Brave is essentially just Chrome with an adblocker, a bunch of bloatware, and a bunch of controversies.
Brave took BAT donations in YouTuber’s names without their consent, with them keeping the money if the YouTubers didn’t claim it. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-browser-no-longer-claims-to-fundraise-on-behalf-of-others-so-thats-nice/
Brave’s search engine crawler hides itself from websites by pretending to be Googlebot, and Meta (Facebook) buys API access from them to train their AI. https://stackdiary.com/brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/
The business model of Brave rewards as a whole is to block all other ad networks to replace them with their own, which is unfair as only YouTubers and websites that have joined can make money from most Brave users.
If Brave actually cared, they would create an acceptable ads style feature which was free for everyone and allowed simple contextual banners while blocking ads which track you, take up most of the page, or have NSFW content.
Their approach is monopolistic as they have full control and can strangle YouTubers and websites by dropping pay at any time.
And Brenden Eich has said on Twitter that he plans to release “Brave Origin”, which is a paid version of Brave without the bloatware. That name is ironic as he is admitting that his browser is commercialised and bloated, which is similar to when gorhill gave uBlock way to Chris Aljoudi who commercialised it, which led him to create uBlock Origin.
If you use Brave, ditch it and look at using Librewolf or Helium instead, which both include no ads nor tracking and don’t have Brave News, Rewards, Wallet, Talk etc bloatware.
I dislike any browser which blocks content (such as ads) by default. It may sound silly, but Imo, that’s not what a browser should be doing. It’s job is to act as an HTTP client, render HTML and do caching, storage and all the management which goes with it and offer any tools to tinker with it.
The meaning of the content displayed should be of no concern to the browser as it is subjective.
I will install an addon to deal with unwanted content as I see fit. Firefox is getting kinda bloated with all the things which come with it (pocket, accounts, default bookmarks…), but I can live with that.What if we start from the premise of a browser being judged by its most popular use case?
I’m happy to change some default settings to customize for my use case, knowing that most users that don’t know/care about such things are getting ads blocked by default (let’s be honest, I like crawling through settings each time I install new software regardless :P )
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Honestly what do people have against Firefox that can’t be fixed with plugins? It’s the only decent browser that isn’t chrome based, and I think that deserves support. And with plugins and sync it’s a great experience.
Firefox is great. Mozilla, however, is making some weird moves every now and then. A lot of people don’t quite trust Mozilla to have their interests at heart anymore.
The obvious solution is to use a Firefox fork. I have no idea whether there’s a meaningful difference between the various Firefox forks, and would welcome a summary.
I switched to LibreWolf, which is a Firefox fork that prioritizes anonymity and privacy. I like it, but there are definite quirks:
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it will tell every website your time zone is UTC+0, which breaks some stuff. Proton Calendar works if you tell it your actual timezone.
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no password saving and cookies delete every session, so you have to log in to every website every time you restart. This is intentional but I don’t understand the rationale. You can install a password manager though and self-host it if you want.
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because your device fingerprint is generic, a lot of websites incorrectly assume you are a not. I have to use FF for GrubHub, for instance, as they won’t play nice with LibreWolf due to restrictions on the HTML5 Canvas element, for instance.
You can set exceptions for cookies on per site basis. I know because I also thought this for long time before finding it.
Settings - Privacy & Security - Cookies and Site Data - Manage exceptions
One item off the annoyance list. :)
You can turn off the fingerprint protection in the Librewolf tab of the settings page.
All of this should be configurable per site. Lots of sites do not need to know my timezone, location, cookies or fingerprint, but some do. I want to give sites I like, those where I’ve intentionally created an account, usually, permission to these things while denying it to every random article I happen to click on.
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For me it’s a combination of Mozilla making strange business decisions (removing of the “we never sell your data” policy) and the fact that a lot of websites take forever to load on Firefox.
I’ve tried forks, LibreWolf pisses me off. Too many settings to change just to still have a broken browsing experience in the sake of privacy. If I need that level of privacy, I’ll use I2P/Tor.
I hate the fact that chromium has won, but it’s getting difficult to avoid the fact that web developers don’t give a rats ass if the website doesn’t work well on Firefox.
Brave was my primary for a while, but I switched to Vivaldi after reading about some of the BAT bait and switch.
Mozilla changed their privacy policy and terms of use about a year ago in ways that show they cannot be trusted. I think Librewolf offers more privacy/security features than Firefox can with plugins (disabling some canvas features that are used for fingerprinting for example). I think Firefox has some advertising/tracking crap enabled by default too (PPA API?). IDK, I just don’t trust them anymore with their policy changes. Mullvad Browser is even more “hardened,” but less convenient than Librewolf.
My main browsers are FF or Zen (a fork of FF), but I think a lot of sites aren’t able to work with just a plug-in due to how deeply they are coded for Chromium. Some of them being Amazon sites like Luna, Amazon Music, and Audible (pretty sure their other media sites/services also refuse to work if any hint of non-Chromium browsers are detected. I have run into non-Amazon sites with media or similar tell me to “update your browser” or “use a supported browser” (which is at least more honest than telling me that my FF is “out of date”).
While there are likely elements in some sites that actually can work with FF (I have had really random moments where I got part of a song to play on Amazon Music but then gives the “browser is out of date” message). The Chromium focused coding is IE all over again. Just a self-fulfilling cycle of making it look like FF is not as capable. And I hate that in the instances where changing the User Agent to be Chrome works, that it just keeps stats looking like Chrome and forks are what people are using (and might lead to seeming like FF is used less than it actually is).
I haven’t encountered anything like that, but maybe that’s because I wouldn’t touch anything Amazon with a 2 metre stick
Not a bad stance. But they are a major provider of media that regular users might use. They also tend to be the people that would rather not bother with FF if they see it as “not as capable” and never leave Chrome. Which further feeds the goals of Google to be the default just like MS did with IE (but much more cleaver by providing the base for endless forks).
MS fucked up by caring that IE was the “only” option and didn’t push creating such a good base to have forks to keep their versions of “standards.” Google did an amazing job at pouring money into getting Chrome past the early years of lack of mature features (and while they still had good will of helping to get people away from IE).
An extra reason: Eich is a homophobic asshole and an anti-masker
…and? Are you going to stop using the transistor?
Man’s dead.
Don’t matter what he thought when he’s rotting in the ground.
Does when you’re still alive
I hope you never use JavaScript then. Eich created that too.
Oh I see, outrage of convenience.
No.
It’s very simple: if someone is alive and holds detestable views, then giving them money gives them a chance to then use that money to lobby for their views. And in many many many many many cases, they do exactly that.
If someone is dead and holds detestable views, they’re unable to do anything about it (cause they’re dead)
Desktop = Librewolf, Mullvad and hardened firefox browsers. Strictly separating uses. Mobile (Android) = Cromite, Brave, Firefox and Tor. Again, separating uses.
Don’t forget that they used to add referral parameters to links you clicked so they got a kickback from you clicking things from anywhere even if they didn’t make that link for you.
Brave is the browser version of Honey. It blocks 3rd party ads and inserts its own, taking the money. Either block the ads or don’t but this is shitty.
I always use and recommend hardened Firefox + Ublock. As a search engine, I use Qwant, which is based in the EU and uses its own search engine whenever possible rather than Google, Bing, etc. And there is another reason not to recommend using Brave. Among its investors is Peter Thiel, the most controversial figure in the investment world. Search for Peter Thiel’s controversial statements in your favourite search engine and you will see for yourself.
And if you’re concerned about the way Mozilla is headed, there are multiple open source versions like waterfox that should work with all extensions.
Consider a SearXNG instance. It can use Quant as a source, but balance across other engines to get the best results based on overlap (you choose the engines).
searxng is awesome.
Only thing is that instances go down from time and it gets frustrating. I am not geeky enough to host an instance myself. So I just keep hoping one instance to another which is also not very convenient. How do I make most of searx?
Yea, running your own is definately the way to go. If you have Docker installed, you can run it on your local machine?
docker pull docker.io/searxng/searxng:latest docker run -ti --rm --name searxng -p 8888:8080 -v "./searxng/config/:/etc/searxng/" -v "./searxng/data/:/var/cache/searxng/" docker.io/searxng/searxng:latestThat would run at http://localhost:8080/ and store all data and config persistent, and download the latest version (if needed) every time.
For all my folks on android a really good chromium browser would be Cromite which is a fork of Bromite a really good privacy browser. I use it with Kagi as my search engine and it works so well for me.
For FF, I used IronFox for a bit. But it had issues with using alternative search engines as defaults. But it’s still a solid browser.
I recommend using the TOR browser as a heavy security measure and for privacy if you need it the most. Remember to change the defaults to the strictest security measures for the best privacy and protection from Malware (ads) and the works.
Waterfox is an option too
i recently installed cromite to find its adblock completely non-functional, anyone knows if it’s just me?
(i mean the obvious ones like google ads were shown…)
cromite just disable the in built blocker and use ublock instead
sir there’s no extension support in cromite…
Adblock was purchased by Google years ago and now allows “non-intrusive” (is Google) ads by default. Use uBlock if you can.
lol ik, i’m not talking about adblock™ but instead i mean the ad blocking feature integrated in the cromite browser. afaik it uses ABP engine/filters tho
To those asking “which browser other than Firefox”
It’s fantastic. It’s Chrome, stripped of junk, with full (not lite) Ublock Origin natively supported and shipped. What more could you want?
And it can coexist alongside Firefox.
Cromite is also great, but its antifingerprinting is so hardcore it breaks some sites. That’s perfect for shopping/private browsing, but a bit much for daily driving unless tracking resistance is your #1 priority.
On iOS and OSX, Orion (from Kagi) is sublime. It’s Safari based (which you want for Apple stuff), but heavily modified with a native blocker, and supports extensions if you really need them. There aren’t many Safari “forks” like it.
I say this because I’ve been through a gauntlet of trying a bunch. Bromite, ungoogled chromium, waterfox, pale moon, Thorium, Vivaldi, all sorts of iOS apps and Firefox/Chromium forks. And these feel like endgame to me. Helium is just about perfect (as long as its development isn’t dropped), and Orion is close aside from some UI quirks.
Thank you for the recommendation, I will try out helium
Where are we on zen browser?
Eh. Firefox is fine.
The only FF fork I’ve ever used for some time is Cachy Browser, as it shipped with my distro and was ostensibly amore optimized. But even they depreciated it in lieu of vanilla Firefox.
And Firefox gets faster security patches anyway.
I’m more interested in Chrome forks because it’s Google spyware. And, as much as I don’t like it, I find Chromium-based browsers to be faster. That doesn’t matter so much on desktop, but the difference is pretty dramatic on Android.
If you used Ungoogled Chromium why did you switch and recommend Helium? Can’t you achieve Helium settings and tweaks on Ungoogled Chromium? Why add an additional party to potentially delay security updates?
Ungoogled Chromium does not support full uBlock Origin. Last I checked, it wont auto-update itself on Windows without a 3rd party tool, and I remember it having some other “quirks” from the stuff it strips out. The delay for security updates seems pretty minimal, too.
And personally, I like the bangs feature, now that I’m using Orion on iOS anyway.
But its based on ungoogled-chromium, so if you prefer to use upstream, that makes a lot of sense. Helium’s main pitch seems to be an “easier to install” ungoogled chromium anyway.
No mobile apps
Orion is mobile. So is Cromite.
DDG is pretty good too. I like its approach, with a UI that encourages whitelisting sites.
But they don’t sync with helium afaik
Orion syncs cross platform, DuckDuckGo does as well. And I believe you can sync with extensions.
Sadly no linux client for duck duck go otherwise I’d use that. Will look into orion tho
This is pretty nihilist to say, but we probably need to stop using what we’re calling the internet today.
The web is not the innocent platform it once was in the 90s and early 00s. Privacy is practically nonexistent and the workarounds like disabling javascript break so much of it that what’s left is hardly usable.
There’s no worthwhile alternatives imo. There’s no major competing internetworks or ‘web browsing’ alternatives outside of modern html/css/js… and there really should be.
The internet evolved towards money making and nobody really stopped and made offshoots that are just cool fun things without the endless goal of capital.
The problem with the internet is not the internet itself, but the big tech platforms.
By using sites like Mastodon and Lemmy, using a browser with uBlock Origin installed, and disabling Web & App activity, personalised ads, etc on your phone, you are taking a stand, and routing around the bad stuff exactly as intended.
It just isn’t enough man. We’re still dependent on a handful of sources for everything. Adblockers break for me practically every single day.
I don’t have solutions. I just see privacy slipping away at scale and i’m afraid where we will end up in just a few years.
We can’t opt out of the system either because too much of it is necessary. Can anyone truly say they don’t need google? ever? I stick to stuff like lemmy and I use duck duck go, but I don’t think ddg is permanent.
Everything just seems aligning for us to have digital IDs and fingerprints that are tracked with metadata and sold freely to any buyer with enough money. Combine that with technologies like flock and all the facial recognition tech everywhere, payment being basically completely digital today and sold/shared to anyone willing to pay… and every move we make is completely tracked and known.
We’re at a point now where the tech used in The Dark Knight by batman to solve crime at the expense of everyone’s privacy is here, and it’s even worse. Nobody will destroy it because it’s too powerful to make money and crush dissent. With how dire the political situation is and how they are literally telling us now to not believe what we see, instead believe what we say… i’m worried, like so many others are.
No one person should have as much power as even a billionaire has, and there are so many who have more than that. The only end to tyranny is our lifespans, until that is no longer a limiting factor from technology.
We can’t opt out of the system either because too much of it is necessary. Can anyone truly say they don’t need google? ever?
Yes. I switched to Qwant some years ago, and about a year back I switched to Kagi. Haven’t seen the Google Search page in years at this point.
The only thing I use from Google still is YouTube. There are also alternatives, I’ve spent some time with PeerTube and found things I enjoy, and I don’t mind supporting Nebula, which is also a nice platform. That said, I could probably just cut it all off. It frees up time to do something else.
Install uBlock Origin and disable any others then the ad blocker problem will be solved.
As for other things, look for backups. If DDG shuts down, search up alternatives. If piefed.social shuts down, find another instance, and do on.
Can anyone truly say they don’t need google? ever?
Using Invidious or other front ends allows me to watch YT without Google tracking.
My Gmail address is only used by as backup to access my own domain and I am ready to move that away from Google.
I don’t need Google.
Using a different frontend to access a Google service is still using Google …
True, but they are not collecting my data.
We can still build small, text-based websites for free.
I have built fileshare and chat before switching to OSS solutions, which I can selfhost.
No adblocker needed, I can enjoy my part of the internet with people I care about.
Also Wikipedia.
If you want to experience the old internet: https://kagi.com/smallweb
A curated list of sites with specific criteria, I’ve found a bunch of good stuff from there
I’d say we don’t need go go so far as to stop using the internet (there are open and free services we can use), but I’d agree that we need to reduce our overall internet usage as way to fight aginst the system. Many times, there aren’t alternatives to things, and the alternative can be doing something else! Doing something with out life time that the corporations have been stealing.
And the tech industry have become the main players int he economy and in many destructive and unethical practices in the world, that by reducing our internet usage, we are working against them.
The 90s web isnt the same product the internet is today. Therefore you’ll never get people to leave. Just like youtube and twitter. These are just new “cable.” The only reason people had cable was for entertainment. We can start a new internet tomorrow but it will just be me and you and if thats what you really wanted, you’d be completely fine with that.
Technically, there’s Gemini (protocol) and Gopher as alternatives to the usual web stack, but they’re still pretty niche in usage.
Not the Internet, but rather the World Wide Web. The once-humble webpage has become such a complex stack of technologies that it’s impossible for small dev teams to make alternatives to the established web browsers.
I never used it specifically because of it being run by Brenden Eich. I have no intention of knowingly throwing my towel in and helping to enrich someone who’s thrown his money around to strip people of the right to marry who they want because he finds it icky.
I’m sure there’s other bad shit from him but after that I just treat him and anything he does as pure toxin.
If that sounds harsh, well, I don’t give a fuck.
I am pretty set with Firefox in Android and desktop to be honest.
I cringe a little when users praise Brave as being the best ad-less YouTube solution (especially android users since we have revanced here!), no bro, there is no way using the web version of YT is better than revanced, or any other apps on mobile.
Firefox is becoming a shitty ai browser now. Consider waterfox or librewolf
For my needs I’m currently fine with it, also my mindset is… All those are FF forks, the enshitification of FF will eventually splash them, not to the same degree, but yeah, it can happen.
I am too lazy to switch my CSS theme in ALL the OS I use too, for some reason this crap isn’t synced automatically with FF Sync (just as some add-ons settings) I hate starting over, that is why I always bash on current backup/restore solution Android has (compared to iCloud) every time I get the chance lol.
Or even Firedragon which is a fork of both librewolf and floorp, best browser i have ever used! I recommend trying it out.
I am pretty set with Firefox in Android and desktop to be honest.
been using firefox since before it was called firefox, and netscape before that. while i do use ‘other’ browsers, too, their use is limited to testing and a few select sites or purposes only (for instance, i use a ‘portable’ opera for mail, and only mail).
Their shields AdBlock is very good though, it’s done in ram in a memory safe way, arguably doing it through an extension like ublock is not great. I can’t wait until a project facelifts shields and puts it on top of an unbloated security focused chromium (or Firefox grows some balls and builds it in). Vanadium pls 🥺
On iOS it might be though, because there’s no revanced and browsers can’t have plugins so the only way to adblock is to use a browser that bakes it in.
This means (afaik) Brave, DuckDuckGo or Opera. IME adblocking for youtube specifically is patchy with Opera, can’t speak for DuckDuckGo.
Or just don’t use iOS. I don’t much but we have an iPad for occasional use
Orion on iOS has support for both Chrome and Firefox extensions. So you can use uBlock Origins directly. It’s made by the same developers as the search engine Kagi.
Only downside is that it doesn’t sync with Firefox, if you use that on your desktop.
I didn’t know that about Orion…
Only downside is that it doesn’t sync with Firefox, if you use that on your desktop.
Man that’s rough.
When I used iOS setting FF to strict navigation or whatever its name is it did wonders, compared to the closed environment I was ofc.
And now Morphe too, continuation of the revanced project, and it’s acually really good i have to say
… This is how I found out about the Revanced situation… Oh boy I swear the open source community is one of the biggest ones that carries some drama 😂 (not saying this is bad, the switch is something totally justified).
I just saw a random post about it here and i switched since revanced isn’t really getting updated, although i still use the revanced reddit bc it blocks ads, bit buggy but it works and i also have their pirated lightroom xd.
I see, I still main Sync for Reddit thanks to revanced do you know if Morphe has parches for it? As far as I can tell it only has parches for YT stuff…
Only yt so far sadly…
Am I the only person who uses mobile tab grouping and sees it as a must-have? Its ridiculous that Firefox is over 5 years behind on this incredible QoL feature. To me it’s almost as bad as if a browser didn’t support bookmarks. It’s just ridiculous at this point.
What is this feature?
I posted an insane rant with a video here :
I remember Brave was popular among MAGA-type people during Trump’s first term. I suspect it’s likely the same.
The logo has a striking resemblance to one I remember seeing on a big pro-Trump community. It’s described here https://www.vox.com/2019/8/29/20838289/trump-fascist-lion-head-bull-testicles-video-twitter basically the logo is associated with Mussolini.
In addition if you check the Wikipedia article you’ll notice this:
In August 2016, the company had received at least US$7 million in angel investments from venture capital firms, including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, Foundation Capital and the Digital Currency Group.[13]
Moreover some right-wing type people expressed their “solidarity” with Brendan Eich for his anti LGBT stance so they used Brave.
After decades of being a Google fanboy and using nothing but Chrome, my bf proudly told me he’d installed Brave after he got tired of his favorite websites being nothing but ads. I wouldn’t use it personally for the reasons you mention, but I think it’s a positive step for some people.
