It’s always been weird to me how people use Brave. Like there’s a big class of Brave users who seem like people who would just be better off on Firefox? I guess it’s some of the best evidence I have seen that marketing works.
The problem is, that Firefox Android can’t group tabs. That’s VERY important for me, and is the only reason I don’t use Firefox (it’s messy using different browsers in PC/Phone).
It’s literally just a coat of paint on google chrome. You might as well install internet explorer toolbars until an unknown browser appears on your desktop and use that.
I mean, there’s good reason to hate the guy, but there’s plenty of controversies the browser has had as well that should ward anyone who cares about privacy away from it, they’ve proven they will do shady stuff without users knowing like affiliate link injection, and then just “apologize” when caught.
Google would be crucified for doing that yet when a shady crypto browser does it it gets a pass.
I do use Firefox on Windows for ages. But I just can’t get over the fact that Firefox for android isn’t anywhere a streamlined experience. Can anyone suggest a good alternative to Brave on Android? I’ve tried Kiwi, but it was breaking some sites and battery usage was high.
Whenever I open certain websites (Google, My banking sites etc…) it decides to load a basic version of the site (Similar to the ones I used to see in Opera Mini on a Java Keypad phone). Maybe it is the website’s fault, because I’m pretty sure Firefox is capable of displaying the full website, but as an end user, those pages are broken for me. Hence using Brave.
Vivaldi if you want a chromium privacy experience. Not fully open source but works well, has desktop sync and a good tablet UI which is my biggest reason for not using FF.
I only have a tablet and a phone and until FF creates a viable tablet UI I’m staying away.
Vivaldi is not a “privacy” experience. It sure has some comfy features, but Vivaldi is not private. Use it if you like it’s UI features, just know that it isn’t private.
You got 2 choices, listen to a bunch of dumb people which has no technical understanding, never read their privacy policy or even ever touched the browser in their life or just do urself some research from trustworthy sources which are better than “it’s my opinion and I’m always right and you’re wrong”
There was that thing where some domains where whitelisted from blocking, don’t know whether it was cookies or something else. Not great, but easily explained by not wanting to break stuff for unexpecting users, maybe bad communication. Shouldn’t happen when you go privacy first, but that was resolved quickly after being discovered at least.
There was the time when they injected affiliate links when visiting some sites, to generate some revenue of course. They overdid it and replaced affiliate links of other people I think, but again they changed it after the community complained. I don’t know whether that’s optional now or completely gone. In any case, no harm was done to the users in this instance.
One thing you can definitely hold against them to this day is their CEO. He supported anti-queer legislature in the past and was dismissed as Firefox CEO (CTO? Something very high up at least) for that reason. He did apologize for it and afaik didn’t continue supporting that kinda stuff, but you never know.
Imo the browser as it is right now is pretty good and unique in what it has to offer. The biggest issue really is a lack of trust by the community.
Be careful, Brave marketing team is well known for disguising themselves as users and promote their bloated crapware via comments.
They overdid it in 4chan and ended up alienating the entire community.
Then they moved to Reddit but people already started seeing Brave for what they really are, a scummy company that has been caught redhanded way to many times to be trusted.
Now they are here on Lemmy, desperately trying to get more chumps under their ad machine before BAT hits 0 and their advertising partners lose all interest.
Just say no to Brave, there are way better browsers out there, with real privacy, that won’t make you look like a hateful brainwashed-by-politics piece of shit.
You should NOT trust Brave to not play fast and loose with your privacy. They already operate an advertising network (it operates on those stupid little BAT tokens) and they DO inject ads and affiliate links.
I strongly recommend Firefox^1^ or Librewolf.
^1^ - You must install plugins and apply user.js fixes yourself to properly harden Firefox completely against tracking; but this is doable.
This. They detail perfectly how you can properly harden Firefox with whichever settings you think fit your privacy needs best and even discuss the tradeoffs for each setting.
Someone on the last Brave thread suggested using Floorp and honestly I’ve been loving it. It comes with Tree Style Tabs support but I much I prefer Sidebery so I use Floorp’s built in sidebar with Sidebery instead. It works fantastic, and using Firefox color theming to tweak everything also works well.
No Google products offer any privacy whatsoever full stop.
If your priority is an aesthetically pleasing UI then Apple products are often beautiful but its not reasonable to expect any degree of privacy from a closed source ecosystem run by a single corporation.
Privacy is often a trade off so it really depends on what you value.
The brave criticisms you see are mostly hot takes about crypto(icrypto jokes are super coool as of '20) but brave(foss) is as good or better than Firefox, IE or safari in terms of privacy.
Firefox can nearly match that privacy with their options, but if you like brave, easier to stick with that.
Part of it comes down to trust. I just don't trust Brave Inc long term - it may well be a private browser now but I don't trust that in to the future. I don't trust a company that Peter Thiel invests in. I don't trust a company that has already been shady and caught redirecting traffic secretly for referrer codes. But I also don't trust Google or Microsoft either.
I trust Firefox and Mozilla. I don't like that they are dependent on Google revenue but I trust that they're open and transparent about what they do, and not motivated or compromised by a desire to maximise profits for their venture capitalist investors.
Ah, thank you, distrusting Peter thiel is at least tangentially relevant and certainly understandable(thiel-creepy brave-trustworthy?)
I would choose Firefox before ie or safari, but Firefox also sells personalized ads and tracks your keystrokes.
I like foss, and I like smaller companies. When another privacy-based browser comes along after brave sells its soul or gets too popular, I’ll support them too.
Until then, brave is doing pretty good privacy-wise, especially compared to the mainstream alts.
No, brave is not bad for your privacy. There has been some controversie but no dealbreaker so far imo.
If you’re on mobile I think brave has hands down the best UX (not necessarily UI but I like it a lot), on desktop I recommend firefox, which has a lot of custom themes to choose from (firefoxcss-store.github.io).
It’s less about whether any individual thing they’ve done has been bad, more that they keep doing things and keep doing thm in sneaky ways. Every time something happened the CEO went on a marketing campaign and drummed up a bunch of new users to drown out the news story. They come across as shady, which gives the impression that it would take a relatively small sack of money for them to sell their users up the river.
Brave is better than some out of the box, but far from the best. I’d say Mull is better for mobile, which is a Firefox fork. It has a companion Android System Webview called Mulch.
Well stuff like chromegle, there isn’t anything similar on Firefox, and there are just less extensions in general. Probably the dumbest reason but doesn’t change the fact that i need them
Definitely yes. Firefox is not private as provided by Mozilla. You have to use a custom user.js to disable all the tracking, or install a Firefox based browser like Librewolf or Mullvad Browser.
Unfortunately there’s ads in Firefox too, and they’re opt out instead of opt in. I’m certainly not a fan of it, but outside of LibreWolf until servo becomes a thing I think should be right but we’re stuck choosing lesser of multiple evils.
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