I’ve been trying out the DuckDuckGo browser lately on mobile. It uses the Chromium backend, so some sites work better in it than in my normal Firefox.
The neatest feature of the browser is the ability to generate random email addresses in signup forms, and those emails all get forwarded to your real email address. As it forwards the emails, it removes trackers from them. You can click a link in one of the forwarded emails to disable that address from being forwarded any more if it gets spammy.
You can use ad-block extensions on Firefox mobile as well. You cabe even use.extensions to have dark mode on every website. Never had an issue with it.
If you’re really privacy concerned try out Privacy Browser on F-Droid, it’s pretty nifty (+ builtin tracker/ad blocking lists, and a ton of other stuff like javascript disabling)
That 1k donation, from years ago, is very usefull to someone. I dont know who cares so much to destroy this Brave founder, but that story for a 1k donation keep being repeated over and over.
Some people gave millions to have trans right banned… we never hear about thoses people. But 1k, big deal!
The issue with the donation has multiple stages. Stage 1 was the donation itself. Stage 2 was the intellectually insulting way that Brendan Eich defended his actions. Stage 3 is the negative impact that Proposition 8 had on California for many years, during which time millions of dollars in taxpayer money was wasted on legal proceedings to walk back the amendment banning marriage for people who dared to be of the same gender.
I used brave in the past sometimes still do. I don’t care for the leadership. The browser is opensource and solid. I use librewolf as my main browser now though.
Right we shouldn’t use brave because CEO donated $1000 to some law author doesn’t like. Maybe we should leave lemmy too because creators believe in things most other people don’t like. These kind of morality plays are stupid, who knows what every devs and ceo of company actually think and do with their money and honestly if it’s legal who cares.
Imagine believing supporting a law that removes the right for same sex couples to marry is on the same level as believing communism isn’t that terrible
Imagine believing some American law is equal to genocide of minorities and students protesting for democracy. At least lemmy is open source otherwise I think it wouldn’t have gotten as far as it has.
One is a belief that has killed a ton of people? Go to lemmy.ml and say something about the genocide in China and see what happens. I don’t really get it, do you also check every person working on all the software you use to make sure they subscribes to the same ideals as you? How do you know they aren’t doing something worse with their money. Isn’t seeking universal healthcare or stopping billionaires from fucking you something more worthwhile to put your energy into? Where do you draw the line exactly because I’m confused.
If you can’t see the difference between someone’s random opinion on the internet and someone paying actual money to oppress actual people - I don’t think we have much common ground to have a reasonable discussion.
I feel the same way about you ignoring the whole genocide topic. I guess we agree to disagree but fuck people who can’t respect other peoples rights in general.
I mean, support a homophobic asshole if you want? This blog post isn’t lying. If you’re ok with making excuses for that or even accepting it, then that’s your choice.
I don’t? I don’t use Brave. Kinda bad rhetoric on your part. That’s like me saying, “support a genocidal regime if you want, guess you hate minorities.”
Not at all! You’re literally making excuses for a homophobic asshole. With a not-difficult-to-find public history of it. And then complaining about people suggesting to not support him. I don’t think I’m the one struggling with rhetoric in this comment section…
Firefox is Google’s controlled opposition. It exists so that Google can claim not to be a monopoly. There’s a reason a significant amount of their funding comes from Google, and it’s not because Google doesn’t have a vested interest in maintaining a single second place browser that’s popular but not too popular.
Mozilla is not doing too well, but they are far from being Brave Software Inc. or Google. It’s not like choosing between Musk and Zuckerberg. It’s like choosing between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Hitler.
The problem with the author is the idea of lumping together some good reasons to avoid Brave and some really bad reasons. The idea that the company behind brave depends on ads for revenue is good reasoning, the fact that they have a volatile cryptocurrency to use as payment is another. But when you mention that the founder is a bigot, or that he was associated with Peter Theil, or that they CONSIDERED a shady ad practice are not really reasons to avoid the product.
In the end, you want to have some competition in the browser market (that means not using the same base browser with a skin and some features). I would recommend Firefox over Brave for that reason alone.
I don’t use Brave because they screwed me (banned my Brave Creators without them providing a reason) and I think I would disagree with their CEO on many points - including same sex marriage - but if I did this with every piece of software I use, then I wouldn’t be able to use a computer at all. Even if you go all open source, you’ll quickly find wild and weird people involved with these projects…
Firefox? I use it, but it’s a big org, one that Brave’s CEO even helped to create. If we dig enough and we’ll find dirt on people. And just one or two months ago, they displayed full window ads on Firefox.
My point is that if we do this with everyone or every project, then we’ll run out of software that is acceptable to use. If I’m using anything related with GNU, then I have to stop because of Richard Stallman’s controversies. Linux? Are they all nice people? I doubt it.
I’m not saying that people should use Brave - I certainly don’t use it - it’s just that if we have high bars for every piece of software we use, we’d run out of software to use (at least I would).
Prop 8 and peter tiel are far beyond “wild and weird”. You need to see some gray, there’s nuance you’re either missing or choosing to ignore and there isn’t the clear equivalence you suggest.
So why exactly should people stop using brave browser? This article is just smearing campaign, I can easily write much more compelling reasons as to “why you should stop using Firefox browser”, coming from a Firefox user myself
Mozilla is almost exclusively funded by Google, and does what Google says it to do, like deprecating XUL and HTTP, and implementing manifest v3… One might argue the whole BAT thing has more merit than using a browser which existence is hanging on it being the Google’s anti-monopoly lawsuit insurance.
Who cares? As liberal I’m sick of the mellow-dramatic outrage culture. People aren’t perfect. Who knew? If you don’t use brave what’s the alternative? Google, who is much worse? Maybe “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” and stop using the lefts social capital to alien people over small personal gripes.
I notice people who write these types of articles never open themselves to the same sort of scrutiny.
Firefox is probably the best alternative but I agree about people looking for flaws. We are all flawed to same degree. It’s unrealistic to expect everyone to have the same opinions about things as yourself.
But that being said, if you find those opinions to be extreamly offensive, don’t use their products. I’m off Google almost completely for that reason. I despise them and am actively telling people to stop using them.
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.
I want to try a thought experiment. Imagine that you observe this comment in reaction to the above:
I just don’t get why the author is so pissed about their political contributions. Guess what, people who are involved in big business are usually right-wing and support right-wing organizations. Shocking. Who could have known. I don’t even want to imagine how the author comes to the conclusion that this is some big conspiracy but I think we all know what political spectrum that guy belongs to.
What I just wrote is a mirror-image version of the top rated comment on that article from a few days ago about the Mozilla foundation funding left-wing organizations. Do you agree with one of those statements and not the other? If so, why?
It is one-sided to say that someone involved in Brave should only be “allowed” to do so if he doesn’t support anything conservative. Just as would be one-sided and wrong to say that Mozilla shouldn’t be “allowed” to support left-wing organizations. Flipping it around, and looking at the reaction when it’s the other way around, is an easy way to analyze your own internal reactions on it.
(Generally, I’m in agreement with the idea that you shouldn’t use Brave because of all these other shady things; just this one part jumped out at me as one thing that’s not like the others.)
Very good observation. The issue being, the way I see it, he supported a generally accepted hateful conservative rhetoric. Most left wing organizations do not promote hateful rhetorics.
Your argument has no merit because one side of the political aisle is actively endorsing a piece of shit draft-dodging criminal and encouraging states to strip the rights of a minority population as well as the bodily autonomy of women, and the other side wants to charge you more money on taxes to support social programs and help people. (I own many guns and live in a red state btw, I have a bias.)
Why don't you take a guess on which side is being disingenuous?
You’re not going to want to hear this, but this logic (i.e. “But MY side is the RIGHT one, so it’s different”) is exactly why the right wing thinks Trump shouldn’t go to prison and it’s okay when they cheat in elections.
I do agree with you that the left wing is the right side of history. That doesn’t mean someone who’s on the other side suddenly shouldn’t be an executive of anything.
Yes, I agree with you 100%. That’s a moral and ethical judgement though. It’s a moral and ethical judgement I agree with, but it’s still a statement of someone’s individual morals.
Put it another way – how about if I rephrased it to:
Christian values are human values and no one who can’t respect Christian values should ever be put in charge of an organization full of humans.
Or:
Islamic values are human values and no one who can’t respect Muslim values should ever be put in charger of an organization full of humans.
Would you still agree with that? There are millions and millions of Muslims who believe every bit as deeply in their way of looking at the world as you believe deeply that gay marriage needs to be enshrined in law. Should they be writing articles about how the CEO of some organization gave $1,000 to an organization with anti-Islamic values and so you shouldn’t use that organization’s web browser?
There were slave owners who believed they were morally right too, and your argument says they should have been left alone. We’re smart enough to know they were wrong and that your Christians and Muslims are wrong. We should be writing articles and making choices accordingly.
My argument doesn’t say they should have been “left alone” though. I’m just saying everyone should have a voice and a right to believe what they believe.
Basically, I believe in the old-school left: The ACLU defending the KKK’s right to have rallies, “I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death” etc. As far as I can see, having the election and the debate in the public sphere about whether gay marriage should be allowed is a good thing. I just don’t think it’s a good thing once it goes into the territory of saying, you’re not allowed to say that, because we’re smart enough to know that you’re wrong. If you say the wrong thing, I’ll try to take your job. If you contribute to the wrong side of the issue, I’ll try to take your job.
I mean, I do get what you’re saying – if someone used to support slavery, and we’re using that as an argument for why now after the war they shouldn’t run a newspaper (or why I shouldn’t buy that newspaper), is that okay? If you put it that way to me, it sounds fine, so on that count maybe I agree with you. How about this, do you think the KKK should be allowed to hold rallies, if racism is what they believe?
This isn’t about what Eich used to believe. This is about a law that he helped pass and still supports. I wouldn’t give my money to somebody who helped pass a law to bring back slavery and still supports it. We know that this is wrong.
Eich and the KKK can continue to advocate for the wrong side. We should continue to argue against them and not give them our support.
Yeah, it’s one-sided. Prop 8 was stupid and CA rightfully rejected that shit later.
It’s good to be one-sided against stupid shit that is a crime against humanity. Gay marriage is now legal federally. Same as interracial marriage. Nazis got beat the fuck up in WW2. Slavery is over. Deal with it.
Bro, if you can't tell why people are happy about progressive policies that support the right to love each other, and upset about regressive conservative antics that attempt to shame them and wrong them just for being themselves by telling them that they are "other" and not allowed to participate in society by getting married just because you personally think it's "icky" or against YOUR religion, then I honestly don't know what to tell ya. And I blame you for that run-on sentence mess, thanks a lot.
Thank you. I’m tired of these people who think there are sides of equal good or equal bad. There a group of religious fascists that want to control all our lives and then there are the rest of us that sometimes begrudgingly are lumped together because we aren’t wacko nut jobs. Fact is there are very few liberal leaning organizations that I would care if a developer or ceo was apart of because they don’t threaten me for disagreeing.
You’re not going to want to hear this, but this logic (i.e. “But MY side is the RIGHT one, so it’s different”) is exactly why the right wing thinks Trump shouldn’t go to prison and it’s okay when they cheat in elections.
I do agree with you that the left wing is the right side of history. That doesn’t mean someone who’s on the other side suddenly shouldn’t be an executive of anything.
Supporting politicians you like and supporting basic human rights being taken away on the basis of completely arbitrary factors outside one’s control are two very different things.
You’re not going to want to hear this, but this logic (i.e. “But MY side is the RIGHT one, so it’s different”) is exactly why the right wing thinks Trump shouldn’t go to prison and it’s okay when they cheat in elections.
I do agree with you that the left wing is the right side of history. That doesn’t mean someone who’s on the other side suddenly shouldn’t be an executive of anything.
What does it matter? They just make up whatever they want. It doesn’t matter what anyone else says or does.
A CEO needs to use logic and reason, and being into Trump shows an utter lack of both, and id argue a similar mindset. Anyone in a position like is probably doing similar things.
It’s not even about sides. There is no left wing party in the USA - the Democrats are a right wing party. The problem with the GOP is not that they are right wing, it’s that they are extremists. A lot of their “policies” are not policies, they are crimes against humanity. 'People who are demographic X shouldn’t have the basic human right of Y" is not an opinion, a policy or justifiable in any way.
And boycotting people as Eich is first and foremost an act of self-preservation.
Eich is, evidently, a hateful cunt who invests into destroying the human rights of random people. By exposing your e-mail, bank accounts, your communications and your identity to him (by using his browser), you are inviting him to violate your rights as well.
By using Brave’s shit, you giwe Eich money. Thot same money he later uses to fund the atrocities he and his peers commit. Thus, by using Brave’s shit, you are not only complacent in these crimes, but actively participating.
Less relevant, but still, by using a Chromium-based browser, you help inflate Google’s oppressive market share in the browser space, letting them push shit like Mv3 or WEI. If Brave actually cared about making a private and secure browser and fighting Google’s monopoly, they’d base off Gecko or, better yet, build their own engine.
Your first point is predicated on a false equivalence. The very real problems Democrats have are not in the same league as the very real problems Republicans have. That Republicans and their supporters have chosen to manufacture outrage based on lies and hysteria does not put them on the same plane as being outraged at the loss of reproductive rights for women and the deaths already caused from that, the attacks on voting rights, the trans and drag show boogeyman that is going to lead to deaths if it hasn't already, and etc and etc and etc.
Your second point is arguing against what exactly? People are talking about things they don't like about the CEO of a company. Some of those people are going to choose not to support that company as is their right. WTF business is it of yours aside from your freedom to make a different decision? That CEO doesn't need your help, and doesn't give a shit about you. Why would you be here finger wagging at people about it? If the claims were false that would be one thing, but even you don't seem to be claiming they are.
Let the truth out and let people make up their own minds. If centrism is your thing (and it seems it is) I can't imagine a more neutral position than that.
When did I say anything about the Democrats? I agree with you that the Democrats are a conservative party, and the Republicans are a fascist party. I don’t think we were saying anything at all about the Democrats or the Republicans, and I don’t think it’s controversial that favoring gay marriage is a left-wing position and opposing it is a right-wing position.
Your second point is arguing against what exactly? People are talking about things they don’t like about the CEO of a company. Some of those people are going to choose not to support that company as is their right. WTF business is it of yours aside from your freedom to make a different decision?
Let the truth out and let people make up their own minds.
100% agreed. Do you feel the same way about “Firefox Money: Investigating the bizarre finances of Mozilla”?
If centrism is your thing (and it seems it is)
Incorrect. I used to be registered with the US Green Party before they shit the bed, if that gives you any idea.
Do you feel the same way about “Firefox Money: Investigating the bizarre finances of Mozilla”?
Absolutely. It's why I'm not in related threads telling people who are bothered by it that they shouldn't be.
I don’t think we were saying anything at all about the Democrats or the Republicans, and I don’t think it’s controversial that favoring gay marriage is a left-wing position and opposing it is a right-wing position.
My issue is here:
(i.e. “But MY side is the RIGHT one, so it’s different”) is exactly why the right wing thinks Trump shouldn’t go to prison and it’s okay when they cheat in elections.
Even if for some reason you want to limit the scope to a generic "Left" and "Right" even after invoking Trump, you're still creating a false equivalence.
As you acknowledge, we can point to the factual basis for the concerns the Left has about the actions of the Right. The right has misinformation, disinformation, and willful ignorance as the basis for their outrage. "Both sides" thinking they are right doesn't boil down to the same thing when one side actually is demonstrably wrong.
The fact that you would consider your counterfactual a mirror image is itself problematic.
In the case of the Foundation, it supports exactly what it purports to support. They’re like the EFF and other civil rights organizations. If you consider the EFF left wing, I think that says a bit more about where you stand.
The original article was outrage-bate blog spam, with random Capitalized Words and the prolific use of “scare quotes.” It doesn’t even say anything. No charges of misinformation. No citation of law. Just “They have a Billion Dollars!!” kinds of sentences.
On the other hand, the CEO of a company - particularly a small company - lends his personality to the company. It often makes sense to co-identify them, given that the CEO has an incredible amount of influence.
So if you are saying that libertarian software project : libertarian institutions :: conservative ideas : homophobic legislation, I guess you’re just really endorsing the position of judging the company by the politicians and politics it supports. If you see prop 8 as being as fundamental to the conservative position as internet freedom is to an organization specifically dedicated to preserving internet freedom, all I can say is that I hope more people start to see it that way.
The fact that you would consider your counterfactual a mirror image is itself problematic.
It’s definitely an imperfect mirror image, yes. One is a private person spending $1,000 of his own money contributing personally to a political campaign (for something fairly abhorrent, I agree.) The other is a public foundation spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of the money it’s been entrusted with on various things which don’t seem to line up with what I think most people’s idea of their mission would be (i.e. software). I glossed over the asymmetry in the analogy to make a point but they’re actually wildly different situations.
If you consider the EFF left wing, I think that says a bit more about where you stand.
What on earth are you talking about? I genuinely can’t even make sense of you got yourself to this leap of logic.
Mozilla I think is generally understood as a software organization. The EFF didn’t get their start by making a web browser called “EFF” which now has been rebranded as “EFF Firefox” and collects ad revenue for them through partnerships. I do realize that the Mozilla Foundation’s mission statement now says they support general internet activism – which, again, is fine – but how you got from there to thinking anything about what I think about the EFF is genuinely very weird.
Also, I’ve contributed to the EFF. Have you?
The original article was outrage-bate blog spam, with random Capitalized Words and the prolific use of “scare quotes.” It doesn’t even say anything. No charges of misinformation. No citation of law. Just “They have a Billion Dollars!!” kinds of sentences.
Did you dig into its sources? I did. I’m sort of in agreement with you that it smells of some kind of right-wing hit job (like “HOW DARE THEY give money to this woman when she’s on THE LEFT”), and I think I pointed out up above that obviously Mozilla has the right to support left-wing causes with their money if they want to, even if it makes some right wing person VERY upset. I would just think that Eich has the same right. Even if it makes you very upset. Doesn’t he?
Be that as it may, specific things that I went back to its original sources and verified were:
They’re spending less money on software development
They gave almost half a million dollars to a one-woman consulting outfit without much explanation of what got produced (for them or for the world at large) in return
It said some other specific things that I didn’t dig into enough (that it paid one executive around $5 million dollars personally, which seems like a lot) (that they’re claiming to people that they rely on people’s donations to keep operating when they don’t) (etc). But, I poked around enough to determine that at the very least the article passed the obvious-bullshit test.
On the other hand, the CEO of a company - particularly a small company - lends his personality to the company. It often makes sense to co-identify them, given that the CEO has an incredible amount of influence.
You know that this is the same type of logic that the right uses to claim that some company whose executives once gave $1,000 to Hillary Clinton now needs to be boycotted, right?
I know, I know, the left is correct, and the right isn’t, so it’s different. Look… I’m pretty sure I’m on your side, politically. I just think it’s weird to advocate avoiding a web browser because one executive affiliated with them once gave $1,000 to a political cause I strongly disagree with. I think flipping it around to the other way is a pretty clear way of explaining why it’s weird. That’s all.
The two sides are not morally equal. Prop 8 was an awful, bigoted stain on California’s history and he was unrepentant. I am glad he no longer is at Firefox. And Brave is a sketchy company that makes clear it was a good decision to give him the boot. I can support companies with moral stances I agree with and not support companies that do bad things.
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