Hi. Not sure where to post this, hopefully it fits here. If you haven’t heard of Brave browser by now, it’s made by the ex-CEO of Mozilla, and is prided on being private, and integrates crypto/bitcoin.
I like the idea of crypto, and would like to get more into crypto/blockchain, but I’m not sure I can support brave, or it’s CEO. Do I swallow my pride and just use Brave? Would it be worth it, just for the privacy additions and crypto?
One reason I’m hesitant, is Firefox now has site-to-site cookie protection, whereas Brave does not. Mostly, I’m arguing with myself at this point, on whether to use Brave, and swallow my pride. Sure, as CEO of Mozilla, he made a bad political call. People can grow, right? Someone rebutted to me that Obama didn’t support gay marriage either, and neither did Hillary Clinton.
Sorry to harp on this topic so much. What would y’all do?
Sidenote: A breadtuber I really like uses brave, so Brave can’t be all that bad?
Personally I don’t care about the politics of every single person associated with every single project, because who has the time? Everyone picks their battles.
I use Brave mostly because it’s the best normie Chrome variant and Firefox hates my main rig.
That said if you’re switching only for the crypto, don’t. BAT is a worthless token and everything else is accomplished just as well with metamask and ublock in Firefox. It’s not the way into cryptocurrency.
I’m not in the whole brave thing in. But… For me LibreWolf is for the desktop a better choice, it offers many more privacy settings and is based on Firefox. And on my Android I use “Privacy”. It disables JS at deafault and has some great handy tools. However, Brave doesn’t have such things. Also does Brave looks soo commercial.
Degrees in hell if you ask me. To browse the web safely with proper functionality intact is an oxymoron and frankly a struggle as functionality diminishes for every safety measure taken.
I really like gemini, but i would also really value a low-tech web with modern HTML/CSS, but with some restrictions to prevent fingerprinting (eg. media queries) and definitely no client-side scripting at all.
The only thing brave is good for is getting BAT from clicking ads, and even that’s a trivial amount. Brave Rewards can be a convenient way to donate to websites and YouTubers who have been Brave verified, but otherwise it’s basically just Chrome with Tor. I remember hearing somewhere that Brave’s built-in Tor browser was not secure but idk the details about that. Brave is not good for privacy. Use LibreWolf or something similar if you need something that respects your privacy.
you do know you not only don’t have to click the ads to get the BAT, but the devs actively recommend you don’t click them if you’re not interested in the product, right?
I know you can get BAT from sponsored images without clicking. It’s been a long time since I used Brave. I did have to click ads when I used it. I was not aware that they changed that feature.
I don’t use Brave because of the cryptocurrency thing. “Basic Attention Token” sound dystopian. And if handing over your data for free to corporations is a bad idea, it’s also a bad idea even if you get a couple of bucks worth of cryptocurrency in the process.
Brave seems like it very much comes from the right wing “Libertarian” ideology.
Re: privacy additions - I use it on iOS only for the shield toggle interface (ie I disabled the reward and vpn fluff.) Have disabled cookies. Brave user protections are as user friendly to operate as the DDG browser is obfuscated (as in DDG has one toggle called GPC, that does literally nothing.)
On desktop, Firefox built-in protection (third party cookies disabled, everything else as strict as possible) plus a few choice extensions is pretty nice.
So my two cents is that Brave is only worthwhile on iOS where you can’t install browser extensions into Firefox…
Re: blockchain / human decency - I’m glad they’re pushing on a complex surface that Google Contributor veered away from in horror as that builds awareness of a variety of issues, ie: I’m not sold on how they implemented / their website refuses to render anything without javascript running so that’s a massive knock against them in my careless opinion. I wish librepay was as ubiquitous as patreon (stopped loading on my browser eventually due to some newly added and unknown required third party asset that I have no interest in troubleshooting…ask me what I think about google recaptcha.) The blood that lubricates the grindstone here is https://stripe.com/pricing#pricing-details which incidentally works perfectly without javascript
I read on brave’s website they are using ex-Cliqz developers to develop their own brave search engine. Cause Cliqz was privacy-oriented…Their privacy practices weren’t good from what I recall.
Brave is really a cryptoscam like any other. Lack of monetization is not the problem on the Internet. Monetization in other areas of life is. As long as we try to “fix” the problem of content creators by finding new ways to exploit/track users to come up with advertisement money, we are ignoring “how to survive with all my bills” is a problem we have in all fields, not just for artists.
Brave has shown over the years they won’t hesitate for a second to introduce a very user-hostile change for all users if that brings them money. Trash it in the dumpster.
Also, it’s a worrying trend that most new Web 3.0 browsers as they like to call themselves all have strong JavaScript support. Client-side scripting is an anti-feature of the web and only Tor Browser includes a mechanism (Safest mode) to disable it. If you have JavaScript enabled, privacy/security is impossible by design.
PS: i downvoted because i’m strongly opposed to Brave’s recuperation strategy, not because your post in itself is bad :)
One of the browser’s draws are it’s advertising privacy features. Context being they have a quick-access panel of toggles in the user interface for javascript, third party domains, other useful things?
It’s a fork from Chromium. That’s millions of lines of code written by a tracking company. No fork in the world will unearth all those privacy-unfriendly design decisions. They may patch out the superficial, obvious tracking, but there’s still going to be plenty implementation details that could’ve been easily done in a more privacy-friendly manner.
And in addition to that, Mozilla actually spends quite a bit of time on innovating privacy protections, and accepts/maintains patches from the Tor Browser devs. The Total Cookie Protection (/State Partitioning) that you already mentioned, is just the latest fruit from that collaboration.
So, for privacy I would always recommend a Firefox-based browser. Tor Browser, if you need all the privacy you can get. Or otherwise Firefox, IceCat, LibreWolf, each with the right add-ons to achieve the amount of webpage breakage that you enjoy the most.
I’ve heard of that Tor push thing. It’s cool that Firefox is first to implement it. Honestly, once Vivaldi gets better with battery life I’ll probably switch to Vivaldi.
Consensus here is pretty anti-Brave and there are definitely issues (e.g. no one has mentioned the bug that allowed your ISP to view TOR sites you visited in this browser, which is a really glaring problem) but I use it as my second browser for seeing how things look in Blink. As far as I’m aware, only Ungoogled Chromium is an option for FLOSS browsers based on Blink. My first will always be Firefox.
It’s an honest mistake and is mostly not a problem. Brave browser was never meant for privacy. Tor project always strongly recommended to use Tor Browser NOT ANY OTHER browser for accessing .onion, precisely because of such problems… this is the first thing people are told when they start to use Tor: don’t use any other browser than Tor browser or you’ll have plenty of leaks of all kinds.
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Is your breadtube love Luke Smith? If so, he is a Brave shill that believes it is made by " Run by a based Christian and not furry leftists" and is quite the homophobe. https://web.archive.org/web/20210311201921/https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/brave
Brave is working on their own search engine , I’m feeling excited.
Personally I don’t care about the politics of every single person associated with every single project, because who has the time? Everyone picks their battles.
I use Brave mostly because it’s the best normie Chrome variant and Firefox hates my main rig.
That said if you’re switching only for the crypto, don’t. BAT is a worthless token and everything else is accomplished just as well with metamask and ublock in Firefox. It’s not the way into cryptocurrency.
I’m not in the whole brave thing in. But… For me LibreWolf is for the desktop a better choice, it offers many more privacy settings and is based on Firefox. And on my Android I use “Privacy”. It disables JS at deafault and has some great handy tools. However, Brave doesn’t have such things. Also does Brave looks soo commercial.
Oh no, I didn’t know there was a culture war aspect to the Firefox vs Brave thing.
Degrees in hell if you ask me. To browse the web safely with proper functionality intact is an oxymoron and frankly a struggle as functionality diminishes for every safety measure taken.
Safe web is no web, welcome to c/gemini.
I really like gemini, but i would also really value a low-tech web with modern HTML/CSS, but with some restrictions to prevent fingerprinting (eg. media queries) and definitely no client-side scripting at all.
The only thing brave is good for is getting BAT from clicking ads, and even that’s a trivial amount. Brave Rewards can be a convenient way to donate to websites and YouTubers who have been Brave verified, but otherwise it’s basically just Chrome with Tor. I remember hearing somewhere that Brave’s built-in Tor browser was not secure but idk the details about that. Brave is not good for privacy. Use LibreWolf or something similar if you need something that respects your privacy.
There were leaks of users that used Tor. Their DNS was leaked along with their searches when using Tor in Brave. It’s since been fixed, though.
you do know you not only don’t have to click the ads to get the BAT, but the devs actively recommend you don’t click them if you’re not interested in the product, right?
I know you can get BAT from sponsored images without clicking. It’s been a long time since I used Brave. I did have to click ads when I used it. I was not aware that they changed that feature.
never changed, it has always been like this
I don’t use Brave because of the cryptocurrency thing. “Basic Attention Token” sound dystopian. And if handing over your data for free to corporations is a bad idea, it’s also a bad idea even if you get a couple of bucks worth of cryptocurrency in the process.
Brave seems like it very much comes from the right wing “Libertarian” ideology.
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uh oh
Re: privacy additions - I use it on iOS only for the shield toggle interface (ie I disabled the reward and vpn fluff.) Have disabled cookies. Brave user protections are as user friendly to operate as the DDG browser is obfuscated (as in DDG has one toggle called GPC, that does literally nothing.)
On desktop, Firefox built-in protection (third party cookies disabled, everything else as strict as possible) plus a few choice extensions is pretty nice.
So my two cents is that Brave is only worthwhile on iOS where you can’t install browser extensions into Firefox…
Re: blockchain / human decency - I’m glad they’re pushing on a complex surface that Google Contributor veered away from in horror as that builds awareness of a variety of issues, ie: I’m not sold on how they implemented / their website refuses to render anything without javascript running so that’s a massive knock against them in my careless opinion. I wish librepay was as ubiquitous as patreon (stopped loading on my browser eventually due to some newly added and unknown required third party asset that I have no interest in troubleshooting…ask me what I think about google recaptcha.) The blood that lubricates the grindstone here is https://stripe.com/pricing#pricing-details which incidentally works perfectly without javascript
tl;dr: https://lemmy.ml/post/55603/comment/39186
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I read on brave’s website they are using ex-Cliqz developers to develop their own brave search engine. Cause Cliqz was privacy-oriented…Their privacy practices weren’t good from what I recall.
Idk why you are getting downvotes for this pretty good question…
I called out a fearmongering and hatespeech article on ruqqus and got -6 votes, so it’s not that bad lol.
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This thread made me rethink my usage of Brave and I am trying to use Firefox again.
Brave is really a cryptoscam like any other. Lack of monetization is not the problem on the Internet. Monetization in other areas of life is. As long as we try to “fix” the problem of content creators by finding new ways to exploit/track users to come up with advertisement money, we are ignoring “how to survive with all my bills” is a problem we have in all fields, not just for artists.
Brave has shown over the years they won’t hesitate for a second to introduce a very user-hostile change for all users if that brings them money. Trash it in the dumpster.
Also, it’s a worrying trend that most new Web 3.0 browsers as they like to call themselves all have strong JavaScript support. Client-side scripting is an anti-feature of the web and only Tor Browser includes a mechanism (Safest mode) to disable it. If you have JavaScript enabled, privacy/security is impossible by design.
PS: i downvoted because i’m strongly opposed to Brave’s recuperation strategy, not because your post in itself is bad :)
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This is not “anti-javascript FUD”. Javascript is a very well know security and privacy threat. It implement remote code execution by design. For example, it allows any website to run timing attacks https://duckduckgo.com/?q=javascript+timing+attacks&t=h_&ia=web including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerability) against vulnerable devices.
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One of the browser’s draws are it’s advertising privacy features. Context being they have a quick-access panel of toggles in the user interface for javascript, third party domains, other useful things?
Brave is trying to spin what is ultimately an advertising model and is not private by design. Targeted ads = targeted surveillance
It’s a fork from Chromium. That’s millions of lines of code written by a tracking company. No fork in the world will unearth all those privacy-unfriendly design decisions. They may patch out the superficial, obvious tracking, but there’s still going to be plenty implementation details that could’ve been easily done in a more privacy-friendly manner.
And in addition to that, Mozilla actually spends quite a bit of time on innovating privacy protections, and accepts/maintains patches from the Tor Browser devs. The Total Cookie Protection (/State Partitioning) that you already mentioned, is just the latest fruit from that collaboration.
So, for privacy I would always recommend a Firefox-based browser. Tor Browser, if you need all the privacy you can get. Or otherwise Firefox, IceCat, LibreWolf, each with the right add-ons to achieve the amount of webpage breakage that you enjoy the most.
I’ve heard of that Tor push thing. It’s cool that Firefox is first to implement it. Honestly, once Vivaldi gets better with battery life I’ll probably switch to Vivaldi.
It’s actually called the Tor Uplift. Also, Vivaldi is not free-software so interesting to see over there :)
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And now for the more politically correct section: Fuck homophobes. I am not aware of Brendan Eich having changed his mind, so fuck him as well.
Consensus here is pretty anti-Brave and there are definitely issues (e.g. no one has mentioned the bug that allowed your ISP to view TOR sites you visited in this browser, which is a really glaring problem) but I use it as my second browser for seeing how things look in Blink. As far as I’m aware, only Ungoogled Chromium is an option for FLOSS browsers based on Blink. My first will always be Firefox.
It’s an honest mistake and is mostly not a problem. Brave browser was never meant for privacy. Tor project always strongly recommended to use Tor Browser NOT ANY OTHER browser for accessing .onion, precisely because of such problems… this is the first thing people are told when they start to use Tor: don’t use any other browser than Tor browser or you’ll have plenty of leaks of all kinds.