this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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[–] db2@sopuli.xyz 191 points 11 months ago (2 children)

BuT bRaVE isN't ThaT bAd 🀑

[–] ZeroCool@feddit.ch 109 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (7 children)

Yep, this news actually broke a couple days ago, I remember seeing a Brave fanboy having a meltdown over it and ranting about how Mozilla is the real shady company, blah, blah, blah.

[–] pensivepangolin@lemmy.world 46 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Oh dear lord. What did they say in support of their β€œMozilla is shady” argument?

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 63 points 11 months ago

Brave's CEO was fired from Mozilla so Mozilla bad.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (13 children)

To be fair. Mozilla foundation is shady. They keep pushing things that don't follow their core mission. That try to expand their brand.

You can use Mozilla to build solid privacy respecting systems, but Firefox out of the box not so much. They're better than Google, but that's a low fucking bar.

Mullvad browser, Tor browser, mull for Android - all use the core Firefox open source engine, to make privacy respecting programs that work out of the box with privacy respecting defaults.

So I would say Mozilla is a good guy in this conversation, but not a saint.

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[–] kirk781@lemm.ee 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I follow Ghacks, a tech site, as well and boy there is a Brave shill on there who attacks everyone there for daring to say anything against it. He knows stuff, judging from his comments, yet is so anti Mozilla and pro Brave that I can't understand. Almost thinks anyone not using Brave is inferior.

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

It's not good to stereotype people. But, I would bet money that they have any three of these: bought ~~NFCs~~ NFTs unironically, supports OpenAI unconditionally, propose blockchain on everything, bought a pizza with bitcoin years ago that would be millions of dollars today and are still salty about it, have a Starlink receiver, drive a beaten down Tesla they can't afford to repair because they spent their money paying for FSD early access, and would definitely be first in line to fly Starship to Mars if they were allowed to, they posts to imageai regularly.

EDIT: autocorrect.

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[–] sneezymrmilo@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've actually been attacked on several occasions by brave fan boys when I casually mentioned that I switched to Firefox and loved it. Idk what their deal is but I find it hilarious that all this stuff is coming out about brave recently 🀣

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[–] thefloweracidic@lemmy.world 100 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

I don't like brave because Brandon Eich (CEO, formerly with Mozilla) doesn't support gay marriage and was pushing anti-vax stuff on twitter. I don't look for this shit to titillate my tits like some folks, but when it hits me in the face I can't ignore it.

When fact checking myself I found even more controversies, but I'm not wasting time reading articles that feed a confirmation bias.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 25 points 11 months ago

I don't like Brave because they've done dodgy things like this time and time again over the years, and each time Brandon Eich went on a marketing campaign across social media to drum up new users and drown the story out.

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[–] LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 100 points 11 months ago (30 children)

Ok. Chrome sucks. Brave sucks. What’s good. Firefox?

[–] Grant_M@lemmy.ca 221 points 11 months ago (5 children)
[–] phx@lemmy.ca 70 points 11 months ago (15 children)

Firefox with good plugins is even better!

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[–] netchami@sh.itjust.works 18 points 11 months ago (14 children)

And LibreWolf is better. It's Firefox with all of the privacy settings preconfigured and uBlock Origin preinstalled. Also, crap like Sponsored sites and Pocket are removed.

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[–] Deebster@infosec.pub 46 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm team Firefox, very happy here. There's a small amount of optional telemetry to disable to maximise your privacy, and it has the best plugins because there's a lot of choice and they're not purposely crippled.

[–] kirk781@lemm.ee 14 points 11 months ago (6 children)

I like Firefox because it allows, Atleast for now, customization via userchrome.css files. I once tried Edge and hated it's bloated right click context menu. Meanwhile, in Firefox, I can trim down the context menu to only basic elements.

I do wish Firefox had proper PWA support, but otherwise I have been using it as the main browser on both PC and phone(since uBlock Origin is supported on it, the only Chromium browser to support it is Kiwi Browser on Android).

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[–] Orbituary@lemmy.world 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Firefox and Mull (a Firefox fork) have your privacy in mind. They work as good as Chrome and don't fuck you without asking.

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[–] MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works 95 points 11 months ago (9 children)

Just a reminder, any time you see a "tech" youtuber with brave installed, they're not going to be an excellent source of information

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[–] RGB3x3@lemmy.world 63 points 11 months ago (12 children)

I don't understand when and why Brave became such a household name. It seems so many people use it and swear by it, but its reputation is "suspicious" at best.

Just use Firefox. It's been around way, way longer and it doesn't use the Chromium engine. Google doesn't need more of a monopoly on the internet.

[–] Resol@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago (8 children)

But what's wrong with non Chrome Chromium based browsers?

(Just give me downvotes, I don't care if my question is stupid)

[–] Goodman@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Well Chrome(ium) has almost all of the browser market share and google is trying to push something called web environment integrity which would implement a sort of certification system where web servers evaluate the authenticity of the client. If you extrapolate that idea a bit further it boils down to "we won't serve you content if we don't like your browser, device, OS, etc". Which I would consider as hostile to the open but rapidly closing internet as we know it.

Edit: I forgot to make my point lol. Firefox is a completely different browser engine from the chromium based browsers which is why you see a lot of people recommending firefox because they don't comply with web integrity. I don't think it's working though because this is something only the techbros and the cybersisters care about while everyone else just goes about their day.

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[–] Emerald@lemmy.world 57 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You have to be very brave to download that browser

[–] Clbull@lemmy.world 52 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Brave to me is like an online advertising racket. They push ad-blocking software by default in their browser, then extort companies into using their own ad network to advertise to their users. Brave Ads are of course opt-in and the main incentive of enabling them is to earn BAT (Basic Attention Token) which is their cryptocurrency. In terms of their intrusiveness, they're like push notifications you get up to six times an hour, and from my experience using the browser, it was all mainly crypto marketplaces and VPN's advertising.

Compared to 2020, when you could earn hundreds of dollars in a year from frequently being served Brave Ads, BAT isn't really worth shit anymore thanks to the crypto crash, so the main financial incentive to use Brave is gone.

If you want privacy, Firefox is that way. Or if you absolutely need to use something based on Chromium, everyone and their fucking mother has forked that browser.

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[–] danielfgom@lemmy.world 41 points 11 months ago (28 children)

Not surprised. Brave is dodgy af.

Use Vivaldi or Firefox if you care about privacy

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[–] fne8w2ah@lemmy.world 28 points 11 months ago

The Brave team are basically a bunch of dodgy wankers at this point.

[–] joklhops@lemmy.world 25 points 11 months ago

I don't trust Brave, there's too much money tied up in it for it to be good for users.

[–] Bloxlord@lemm.ee 21 points 11 months ago (39 children)
  • Download a browser with a built-in VPN
  • Get browser and VPN services on your computer

Why is this news?

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[–] SoonaPaana@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago (8 children)

Why is installing a VPN considered bad? Is it because it is done without user consent? I don't understand if there is any malicious intent.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 47 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Brave browser has been automatically installing VPN services on Windows computers without user consent, but it remains inactive unless the user subscribes.

They're installing extra software that's useless unless you give them money. Plus you really want to be aware of your VPN since all your traffic will be going through it.

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[–] admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 25 points 11 months ago (12 children)

Because a vpn can monitor all the websites that you visit. Not directly what you're looking at, but definitely where you're looking. Just line your provider can, if you're not using a vpn. But at least with your provider, you have a contract with them - you pay them to transport your data and nothing more. Some very scummy providers aside, that's where it stops.

A free vpn, however, needs to pay for transporting your data somehow. And if you're not paying for it with money, then who/what is?

See also Tom Scott's explanation about vpns, why you probably don't need one, and why he refused their advertisement money.

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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I agree with what other people said. And here's a new twist.

Any software that messes with the networking stack, can cause really difficult to debug errors. And it may induce errors in other programs. The more complicated your computer's networking, the more fragile it is.

So introducing, silently, unasked for, network drivers and VPN hooks into the operating system is harming the compute stability of their user base.

At the very least, it should be opt-in! There should be a dialogue asking hey we have this new awesome feature, click okay to install it, something like that. Informed consent

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[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Please Brave: cutout the bullshit defaults game. Everybody's getting smarter and companies are getting stupider

Edit: said this b4, don't fuck with your own competitive advantage where you haven't had a joint and duly qualified computer science lawyer who explains how easy it is to lose trust and commercial viabillity for a sketchy, underhanded product (see LastPass). Also FUCK LastPass, may this Pass be their Last

[–] Tom_bishop@lemmy.world 16 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The ol' bait and switch...classic. Opera used to be good too, then chinese people bought it, then emerged opera vpn. Shaddy af. Same as camscanner

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[–] HKayn@dormi.zone 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Opera does this too and nobody bats an eye (anymore).

For some reason people like to clown on Brave specifically.

[–] Asudox@lemmy.world 34 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Probably because nobody cares about Opera doing that since the ones pointing this out are at least privacy aware people that won't use Opera. It is also a problem when Brave does it because it is a "privacy focused" browser. They sure have the balls to do this.

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