I don’t understand when and why Brave became such a household name. It seems so many people use it and swear by it, but its reputation is “suspicious” at best.
Just use Firefox. It’s been around way, way longer and it doesn’t use the Chromium engine. Google doesn’t need more of a monopoly on the internet.
Chromium is still controlled by Google, so having an overwhelming market share of Chromium-based browsers reduces competition and increases Google’s control of the market’s position and future. Using Firefox (and Safari, if it were not locked to a single ecosystem) reduces that threat.
It just means if they want to do something bad then they can
If Google wanted to they could ban VPNs on all Chromium browsers and all the forks downstream would have to comply
More likely they can make it so only verified websites will load and down the line charge to be verified. It kills the open internet and the ability for anyone to make a website/host it where they want
When we say “controlled”, that’s still only accounting for the primary fork, right?
As long as it’s open source, it feels like the idea is that the day Google pushes “feat(): Users now automatically have $1 sent to Google a day” commit, someone creates a “chromium-nongooglefucked” fork repository from the prior commit, and everyone uses that.
Well Chrome(ium) has almost all of the browser market share and google is trying to push something called web environment integrity which would implement a sort of certification system where web servers evaluate the authenticity of the client. If you extrapolate that idea a bit further it boils down to “we won’t serve you content if we don’t like your browser, device, OS, etc”. Which I would consider as hostile to the open but rapidly closing internet as we know it.
Edit: I forgot to make my point lol. Firefox is a completely different browser engine from the chromium based browsers which is why you see a lot of people recommending firefox because they don’t comply with web integrity. I don’t think it’s working though because this is something only the techbros and the cybersisters care about while everyone else just goes about their day.
It’s not a stupid question, some people just don’t know.
Mainly it’s because:
Chromium holds too much market share which is bad for the health of the Web.
Chromium is controlled by Google which is concerning because they have been known to plant trackers even in software that shouldn’t have them.
Chromium is inherently less secure, it contains features that might seem nice but are extremely risk to give access to websites i.e. letting websites access Bluetooth.
There are probably plenty more reasons but these are the big ones, and of coarse this is a simplification, in reality things are always a bit more complicated.
I use it as my YouTube/spotify browser because the ad block just works. Firefox is janky because I have other extensions running that screw up playback on some sites (this has gotten a lot better but I still just use brave out of habit)
The only real problem I ever had with Firefox was this privacy option that would disable auto playback on sites like Twitch and TikTok but that was a setting I wasn’t even aware of. Other than that, I rarely ever have an issue with FF outside of web dev when it doesn’t yet support some cutting-edge web API feature.
Yea, it was something with various extensions I had going. I’m not blaming Firefox at all. I love Firefox. Just easier to use the other browser on the occasions when my configuration causes issues than try to troubleshoot it.
I’ve had issues with add-ons on some sites too. For those times I just use a different Firefox profile (each has its own set of add-ons and settings :D)
I think if Firefox can find a way to have full parity with chrome extensions, that might be a big shift. I’ve talked to more than one person that has a specific extension they rely on that they can’t duplicate with Firefox options. They have many of the big names, but also some holes
Not OP, (and Firefox is still my main), but I keep Chromium-based browsers around for Ichigo, an addon which automatically translates raw manga - which is a godsend for avid manga readers like myself who frequently run out of existing translated manga to read. There’s also Scan Translator which works in a similar way, but sadly Firefox has nothing like them.
I just spent awhile trying to switch from Vivaldi to Floorp before going back. It just doesn’t work as smoothly, things like tabs wouldn’t save properly between sessions, pinning tabs doesn’t prevent you from closing them, UI elements would disappear, etc.
Edit: Apparently it’s not enabled by default. I tried brave some time ago and remembered that it was enabled, which promoted me to uninstall it immediately. Maybe it was enabled by default then, maybe I misremembered.
Having a VPN basically just means sending your traffic (albeit encrypted) to someone else’s server, before sending it to the wider internet.
That means if you don’t specifically disable it, everything you do in the brave browser could theoretically be logged, processed and analyzed by the owners of brave.
Even if the traffic itself is still encrypted, like with online banking, just knowing how many people in a certain city use which bank for example, could be very interesting to advertisers.
Depending on how evil they are, they could also log extensive amounts of user data, just waiting for the day it becomes legal to sift through it (just like a lot of governments do).
Or maybe they just log and sell your data even though it’s illegal. Like a lot of companies do all the time (see Cambridge Analytical scandal etc.).
Or maybe they don’t. But if I was a browser company I’d sure enjoy having all my users route all their traffic through servers I control.
the toggle shows up by default, but without a paid subscription the vpn is unusable. even then you need to enable it. you can disable it completely in brave://flags and set “enable experimental brave VPN” to disabled. it’s shitty that they include it by default, but it’s disingenuous to say they’re rerouting traffic of all brave users through their own vpn servers.
Google is paying Mozilla to keep their search engine the default in Firefox. Period. There is no Google spyware (or any spyware in general) in Firefox. Just because Google is the default search engine in Firefox doesn’t mean Firefox is Google-controlled spyware.
Also Librewolf’s privacy is in some ways selfish on their part. It strips out Firefox’s troubleshooting data collection so Mozilla loses a good chunk of clues on how well the browser works. Lack of any data would lead to lower browser quality, ends up as a worse Firefox release, and Librewolf gets to be affected directly as a downstream of Firefox. By removing troubleshooting or usage data (which practically doesn’t affect privacy in any way), Librewolf is just hurting itself in the long run. If they’re really aggressive against directly contributing data back to Mozilla, then they should just run their own collection server and contribute the final data back to Mozilla.
telemetry and troubleshooting information can be used for fingerprinting. This isn’t an issue for most people but I can understand why some wouldn’t like it. Tor browser strips a lot of that as well for similar reasons.
My understanding is that google primarily funds Firefox because if chrome becomes a monopoly then google would have to face antitrust laws. Getting broken up would be more expensive to them than keeping Firefox viable with a minority of people using it as their browser.
Maybe I need to change to Linux, this one is Windows 10 and I am tired of getting errors because of things that Windows change. Last week I had the search bar activated with thr last update. Thanks for the tip
I would strongly recommend looking into it. There’s not much you can’t do with Linux these days and it’s easier than ever to adopt. Check out Linux Mint for a good distro for those new to Linux.
I will do that, I mean there is something wrong with windows, it was slowing ff for some reason. And not only that, other apps. I mean I have 16gb of ram, and only running that and whatsapp
Did it a little over a year ago. Has been fun thus far, my computer really feels like my device now which it didn’t really do before. Its like when a meal tastes better because you make it yourself. Still have issues once and again ofc but I had that on windows too tbf. Not an OS advisor, not OS advice
Eyyyyy high five. Any good or bad stories or something to recommend? I will start. I am now the go too person on work for people who have issues with their usb drives. Not matter what, on linux I can always read the filesystem or make their flash drives work again. And people are always super thankful :)
Haha that’s really cool! I had something similar at work - when the adobe suite stopped working properly with the computers there I was able to get GIMP and and Libreoffice working for everyone instead. I most recommend the application “cherrytree” and avoiding flatpak. Also, if you’re thinking about self-hosting check out YUNOhost. How about you?
I will try it, i am really angry at ms, it is not normal that it was running ff slow, with 16gb if ram and onky running WhatsApp in the backgroud. Thanks for the recommendation
I have issues with FireFox running YouTube on windows 10 - it gets super laggy - the issue is nonexistent if I used the Piped frontend. I think it depends a lot on what website you are using - some don’t play well with FireFox.
That being said, I did not have issues with FireFox on Mac when I used that, or on Linux, though I don’t use my Linux laptop a lot for web heavy stuff
It’s believed to be that Google will serve different websites to non-Chrome (maybe non-Chromium) browsers, or they specifically use features that only they implement to ensure that it performs worse on other browsers. And I don’t mean they add a new feature and it’s only them, but that they use deprecated features that only they have. Honestly, fuck Google.
I do have lag issues with YouTube on FF as well, but only the video not the audio. I just assumed it was a codec issue, or just RAM management, since it only occurs when I’ve been running FF plus a game like wow all day
Check out the Freetube application for watching youtube videos. You can import all your subscriptions from youtube, make playlists, download video/audio etc.
But I still don’t understand why people would make a big deal about a piece of software that installs multiple software packages…
I mean have you ever installed Microsoft office? Did you ask it to install Microsoft access? What does Microsoft access even do?
Or have you ever installed nvidia drivers? Did you ask for the whole “GeForce experience”? Wtf does that even mean?
Installing extra software packages is definitely par for the course, bit in the brave example, at least the extra shit isn’t required for the main app to work, in fact it’s disabled by default, that’s great!
To answer your original question: yes I do think people are genuinely upset with this.
If you take your office installation example, you’re installing a suite of applications. You’re not just installing excel, you’re installing the office suite so you’re bound to get all the applications in the suite.
Meanwhile, this would be like installing the office suite and getting a service installed along with it, that can monitor outgoing network traffic without them saying anything about it.
The main two reasons I’d be upset with this if I used brave was: They installed it without saying anything and It’s something that’s inherently a privacy and security risk. Even if brave themselves don’t do anything malicious with it, doesn’t mean that someone who’s found a potential exploit in the VPN service won’t.
Also just as an aside, I also absolutely despise “GeForce Experience” and there are ways to fetch the drivers as standalone packages without getting the telemetry spyware installed alongside them.
It’s something that’s inherently a privacy and security risk. Even if brave themselves don’t do anything malicious with it, doesn’t mean that someone who’s found a potential exploit in the VPN service won’t.
Ok, well a vpn is a potential security improvement if anything… But regardless, it’s off, it’s disabled, unusable unless you’re paying for it. I mean just for perspective, any browser is much more of an inherent security risk than a VPN app sitting dormant and inactive.
But you’re right that users never asked for it, so I get that part.
A VPN is only as much of a security improvement as the service behind it. If it gets installed in a shady way, how much trust can you put into the service?
This was my point exactly. A VPN may just as well be used to spy on your traffic rather than secure it. And that’s why I’d be upset, personally: because I don’t trust brave or the company behind it.
But I think the main thing people are up in arms about is the fact that they didn’t ask for it. :)
Brave to me is like an online advertising racket. They push ad-blocking software by default in their browser, then extort companies into using their own ad network to advertise to their users. Brave Ads are of course opt-in and the main incentive of enabling them is to earn BAT (Basic Attention Token) which is their cryptocurrency. In terms of their intrusiveness, they’re like push notifications you get up to six times an hour, and from my experience using the browser, it was all mainly crypto marketplaces and VPN’s advertising.
Compared to 2020, when you could earn hundreds of dollars in a year from frequently being served Brave Ads, BAT isn’t really worth shit anymore thanks to the crypto crash, so the main financial incentive to use Brave is gone.
If you want privacy, Firefox is that way. Or if you absolutely need to use something based on Chromium, everyone and their fucking mother has forked that browser.
Blame YouTube for screwing over legitimate content creators and forcing them to be paid shills for shitty VPN and mobile game companies to pay the bills.
Anyone who claims “We’re the best most privacy conscious, secure, and safe product” is already extremely suspicious.
Brave has already been caught Red handed doing anti-privacy and crypto shilling before, yet people decided to forgive them. You don’t forgive these things EVER.
I don’t like brave because Brandon Eich (CEO, formerly with Mozilla) doesn’t support gay marriage and was pushing anti-vax stuff on twitter. I don’t look for this shit to titillate my tits like some folks, but when it hits me in the face I can’t ignore it.
When fact checking myself I found even more controversies, but I’m not wasting time reading articles that feed a confirmation bias.
I don’t like Brave because they’ve done dodgy things like this time and time again over the years, and each time Brandon Eich went on a marketing campaign across social media to drum up new users and drown the story out.
It’s crazy to me that people ever thought brave was “privacy focused” when it was clear that they were trying to jump on the crypto bandwagon with their own in-network crypto and ad network. It was always just a reskinned chrome with ublock built in and then their crypto and ad network tacked on top
I have Orion (macOS only for the time being) and it’s sooo good.
The amazing part is that it even works as a daily driver if you’re a not-so-techie person/normal user… but then on top there are all these little extra features and optimizations that make it like Safari if Safari was actually good.
I would at this point a) not be able to go back to either Safari or Firefox (edit: nor Ungoogled Chromium) as well as b) immediately trust an Orion user on most of what they have to say about a “tech” related opinion :D
Based on your comment, I’ve just downloaded Orion to give it a shake. Very much enjoyed the OS X-esque intro video. Took me right back to installing Snow Leopard for the first time.
Sounds interesting. I’d thought I’d heard of all the browsers that exist lol. Gonna give it a spin .
Wow, Orion is pretty slick! And Orion+ doesn’t offer any actual features aside from early access and input on the roadmap. So far so good. Custom buttons is really cool, built in tree style tabs is slick. Also!! orion has workspaces that are as good if not better than vivaldi’s! This is really slick, thanks for sharing
Let’s sell a browser to a crowd obsessed with privacy, feeling better than others, adverse to “normies” so let’s call it Brave. Or Bold. Or Freedom Eagle.
It tries so hard it ends up sounding like a 14 year old boy trying to sell you a NFT.
“Hey kiddo, we are Brave, we are sticking it to the man, we aren’t afraid of those who try to silence us - which is why we are going to insert affiliate links and trackers into your URLs 😎”
And those devs working at Opera that objected to the sale of Opera started Vivaldi, literally “one of the kings of opera” as a competitive browser. It uses chromium under the hood but they’ve made strides in a power user browser. No crypto, built in ad blocking. The only revenue they get in the actual default browser install is that there are like 20 bookmarks to commonly used sites to start, and they have affiliate tags if you keep those bookmarks and use them. Other than that, they’ve turned off chromium’s new DRM features
Camscanner hurt. I used it constantly. Then boom, absolute 180. I guess that’s the goal. Make a legit app that people love. Then sell it to someone who will exploit your loyalty customers. Cool!
At this point that seems to be the case everywhere. The future looks bleak, and so for most, trying to get what they can out of life before the climate wars, or WW3, or whatever happens seems to be the case. I don’t criticize it. I think there’s a high probability that the reason that we see little extraterrestrial life is that they did the same shit we are doing. The universe has a fractal nature. There are likely many species that also had planets that could support intelligent life. However since the competition for resources is baked into existence, they probably did what we are doing and are themselves no longer alive because they ended themselves before they could really end their stupid arguments about their gods, or work for the collective good more than the individual good
It’s a Chinese app that lets people “scan” a document using the camera on their phone. It was “free” for a long time, turns out it was dropping injected adware on people’s phones.
To be honest, Microsoft lens has had the same features for a long time, but didn’t have “scanner” in the name and most app searches are piss poor so people just literally searched “camera scanner” and got the adware result. Microsoft has their own long and shady history, but dropping an adware payload wasnt part of that.
Showing in app ads is one thing. Installing a Trojan specifically meant to circumvent App Store ad requirements is another. Windows 11, and most MS products at this point are ad delivery platforms, but they still follow the rules of app stores with the basic requirement of “shows in app ads” and “won’t try to inject a Trojan that beats your phone’s app sandboxing”
Some of the OG devs who made Opera have made Vivaldi. It’s chromium under the hood, but with googles tracking and telemetry turned off. It’s not perfect, but it adds a significant number of power user features, includes its own (limited) ad and tracking blocking. I alternate between that and Firefox dev edition as my daily driver
Probably because nobody cares about Opera doing that since the ones pointing this out are at least privacy aware people that won’t use Opera. It is also a problem when Brave does it because it is a “privacy focused” browser. They sure have the balls to do this.
Opera was also 100% up front about it and sold it as a feature. They didn’t sneak it into installers and crap. IMO that’s the issue, the lack of communication.
It’s crazy to me that people ever thought brave was “privacy focused” when it was clear that they were trying to jump on the crypto bandwagon with their own in-network crypto and ad network. It was always just a reskinned chrome with ublock built in and then their ad network tacked on top
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