• Raltoid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The ceo is a bigoted asshole, Brave is chromium, it was initially funded by Peter Thiel and they’re literally just trying to make their own adsense network.

    The self-proclaimed privacy focused browser is tracking your browsing and want to serve you personalized ads, and I think they want to use that tracking data for AI training as well, meaning other people can potentially access it.

    And lets not forget about their crypto currency that you can earn by turning on special ads. Which they seemingly unironically called it “Basic Attent Tokens”…

    TL;DR: The company is basically a sham company trying to usher in a dystopia. Where you’ll get paid for staring at ads, while having all your data stolen and sold back to you.

    • sic_1@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I see no reason to use any other browser than Firefox and maybe Librewolf.

      • mrsgreenpotato@discuss.tchncs.de
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        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.

      • xavier666@lemm.ee
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        I am forced to use Chromium on my work laptop because MS Teams doesn’t work (all the features) on Firefox.

        Edit: I should elaborate this a bit. There are 2 reasons why I use Chromium on my machine.

        1. If I face a problem, company tech team only knows Chrome and they start crying when I open Firefox.
        2. On Linux, the official way to use Teams is through a web-app and Firefox doesn’t support PWAs.

        All other MS services function fine on Firefox.

          • vettnerk@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Same. I use furefox for everything* at work, despite everything being heavily integrated with teams, sharepoint, et.al.

            *: The only thing that doesn’t work with firefox is this inhouse web service that hasn’t been updated since 2017. It’s about to be replaced anyway, so nobody bothered to fix/update it.

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            1 year ago

            Simple one-to-one calling is disabled saying it’s only available on Chrome. I’m pretty sure it’s recent since I had calls a few months back on Firefox. I’m also sure that it’s not some group policy since I’m on Ubuntu without any sort of ActiveDirectory so it’s a pure browser issue. Also, they force the old UI in Firefox due to some reason. Typical BS from Microsoft.

        • dan@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I use Firefox as my primary browser and run the teams app.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          they start crying when I open Firefox.

          Good. Use it anyway, and bathe in their tears!

  • blue_zephyr@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The fact that their founder wants to ban gay marriage is enough reason for me to avoid it like the plague.

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        1 year ago

        He made a thousand dollar donation in support of proposition 8, a constitutional amendment in California that strips gay people of the right to marry. He then proceeded to argue that such a donation does not make him a bigot or an enemy of LGBTQ+ people, because he’s a delusional piece of filth.

        This effectively prevented gay people from marrying in California from 2008 to 2013 until the fascists that supported it were finally done trying to argue how this doesn’t violate the US constitution.

        So yeah, may he, his browser, and any pathethic excuse that pretends to be human being who supported this abomination rot in the deepest depths forever.

      • coltorl@programming.dev
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        The codebase is irrelevant, I’ve already rated it, it’s another blink clone. As a product, on the other hand, you should definitely practice responsible consumerism. Aligning your values with your consumption is a good thing.

        • seiryth@lemmy.world
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          Totally agree. Why make someone richer who you ethically don’t align to. It just makes their agenda easier.

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              Right, because it was totally his views in general, not just lack of API access…

              Edit: Sorry guys, you’re right, the surge of Lemmy users that correspond to the hour of API access loss was DEFINITELY just coincidental.

              • Fuzzlightyear@lemmy.one
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                1 year ago

                Tbh it was a bit of both for me. The API access was one thing, but the response to the backlash was revealing towards his views. The protest against the API access was focused on business, the backlash to Spez’s actions in response was focused on him.

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                In particular, it was his view that he can impose himself on the community in such a way that takes us steps closer to a walled garden.

              • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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                Personally I’m here because of the way he went about trying to bully people who demonstrated against the API change.

                I don’t really care about the API change myself because I didn’t even indirectly use it.

                So yeah, it’s exactly not wanting to put money on the hands of such a person.

                Don’t really know Brave, don’t really know its CEO, am a little iffy on the whole screwing of people’s livelihoods due to their personal political leanings but can see how people would not want to put money in the hands of a guy who wants to make a subset of people miserable (by forbidding them to marry those they love) for no good reason (no mature and mentally healthy person goes around judging other people’s love on the gender of whom they love).

                Whilst I think that even haters should be able to survive (even they have basic human rights) it’s fair enough if their chances at prosperity beyond mere survival are negativelly affected by them being haters: after all, making life shit for others is fine with them, so as I see it, live by the sword die by the sword.

              • dtc@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I didn’t care about the api, I browsed via browser. The spez ama made me want to puke so I found this place.

                Yea his views and actions matter.

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                1 year ago

                The API was only the tip of the iceberg. When he came out and said he basically worships Elon and what he did to twitter I knew things weren’t going to improve.

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        Same reason people who boycott chic a filet over LGBT issues, it has nothing to do with the quality of their product it’s about not supporting someone who’s views and opinions are that only some people deserve equality.

        Voting with your wallet is more effective than simply vocalizing disagreement while still supporting their product.

      • vext01@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Everyone has a price when it comes to “can I still use/enjoy X when the author did seemingly unrelated thing Y”.

        For example, can you still enjoy the music of The he Lost Prophets? I can’t.

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        Most poeple responding said that it has nothing to do with it, but I would add that someone who has these view is more likely to implement unethical features

      • dtc@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I got my OS from north Korea, why on earth would I not trust it explicitly with any and all of my families information?

  • rog@lemmy.one
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    I dont know why anyone would leave chrome and land on something like brave.

    If youre ditching chrome, which you should, go to an actual different browser and use Firefox.

    • Cypher@aussie.zone
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      Streaming services seem to lower bitrate when I’m using Firefox vs Brave, so Brave is my go to for streaming.

      I use Firefox for everything else.

    • Anaralah_Belore223@lemmy.world
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      Also, if you going to completely ditch chrome/chromium, also stop using Electron apps (which have chromium/Chromium Embedded Framework on them!)

    • hayes_@lemmy.world
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      Personal anecdote:

      When I initially decided to drop Chrome, I moved to Brave because - as a chromium-based browser - it supported the same set of extensions I’d grown accustomed to.

      That being said, the crypto stuff weirded me out enough that, once I’d weaned myself off the extensions, I switched to Firefox.

      • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        What extensions does chrome have which are useful that Firefox doesn’t?

        My only recurring issue with Firefox, which may have been fixed I dunno, is it for some reason it “isn’t officially supported” or whatever exact wording to use hardware security keys (like yubikey, which I use on every account that allows it). It’s only certain websites that don’t want to work though. Like google, Microsoft and many others were fine but I think paypal didn’t want to work properly but it does work on Edge, Chrome, probably Brave. Overall annoying as fuck at times but I deal with it to be out of Google’s-world

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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      Chromium has metric shit tons of work done that seems to perform great. What I would love to see is for Mozilla to fork Chromium, staff it with enough people to maintain it, add/remove the features they feel are appropriate/inappropriate, and thus reuse the tons of free work Google and others have already done. As a software engineer, I don’t buy the argument that it’s easier to correctly implement every new web feature anew than maintaining a fork. Every large org that ships anything based on Android for example maintains a fork of an even bigger codebase. It’s not as complicated as people make it out to be. It’s not a new problem and there are strategies to manage it. If Mozilla does this, they’ll be able to play an active role in steering by far the biggest rendering engine’s direction, instead of playing opposition with no stake in it. Now downvote away! 😄

      • tate@lemmy.sdf.org
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        The more market share chrome based browsers have, the easier it is for google to inflict their agenda for the internet on everyone. If firefox didnt exist, every web developer would be optimizing their sites only for chrome, and responding quickly to any change google wants to make.

    • mrsgreenpotato@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      I am using Brave 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.

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      Brave is the only browser I know that can play youtube videos in the background on mobile. Please tell me another browser that can do that. The UX is just really good.

    • FatCat@lemmy.world
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      Firefox and gecko are just not as smooth. I don’t know how you don’t notice this, especially on Android.

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    Brave is a marching band of red flags. It claims privacy while injecting ads, affiliate codes and crypto into the browser. It’s kind of sad to see someone like Brendan Eich who should know better turn to the dark side and pretend this is all fine. It isn’t.

    Best advice I could give for anyone who wants privacy is use Firefox or a branch of it. Firefox is out of the box the most privacy conscious mainstream browser and add-ons make it more so. If you want absolute privacy you could even use a derivative like Tor Browser.

    • ours@lemmy.film
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      Louis Rossmann also recommended Brave in one of his videos. Quite sad.

    • prosp3kt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      These people talking as if not all the crypto bloat would be opt in lol. It just take 30 seconds or even less to turn off everything of that.

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    I have absolutely no idea how Brave got the reputation it has. It’s business model is disgusting and extortionate, it’s like paying for warez. Been clear as day since day one.

  • AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦@lemmy.world
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    At one point they were scummy enough to automatically add their referral codes to any Amazon link you see. Lots of people today still mindlessly recommend Brave, and that’s what’s wrong in general with the “but the UX is so nice” mentality.

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      Lots of people today still mindlessly recommend Brave

      It starts to feel astroturfed at a certain point. The last week or so has been crazy.

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      At one point they were scummy enough to automatically add their referral codes to any Amazon link you see.

      To be clear, that means Brave is ① invading their users’ privacy, and ② stealing money from web publishers.

      The point of referral codes is to reward web publishers for referring users to a product; leading to the user buying a product that they otherwise wouldn’t.

      Your browser isn’t introducing you to a product. For it to insert referral codes for the browser vendor’s benefit is stealing money.

    • FatCat@lemmy.world
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      Its almost like UX is one of the most important things for a user of any given program. 🥴

    • Just_Pizza_Crust@lemmy.world
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      If you really dig into the whole ordeal it was a software error, not some malicious idea to steal links from creators.

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          Most of the stuff that happens on the backend of any software goes on “without your consent”.

          You clicked on a webpage.

          You were brought to that webpage.

          You weren’t tracked, logged, or had your data exploited or anything. All that happened was Brave got an affiliate bonus.

          Now if the companies in question were angry at Brave for doing that, I could understand. But why should we, the users, give a shit?

          • Azzu@lemm.ee
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            You weren’t tracked, logged, or had your data exploited or anything. All that happened was Brave got an affiliate bonus.

            You seem to not know how affiliate links work. The products shopped are tracked & logged per user, and can be analyzed by the affiliate partner as to what their users were buying, i.e. data can be exploited.

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              I don’t know a lot, so maybe you know more than me. The tracking and logging is via cookies, right?

              The same cookies that brave automatically blocks?

              Again, maybe they do some tracking via some other method that I don’t know about; I’m not an expert. But it seems to me that Brave was essentially scamming those companies by using their referral codes but denying them any useful data. Great for brave, sucks for the companies, shouldn’t matter to us.

              • ominouslemon@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Not necessarily via cookies. The referral links can be unique to a specific user.

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        Why the fuck should your browser get a share from your amazon shopping? It’s doubly galling since they pretend to care about user privacy.

  • CafecitoHippo@lemmy.world
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    Yeah, fuck this guy.

    First, I have been online for almost 30 years. I’ve led an open source project for 14 years. I speak regularly at conferences around the world, and socialize with members of the Mozilla, JavaScript, and other web developer communities. I challenge anyone to cite an incident where I displayed hatred, or ever treated someone less than respectfully because of group affinity or individual identity.

    So I hid my hatred from everyone for 30 years successfully. Now that everyone finds out that I donated to a cause to strip them of rights everyone wants to say I’m hateful? Give me one example where I displayed hatred…how about the time you donated to strip people of their rights? That might be a big one for me.

  • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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!

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    “If someone recommends Brave to you, you should ignore them, because they are wrong.”


    I stopped reading here. If you would like to present objective technical arguments, please try not to sound like a 5 year old “I’m right, you’re wrong, blah blah”.

    Use Brave or use Firefox. They both work great for privacy, but I find Brave is easier to configure to be private.

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    Thanks. Whenever I raised the issue of homophobia or his general support of right-wing causes that threaten people’s privacy (see the aftermath of Roe v. Wade for example), I got downvoted, be it on the PrivacyGuides sub where they adore the browser, or right here just weeks ago.

  • Hal-5700X@lemmy.world
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    I use Brave as a backup browser. My main one is Firefox.

    You can turn off the crypto stuff. You don’t have to use Brave Shields (in browser ad blocker). It can be turned off. Now you can use uBlock Origin or another ad blocker.

    About the CEO, I can’t see nothing about his beliefs reflecting in his work. Looks like he kept them separated. I’m not for said beliefs.

    • InfiniteFlow@lemmy.world
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      That you can is besides the point. You shouldn’t need to. If the first thing I need to think about after installing it is “well, let’s see what garbage is in here that I need to turn off”, then any trust I would have for it has already gone out the window. Especially important odor a browser where that is kind of the main differentiating aspect.

      • CheshireSnake@lemdit.com
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        Firefox has telemetry. You can opt out and delete it, but by that logic it shouldn’t be trusted either. Also, I doubt people who really care about privacy don’t harden firefox. Being able to is not besides the point.

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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        Idk if I’m doing something different but for me, the crypto stuff seems to be opt in.

        Like you have to create a wallet it seems, they don’t make one for you.

      • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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        Beside**

        It still has to be feature rich and work or of the box. I haven’t been back to Firefox in a few years, but it was pretty dumpy by comparison to brave. I’ll look again but the key feature of a browser to me isn’t “it’s not Google, it’s Foss, and I don’t have to disable stuff”.

        I’m gonna hope you’re a fellow Linux user if that’s the perspective you take.

        • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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          i’ll look again but the key feature of a browser to me isn’t “it’s not Google, it’s Foss, and I don’t have to disable stuff”.

          You use linux but your primary criteria for the most used program on a PC is not having to configure it?

          That’s a pretty odd middle ground to take.

        • InfiniteFlow@lemmy.world
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          I wasn’t arguing for Firefox or FOSS. It just seems to me that if your selling point is trust and privacy (at least it is what I see people citing as Brave’s Big Thing), you should be as transparent and irreproachable in that regard as possible. Having said this, of course, good features can be enough for the trade-off to be worth it (this is true of pretty much every piece of software out there, Chrome included), depending t each user finds more important.

      • capr@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        By that logic, Firefox would be in the same boat. After initially installing, you have to turn off data collection in the settings and disable Pocket in the config.

    • cleric10@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I use brave as my backup in windows and linux. And my default for Android to sync bookmarks.

      Firefox android experience have always been subpar for me even without Darkreader which is known to slow down the browser in Android.

    • the_q@lemmy.world
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      By using his product you’re contributing to his political views. You know that though, don’t you…

      • Hal-5700X@lemmy.world
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        By that logic. You can’t use nothing who going against your beliefs. That’s impossible, because you can’t know every company beliefs.

        • the_q@lemmy.world
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          But you can make changes once damning information is discovered or attempt to research products and services to try and minimize your own impact on others suffering.

          • prosp3kt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            11 months ago

            No you can’t bruh. You want to see changes? Go and win a fucking election. No one cares about your insignificant product choices.

            • the_q@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Yeah you’re exactly what capitalism wants you to be. It’s pretty sad. Poor guy.

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                11 months ago

                It’s like with climate change. Germany has laws against climate change. But they have a small problem: 85% of CO2 is from China and USA. and even like 10% from that 15% comes from poor countries like India or Indonesia, which can’t be asked for any change. I try to not live in a lie. We need to be pragmatic. I believe in transparency of FOSS. But at the same time I think Firefox is doomed to die a slow death. One swallow does not make a summer.

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      Why use a product that pays a bad actor tho?

      There are other options, free options.

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      1 year ago

      Because these weirdos rate the browser by their political views. Let’s look at the work Brave have done here. This is the best out-of-the-box browser. Only Librewolf is on the level. I hate watching leftist that try to enforce their views on a product only because of his right-wing views. I don’t care about it as far as the search engine and browser are good products. Also, as an Eastern European, I am happy to see not everyone supporting the alphabet rainbow mafia. Once more, it cannot be related to the code.

  • barberousse@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Long time Brave user here. This made me uninstall Brave and move to Firefox. Thank you !