doesn't have YouTube ads. But I don't follow any subscribers, so I don't know if they include that functionality.

Newpipe?

Snobs criticizing that normal people can now use an adblocker.

Fennec with Ublock Origin/ AdNauseam extension

Vivaldi 

if you're already using GOS, just use vanadium then, and block ads on the dns-level (eg by setting nextdns or adguard as "private dns" on your phone). works fine for me!

I'm trying out waterfox on GOS with UBO and it's working pretty good, though I still mostly use vanadium out of habit (wish it had better ad blocking though). Gotta use aurora store for it though since it isn't on F-droid which is annoying.