this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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[–] starflower@lemmy.blahaj.zone 207 points 9 months ago (25 children)

Your friendly reminder that the Brave CEO is Mozillas old CEO, who was fired from Mozilla for being unapologetically homophobic.

[–] VerseAndVermin@lemmy.world 60 points 9 months ago

Since everyone else is piling on negatively, I appreciated your friendly reminder.

[–] Rose@lemmy.world 24 points 9 months ago

Worse than merely being homophobic, as he financially supported politicians and causes that worked to prevent equal rights.

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[–] YeetPics@mander.xyz 120 points 9 months ago (13 children)

The scam company brave? The one that scams people? With their scam based crypto rewards that don't pay out? THAT brave?

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 113 points 9 months ago (7 children)

There's no reason to hate Brave unless you have a political bias against their CEO.

Besides in 2016, when Brave promised to remove banner ads from websites and replace them with their own, basically trying to extract money directly from websites without the consent of their owners

And when the CEO unilaterally added a fringe, pay-to-win Wikipedia clone into the default search engine list.

And in 2018, Tom Scott and other creators noticed Brave was soliciting donations in their names without their knowledge or consent.

And in 2020, when Brave got caught injecting URLs with affiliate codes when users tried browsing to various websites.

Also in 2020, when they silently started injecting ads into their home page backgrounds, pocketing the revenue. There was a lot of pushback: "the sponsored backgrounds give a bad first impression." Further requests were ignored (immediately closed)

And in 2022, when Brave floated the idea of further discouraging users from disabling sponsored messages.

And in 2023, when Brave got caught installing a paid VPN service on users' computers without their consent.

[–] drislands@lemmy.world 37 points 9 months ago

But other than that, there's no reason!

[–] shotgun_crab@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

You're right, no reason at all :)

[–] YeetPics@mander.xyz 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I had a small mountain of BAT they locked me out of due to shoddy linking with their banking affiliates and out of date DRM practices locking me out of my account due to too many devices being logged in (each OS update counted as its own device).

I noticed you didn't have that linked, that's because not every shitty move a company makes gets news coverage. Sorry I don't fit into your narrow view on what constitutes a valid reason.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If there's something interesting to add to the list, I'm curious. Brave did partner with a criminal organization currently under a $1.1 billion lawsuit, but I don't have enough information about your particular case.

Did the software lock you out or did their servers? Was this reported on anywhere?

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[–] Mikina@programming.dev 3 points 9 months ago

This made me wonder - is there any active Best Of community on any instance? This would be a perfect candidate.

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[–] tazy@lemmy.tazy.xyz 95 points 9 months ago (4 children)

fuck brave all my homies hate brave

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 88 points 9 months ago (39 children)

Honestly you really should be using Firefox.

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[–] bc1@lemmy.l0l.city 80 points 9 months ago (7 children)

Whenever people tell me to use Brave, I know they fall for marketing very easily

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[–] moitoi@feddit.de 51 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Brave to end 'Strict' fingerprinting protection as it breaks owns ad revenue.

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[–] ZeroHora@lemmy.ml 44 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Another issue is that Strict mode is used by roughly 0.5% of Brave's users, with the rest using the default setting, which is the Standard mode.

How are they getting this data? If it's with telemetry this data doesn't seem reliable, I doubt that people who change the fingerprint setting don't disable telemetry.

[–] Umbrias@beehaw.org 3 points 9 months ago

Alternatively, lol

[–] LainOfTheWired@lemy.lol 33 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I used brave for a while, but left as I felt there was something fishy about them. Seems I was right

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[–] const_void@lemmy.ml 26 points 9 months ago (1 children)
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[–] JoeKrogan@lemmy.world 16 points 9 months ago

I'd rather have the sites break to be honest

[–] Byter@lemmy.one 14 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I'd ask why they don't make it optional (I'm not a Brave user) but it seems it was.

Another issue is that Strict mode is used by roughly 0.5% of Brave's users, with the rest using the default setting, which is the Standard mode.

This low percentage actually makes these users more vulnerable to fingerprinting despite them using the more aggressive blocker, because they constitute a discernible subset of users standing out from the rest.

Given that, I'm inclined to agree with the decision to remove it. Pick your battles and live to fight another day.

[–] averyminya@beehaw.org 5 points 9 months ago

So rather than fixing the issue they just removed it entirely.

That's kind of a joke from a "privacy" based browser.

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[–] Dark_Dragon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 9 months ago

I don't like brave browser from first use. Something seemed off.

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