1y ago

Please, do not use Brave.

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.

653 comments

Brave is literally a grift. Too many people are falling for it.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  Yet, they use ~~Brave.~~ Chrome
  FTFY
- I turn on youtube and see no ads
  
  Just use uBlock Origin.

Brave is not spyware. That website you linked is horrible and full of misinformation. They also claim that Firefox, and even Tor Browser, are spyware. They act as if any and all connections a browser makes are automatically bad and used for spying/tracking.
I won't disagree with the other criticisms of Brave that you made, but just wanted to point that out. That website is just highly unreliable and makes verifiably false claims about the browsers it reviews.
- Brave is not spyware
  It is officially spyware now: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/10/18/brave-is-installing-vpn-services-without-user-consent/
- Just commenting to let you know I've clarified a bit in the post. Also, stock Firefox is spyware so.
  Stock as in out-of-the-box.
  Edit: If you want to downvote this go ahead, but at least know that it's true. Without changing ANY settings, Firefox is spyware.
  
  Just stop giving any advice please.
  
  Never heard of that. Please do not just claim things without clarifying.

Let's not forget one of the biggest investors is a right-wing billionaire who runs a corporate intelligence agency that contracts with the DoD. And the only proof we have that he doesn't collect data on Brave's users is the questionable word of the devs.
- Brave has been off limits for me ever since I saw my QAnon nutjob father using it lol.
  
  Big ol yikes right there
  
  That's dumb.
  Would you stop drinking water just because Hitler drank it too?
- And the only proof we have that he doesn't collect data on Brave's users is the questionable word of the devs.
  And...the source code?
  
  If the devs aren't trustworthy, I'm sure as hell not trusting that they didn't add something extra.
- I would appreciate if we don't bring politics into the conversation. They are completely subjective and only serve to stray away from the original point.
  Edit:
  Yes, I'm aware I'm in the wrong here.
  
  Privacy is a political subject.
  
  I would appreciate it if conservatives stopped trying to strip away our rights, including the right to privacy.
  
  untrue, politics affects the shape of everything, if we don't 'make it political' we let whatever political lean already is there continue. thats not apolitical, thats apathy
  that said thanks for the post, good to know!
  
  Politics are as subjective as the right to privacy. There isn't a hard logical truth to it, it's what people think is moral. Considering that, and considering that right-wing billionaires aren't known for being friendly to privacy, I think it's fine to bring politics into this discussion.
  
  aren't you on a fucking anarchist instance, ding dong? shut the fuck up, we don't do "apolitical" theatrics here.
  
  how can privacy ever be stripped of political content? it's inherently about social forces - ie politics.
  
  Everything is political.
  
  If you know you're in the wrong, delete the comment, or at least strikethrough everything you have changed your mind about.
  The people who downvoted you have already moved on, they don't need or care about an apology and won't see it.
  
  Everything is politics kid. Sticking your head in the sand is no different than allowing people with evil intent to do whatever they want.
  We can, will, and must continue to talk about everything through a political lens until all the problems of the world are resolved
  
  You are aware that "Don't bring politics into this" is code for "I don't agree with what you're saying" right? It's never a good look.

For the comments, can anyone give me an actual reason to use Brave over Firefox (and it's forks)? I guess the cryptocurrency aspect is a reason, but I wouldn't say it's a very good one.
- That's actually one of the reasons I do not use Brave.
- My guess is because Brave is a relatively known Chromium browser that's been degoogled. Along with built in ad and tracker blocking, and it's an easy less evil of the two.
  I want to like Firefox, both as normal user and as web developer, but something about it keeps bugging me. The UI feels sluggish, sites seem to be slightly less performant, and I can't seem to get used to it.
  That said, I've started using Vivaldi, and while it can be considered bloated, I really like the tab options it has, while also offering a degoogled chromium that's being kept to date.
  
  Because all the web devs optimize for chrome because they dominate the market. If more people use Firefox then devs will start to care about performance in it
  (You're a dev so I assume you know this. This comment is mainly for other people)
  
  I want to like Firefox, both as normal user and as web developer, but something about it keeps bugging me. The UI feels sluggish, sites seem to be slightly less performant, and I can't seem to get used to it.
  I feel the exact same. I use linux with a tiling window manager and when I change format, Firefox just starts twitching like it's trying to give me an epileptic seizure while chromium browsers do it just fine.
  Also, sometime ago I tried to compare Chrome (when I still used it) and Firefox side by side with the same extensions opening the same websites and Firefox always took a bit more ram.
  
  The problem is that so many site hyper-optimize for chrome. Add that to Google helping create web frameworks that seem to almost intentionally break Firefox and you get a de facto standard on chrome because ANYTHING else seems broken.
  Long live FF
  
  Try basic Chromium, it's Chrome without the Google.
  You're not wrong about Firefox, many sites are specifically optimized for Chrome and perform worse in FF. This is especially true for anything Google.
  My machines are generally fast enough that FF is fine so I prefer it but I fall back to Chromium occasionally or Chrome and Edge for specific uses.
  There's nothing in particular wrong with Vivaldi, IIRC I didn't like some features or UI bits when I used it last so it didn't have anything to recommend itself to me over basic Chromium. I'd prefer it over Edge which, IMO, is bloated with a bunch of garbage but Edge has very good streaming site support so 🤷‍♂️
  
  For me, Vivaldi had had the best performance next to Safari. FF and Chrome are easily smoked by Vivaldi when benchmarking. Idk if it’s related to M-series chipset or what, but my buddy who doesn’t have one has much worse performance on his laptop. Also, web and software dev, the saved workspaces that you can pin is killer.
  
  Vivaldi tab management is pretty great. Vivaldi is designed for power users that always have a ton of tabs open. There are a bunch of other features as well that I use regularly, but I could see that it might be a bit of a learning curve for those that just want to install a browser and immediately know where everything is. There has been more than a few times that I discovered yet another efficiency using Vivaldi and felt like I was getting more from it. Definitely a browser for someone willing to spend time configuring it for their use case. Keyboard shortcuts ftw!
  
  Pretty much the only reason I use brave. 99% of the time librewolf. I don't wanna go through the effort of installing chromium and an ad blocker and all that other stuff for the 1% of sites that are broken on firefox for me so brave it is. Really I just wish there was a chrome repackage with all this stuff out of the box. God knows chrome and chromium will never be that.
- Brave has been hyped as a privacy browser despite having several major privacy failures baked into it repeatedly. It's 100% hype. You get the same level of privacy on paper by installing Chromium with an ad blocker and tweaking a couple settings. Firefox has better privacy defaults and is better with an ad blocker installed. Chromium has a slight edge on security (FF needs to really push tab isolation harder) but if privacy is your main concern I would always recommend FF.
- I have installed Brave on my grandparents' computer, because:
  They had only used chrome, so brave is more familiar than firefox.
  Less chance of something not working/loading properly.
  Personally I use firefox.
- I don't use brave, but I use Vivaldi.
  The main reason for me is native mouse gestures. They are so much better than addon mouse gestures.
  And speed dials. Addon ones are okayish, but I prefer the Vivaldi implementation.
  If Firefox would ever ass native mouse gestures, I would swap in an instant. Until then, no can do :(
  
  Personally I can't say anything about Vivaldi, but it's proprietary and owned by people who used to work for Opera.
- Being chromium based it
  has better performance
  has less bugs
  has better standards compatibility
  Don't get me wrong, I am using Firefox, but your entire post is pretty disingenuous. Criticizing Brave over privacy concerns and then suggesting Firefox instead requires disingenuity or a special kind of ignorance and/or stupidity. Firefox has had 10 times as many privacy "mishaps" as Brave with all the "experiments" of corporate affiliates they shipped to users unannounced. There's a reason there are so many forks of Firefox.
  Pretty much everything you criticize about Brave is entirely optional.
  Then you title a link as Brave "getting ousted as spyware", and the linked to page does not oust Brave as spyware at all. You would do good to adopt some of the more neutral/factual tone of that page.
  And in parts that page is pretty ridiculous, too: complaining about what is set as the default search engine (the same as Firefox, btw). Who the fuck cares what search engine is set by default? Just change it. Opt out of everything you do not like. If there's stuff you cannot opt out of which is bad, we can talk about that. But arguing about optional features is ridiculous.
  Edit: little add-on: Brave factually has better out of the box (no plugins) privacy protection than Firefox: https://privacytests.org/
  
  None of those three are true.
  Some web sites are optimized for chrome.
  Not remotely accurate, https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list
  Not to any relevant degree. 515 VS 528 is at best a slight difference that in all likely hood is from Googlie using their position to strong arm things that benefit only them into the standards and very likely undetectable by the end user. https://html5test.com/
  
  I stated "and it’s forks" in the comment, and I did not mention Firefox (or any other browser) in the actual main post itself. Firefox can be easily de-spyware'd with something like arkenfox's user.js (as I mentioned in another comment). There are also plenty of privacy-centric Chromium based browsers such as Ungoogled Chromium and Vivaldi.
  Regarding optional features, I more used them as a segue into the last three links showcasing Brave's malicious and downright illegal activities. Personally, the fact those features are integrated into the browser at all is a deal breaker for me.
  Edit: For the record, I'm aware Vivaldi is proprietary but I don't necessarily think that makes it bad. I haven't done enough research on it to personally recommend it, but I've been told that it's good.
  
  That website you link is literally run by a Brave employee. Sure, they might have tried very hard to be independent, but when you literally work on the codebase of one browser you're probably going to write your tests to focus on the things you already know (plus it's not like Brave would allow their employee to run a site that says it's shit, would they?)
- The thisisunsafe bypass - although I'm pretty sure it's a Chromium feature and not specific to Brave. One of our servers has a completely fucked-up SSL cert, which I can't fix for reasons outside my control. Firefox won't allow me to connect, but thisisunsafe on Brave works.
  
  It works in Chromium too.
  
  I have no problem using firefox with my self signed cert. Just add the cert.
- Defaults. Install Brave and you're done. Site doesn't work? Report non-working site. Wanna support creators? Top up your Brave Wallet or turn on Brave ads.
  I've a limited budget and limited time to tip websites. I ain't gonna tip manually every other rando on the internet. Brave takes care of that. Small amounts, yes, but better than just ad-blocking [yes, website owners have to opt-in to it].
  Completely uninformed take follows: Also, Mozilla seems to be trying to ramp up their ads department -- search for Mozilla Ads. And no-one gonna convert because they already have Google Adsense.
  TL;DR: Firefox is faster but using recommended tools like uBlock Origin leaves websites without income.
  
  You can always use something like AdNauseam to give website owners ad revenue and still block ads.
- On iOS, unlike Android, Firefox doesn't come with extensions. No ads are blocked. Even if I use Safari and Adguard extension, it doesn't block YouTube ads. Brave works like a charm in this regard. I've opted out of all telemetry stuff that I could find, and btw even Firefox opts into everything by default. Any other open source browser you can suggest that blocks ads including YouTube on iOS?
  
  On iOS use Orion Browser by Kagi. As for blocking ads in YouTube, you can use AltStore to sideload a YouTube app with sponsorblock and ad block built in.
  (Orion might block YouTube ads, I haven't tested it)
- The only reason I use it over firefox is about tab grouping and how tab mutting work by default. I don't feel like trying out a bunch of extensions to find one that does what I already get from another browser. Also don't have to worry about installing ad blocker. Originally switched because it worked better than uorigin for a specific use-case that was relevant for me. I also have vivaldi, firefox, and librewolf install and will use them occasionally. Privacy isn't a big concern for me though; when I tried to switch to librewolf, the privacy features ended up annoying me so I disabled a lot of them because they interfered with using the browser how I wanted.
  Not recommending Brave. I agree at least in theory with using Firefox and I want more people to use Firefox. But its what I'm use to and there was reason for me to try it out at the time I switched to it (that's probably irrelevant now).
- Brave is better out of the box than Firefox
  
  And an iPhone is better for privacy out of the box than most Android phones, but once you make some basic changes that's no longer the case.
  
  Not by much...
- Due to some specific hardware issue on my end affecting all firefox based browsers, I have to use a hardened and stripped down version of Flatpak Brave, which I did manually, as a backup browser. I used to use Ungoogled Chromium but it is not reliable. Other than that there is absolutely no reason to use Brave and I would immediately switch back to Firefox only if I get newer hardware.
  As a plus point, firefox (gecko based browsers in general) are the only ones I have seen which provide the best theming flexibilities.
  
  Have you tried any forks of Firefox? They might serve you better. You could also try out Mullvad's browser, which released a few months ago.
- Firefox is actually NOT a private browser. I don't know where it gets this reputation because clearly those people haven't read their privacy policy where it plainly states that they gather and sell your info to a data mining company.
  For better or worse, Chromium browsers work better because the vast majority of people use Chromium so that's how people build their sites.
  Brave has tons of privacy features and settings. Including built-in ad-blocking just like uBlock so your extensions can't be used to fingerprint you.
  If you want a private browser and insist on but using Chromium there are dozens of Firefox forks that are much better for privacy.
  If the (supposedly) privacy preserving ads and crypto really upset you, you can simply turn them off.
  
  This isn't a reason to use Brave, this is just a reason to not use stock Firefox.
- I already wrote in another comment, but since you're asking here, I'll add i to this thread:
  You probably shouldn't use Brave over Firefox (and it's forks), at least not as a primary browser, but it's a great out of the box plug and play browser for average people, most of which are probably currently using chrome with no ad block.
  If the average user was decently tech literate, companies wouldn't buy ads any more, because they wouldn't make anything off of them, since people don't watch; but obviously they do.
  The average person doesn't want to have to install an ad-blocker - hell, the average person probably has no real idea of what an ad-blocker even is - and they don't want to bother configuring anything either. They just want plug and play applications that will do everything they need. And for that, Brave is probably the best. E.g. if a family member called me asking for a browser recommendation, I'd probably just tell them to install Brave. I think I'll keep doing that until I see a better plug and play browser.
- on my very old s4 mini android phone Brave works better than any other browser by far.
  i do not use Brave anywhere else :)
  
  Given that you've probably not had a security update on that phone for a decade then you probably shouldn't have any personal data on it at all!
- Included TOR browsing
  Included IPFS
  
  Built in Tor browsing... Just use Tor?
- I use it on my phone and tablet to block YouTube ads. All the other browsers are dedicated for various other purposes, but I use Firefox as my main browser. When a site doesn’t work on FF, I have to use Safari. Brave is just another tool in my toolbox.
- I wouldn't touch Brave with a ten-foot pole, but I heard that it's configured for privacy by default, whereas Firefox requires extensions like uBlock Origin etc. So maybe Brave is better for idiots, I guess?
  
  Brave is slightly better than default Firefox. But there are plenty of forks of Firefox that are way better than it out of the box.
- Chromium exensions
  
  This falls under "not a good reason" because 90% of Chromium extensions have Firefox alternatives.
- I don't want to support Mozilla, for a lot of reason I don't have the time or the will to discuss here. Is that enough for you? It is for me.
  
  You either support Google or support Mozilla. Supporting Mozilla leads to a safer internet for all.

Brave was also made by a guy who got kicked out of Mozilla for being homophobic. The cryptocurrency stuff is brave also a major scam, it's a crypto that must first be converted into another crypto before it can be converted into real money. How is that a "currency"?
- Personally, I trade my monopoly money into beanie babies and use that to pay my rent. I'm homeless.
  
  mood
- As I stated in another comment, I didn't bring up the CEO's controversies because they are subjective. Some people might be fine with what he thinks. It also doesn't really impact the software in any way.
  
  Also, and I hate to defend a homophobe here, but if we're going back to the details...
  It all sprang up because he gave $1000 to the Prop 8 campaign for banning same sex marriage in California.
  Scummy, to be sure, but it's not like he orchestrated the whole campaign or fully financed them. $1000 is barely enough to pay for one TV ad to play exactly one time on a local California TV station. I understand, yes, that when you add that to the rest of the donations, it was a juggernaut, but it still felt a little like punishing someone for having different politics. I also understand that it would be hard to work under someone like that knowing what his politics are, and questioning if that was going to impact fellow LGBT employees. Super valid reasons to be upset that he was put in the top leadership position.
  His politics are shitty, to be sure, but a single $1000 donation definitely always seemed a little overblown to me. Especially since he chose to resign after just 11 days, while Mozilla had tried to convince him to stay on in a different role. No one in leadership roles stepped down over him, he made the choice to save the organization instead of himself. That at least showed some sense of humility. So I don't know, not the greatest guy, and his current trajectory with Brave hasn't been so great either, but he at least showed decorum in that situation.
  However, that situation also put Mozilla on the defensive, having to put out a FAQ about how they weren't turning into an activist organization, or how you didn't have to ascribe to and agree on every political issue to work at Mozilla.
  It was just bad business all around.
  
  Those beliefs do trend among the same kind of people as crypto scams though

If nothing else, I would recommend Firefox over Brave for the sole reason of the latter being yet another Chromium browser. It would be nice if we could eat away some of the browser marketshare from Google.

getfirefox.com
- If someone can help me fix a major issue I have with Firefox I'd love to switch.
  I heavily use the per-application sound volume in pipewire on my Linux PC.
  Firefox will reset whatever volume I have set as soon as I pause a video and resume it a couple seconds later.
  I have a deej board and use that to control the application volumes.
  Firefox makes it simply unusable for me...its a known bug and Mozilla just doesn't give a fuck...
  
  Does this also occur with Firefox forks? They might have fixed it.
- If fire fox has profiles like brave, I'd switch instantly. I need profiles to separate all my different accounts
  Edit: I just wanted to say thanks to those who replied to my comment, it looks like I've gotten a couple of really good ideas for implementing profiles within Firefox. I'll be exploring these thanks much!
  
  Container in Firefox is better IMO. Use this addon to enable the feature https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/
  
  What do you mean, of course Firefox has profiles.
  You can also separate online accounts with container tabs.
  
  Don't know how no one mentioned this yet, but Firefox does have profiles. Unfortunately the only way I know to access them is using "firefox -p" via the command line. But you can set this to be the default way it launches within that menu.
  
  Firefox Multi-Account Containers
  
  Firefox has profiles, it's just not nearly as intuitive/easy to find as Chrome.
  I had created shortcuts on the desktop to easily choose between them. One for "school" one for "junk/entertainment" and for "important/shopping"
  Eventually after school, I merged them and just use containers. This when I started using a separate password manager. For the sites I have multiple accounts for, it's no trouble to pick the one I need.
  If I ever need a completely separate work browser, I'd use a separate profile for that.
  I do keep an "add-on free" profile for when I run into some website that's completely broken otherwise, but rarely need it.
  
  Check out Floorp. It's based on Firefox, but has a lot of other functionality. Maybe it has what you're looking for! https://floorp.app/en/

Personally I agree with the OP; and I refuse to use Brave. This isn't based in dislike of cryptocurrency in general; but I DESPISE both ADVERTISING AND SHITCOINS (Basically any token or sub-token of a main standalone blockchain that has no real, significant, usable real world value).
Therefore Brave DOES NOT reflect my values. I don't care if advertising networks make any money, I actively hate them enough I want to deprive them due to their behaviors anyway for being so violently anti-user.
I don't use Chrome or Brave because they DO NOT reflect my beliefs regarding web standards either, and I refuse to allow Google and the Chromium and Chrome project to dictate standards either. Particularly of note is their utter failure with both FLOC and WEB-INTEGRITY; both of which are stupidly removed anti-user and anti-privacy features which are horrible.
- Web Integrity might be the worst Google thing yet

Brave behaving like Win XP era browser with gazillion toolbars installed, with a pinch of crypto and crypto promoting ads should be a giant red flag.
FOSS =/= trusted by default. Why are there so many FOSS evangelists, but such a damn tiny part of them are programmers, let alone programmers able to examine a source code behind such a giant codebase as web browser?
I use Vivaldi, at least their business model is clear, and developer is kind of trusted, and not crypto scammer and homophobe.

Might I add brave's BAT wallet is garbage. You had to sign up to some random exchange and upload your ID (I didn't), but even that you couldn't even backup your wallet into a new install, so hope that you would never have to format or reinstall or change devices - it'll be a pain to restore, if it was even possible.
Firefox over brave any day.

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.
- Woah, realplayer, you just gave me a hit of nostalgia
- brave browser is free and open source tho?
- It's amazing Canter & Siegel were the most hated people on the Internet at one time...
- I remember using that on windows xp, maybe vista too.

The issue is wider than Brave. Nowadays, companies build uncritical communities around their products.
If you try to be critical, you loose the community in which you're involved on one side. And, if you are critical from the outside, "you don't understand" like in the "you're not the choose one".

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.
- Since the source code of that Chromium browser is under the same license as Firefox, someone could fork Brave at anytime. Dissenter is trash, fuck Gab.
- Arc is, I think, not particularly a privacy focused Browser, but I only use Mac at work and privacy ain't my main concern there. So privacy aside and a little tear shed that it's not FF based, Arc is just great.

making (presumably) thousands of dollars off their users
I agree with this post completely but for some reason you finishing with this makes me chuckle.
Oh no! Thousands! They might be able to pay rent for a month or two!
I'm just being cheeky, and while its true what they did was scummy, it also feels like a really.... smallish amount of money?
If we're literally just talking thousands, and not tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands.
But yeah, fuck Brave.
Firefox gang and Hardened Firefox gang here to stay.
Mozilla's got its own problems but that's a story for another day.
- Well thousands could mean hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands. I kept it small because I can't really give a real number.
  
  That's fair, but in that case you might just say "they likely profited handsomely off this venture" or something similar, because if you reach for dollar amounts like that, it can kind of undermine your point.

Even if they were amazing, it would still be worth using Firefox instead to suppport an alternative to chromium.

Now try saying that at https://lemmy.one/c/privacyguides
- Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !privacyguides@lemmy.one
- Could crosspost it.

I see this exact thread every week now and it's between the same people:
"Oh ok i stopped using it" to "Naw i'll keep using brave"
At this point can we stop this? Brave is trash but people are either too stubborn or just don't care anymore (which is ironic). Either mods just pin this thread and treat this as a "brave is trash" megathread or I don't know.

I used them for a few weeks before they rolled out their crypto scheme. It honestly felt like they monetized “privacy”, nothing more. So I bailed having zero faith any of their shit worked like they wanted us to think it works.
- They monetized their users, and that wasn't the first time they tried.
  
  Um, so does every other major web browser company

Why are there daily posts against Brave but not against other browsers? Is Google more trustworthy than Brave?
- Because Brave likes to portray itself as privacy friendly. We already know Chrome, Edge and others aren't.
- Because people in this community already know not to use Google Chrome and Microsoft.
  
  daily posts against Brave
  Also, where are these daily posts? Personally I haven't seen any saying "don't use Brave" which is why I made this post in the first place.
  
  I see all too many recommendations to use Brave in comments so a post like this is of value.
- I mean it's a free forum, you can make one if you want to.
  
  I don't object the creation. I just want to know why there is that discrepancy.
- "The devil you know" and all that.

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.

I tried them a few years ago before I knew more about things like this, their CEO, etc. I had a problem with them continuously taking over my home page on desktop with their own homepage (much the way Firefox on android does now) after every update. I contacted them on social media where they went on a two day stent of making fun of me for having a problem and gaslighting me that there was a problem because zero other people had ever complained. Super professional there.

Never used it, I saw some twitter comments from it's CEO and this guy isn't trustable.
I go with Firefox and sometimes epiphany. Last one tries to accomplish the level of the well known ones but is mostly years behind. That's sad, because I really like it.
- Brendan Eich is a big ole dickhead. He's kind of like if Elon Musk was actually a competent engineer.

Guess what, Firefox also gets the same score on ghis site :)
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/firefox
Also they both seem to be the better option to Chrome https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/chrome
Not sure if this score applies to vanilla Chromium.
- Firefox gets a high rating on default configuration.
  The next line explains that with custom configuration, it becomes Not Spyware.
  
  Brave can be configured in the same way, so really no difference
- Yes they both get the same score, but Firefox also has a mitigation guide to make it Not Spyware.
- That website is very bad and full of verifiably false information, they act as if any and all connections a browser makes are automatically bad and "spying". They even claim that Tor Browser is a "spyware".
  
  That website is [...] full of verifiably false information
  Could you please provide and example or two? I wish to verify it, since I didn't notice any last time I checked the site.
  they act as if any and all [unprompted] connections a browser makes are automatically bad and “spying”.
  They're very clear that this is their approach (bold text on the home page). Even if you disagree with their definition, that doesn't make the site bad. And there are many valid situations where a threat model should be this strict, consider anti-government activists in any country.
  They even claim that Tor Browser is a “spyware”.
  It says "Not Spyware". https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/tor
- Let me put it in this way – if Firefox were really a spyware, TOR browser won't be based on Firefox.
  
  That website has a very strict, unusual interpretation of 'spyware'. Even if all the telemetry and unprompted connections made by Mozilla Firefox are in good faith and legitimate features, that website still labels it 'spyware', as it is revealing unnecessary information without your consent.
  The same website gives Tor Browser a 'Not Spyware' rating, as it (necessarily!) removed the default features of Firefox that concerned them.
  Side note - I think you may have accidentally marked your account as a 'bot account' in the settings.
  
  Tbf Tor is based on US military software. Could be a honeypot lol. But it's the best we've got...
  
  That's not the best argument tbh, bc you van remove all the spyware from brave AND Firefox sooooo

Look, just… just use fire fox! Sure some sights aren’t optimized for it, but it’s a minor difference in performance from a chromium based browser.
And the more people use fire fox the more sights will have a reason to optimize for it.
Anything that is using chromium is still using something built by Google, and thus if Google tries to alter chromium to make ad blockers stop working, or some other asinine idea, there isn’t much a browser can do about it.
- Use librewolf instead of Firefox to get rid of the whole spyware part of it. Librewolf only has a single request when starting, to "check for updates". But using Firefox is the second best thing you can do both for your privacy and to fight Google's " Web Environment Integrity" crap.
  
  I personally use Librewolf, can agree with this.
- Sites*, not sights.
- and 80% of firefox's revenue is JUST Google. we are fighting an uphill battle here

@eya I made sure I’d never use brave when I found out that the ceo is a massive homophobe

I dont use Brave and will never use it. But this sounds not logical.
Their ad system and affiliate URLs are not anti-privacy per-se. Its not as easy.
I will not use it as its
99% controlled by Google
dependend on Google Addon store
bad UI
bad OS integration
not Arkenfox

For a lot of people, way too many people, using Brave is a political statement that is paradoxically supposedly against political statements. It's a spite choice that justifies the cryptogrifting, spyware, and the horrid political views of its owner.
- I can't really comment on this claim but I posted this under the assumption that most people in this community care about their privacy, not about politics.
  
  most people in this community care about their privacy, not about politics
  Whether you want to see them or not, privacy concerns can and do have political implications, especially when what is supposed to be a privacy tool is itself violating privacy because of the whims and wishes of the person that owns the proprietary software.

Just disable the ads, crypto and telemetry and suddenly none of those things are a problem anymore, just like Firefox.

Even worse for privacy, it uses the Chrome engine.

Firefox + Startpage is really cool. I like how their searched don't include the search parameters in the url + the built in proxy

Honestly, even the crypto part of Brave was a cool idea. Back when it was in beta, I was sending various websites and GitHub users 'tips', and they were able to cash out. It was genuinely supposed to be a new way to monetize the web (they later made the tips automatic based on how long you spent on each webpage), but, yeah.. Too many people didn't see the vision, and they got too much hate, so I'm pretty sure that whole program is axed now.
- they got too much hate
  It's almost like lying to your users about fundraisers and inserting affiliate links into URL's leads people to hate you...

What should I use on android?

I used to use Firefox but have been using Brave cause I was getting tired of having to open Edge every time there would be an addon or tool that was Chrome exclusive. So unless there's other options for privacy focused chromium browsers I'm just gonna stick with brave.

What is the issue exactly with their search engine?
- If they are doing these kinds of things with their browser, what are they doing behind the scenes with their search engine?
  
  I don't know. That's why I'm asking.

Used to use Brave, but it became more and more bloated as time went on. Also, I realized that I wasn't opposing Google as I wanted, but choosing an alternative of Google, as brave is still based on chromium. I enjoy Firefox very much now (don't know about the performance issues people talk about at all cause it seems better than all chrome, brave, opera, and opera GX I used in the past) although I'm looking into even further simplifying and privatizing that. Any suggestions for modified Firefox browsers that keep the functionality would be appreciated.
- I use Librewolf, I've enjoyed it and it's very privacy-centric.
  
  LW is awesome because its Firefox but security hardened out of the box. Instead of spending an hour or more doing it manually with default fox, you can just use LW. Huge fan. The step up from there would be mullvad browser , then tor imo
  
  Thanks for the rec! I'll check it out
  
  Hi! I’m interested. Does librewolf push updates fast relative to Firefox?
- Firefox used to have performance issues, as of 6 months ago Firefox runs faster than Chrome.

I would be very curious what other browsers people recommend. I use Brave solely because of the profile feature it offers, which for my use case is an order of magnitude better than Firefox’s containers. Is there something more private/better than Brave that still has profiles?

its open source tho, show me the spyware and i will belive you

I don't see why making money needs to be at all a part of using a piece of software. The only transaction that potentially needs to take place is paying for the software up front.
Same with social media sites like whatever BlueSky or Posts is doing. Why is money involved?
- Would you pay for a browser upfront?
  
  Yes, if it avoided this headache of ads, spyware and any other intrusive monetization. I'd pay for any category of software I wanted to use for this reason. Which is how software used to be sold before people got used to not paying for anything upfront and instead paid for it in hidden data harvesting.
  
  I'd pay for a browser upfront if free solutions didn't already exist.
- I don't see why making money needs to be at all a part of using a piece of software.
  It doesn't...?
  When you install Brave the crypto is opt-in, and to hide it permanently is literally 2 clicks.
  
  The fact it's there in the first place should be enough to use something else.
- Money is involved because people want to make a living off of their project. Also, every major browser has been backed with huge amounts of funding because supporting a browser is very difficult.
  That said, that doesn't mean every browser project is good, either. Just that it's reasonable to see why people would want to get income from their work.
  PS the Brave CEO sucks so I'm not sympathizing with him here.
  
  This person was talking about the making money aspect (the rewards program) in the browser, not the browser itself making money off their users. At least that's what I believe they were talking about.
- Yeah! Not sure why you get paid to work the only transaction that potentially needs to take place is paying for your work up front.
  Why is money involved?
  
  I don't know what you are trying to say here. I'll do my best to explain my point.
  When I go to use a browser I have never had the expectation that I should be earning money for doing so. I do not believe this is a use case that most people have had. Similarly with some of these new Twitter clones like BlueSky you can send people money for some reason. Again, this is not a use case that I expect from a social media platform. The transfer of money to myself or to other users in these scenarios does not make a lot of sense.
  Where is does make sense to have money involved is paying for software.

thanks for the links and info. I use brave as well as firefox and other browsers depending on what device I'm using. The spyware link is worth a quick read to understand any risks. It's great to see some analysis done there. I actually feel a little better about brave now, I'm ok with those risks for most cases and brave blocks ads better for me than what I've seen in other browsers. I'm always willing to switch though, I have no loyalty to any browser.
- uBlock Origin does basically the same thing Brave's adblock does only better and more customizable.
  
  unlock Origin is a huge performance hog on my system, whereas Brave runs as fast as Chrome. Thank you for the heads up, but for people in the middle ground of "I know what ads are and I want them blocked, and when I see a Brave ad I'll ignore it", I think Brave is fine
- The spyware link is not a credible resource. Read some of the other comments here and look at what that site says about Firefox.

Current Brave user here.
Is Firefox the way to go at this point? I considered switching back to just plain Chrome or even Chromium more broadly
- Most people agree that Firefox (with something like arkenfox's user.js) or a fork of it is the way to go. Don't use stock Firefox, it manages to be worse than Brave out of the box when it comes to privacy.

Lol isn't eTrash considered a scam anyways? They are the reason i got ad blocker - dumbest ads on youtube 24/7.
Anyways sounds like you gotta be quite brave to use Brave lol

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.

I actually use Brave and have been for few years. Used Firefox back when it was version 2 and switched to Brave as it's performance was better compared to Firefox.
Reading the above now, you have shed a lot of light on things I didn't know about Brave. I know I can disable a lot of stuff on it (news, rewards, VPN, chat). But the list of bloat has been increasing.
Your post is an eye opener. I will be looking for a way to switch to Firefox. Unfortunately I work for an organisation that doesn't give us the option of installing our browser. Forced to use MS Edge for now lol.

Then what browser yall recommend ??
- firefox
  
  With uBlock Origin.
  
  Always! Recently, I've been dabbling with Floorp. Based on FF. It's quite nice! https://floorp.app/en/
- Firefox is a good start, or Librewolf if you're really concerned about privacy
- Firefox with arkenfox's user.js or forks of Firefox such as Librewolf. You could also use Mullvad's browser.
  
  Firefox and Arkenfox is my browser of choice
- If you're on MacOS, Orion is really good. Zero telemetry, built-in ad blocker, supports both Firefox AND Chrome extensions.

if you want the best privacy but you still want to use chrome just use ungoogled chromium, you get both privacy and you're still able to use chrome, just minus the sync capability
~~if you want something like it for mobile on android there's bromite~~
if you want something like it for ios... you're fucked

Brave is better than chrome ans I'm glad we have alternatives.
- Yes, but there's also way better alternatives to Brave.
  
  I guess only Firefox and Firefox based browsers.
  
  But are they as user friendly?
- I doubt, at least with chrome you can switch off the crap and have immediate security updates while with brave you may have to wait a week or even a month for a security chromium patch.

@eya Oh wow, I'm using it as a daily basis. I think using mullvad browser is an option now.

What is the best browser for iOS?

So whats a good browser for my android? Already changed to duckduckgo browser on my PC.
- Firefox for Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.firefox
  I have been using it for several years and really happy with it.
- Firefox. With adblock & other privacy-focused extensions on Android.
  If you are this paranoid - Firefox Focus browser on Android.
- Mull is a great choice imo. You can get it from f-droid after you've added the DivestOS repositary. It's basically a deblobbed Firefox built with privacy in mind.
  Edit: just rember to add ublock origin to block adds.

Spyware is a bit of a stretch. However, let's talk about Firefox. Mozilla Corporation is a Billion Dollar Corporation that is tied at the hip to Google and uses 115+ servers to track every single thing you do.
Chromium explicitly uses shared memory and is technically able to write and execute not only shared data from private/incognito to regular windows or tabs but adjacent processes. You can search for mmap in the Chromium repo or try to use Chromium with FreeBSD or GhostBSD sysctl.conf set with kern.elf64.allow_wx = 0 - it won't run.
The Precise Geolcation Timeout for Firefox is 68 years.

I absolutely agree, many news about security issues have already been published before.

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