If you are keen on personal privacy, you might have come across Brave Browser. Brave is a Chromium-based browser that promises to deliver privacy with built-in ad-blocking and content-blocking protection. It also offers several quality-of-life features and services, like a VPN and Tor access. I mean, it’s even listed on the reputable PrivacyTools website. Why am I telling you to steer clear of this browser, then?
It seems to me that nothing in life is free, including browsers. Yeah, free software exists, and that works fine for many kinds of software, but not browsers. Browsers are a living thing, they have to change constantly to adapt to the changing environment. Maintaining a browser takes effort, to an extent that far exceeds that of other programs, word processing, games, image editing, etc. A browser is a primary attack surface for all manner of malware and exploits. It’s web facing and it executes code provided by external sources. That last sentence should give you chills.
So all that is to say, that it is very much non trivial to maintain a browser. So it only stands to reason that maintaining it consistently won’t actually happen without some amount of compensation.
So how do you pay for a browser? Well everyone seems to agree, with ads. This method is apparently quite viable as a business. But I probably don’t have to tell you that there are a bunch of problematic aspects to it. User data collection (and resale) is probably top on the list of problems. It’s a pretty serious breach of privacy, I hope I didn’t have to convince anyone of that.
To get to my point though, Brave is the only browser I know of attempting to use a different model to support their project. They’re trying to allow people to just pay for the web themselves, rather than let advertisers pay for the web while users give up all their data. It may not be a perfect implementation, but from where I’m standing I don’t see anyone else even trying…
Correct me if I’m wrong though, i’d love to see other viable models.
See guys, I know people didn’t believe me when I said there are people who push for and encourage for projects to be corporatized instead of community run but here is one of them. These types of garbage arguments always bring up the idea of cybersecurity but always neglect to mention one of the biggest security and privacy threats to the corporate governed model, the corporation itself. Especially once enshittification really sets in.
And before you vomit some horrible misrepresenting argument reminiscent of Dave Plumber’s speech against backdoors in Windows, you know damn well that when I say the company itself is a privacy and security threat to the project that I’m talking about deliberate attempts by the company to make money off the project through tracking, ads, crypto mining, and any other number of shady shit. You know, things that are officially sanctioned.
That’s a long winded way to try to excuse secretly mining crypto, far right misinformation pushing, transgender phobia, and more that Brave does / has done.
I also want to point out an operating system is a huge project to create and maintain, and yet Linux has accomplished this without all the shit Brave has pulled.
PS: technically Brave has used ads as well.
That’s a really concise and thoughtless way to excuse Google, Microsoft and Apple for monetizing spying on every person on earth for profit.
And yes, Linux distros have a business model. I’m happy that distros found a business model through offering official support to corporations, it makes it truly free to the rest of us. It also helps that their competition is very expensive. Will that model work for a browser? What do you think?
That’s a really concise and thoughtless way to excuse Google, Microsoft and Apple for monetizing spying on every person on earth for profit.
Nice strawman you got there. I think anyone with eyes can see I didn’t bring them up because most (all?) Lemmy users know Firefox and its forks exist.
And yes, Linux distros have a business model. I’m happy that distros found a business model through offering official support to corporations, it makes it truly free to the rest of us. It also helps that their competition is very expensive. Will that model work for a browser? What do you think?
That’s… Literally how browsers used to work. Netscape was a paid browser. Orion is starting to look into that model as well.
And yes, you just pointed out of possible to raise funds without pulling the shit Brave has, as Linux distros have done… So, congrats on getting the point? A little slow, but you got there.
Nice strawman you got there. I think anyone with eyes can see I didn’t bring them up because most (all?) Lemmy users know Firefox and its forks exist.
It’s not a strawman, it’s the problem. You may not have mentioned it, but I didn’t think it needed mentioning, between the three companies I mentioned, they makeup 90% marketable for browsers, that’s the vast majority of browsers. Are there others? Absolutely. I primarily use Firefox myself, but they’re starting to lean more toward sharing data as well… I don’t know what let you think you have to stand in here.
That’s… Literally how browsers used to work. Netscape was a paid browser. Orion is starting to look into that model as well.
And Netscape? When was that paid? I can’t think of an era when that was paid… Was that like during the Mozilla period, when the browser sucked, or before that? Whatever, that clearly didn’t work at any rate, cause they aren’t still doing it. But I swear I used to use Netscape in the 90s, I can’t remember it being paid…
But no it would not work for browsers just because it works for Linux. Nobody needs support for a browser, so there’s no reason to pay for that. I’m sorry presenting that to you as a question meant you wouldn’t think about it.
It’s not a strawman, it’s the problem.
It’s a strawman you’re still trying to prop up because the issue is not only the Brave browser itself, but the owners of it.
Even if we took your argument in good faith, it would still be flawed since Brave is based on Chromium, of which Google essentially controls at this point, so you’d still be supporting Google hegemony. In other words, even from that stance you’ve brought up, it would be a bad idea to use Brave vs Firefox, Librewolf, Konqueror, etc.
the issue is not only the Brave browser itself, but the owners of it.
I mean, that an issue, sure. But I gotta be honest with you, I care far more about the practicalities of the technology than the personalities behind them. So I guess that’s where we see things differently. Don’t let me get in your way on that front, if that’s what really matters to you.
I see browsers as being problematic in general right now and new solutions are needed. If you’re happy with tracking and spying at the browser level, then fine, but I’m interested in how we can put an end to that.
If you’re happy with tracking and spying at the browser level, then fine, but I’m interested in how we can put an end to that.
And brave has shown it’s not a solution to that at all, so there’s literally no reason to defend them, or use them.
far right misinformation pushing, transgender phobia
Brave does not do this.
Goggles is the first part, the owner is the second part
The CEO of brave is a homophobic bigot if that helps push anyone over the edge for changing their browser. It was the last straw for me.
I didn’t know that, thanks for the tip : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
Probably also has some right wing bias as well. That’s probably one of the reasons they included goggles in Brave search for right wing content.
That was the headliner reason for me.
The rest was just ‘Alright, it isn’t enough this guy is a piece of shit, he’s pushing a shitty product.’
This post shows that it’s much worse than that.
That’s not even his worst crime. His worst crime was inventing JavaScript.
Especially when the alternative they were considering was having Scheme in the browser.
God damnit.
Every browser I switched to since Firefox has been a good user experience, and then I find out some horrible bullshit.
Is there any safe browser that isn’t run by hateful assholes?
Firefox? Mozilla are just stupid, not really hateful
i found one called waterfox that is a nice little firefox fork ive been using. super chill.
I’ve been loving it.
Might give this a crack. Been waiting on Ladybird to come to PC.
Edit: OK it really doesn’t work well with bitwarden on mobile. Normal FF works fine but not this one.
I was about to say something about Waterfox too! It feels like old Firefox.
I’m waiting on Ladybird to come out next year into alpha
FF is starting to enshittify because they depend on Google for their revenue
Brave bought ad space on YouTube, and showed an ad on how to block ads on YouTube.
Mozilla could have done something similar with UBO but they just keep missing so many golden chances.
Mozilla has millions of reasons to not rock the boat with Google.
The crazy conspiracy guy I know uses Brave, so that already put me off.
I don’t use Brave but honestly there aren’t many options left. I can’t wish for Orion to launch any sooner.
Fascinating… I knew some of this and it is indeed troubling.
It seems that Brave’s mission is actually about generating revenue by any method possible (including manipulation of end users) more than anything to do with privacy.
If you’re cool with all that then Brave is for you I guess.
Wow, what scummy bastards. I used the browser for a little bit, and I kinda figured they were up to some shady shit when I noticed a crypto-wallet was included, but I ignored all that shit and it was fine. But if I’d known what the CEO or the company in general had been up to I’d have dropped that shit like a bad habit long before I did for other reasons.
I’ve heard enough of this stuff over the years to never be tempted to try the browser out. At this point, I feel like it’s claim to privacy is mostly marketing. Personally, I’m going to stick to LibreWolf.
Thank you for posting this! I had a vague recollection there was something scummy about Brave, and I was surprised to see it recommended in so many of the “Which browser should I use?” posts. It’s really handy to have a chronical of bullshit like this to point to when it comes up
Thanks, but I’ll keep using it.
Here come the downvotes fro the supposedly tolerant
idiotsgood people out there, lolDude, you showed up to a post about how brave is an ad-riddled crypto scam and responded with “yeah, but fuck Firefox” with no reasoning given. Then cried about how anyone who disagreed with that assessment was an idiot.
What kind of engagement were you expecting/hoping for?
I’m just tired of these shitty posts about… A perfectly fine browser! But no problem, I’ll just keep blocking idiots who endlessly parrot bullshit while pretending that the fediverse is a paradise.
The article is unfair about the fingerprinting issue. Brave utilizes a technique they call farbling and it does a really good job at keeping websites from knowing who you are, in theory anyways.
People really love to attack brave, but it can be configured to be a very fast, private, and clean browsing experience. Faster than Firefox by a long shot, open source, decentralized encrypted syncing… I get there have been controversies, and it is chromium, but at the end of the day you have to use the tool that works best for you.
You’re not just licking the boot you’re giving it the good sloppy
By boot do you mean chromium? Id love to use a gecko browser, but my busy life is too short to spend extra seconds every time waiting for pages to load. If that makes me a boot licker so be it I guess :)
This is a very well written an thorough article and I highly recommend reading it. If you don’t want to however, here is a summary of the key points:
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- Brendan Eich donated to anti-LGBT political organizations, politicians, and initiatives such as CA Prop 8 which was a proposed ban on same-sex marriages.
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- Brave promised to replace ads with privacy friendly ads that would actually pay publishers and even users with a volatile cryptocurrency while keeping a cut for themselves. This never actually came to life and was criticized as “blatantly illegal”.
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- Brave collected donations for popular content creators without actually involving or seeking consent from said creators. In short they accepted donations in crypto for creators, but would only pay out if it reached a minimum value of $100. When called out, Brave said refunds were impossible.
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2020 — Brave injects referral links when visiting crypto wallets
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- Brave injected their own referral links for services such as Binance without informing users or asking permission.
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- Brave turned their home screen image rotator into a place to serve ads, many of which were suspicious or crypto related.
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- Brave added a Tor feature which exposed users DNS requests
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- Brave refuses to disclose their crawler bot to websites since many websites want to block Brave Search. Brave will only chose not to crawl a website if it also blocks Google’s crawler.
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2024 - So-called “privacy browser” deprecated advanced fingerprinting protection
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- Brave removed a the Strict, Block Fingerprinting privacy feature from their browser.
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- Brave paid for targeted ads for users searching for Firefox in the Play Store and ran a campaign to “Forget the Fox”. When called out on this the VP publicly denied it and claimed it was photo-shopped.
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- The VP of Brave, Luke Mulks, frequently posts about all things crypto, from NFTs to FTX, and uses AI-gen images to promote them. He also frequently re-tweets right-wing activists.
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- Brendan Eich’s feed also frequently contains right-wing content and Republican propaganda despite his claims to be “independent”.
Prop 8 was not merely proposed, it was approved by voters and actually banned same-sex marriage for several years before it was ruled unconstitutional.
Brendan Eich contributed to the actual banning of same-sex marriage in California for several years.
Corrected the mistake, thanks.
Thank you!
I don’t use Brave as my main browser but I think some of the accusations are not fair.
- TOR Feature. I don’t think it was deliberately done. Similarly Firefox revealed your up address even if you used VPN while using. As long as there was no malicious intent we can’t say anything other than that they software has big bugs.
- Yes, it is questionable what they do for getting money but same can be said for most donations or schemes that FOSS use. There was long discussions about the money Mozilla receives from Google, or things Opera did (basically similar to Brave)
- Getting news from right wing is useful if you ever need to do research, I had a course in uni about anti-islam and getting really right wings news was difficult. We all knew the same 2 sites.
- The political opinion of the CEO is concerning but not important enough. In that case I’m wholly on the same boat as the developer of the Factorio, if Hitler were to make good Browsers I’d use them.
- It is also important to note most of the problems are in the past. Sure it means there are likely a lot we could not find and it is annoying to use a product where they would exploit you if they are given a chance.
That said Brave is still #1 Browser I’d recommend someone installing. If I can I’d install Firefox myself, but on the phone it is what I recommend. I don’t trust my uncle to install Firefox and install uBlock etc. on top of it. But I trust him to install Brave and use it.
Most privacy minded Browsers like Libre Wolf have restrictions, like not enabling WebRTC out of the box, meaning using Zoom, Meet etc is not possible. There are people who are forced to use such software and not able to tweak with config files. Some people think just because they can do it, everybody should be able to. I think it is a good choice to recommend to people, very good in place replacement for Chrome, you can even take your bookmarks and addons with you
I just installed Brave on my Ubuntu OS on my laptop to replace Chrome. It is running better than chrome was so far. Is there a way to setup Brave to safeguard against some of things mentioned or should I go with something like DuckDuckGo instead?
Does Adblock even work in Brave any more since Google blocked them?
Brave has their own built-in ad blocker that still works
It barely block most ads
Last I used it, it didn’t have nearly the functionality that ubo does
What better chromium based browser is there?
I normally stick with Firefox but, when there’s the need, I use degoogled Chromium.
Thorium’s not bad.
Vivaldi if you really need a Chromium based browser.
An option, but not fully open source.
