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.
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.
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.
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”?
Even worse for privacy, it uses the Chrome engine.
Even if they were amazing, it would still be worth using Firefox instead to suppport an alternative to chromium.
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.
Firefox + Startpage is really cool. I like how their searched don’t include the search parameters in the url + the built in proxy
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.
How about the Opera Browser?
They got sold to a Chinese firm and it appears that much of the core development team abandoned the project and restarted under the name Vivaldi.
Proprietary, controlled by the Chinese Government, spyware, Chromium.
Don’t touch opera, avoid it like the plague
I have installed it on all my devices. Firefox is standard from now, becouse of its open source culture etc.
Vivaldi
If you absolutely have to use a Chromium project, then Vivaldi is the one, but at the end of the day it is still unfortunately Chromium.
Brave always marketed itself as hardened privacy browser and the second I saw their removedcoin 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.
Or just use Edge cause Microsoft is already syphoning your data so you might as well go the whole hog and use Edge
How about we just let users use what they want? I don’t use Brave, but it has some legitimate anti-fingerprinting tech.
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.
There are many, many good reasons to not use Brave. Being spyware is not one of those.
Boycott Brave for real reasons like their CEO and owner being a raging anti-gay reactionary or because of their cryptocurrency bs.
If people want to use Brave, or Windows, or install screen doors on their submarines who am I to complain?
The fact is for a lot of people, Brave offers a superior out of box experience compared to firefox or almost any other browser. In terms of ad blocking, speed and ease of use, it’s pretty much second to none. The fact that you install it and go is really appealing and how easy they make the slider to adjust the aggressiveness of the script blocking is great ui that my dad mother could use.
Yes, the company isn’t very good, it’s headed by a guy with a questionable history and has a poor track record when it comes to monetization strategy. I stopped using Brave this year, but for ages it was my goto because I could just install it and have an improved web experience.
