The fact that its main 2 gimmicks are a shitty ad blocker and integrated cryptocurrency should be enough of a red flag, honestly. Just use Firefox, people!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but i believe that’s because it’s not really Firefox, everything on apple devices is forced to use safari, all you do with the “Firefox” installation is change the ui.
You are not wrong, no correction needed. However, their “Firefox Go” browser blocks ads, so it’s a little annoying that the full browser doesn’t. I only really use brave for YouTube on it anyway. Firefox I still use for normal browsing there and everywhere else.
I am using Brave on iOS mainly because of its superb YouTube support - It has a built in ad block, can download videos offline and play minimized. Is there any way I can achieve this with any other browser? I would switch immediately.
Because, for years, Chrome and its forks were basically the only good browsers out there. Both Internet Explorer and Firefox were in bad shape at the time.
Internet Explorer never recovered its reputation (and Edge itself is a fork of Chromium, anyway), and, by the time Firefox recovered, too many people were integrated into the Chrome ecosystem, and too many of those people believe it’d be too difficult to switch (and most don’t really care since Chrome’s issues have yet to personally affect them).
Because Firefox on mobile is a pile of shit to be honest. It works great on desktop, but the mobile experience is subpar. For a chromium browser, Bromite used to be an option, but it seems abandoned now. Brave is one of the few Foss chromium browsers left that also supports adblocking.
Works fine for me. The sheer ability to have addons like ublock origin on mobile, something that no chromium-based browser allows you to do, was enough to convince me to switch.
I am using Brave on iOS mainly because of its superb YouTube support - It has a built in ad block, can download videos offline and play minimized. Is there any way I can achieve this with any other browser? I would switch immediately.
Why was appointing Eich as CEO so controversial? It’s because he donated $1,000 in support of California’s Proposition 8 in 2008, which was a proposed amendment to California’s state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
Besides this I cannot find another good reason not to use brave. Nobody point to a specific line of code that ruins privacy, not enough reasons.
I’ve been using brave for over a year. I can’t remember the last time I saw an ad on my screen. Now there might very well have been some But I have no memory of it.
I stopped using it because it was kinda shitty. Some page elements in my webapps just didn’t display or work correctly. Firefox is the more polished experience now. But it is kinda nice not having to morally justify your choice of browser, too.
They block the website’s own ads, but inject their own instead. So the user still gets ads, but the profits go to Brave. I know that if the site’s owner is aware of that and goes through the process of registering with Brave they get a share of the profits, but this should really be opt-in. As it is, the whole scheme is shady as fuck.
They do point out a couple of instances of questionable if not outright scummy things (e.g. the affiliate codes situation) but the article mostly gives off “stop using brave, I’ve decided it’s cancelled” vibes.
I’m all for gay rights and advocate for same sex marriage. But if he doesn’t then he’s now boxed in with the skinhead kill-all-the-immigrants crowd? Where’s the nuance?
That said, I don’t really trust Brave the product. It’s pushing its privacy agenda a little too hard for me to trust it.
You’re upset the bigot gets classified as a bigot? Do you also care for the flavor of your shit sundae? No. Bigotry is a hard line that does shape modern politics
I don’t like that he supported a campaign against gay marriage. I don’t know his reasons for doing so but it’s probably not one I’d support.
But my understanding extends no further. I know he made a donation. I don’t have the nuance or understanding to extrapolate that into putting him into an entire box
There’s something ironic about tarring him with a broad brush based on one attribute
I’ll absolutely disagree with his action in contributing to taking away same sex marriage. I don’t see why gay people shouldn’t get married.
I don’t know his reason for contributing to it. I’ll very likely disagree with his reason.
What I’m saying is, does that make him alt-right (whatever that even means)? The only thing you can deduce is that he thinks gay people shouldn’t get married
Honestly how is that different from what you’re saying on a topic you’re simultaneously admitting you’re uniformed about? You can afford as much leniency to hate as you want it doesn’t make you open minded or nuanced
Question is, though, where’s the line? We don’t all come with the same exact moral compass, and we’re all perfectly capable of rationalizing evil, so you can’t just say “be a moral and non-bigoted person” and expect the desired outcome. Plenty of slave owners worldwide were convinced that slavery was not just morally admissible but even admirable.
No matter where that line is, it needs to be well-defined and agreed-upon, or else it’s arbitrary, and thus open to abuse and corruption by demagogues.
Well before donating $1000 to fight gay marriage. This isn’t a deep philosophical debate. You’re trying to muddy a pretty clear cut immorality for suspect reasons
In my experience, anybody who claims morality is “clear cut” is probably naive, otherwise they’re selling a cult. The fact that you think my line is questioning is suspicious without knowing anything about me or anything beyond this thread makes me suspect it’s the latter, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for now.
Yes, it’s a philosophical debate. That’s why I’m here, on the Internet, asking philosophical questions, to spur debate.
Yeah I’m not interested in debating where you want to draw the line if you think it’s somewhere after donating to fight equal rights. There is a debate to be had but you’re too far gone if you can’t even start there
Please, go back and carefully read what I wrote. I’ve said nothing about whether I find Eich’s donation morally acceptable or not, let alone anything beyond that. You seem quick to condemn on nothing more than circumstance. The far-left is just as illiberal, regressive, and unjust as the far-right.
You really might want to do the same. Someone donates to fight equal rights and you’re now trying to imply condeming them is just as bad as the alt right. You are unwell
I’m all for gay rights and advocate for same sex marriage. But if he doesn’t then he’s now boxed in with the skinhead kill-all-the-immigrants crowd? Where’s the nuance?
The nuance is that straight white people get away with this shit. Sleep with dogs wake up with fleas. Also you just did a “im all for gay rights…, but…” Lmao.
This is the first I’ve heard of that proposition so I have no idea. Nor do I know the guy’s feelings on it other than he felt motivated to donate to it
If someone is using their money and influence to actively trample on my human rights, then yes, I reserve the right to call them out for being a cunt.
Aw diddums, but what if I hurt the homophobes wittle feelings 🥺??? I don’t give a fuck about his precious little fee fees. I care about the rights of people.
And no, calling out a bigot for being bigoted is not the issue with politics. The issue with politics is the bigoted shitheads who view themselves as deserving more rights than the “undesirables” in society.
Sure, but “alt-right” means something specific, and I was missing the jump of reason … but this thread has gotten pretty heated, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised people were weirdly upset by what I thought was an innocent question.
It was started by a right winger who didn’t want to be called far-right so he just called himself “alternative-right”. It caught on but his views were still the same right wing views.
I guess people often use it to mean the more internet-savvy, meme-posting, trolling right wing. But they too dunk on LGBT people so even then I’m not sure why anybod would think it’s not connected.
Fair enough, political definitions are rarely well-defined.
I guess people often use it to mean the more internet-savvy, meme-posting, trolling right wing.
Yeah, that’s how I understood it… Not really something Eich seems to do much.
I’m not sure why anybod would think it’s not connected.
Just because Eich has awful views doesn’t give license to also be awful by throwing around random other accusations or connecting him with trolling skinheads. Remember, even the Nuremberg Trials had defense attorneys, so let’s stick to the high road of justice, not the shitty cesspool that the far right wants to drag us into.
“The Brave web browser has carved out a niche over the past few years as an alternative to Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and other mainstream web browsers.” Excellent article my only criticism is that firefox is not a mainstream browser lol. Im saying this as a proud firefox user.
According to this page, no, it isn’t. Chrome is in first place with over 60% global market share on all platforms, followed by Safari, then Edge, then Samsung, and then Firefox.
Considering 63.55% of users use Chrome and 19.95% users use Safari, 2.79% for Firefox. I think it’s accurate to say that it isn’t as mainstream as people would have wanting you to believe.
I ditched Brave ages ago when the ad and crypto bullshit really ramped up, and finding out Peter Thiel was involved and Brendan Eich was a bigot, were more than enough to keep me away from Brave.
I currently use Arc on desktop because it makes my life as a busy dev much easier to organize, and Safari on iOS because every browser on there is just Safari anyway. iOS Safari + custom DNS to block ads. Works for me.
I’d use Firefox but Arc’s organization features have become insanely useful.
For his vendetta against Gawker (which was more or less entirely executed by paying for people’s lawyers if they had a reason to sue Gawker) or for being a general dickbag elsewise?
Because I totally get why Thiel was pissed at Gawker - it wasn’t just outing him as gay, but outing him as gay as a time while he was in a country where being gay was punishable by death. Gawker genuinely did something that could have got him killed.
But if you demand moral purity from people making products you support, you’re going to have a bad time unless everyone involved is under 25, just because of value drift over time. Doubly so for politicians, for example Hillary used to be a vocal opponent of gay marriage, until that would cost her more votes than it was worth.
It’s more about the fact that I just don’t like anything he stands for. I don’t demand anything from anyone, but I have the freedom to choose what and who I support at any given time.
The sad reality is that a lot of tech bros have moral and political aspects I don’t like, and I’ve been in the tech space for years. They can do whatever they want, just like I can say “nah, not interested.”
It does make you a transphobic bigot. My earlier post to a comment you made is no longer appearing so I’ll restate. Get out of your bubble and get your head out of your ass, to which you replied “no u”, like a toddler. I am out of my bubble actually. I’m a straight, white, cis male who grew up in a small farming town. Took some time to overcome the “values” that I grew up with but I managed.
Never once have I felt attacked, fearful or even remotely threatened by anyone who is lgbtqia+ and no, the lgbtqia+ aren’t targeting kids. I’m not saying there couldn’t have been instances of individuals within that group but no more so than any other group. For instance, how is your outrage at the church? Are you attacking every institution that has ever had a pedophile in their ranks? Basically don’t try to cherry-pick data because there’s more to refute your arguments.
You’re too stupid and scared to realize that you’re being radicalized by disinformation. I’m sure you’ll never change but maybe you’ll stop drinking the kool-aid some day. The only solace the rest of us have is that our society progresses, even with people like you as dead weight.
Here I express myself, Anyway articles, essays, wiki Etc. for me they should be less subjective, because it is material that the reader then makes an argument.
Objectivity in reporting is a nice goal when you’re trying to write objective journalism. But this dude clearly wrote an opinion piece. It literally says “you shouldn’t” in the headline. That sort of thing can’t be objective, and it would look embarrassing if it tried. Objectivity for objectivity’s sake regardless of context is not really sensible. What you’re asking for is a fact sheet, not something written by a person because that person believes a thing.
That being said, I’ll give it to you: it wasn’t an especially good op-ed piece. It would’ve been better if he elaborated some of the stuff he said. But that just means he’s got some work to do as a writer, not that his crime was ‘not being objective enough’.
They just started showing ads again on YouTube when watching on Brave. Which is a very good way to get me to permanently switch elsewhere! Thanks Brave!
Why was appointing Eich as CEO so controversial? It's because he donated $1,000 in support of California's Proposition 8 in 2008, which was a proposed amendment to California's state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
That has nothing to do with the software. And that's a tiny donation. I'm not going to stop using an excellent tool because one of the guys in charge is a bigot. If that were the case, I wouldn't be able to eat, drink, breathe, make a phone call, or do anything really. There's a lot of people out there. Some of them are bigots. We should work to reduce their influence but we can't boycott literally everything. Every alternative to Brave has at least one bigot involved in it, I guarantee it.
Brave’s replacement for ads doesn’t reward users in a meaningful amount
Not enough > 0, which is what you get without adblock. And I'm fine with occasional non-targeted and unobtrusive ads to help fund a service I use.
Brave’s BAT was built around the cryptocurrency ecosystem
Who gives a shit except crypto bros? And who gives a shit about crypto bros anyway?
Brave was also caught up in a privacy scandal in 2020, when it was revealed that the browser was adding affiliate codes to some URLs typed into the address bar.
Are these affiliate codes tracking you? No? Who gives a shit? It's more money for Brave, same webpage for you.
That should have been enough to swear off Brave as a privacy-centric browser forever, considering the entire point of affiliate links is to collect data about the user and traffic source. For example, when you click an Amazon affiliate link in a web article, the publisher can see the exact products you purchase in the timeframe the tracking cookie remains active
Brave blocks cookies by default. Unless they specifically made an exception in their own browser for these codes, then this carefully-worded paragraph is just bullshit.
Much like the rest of this article. Bunch of poo-flinging. "Brave is involved in crypto, here's all the bad things crypto has done, that's why you shouldn't use Brave". Stupid guilt by association and a lot of hot air. Bringing a smoke machine to make people think there's fire.
There's a lot of effort going into making Brave seem like a bad browser and I don't know why.
A lot of people on Lemmy don’t like bigots, they don’t like crypto, they don’t like scammy tracking and they don’t like dishonesty. So I’m gonna fling that poo and point it out for as many people as possible, in case they don’t know.
A lot of people on lemmy don't care about bigots, crypto, or anything else until something they dislike because it's not en vogue is doing it.
Some dude at Firefox donates $1000 against prop 8? I sleep
Some dude at Brave donates $1000 against prop 8? REAL SHIT
I'm not trying to get into the "everyone is equally bad" thing here, but with projects as large as these if you dig into the history of everyone involved you WILL find some distasteful shit, it's just statistics.
There's a lot of "Brave bad" going around the Fediverse, and people trying to find reasons to support that emotional belief, and stuff like that annoys me.
Yeah but Mozilla isn't tainted by it? Come on, that's ridiculous. He's not building some anti-gay code into the software, the homepage of Brave (or Firefox) isn't "lol fuck the woke".
Dig into any company, or any CEO, you'll find something to get angry about. People are people. Products are products. Open source products especially so.
That’s literally why Eich was made to resign as Mozilla CEO: his anti-LGBTQ+ history is poison for one hell of a lot of web engineers.
Internet engineering, as a field, has always been rather queer.
“There is some sort of perverse pleasure in knowing that it’s basically impossible to send a piece of hate mail through the Internet without its being touched by a gay program. That’s kind of funny.” — Eric Allman, author of sendmail
Okay, so the creator of Brave might be a bigot and some of the stuff it does with crypto currency is a little sketchy? And the ads it replaces with the blocked ads are somewhat invasive?
So disable the crypto stuff and use ad-blocking software along with its own adblocking functions.
If a mechanic fixes my car and does a really good job, but he might have some shitty opinions of gay people, as long as he fixes my car I don’t care about what he might think of gay people.
Everyone needs to be aware that there’s propaganda everywhere. microsoft and google REALLY want you to use their browsers and people are tired of the data MS Edge and chrome collect.
I for one, hate that chrome constantly connects other shit to your google account with just one accidental click sometimes. Edge does the same shit, but brave is the only chromium based browser that doesn’t deceptively do shit like that.
I still like firefox better and I only have brave for those rare instances where firefox won’t work on a website. And I don’t actually believe that the creator of brave is actually a bigot. Pro-liberty, Pro-privacy and anti-surveillance types are always getting smeared as bigots when they aren’t.
I don’t use Firefox because of its poor security compared to chromium. I’d love it if a sane, well-polished, open source chromium based browser came along and replaces Brave.
Adguard for desktop has pretty good filters for malware and phishing domains
Then there’s also avira browser safety and bitdefender traffic light. Emsisoft browser protection, malwarebytes browser guard.
Firefox also gives you a lot of stuff in the about: config menu to prevent many different kinds of tracking from advertisers and the websites themselves.
It’s not what he thinks of gay people. It’s that he spent his money to successfully deny gay people rights and nullify marriages that were already recognized. That’s not somebody I want to give money to. Look on Hacker News for his comments about why he made that donation, and you might change your mind about whether he is actually a bigot. He has never apologized for his actions.
Again, the sheer volume of propaganda that’s out there about everything that helps protect your privacy. People still think the Tor network and the Tor Browser are exclusively used by criminals.
Some people think that VPNs are exclusively used by criminals namely viewers of CP.
And it’s because of shills, some from the government and some from corporations, mixed in with groups of people that spread lies like those that people think that.
Brave is a relatively good browser. In terms of privacy it’s way better than chrome and edge. And I know for a fact that google, maybe microsoft too are trying to take control of everything by forcing everyone to use their own browsers so that they can be spied on easier and they’re also trying to make it so you can’t visit their own websites with an adblocker enabled.
Brave has adblocking built in and it blocks a lot of trackers from collecting your data too.
Even if the creator of brave is bigoted against gay people, which I still don’t believe he actually is. Is he the one trying to restrict access to pro-gay stuff online? Is he the one trying to restrict people’s access to anything at all? Google and Microsoft are trying to do those things if you don’t use their browsers with no extensions in them
If he was a bigot back then, is he still a bigot now?
Again, I only ever use brave when I can’t make something work with firefox. Which is almost never.
If he was a bigot back then, is he still a bigot now?
Yes, he is. As I said, he has posted why he spent money to deny gay people the right to marry and to nullify the marriages of gay people who were already married, and he has not apologized for it since.
Which is almost never.
Then there is no problem. Just tell people to use Firefox.
Well there is one problem. A lot of websites will lock you out if they see you using firefox. I have to spoof my useragent to show I’m using…some other browser. Ha! Nice try! You almost got me to reveal some of my op-sec
As I said, he has posted why he spent money to deny gay people the right to marry and to nullify the marriages of gay people who were already married,
Yeah and it had a lot of success, didn’t it?
A majority of even republican voters are in favor of allowing consenting adults to marry. A majority of republican voters are also in favor of medicare for all and ending the illegal wars the US is involved in. And a majority of republicans are also against all the toppling of democratically elected leaders that the US does too…once they’re made aware of it anyway.
If he’s still a bigot, the solution would be for the LGBT community to reach out an arm of friendship to him.
Once he realizes that they’re going through all the same problems he’s going through he won’t hate them anymore.
Holy shit man imagine if we judged every huge project by one asshole at the top. There wouldn’t be a single thing to enjoy in this world.
Edit:
I am going to add more perspective to this, because holy shit people are so into eating nothing burgers.
Reddit/Twitter was a database and API that everyone was centralized onto, there was no choice. Brave you can literally fork because its open source. Aside from that this was literally the CEO’s personal donation of $1000…in like 2014. Almost 10 yrs ago.
Underrated comment - the top is filled with toxic scum. Like if one really looked into it, everything would have to be boycotted (not that it isn’t a worthy thing to do, but it gets exhausting and scumbags seem to own everything)
Calling something Ubiquitous isn’t arguing any point. It’s just a statement of observance. It’s not a call to action. It’s not a reason to do one thing or another. If anything, it’s a symptom. A pattern. And patterns can be a reason to change. Happens in psychology all the time. In fact looking for the patterns is in part in identifying a problem. So congrats on identifying something everyone else already knew. But you certainly can’t argue that a pattern as enough of a reason to not change a pattern.
I don’t personally resonate with the idea of “boycotting” things, mostly for the fact that these companies will never miss the $20 I would have spent on them. “Boycot” to me, implies some sort of noticeable statement.
For me, when Im thinking about getting a Chik-Fil-A or something, the question is simple: “Do I want to give my money to these people?”
I don’t know what it is, but a fair number of people are incoming these types of arguments these days, especially in academia. What started this trend?
I’m not sure if you mean to say people like me arguing to separate patrons, artists and the art - especially where this is open source - or people like the writer of the article in the OP.
So I’ll speak to it from both ends: people naturally want to vote with their time and money. If money is seeing ads and generating crypto for someone they don’t support; fine. I think everyone understands where they’re coming from. On the other hand I can google github + project-name for brave and find all the code and fork it…if you don’t like something about brave just fork it or use a stripped down fork.
I don’t use brave to begin with but the public executions are fucking obnoxious when the product hasn’t taken a unilateral shift in direction. Twitter and Reddit were proprietary platform you were locked in for if you used them daily. There was never an alternative way to use those products in their full functionality; both had to be 100% recreated on mastodon/lemmy. If you don’t like Brave’s CEO you can literally fork the project, remove the shit you don’t like and use the work for free.
Sorry, my comment got mangled and I had some typos. I agree that we can separate artists and art. I am annoyed that so many people try to argue the contrary. In academia, many are currently trying to argue that you cannot separate the artist from their art (at least, in music circles). I find that perspective juvenile.
The article isn’t judging by the one asshole, it breaks down specific flaws in the core of the product itself. Also when the “one person” is the CEO who guides the decisions the become the spirit of the product, one bad person can be enough. Twitter is now irredeemable because of the cancer of elon musk at the top, for example.
Also, a little tone deaf to make a statement like yours on Lemmy; a place basically populated entirely by people leaving Reddit because of the toxic, user-hostile decisions of spez on Reddit.
Don’t you don’t think that a CEO highly affects (if not sets and controls) the strategy, priorities and direction of an organization?
If you agree with that, would you then agree that a CEOs values and way of doing things highly affects they way he sets strategy, prioritizes and in what direction the organization should move?
Calling something Ubiquitous isn’t arguing any point. If anything, it’s a symptom. A pattern. looking for the patterns is in part in identifying a problem. So congrats on identifying something everyone else already knew. But you certainly can’t argue that a pattern alone as enough of a reason to not change a pattern. Go back to identifying the sun as the sun while the adults talk.
No. That is factually wrong. Brave is open source. This is more like if we discovered the creator of mastodon was donating any profits he managed to make to some bigotry party. You wouldn’t see me barking down the nice people who host mastodon or contribute to its code.
Separate the patrons, artists and art. Because it is not the same and that logic cuts all sorts of ways.
Ok but like that asshole is using his money and power to donate to horrible stuff. Even if we take the stance that you shouldn’t let someone’s opinion ruin what they make, you’re still helping him support his causes financially through using his platform.
Or wow, it’s almost like people care about that sort of thing on the platform were most people came from Reddit or twitter because of the awful actions of their respective CEOs or something
Oh believe me I get it. But at the same time the CEO didn’t rename brave browser “anti woke browser” and force it to not load “woke sites man”.
Shits all open source right? Even if I disagree with him politically that’s on him. I can use my money to donate to my political designation and even fork the brave browser if I don’t want to support it.
Elon and Spez were one way no choice fuck you CEOs. We didn’t get much choice there. And they use their platforms to remind you of that. I don’t really feel like brave does that at all.
Edit: I’m also going to add that I don’t use brave. I also don’t care much about politics outside of leave me alone, leave my neighbor alone, and make things affordable.
If the huge asshole at the top uses their money earned as CEO to fund bigoted causes, yeah, I generally stop patronizing that business. Maybe you don’t have the energy to care about things, and that’s fine. Last time I checked, the Mozilla Foundation was still fairly ethical.
I think most leaders of companies apologize and take ownership when they publicly screw up. The problem in Eich’s case is he doesn’t think it’s wrong to strip same-sex couples of their equal right to marry, so he felt he didn’t need to apologize for helping to make that happen.
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