I don't get all the hate Brave gets. I understand that techies have some issues, but for me as a user I have nothing bad to say. Ads are blocked everywhere, including YouTube. There's an option to use tor...
If you don't like the crypto options don't use them. I always thought crypto was bunk, but I wish I bought a bunch of bitcoin when I first heard of it.
I don't like it because it's a chrome derivative. Sure, they use Chromium and can edit some things. But at the end of the day, they use the Chrome javascript engine and render the HTML/CSS however Google wants to. Therefore Google more or less defines how that browser represents the web. If Google wants to implement or not implement some web standard, Brave has to follow along whether they like it or not.
Good point, I had forgotten node uses v8. It's powering servers that run node, sure. Not every website uses node. Lemmy I think is rust backend and kbin uses PHP.
But I mean browser specific rendering. They all follow ECMAScript standard but there are things outside of it. In the past __proto__, a way to get an object's prototype, only worked in Spidermonkey. Or how the ECMAScript doesn't specific what order the elements in a for...in loop shows up. Today these are little minor things
They aren't particularly important right now (besides hunting weird bugs) because Google follows the standards more or less. But give Google 100% control and you will start seeing dark patterns slip into the javascript itself
The browser works fine, although with time they kept adding more and more stuff that I had to disable. I could deal with it, but it's not a browser I'd recommend to most of my friends.
After a few years using Chrome and then Brave, I moved back to Firefox. Not as polished, but works fine for me.
As a Brave Rewards/Creators user:
I simply don't trust them anymore.
I used it for a while to make some money with my site. Some people used Brave (like me), so since they were blocking ads, I confirmed my site so I could get some of the automated donations the browser sends to the top sites people visited that month. I received a few payments, had everything confirmed, paid taxes on the revenue... all 100% legit, never tried to game the system or anything like that. It wasn't much, but helped with running costs.
One day I couldn't login to see my balance, but ignored it and forgot about it. Then they sent me an email asking me how I was making that money, to which I replied. Months went by without any reply... until I forced the issue. Then they banned my account without providing any reasons or a way to appeal. My site was still verified, so I assume I was still receiving donations, which I could not access. The site continued to be displayed as "verified" even after them banned me... I have no idea if they sent the donations back to the senders. I actually had to ask them to un-verify the site if they were going to keep my account banned.
The way they dealt with it was bad and receiving donations to a banned account is shady as fuck. I wouldn't use the word "hate", but I just can't trust them.
Awhile ago, I made like $300 with a bunch of Docker containers running brave browsers, I used a script that would open a bunch of sites, move the mouse around and then send the crypto to my site. It was so obvious, I have no idea how I didn't get banned (I'm still not), clearly whatever fraud detection they're using is pretty shitty.
I prefer Firefox and Librewolf because they are less dependent on Google. But I never disliked Brave. I have it as a second browser. I think the issue people have with them is that they are also fundamentally an ad company.
Look, nothing lasts forever. For now, I think brave is a decent alternative to Chrome if people don't want to leave Chromium.
Props to Brendan! Firefox and Brave are have put their foot down. Now they need our support. I'm hoping that nobody here is using Chrome (or anything else Google for that matter). We the users are what gave Google their power. We wanted free shit and look where that landed us. Time to turn things around.