I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever.

Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency which they then added to a rewards program that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave.

Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.

After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes into URL’s. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators.

Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I’d say the answer is a very clear no.

One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.

Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don’t mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Too many people only care about the openweb or shitty companies in the comments. They have no fucking willpower, no patience, and no follow through. Their complaints are utterly meaningless because they utterly refuse to stick to their guns.

      There’s one and literally only one browser that actually stands for all the things the most vocal people around here claim to care about.

      Yet, they use Brave.

  • AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 years ago

    Let’s not forget one of the biggest investors is a right-wing billionaire who runs a corporate intelligence agency that contracts with the DoD. And the only proof we have that he doesn’t collect data on Brave’s users is the questionable word of the devs.

    • Katlah@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      2 years ago

      I would appreciate if we don’t bring politics into the conversation. They are completely subjective and only serve to stray away from the original point.

      Edit:

      Yes, I’m aware I’m in the wrong here.

        • Gestrid@lemmy.ca
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          2 years ago

          To be fair, nearly everything is/ has been/ can be a political topic. Two of the more ridiculous ones (IMO) I can think of are video games and D&D.

      • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        If you know you’re in the wrong, delete the comment, or at least strikethrough everything you have changed your mind about.

        The people who downvoted you have already moved on, they don’t need or care about an apology and won’t see it.

        • Katlah@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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          2 years ago

          I won’t delete the comment as that also deletes (not really but hides) the replies. As for strikethrough, I don’t really think it matters that much.

          • Kissaki@mander.xyz
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            2 years ago

            I don’t really think it matters that much

            When I read your comment I couldn’t see what specifically you consider yourself being wrong about. Striking through could have clarified. Without it, I would have preferred the comment as it was. Then it at least makes sense within the thread and makes a clear statement. (Whether one agrees with it or not.)

  • gornius@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Brave behaving like Win XP era browser with gazillion toolbars installed, with a pinch of crypto and crypto promoting ads should be a giant red flag.

    FOSS =/= trusted by default. Why are there so many FOSS evangelists, but such a damn tiny part of them are programmers, let alone programmers able to examine a source code behind such a giant codebase as web browser?

    I use Vivaldi, at least their business model is clear, and developer is kind of trusted, and not crypto scammer and homophobe.

  • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    Just disable the ads, crypto and telemetry and suddenly none of those things are a problem anymore, just like Firefox.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      Firefox gets a high rating on default configuration.

      The next line explains that with custom configuration, it becomes Not Spyware.

  • Katlah@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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    2 years ago

    For the comments, can anyone give me an actual reason to use Brave over Firefox (and it’s forks)? I guess the cryptocurrency aspect is a reason, but I wouldn’t say it’s a very good one.

  • Kalcifer@lemm.ee
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    2 years ago

    If nothing else, I would recommend Firefox over Brave for the sole reason of the latter being yet another Chromium browser. It would be nice if we could eat away some of the browser marketshare from Google.

  • les@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    I absolutely agree, many news about security issues have already been published before.

  • droidpenguin@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I used to use Brave, then used Bromite but that got abandoned. I think there’s another fork of it, but ultimately I just use Firefox which has worked better for me overall.

    Browsers are a big attack vector for exploits and security is very important. Firefox releases patches regularly and I don’t have to worry about it being abandoned like some others. I disabled whatever telemetry / sponsored stuff they have enabled by default and feel it’s a good balance of security & privacy + doesn’t have the DRM crap chromium is trying to add.

    Their extension support is nice too.

  • gasull@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    If you need a Chromium derivative, then Brave is probably the best choice. It’s open-source, and includes ad blocking. Just don’t use its crypto token.

    I prefer Firefox over Brave, but sometimes I might need a Chromium derivative for a particular site.

  • Don Escobar@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Brave always marketed itself as hardened privacy browser and the second I saw their shitcoin immediately bells went off.

    Either way, I use Librewolf on PC and Mac and lately been giving Arc a try on Mac and I like it.

  • Clbull@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Newsflash: everything that isn’t free and entirely open source is generally spyware these days.

    It’s amazing how we pilloried RealPlayer and burned its parent company to the fucking ground over two decades ago for far less egregious transgressions than what we now let Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc get away with.