Technology

Just use Firefox.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Firefox is king 👑

So the CEO is a raging alt-righter. Glad I never used his product then.

the hateful browser

Holy shit man imagine if we judged every huge project by one asshole at the top. There wouldn't be a single thing to enjoy in this world.

Edit:

I am going to add more perspective to this, because holy shit people are so into eating nothing burgers.

Reddit/Twitter was a database and API that everyone was centralized onto, there was no choice. Brave you can literally fork because its open source. Aside from that this was literally the CEO's personal donation of $1000...in like 2014. Almost 10 yrs ago.

Elon, as CEO and on the X/Twitter brand:

• "brainwashed" https://www.news18.com/buzz/elon-musk-causes-uproar-with-anti-lgbtq-anti-vax-meme-insults-random-twitter-user-6714733.html
• https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musks-twitter-makes-millions-off-anti-lgbt-groomer-tweets-report
• https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musks-new-twitter-pronoun-rule-invites-bullying-lgbtq-groups-say-rcna87336
• https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/21/elon-musk-triples-down-on-making-twitter-terrible-for-trans-people/

Meanwhile Brendan:

• Literally stepped down as CEO https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/brendan-eich-resigns-as-mozilla-corporation-ceo/
• https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/brendan-eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-ceo/
• made personal blog post about inclusivity shortly after https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/
• invented and worked on/for javascript, brave, firefox

Gnubyte

Use Firefox or Safari, the more people use Chromium-based browsers the faster we get to the situation where Google completely owns the Internet (and they almost do now).

Vivaldi? Trusting a closed sourced application for privacy? What?

Not even defending brave here, just weird that the author say that.

Today I learned that people take it VERY PERSONALLY when you criticize their chosen browser. 😂

I just use Firefox and DuckDuckGo

I can't think of a reason why anyone would use a browser other than Firefox and it's forks.

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

This article is useless trash. There is no real technical argument here except "founder bad".

I do have reasons for not using Brave, but it's to do with the annoying defaults and the crypto integration. They default whitelist Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook garbage that I have to go and toggle off.

Given the level of effort and extensions like Facebook container on Firefox, I just prefer the better experience for me. This bullshit about getting on identity politics agendas I find abhorrent and repulsive. This author's a stupid fuckhead.

Oh boy, this comment section is gonna be spicy. I can already smell the smoke from the Brave enthusiasts heads exploding.

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.

I ditched Brave ages ago when the ad and crypto bullshit really ramped up, and finding out Peter Thiel was involved and Brendan Eich was a bigot, were more than enough to keep me away from Brave.

I currently use Arc on desktop because it makes my life as a busy dev much easier to organize, and Safari on iOS because every browser on there is just Safari anyway. iOS Safari + custom DNS to block ads. Works for me.

I’d use Firefox but Arc’s organization features have become insanely useful.

I've read the article via Firefox, with NoScript enabled. Am I doing this right?

I get people wanting an alternative Chromium based browser. Vivaldi, IMO, is a much better than Brave, and doesn't have all the annoying crypto weirdness.

I don't use either, though, I use Firefox

"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.

Things wrong with Brave: #1- It isn't Firefox/a Firefox derivative

I started using Brave about a year ago... I didn't know any of this.

The Prop 8 stuff is enough of a reason for me. Firefox it is, I guess.

I used Brave on mobile for a full week about a year or so ago at the suggestion of a coworker before realizing it gave me nothing over Firefox and added the bizarre crypto angle to everything.

This was during my (thankfully brief) crypto interest phase and I tried to see if I could accumulate any of the BAT coins the browser would give you for viewing ads...that never worked somehow so I accumulated zero, which was certainly one thing that led to me getting fed up with it and going back to Firefox.

Beyond that, the interface was weird, it was prone to crashes, and it was generally a hassle. 100% flash-in-the-pan cash-grab effort.

Why was appointing Eich as CEO so controversial? It's because he donated $1,000 in support of California's Proposition 8 in 2008, which was a proposed amendment to California's state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

Besides this I cannot find another good reason not to use brave. Nobody point to a specific line of code that ruins privacy, not enough reasons.