I’ve liked Firefox in the past on school computers, but lately I’ve been using brave on all my devices.
I love Brave, with its built in adblockers PLUS the ability to install more on top of it, so you can turn one off and still have protection. It feels pretty streamlined.
As someone who pirates stuff pretty frequently too, all of its pop up blockers make me feel more safe.
Should I make a switch to Firefox, and if so, why?
For starters, Brave is still Chromium, which means when Manifest v3 drops, you can expect a lot of the adblocking extensions to stop working. Only the built-in adblockers will continue to work after Manifest v3 finishes rolling out (next month, supposedly).
You’re still using a web browser that is allowing Google to dictate web standards, sadly.
I love Brave, with its built in adblockers PLUS the ability to install more on top of it, so you can turn one off and still have protection. It feels pretty streamlined.
Firefox isn’t as streamlined, I agree. However, as stated above, you will likely lose access to any extension type adblockers and be left with only the built-in adblockers relatively soon. Firefox does not have this long-term problem because it has it’s own rendering engine and its business model isn’t based on advertising. Already adblockers on Chrome/Chromium/Brave that are extensions are able to do less to control ads than they are on Firefox, because Google’s Manifest v3 is going to remove a lot of their ability to monitor the page they’re on. Google claims its for “security” and it is: It’s for Google’s financial security.
As someone who pirates stuff pretty frequently too, all of its pop up blockers make me feel more safe.
I’m really not sure how this differs from Firefox which has had built-in pop-up blockers for a decade at least. You should be more worried about using a VPN if you’re pirating, than about pop-ups. Also, it might behoove you to move towards invite-only torrent sites which you don’t have to worry about pop-ups and viruses.
Should I make a switch to Firefox, and if so, why?
The main reasons why you should switch probably don’t matter to you much, but here goes.
Google is dominating in the browser market, and ALL browsers except Firefox are now based on Chromium. Brave, Edge, Opera, and so on all use Google’s Blink rendering engine from Chromium.
Google has a history of trying to ignore web standards and impose their own. Like trying to remove the https:// and the www to make it “cleaner” while actually obfuscating important information the end-user might want to see.
Google’s main business is advertising, and anything that is going to get in their way of serving ads is going to be fought by them. Look at what is happening with YouTube, where they are going to block access to videos based on whether you’re using an adblocker. If you don’t think things like that are coming down the line for Chrome/Chromium, you’re naive.
Google is realizing their search sucks now, that nobody trusts products they make because they kill their products so quickly and willingly, and that they’re starting to hemorrhage money. They have to stave the bleeding, and that starts with fighting against adblockers, because once again their entire profitable business is ads.
If you care about open standards? Use Firefox. If you care about not seeing ads? Use Firefox.
Don’t let Google dominate until they actually can start forcing the web to be how Google wants it to be: an ad infested shitfest.
I think will I change to Firefox then. Didn’t realize brave was going to be changing for the worse but I guess I should’ve expected it, good things never last. Thanks for the info!
Well I’m glad to have helped you come to a decision. While it’s nice to know you’ll be switching, always use what works best for yourself and your use-case scenario. I know some folks who are disabled who absolutely need tools only available on Chrome. While that’s not ideal… neither is being disabled, haha.
Happy browsing!
just a small correction: Safari (and some other minor browsers with small user bases) uses it’s own rendering engine aswell (Webkit, which Blink is actually a fork of). They also enforce the use of their rendering engine for any browser on iOS and iPadOS.
This is correct, so I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. Sorry about that.
I just didn’t include Safari because it’s not actually cross-platform. I’ve been long disappointed that they gave up on making their browser available for Windows/Linux, because we do need more browsers in the market.
Why do we need to convince you? Chrome is bad for privacy and Brave is lipstick on a pig. And lipstick that loves BAT and token crap. You can easily install an adblocker plus more on top of Firefox, so that isn’t really a big item for Brave.
But just do what you want.
I think I will change to Firefox on my new phone (going android instead of Iphone for this one) and I will make the switch over on my desktop and laptops as well
You can install uBlock Origin on Firefox Android so you’ll get adblocking on mobile, just like Brave!
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I have nothing against brave itself, but the monopolistic control of the browsing is bad for privacy per se, and chrome is not a community project on which we can rely to be the entry-point of everyone to everything.
Firefox is not perfect (as chrome is not perfect either), but is very good and the only existing real alternative to chrome right now.
This may be enough (it is for me), but also firefox comes with good out of the box privacy settings and is very easy to install a bunch of extensions (adblocker included) that will improve your protection.
Finally, firefox will continue supporting V2 extension API (which allow the protection tools) while we know google was pushing to drop it and replacing it for a V3 that was invalidating the work of those apps (and would represent also a problem for brave and others, since they use the same codebase), they just retracted (temporary) because they feared a migration to firefox.As a conclusion, IMO at this moment using firefox is not just a glad experience, but also a matter of self-defense.
EDIT: formatting
Life is too short to convince. Use whatever you wish.
I had the same dilemma and I’ve made the switch for one particular reason - my eyes! Chromium font rendering adds some awful blur around each letter and this literally burns my eyes. There might be a way to turn the blur off… IDK.
That said, Brave is an awesome browser. From the Chromium world this is the only thing you can use with peace of mind. Don’t feel guilty or ashamed, or whatever, if you stick with Brave.
There’s been a lot of controversies around brave and there is an obvious danger regarding a chromium monopoly. Firefox is not perfect but it’s a really good browser and a statement.
Yeah, it feels like I’ve spent the last twenty years coming back to Firefox over and again. The last time was leaving Brave because of Brendan Eich’s bigotry not being welcome at Firefox but seemingly okay for Brave. Gross. And hey, at least Mozilla is a non-profit.
pros: it’s not chromium based
cons: mozilla is mimicking all the bad decisions from chromium
verdict: continue using chromium based browsers. I will never forgive them for having crippled the download manager, now it saves all the trash in downloads instead of tmp (edge instead saves temp on tmp even on linux)
Why not try to convince yourself by actually trying it for a week. Do your own hands-on research, as you’ll have a better appreciation of the browser. It’s not as if your device is going to explode if you try something other than Brave.
It is inadvisable to use multiple blockers at the same time.
Also, what you are calling “streamlined” is what I call loss of user control. You no longer have control of your content blocker, Brave does. And they’ve shown they’ll allow content through for those who are willing to pay them. Also, I don’t know if they still do it, but I remember they used to inject their own advertisements on websites (I think it was opt-out though). Honestly, Brave has done a lot of sketchy untrustworthy crap over the years and it boggles my mind that they’re still so trusted by supposedly privacy and security minded people.
Finally, as others have already said, their browser is based upon the Chromium codebase that is controlled by Google and will be affected by their Manifest V3 changes.
And they’ve shown they’ll allow content through for those who are willing to pay them. Also, I don’t know if they still do it, but I remember they used to inject their own advertisements on websites (I think it was opt-out though)
You sure you’re not thinking of AdBlockPlus, or did Brave do it too?
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I love Brave, with its built in adblockers PLUS the ability to install more on top of it
Eh, just fyi, you might not wanna do that. Multiple adblockers can interfer with oneanother and the result might be unpredictable/random. Also the generally considerd best adblocker uBlock Origin works best with firefox as the developer himself said. (ref. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox )
As someone who pirates stuff pretty frequently too
Hope you are using vpn, if not, you might want consider looking into that. (ref. https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/ )
Between Brave, Mullvad and Librewolf, you really can’t go wrong. They all offer great privacy features and ship with adblockers out of the box (the latter 2 ship with uBlock). It’s worth mentioning however that the chromium project is going to transition to MV3, which will cripple the functionality of a load of addons, including adblockers (although Brave’s built in one will be unaffected).
As for Firefox, I recommend you steer away from it and choose one of the aforementioned forks of it instead because they will give you better results in terms of privacy. Alternatively, you could use the Arkenfox user.js, however it’s no longer as well maintained due to being made redundant by the plethora of privacy browsers out there already.
I’m also going to go ahead and give an honourable mention to the firefox css community who have made some insanely impressive themes for Gecko based browsers. You can view some of them here: https://firefoxcss-store.github.io/ They’re one of the main reasons I’m using a Gecko browser :)
