One thing about the “Brave has been caught inserting affiliate codes” drama that doesn’t get mentioned was it wasn’t a secret. It’s not like you had to inspect the network tab on your browser to see it - It was in the URL bar! It wasn’t an obfuscated link either, it clearly said
binance.us/?ref=1234... “Caught inserting” was a laugh.The other thing I want to mention is Brave is private by default. Good defaults matter. I use Brave on all but my Macbook Pro- Would hardening Firefox be better? Almost definitely, but between installing a bunch of extensions and patching, Firefox is not worth my time.
Yeah, there are several angles and variables to it, you also can control top search results and suggestions trough the settings. Brave has such an option in their settings but they enable it by default because Chrome also has it enabled. Also people had to use specific terms in order to trigger that system. Assuming you entirely disabled all search suggestions you never triggered it anyway.
Some people wrongly claimed and speculated here that every link got somewhat manipulated, which was not the case if you actually check the source on this.
I agree that defaults are important, but what people often like to forget is that people judge by the out-of-the-box experience and if there is no result or xyz feature is missing people tend to complain. This is why there never will be a professional Browser with hardened defaults because people and developer want a middle-ground. My idea was that you can provide a Browser with 3 choices during setup, like a popup and then choose between, hardened, normal and work that setting once you choose you desired profile then can be changed within the Browser. I got criticized for this because people counter argued that you can already create profiles, but creating profiles and then afterwards harden yourself has some implications, especially for beginners.
Totally get your points, time is also always a thing. Gotcha.
